Developer Arsi Patala and publisher New Blood have released the Ultrakill Ultra Revamp update, and its impressive visual and performance improvements appear to have resulted in a player count surge for the ultraviolent shooter.
Released yesterday, the update is described by its developer as “a complete visual and technical overhaul of Ultrakill“. The game’s eighth layer is still in development, but Patala and artist Victoria Holland decided to use that time to bring previous layers’ visuals up to par with the latest as well.
Patala acknowledges that “you won’t notice a lot of the technical work that’s been done under the hood”, but he does say that the game’s performance has been vastly improved, bragging that he and Holland have “improved the visuals of the entire game while also improving performance in each and every level”. Fair play.
As well as the performance and visual improvements, Ultrakill‘s Ultra Revamp update has also introduced two new Encore Levels, in addition to reworking the way Encore Levels work across the board.
While they were previously “mere replayable levels with radiant enemies”, they’re now essentially new stages that don’t look or play “anything like the levels they’re based on”, as well as being “about 10x harder” than those levels.
Not only that, but if you’re a fan of Australian psych-prog band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (and you should be, because they’re great), you’ll now find three of the band’s songs in the game, including certified banger “Robot Stop” from the excellent 2016 album Nonagon Infinity.
If you want to see how the visuals for Ultrakill have changed in the Ultra Revamp update, you can check out a before-and-after comparison video right here. It’s the only way to do the update justice.
The update has resulted in a huge player upsurge for Ultrakill, too. According to SteamDB, while the game has been averaging around 3-4,000 players per day for the last year or so, its 24-hour peak shot up to 23,011 at the time of the update’s release, and at time of writing, 12,055 players are enjoying Ultrakill.
It’s been a busy old time for Ultrakill recently. Back in December, the game got itself a crossover with fellow ultraviolent shooter Mullet MadJack, bringing a brand new Ultrakill-themed boss fight to developer Hammer95’s game.
You can check out Ultrakill right now on PC via Steam Early Access. The Ultra Revamp update’s patch notes are available here.
