Taking Post-Release Seriously: Shoulders of Giants 1.2 Update out Now

The tiny team that we have put together The Shoulders of GiantsThe response of Xbox users has been much better than what we expected. (At the time that this review is being written, our score for user reviews exceeds 4.5!) there’s still a million things we’re committed to improving.

The first major set of changes is now available in the new The World is Alive 1.2 content update. Keep reading for more information on how we keep our co-op Roguelike updated.

I’m a firm believer that the surest way to improve a work of art is to find its weakest elements and try to turn those into its strongest. That’s exactly what we aimed to do in this long-coming update, working tirelessly to merge player feedback with our own to make some significant changes to our already-released title. Here’s the story:

Our team released the release with satisfaction. The Shoulders of Giants’s improvisational combat and robust progression system. The reviews were coming in and one common theme emerged. Players felt the sameness of the game’s worlds, mission objectives, etc. after about 12 hours.

We all deal with criticism differently, but to me the criticism that really gets into your head isn’t the loud, unhinged, and hateful kind–it’s the subtle kind that says something you know deep down is true.

With our first major content update, we and our players both wanted to upgrade the mission types and level environments. The first thing we did was to rebuild our lesser-loved Mission Types.

Our combat-focused “butterfly collector” mode (trust me, the name makes sense if you’ve played the game) became an exploration-heavy “hunt” mission with a focus on taking on tougher foes with strategy. Our very one-note “storm” mission type that once challenged players to run around in a dark procedural world through a dense thunderstorm seeking an exit is now a much more guided experience built around defending weather probes from enemy onslaughts–for most of our team, this is now their favorite mission to play.

But that wasn’t enough, to make the surfaces of these procedural planets more meaningfully unique between runs, we’ve introduced a new Planet Anomaly system that can completely change how levels behave–adding meteor storms, indoor arena battles, low gravity fights that take you into outer space, and some extremely goofy business that I will not spoil here.

We’re extremely excited to get this out to our fans. This is just the beginning. To keep up to date with our roadmap, check out the game’s store page and official website, or join our discord.

The shoulders of Giants

Moving Pieces Interactive

☆☆☆☆☆
57

★★★★★

$19.99

Shoulders of Giants is a sci-fi Roguelike that lets you control both a robot with a blade and a space frog with a gun. You can play alone or with friends, and even as a team of four. Cut through the waves of enemies to save the galaxy.

Entropy is spreading chaos throughout the galaxy, corrupting planets that are still alive and pushing for the death of the Universe. One scrappy group of space survivors, led by the psychic Owl is fighting to restore balance. A mysterious mech Sharpshooting amphibian! Together, they have to cut through the waves of enemies in order to restore life and light throughout the galaxy.