Steam Community :: Shroom and Gloom

Shroom Patch Notes: 0.6.39

Sep 16

Hi Shroomers!

We’ve just rolled out a fresh update to Shroom and Gloom - 0.6.39 is now live for your

mushroom-roasting pleasure!

This update is focused on both gameplay improvements, and stability fixes. Huge thanks to everyone

that shared feedback on your experiences playing the game, or logged bug reports. We’re so grateful

to all of you, and it’s awesome to be making this game better with you!

TL:DR For gameplay changes:Broadly, our biggest focus with gameplay tweaks has been to address the feedback that The Janitor and The Facility are too challenging or complex for most new players. Analytics also confirmed this was an issue, with only a small majority of runs ending in The Gloom.

We didn’t change anything drastic to make the janitor outright stronger, but made tweaks that should make this new playstyle easier to pick up and more fun to master. There have also been improvements to the behaviors of several cards in P2.

For the high level players who are already mastering the game, we see and hear you too! An assault of more punishing shrooms will be coming just for you with the upcoming challenge modes, AKA “Gloom Levels”.

TL;DR for bug fixes:

Despite the best efforts of Team Lazerbeam and our beta testers, Shroom and Gloom launched into Early Access with some pretty aggressive gremlins breaking things for some players. We want to get the game as stable and bug free as possible, as quickly as we can, so bug fixing efforts were heavily focused on the worst issues we picked up in these first days after launch.

We’ve given a lot of focus to improving on issues when playing the game in Simplified Chinese, especially the bug where some players had the game freeze on start up. Our apologies to that segment of the Shroom and Gloom community, and special thanks for your patience and understanding while we ironed out those issues.

Do you want to know more? Cool, let’s dive into all the changes in Shroom and Gloom 0.6.39!

Gameplay (Some of this was listed mistakenly in 0.6.24 changes. Sorry!)
- Added “Dice”, which can be collected to allow you to reroll certain card choices! Added this to smooth out some of the frustration players raised with RNG. Note: It's possible this will appear on certain camp encounters where we don't intend it to. Also you can't re-roll in all situations we would like you to. This will be improved over time.
- Changed how cleaning cards explain what they do both on card descriptions and their tooltips. This was in an effort to make it clearer how gunk removal works, and that over-cleaning can make cards sparkle.
- Camp card descriptions have their activation verb in card properties. Eg. “Unlockable” (please let us know if you find this meaningful or if it just adds more noise!)
- “Melty” and “Gunk Pile” are now temporary. (Preventing new players from clogging their decks with these cards.)
- “Sweep” now cleans for 1.
- “Gross Feast” is now “"Collect 100% of Gunk on card and heal 5 X the Collected amount. ”
- “Flash Turret” Applies 2 vulnerable instead of 3, but now deals 2 damage.
- “Analysis” draws a Data card, but no longer lingers.
- “Chugger Chugger” is now "Deal 5 Damage. Temporary. IF FATAL, Make Sticky Residue.
- “Oozing Canister is now “ Unplayable. IF GUNKED, +2 Decay on a random card. ”
- “Splatter Saw” is now “Unplayable. When an enemy dies, Make Chugger-Chugger with 5 damage.”
- “Writhing Mass” is now “Apply 3 DECAY. Make Writhing Mass. Draw With Gunk 1. Temporary. Eager.”
- “Secretion” is now “Unplayable. IF GUNKED, Make Writhing Mass.”
- “Unstable Concoction” is now “Unplayable. Draw With Gunk 1. IF GUNKED, Create LODGED Glass Shard in a random enemy AND Deal 5 Damage to a random enemy.”
- “Stem Pack” is now “Heal 5. Draw 2 cards. Bioheal 5. Exhaust.”
- “Flea Bites” now deal 5, instead of 15 damage.
- “Sacrifice” now affects all cards in your hand with IF FATAL.
- “Shurikens” now persist for 3, no longer have uses, do not replenish, and cost 3 in shop. Have fun ninjas!
- Tweaks to numbers: Gunklung, Fumigate, Splatter Saw, Greycap Tag, Gnat Nest, Gunk Pile, Endless Larvae.
- Enemy Tweaks: Bloat Shroom, Mechamuck.
- Small Gunk Worm status effect adjustments.
- You can no longer get multiple “Skin and Bones”
- “Workbench” camp structure adds less damage.
- Training type “Multiply Damage” applies to “Make Card With Damage”
- Some Modify card camp structures have new upgrades.
- The Facility Explore danger scales a bit faster.
- Sparkling visuals and sound effects adjusted.
- Gloom hand in character screen has some animation.

Fixes
- Auto-walk/ not walking issues should be fixed! Cause was unrecognized input devices, like joysticks and keyboards, should no longer register as a valid input device. Previously, in certain circumstances this would lead to the Unity input system registering an analog input with default position as +0.5 or -0.5. Leading to the “Always walking forward” or “Always walking backwards” bugs. We are hoping the changes we have made will fix the majority of issues that have been reported. (thanks for letting us know!)
  - If you are still experiencing the same, or a similar bug after this release, we should get a report of the device causing the problem, and fix it in subsequent versions. But your reports still really help us know what to prioritize!
  - If a device that you would like to play with, is no longer working. Please let us know via Discord [discord.gg] or Steam Discussions.
- Fixed a softlock on controller where you could enter the character selection, and then go back to the title, and then not be able to start a new run.
- Chinese Localisation: Hopefully fixed the issue where the game would take very long to load/ would crash during load on some systems.
- Chinese Localization: Ensured that if your system language is “Chinese”, “ChineseSimplified” or “ChineseTraditional” the locale will fall back to our available Chinese locale.
- Chinese Localization - resolved issue with some instances of text appearing blank. (Issue was caused by large text atlases taking longer than expected to load, leading to nothing where text should be.)
- Fixed a settings issue where “Chromatic Aberration” and “Lock Camera in Combat” settings had their wires crossed and would enable or disable each other.
- Visual fix: “Large rock” and “space heater” rewards should no longer be float.
- Visual improvement: Coffin and Gloom shelf material updates.
- Visual fix: Environment updates in Forgotten Path Tunnel 12.
- Visual fix: When cards grow damage they should “ping!”

That’s all the big stuff for 0.6.39! Thanks again to everyone that’s been helping us iron out these kinks, and improve on the Shroom and Gloom experience! We’re already working on the next round of fixes, so expect to hear more from us soon.

Stay rad everybody!

Shroom and Gloom

189

54

Concerns about overall card design and difficulty scaling

Hello! After playing a few runs i've got some feedbacks As things stand, the game IMO nails its presentation, the ambiance is absolutely great. The camp game loop is pretty fun and original as well. But there's an issue with card/progression design. I played 5 runs, going in blind, which all ended up with an (easy) win. After the second zone or so, every fight was absolutely trivial, either by killing everything in one turn or having absurd amount of healing (often both). From that experience, I can only ...

7

APurpleApple

3 hours ago

General Discussions

Shroom Patch Notes: 0.6.24

Sep 15

Good news Shroomers! First patch is live! We had an absolutely stellar Early Access launch for Shroom and Gloom. Huge thanks to everyone that picked the game up at launch, left a Steam review, or spread the spores! After our first weekend we had 700 reviews with a 91% positive rating. We’re very happy with this, but THAT NUMBER NEEDS TO GO UP!

The Lazerbeams have been hard at work, reviewing initial feedback and bug reports. We’ve been squishing some of the most nasty bugs that were troubling players. After a bust of bug fixes, we’re happy to share that our very first post launch patch is out! Shroom and Gloom 0.6.24 is now live!

Here are the biggest bug fixes:

Achievement “Gloom Slayer” should work now
Achievement “Would you love me if I were a worm” should work now
improved loading times
localization: Chinese loading screen is an image. Further resolve above loading issue.
Explore rooms with 3 doors have had their layout adjusted
Veterans (enemies that run away) should have lodged cards when you encounter them next (may not persist over multiple sessions)
Ensured that cancelling a cast and letting go of a cast doesn't lead to a null ref
fixed issue where some locked cards could be found in weird situations
Fixes errors related to dead enemies receiving damage.
Fix cases where the deck viewer can open during a transition.
Fixes errors related to adding cards to player deck when the active player hand is not set.
Fixed errors resulting from trying to stop a nonexistent or already destroyed sound.
Fixed Card “Acid Vial” breaking things
Fixed some sketchy selection outlines.
Improved environment prompts intersecting with world.
Some enemy vfx spawn position adjustments

Gameplay improvements:

In The Forgotten Path, more torches can spawn in more locations.
Permanent food and data should have the "Endless" property when you make a permanent copy.

Coming next:

balance fixes to make Janitor less punishing
fix for auto walk/ can’t walk:

In the mean time please try Bebel-O-Rama’s fix:

https://five.seafn.eu.org/app/3271280/discussions/0/568163851455049030/?tscn=1789310152#c520883440133960144

This next patch should be live very soon.

Shroom and Gloom

245

33

Love the game, hate the janitor

Heya Loving the game, but to unlock the rest of it I gotta win a janitor run (the other area 2 person is locked behind him, apparently the next area is as well) is there any broken build I can force on him? just playing him and getting a ton of support cards for builds I don't know if I will have a good time if I find the payoff is not a fun time for me....

66

grimphoenix

12 hours ago

General Discussions

Shroom and Gloom explodes into Early Access!

Sep 10

Yo Shroomers!

Welcome to the most exciting dev log of our lives!

Today we're so excited to celebrate the launch of our first-person fungal-punk double deckbuilder! Shroom and Gloom is now out in Steam Early Access!

You can finally welcome the spores of our mushroom infested baby into you brain!

The road to launch!

Development of this game has been a trip. It's been punctuated by some absolutely huge moments; dropping the original prototype, signing with Devolver, going viral on social media multiple times, bringing the demo to Steam and participating in some amazing events. But even more awesome than these huge moments, there's been a constant stream of hype and excitement from our growing community, inspiring us and cheering us on every step of the way.

In Sep 2024 we dropped an early prototype of Shroom and Gloom as a viability test The response was almost instantly overwhelmingly positive. Two year's later, it's surreal to look back on how far the game has come, and how massively the community has grown since then. We can't really express how grateful we are for all the lovely people that discovered the game, and joined our journey to bring it to life. And today, we are absolutely ecstatic that we can invite you to join us for the next chapter of this wild creative adventure!

The final week!

As we've been gearing up to release the game, Shroom Hype has gone off the charts!

Wishlists were steadily growing ever since we opened them up, but things went into overdrive after we announced the launch date. Things were further helped by SnG being included in some choice lists of upcoming games, and us landing a few viral social media posts. Then with wishlists streaming in, we were delighted to see Shroom and Gloom creep it's way into Steam's Popular Upcoming charts, peaking at number 5!

Back in our February dev log, after hitting 150K Wishlists, we announced a wildly ambitions dream; reach 250K Wishlist by launch. Today, as we drop this thing, we're beyond stoked to share that we not only reached that goal, but massively surpassed it. We're launching with 326 696 Wishlists!

Early Access at Launch:

As we bring Shroom and Gloom into Early Access, here are some highlights of what you can expect:

• Next level double deckbuilding! If you played the demo, you'll have a feel for Shroom and Gloom's double deckbuilding gameplay. In Early Access, we've fine-tuned, rebalanced, polished and amplified everything we love about the game.
• 2 paths! The Mysterious Facility can now be discovered! This is an entirely new path towards The Gloom, complete with entirely new card pools, enemies and rewards!
• 5 characters! At launch you'll be able to play as Paperboy, Janitor, Lunchlady, Activist and Concerned Parent. Each character has unique starting decks for both combat and explore, plus a base Foresight card that changes how they play. You'll also be able to discover game-breaking character cards during your explorations of The Underealm!
• Quests! You'll have to do some mushroom-hunting to earn these advanced characters and access to The Facility. The quest system that allows you to unlock new content and grow this strange world as you venture deeper and learn more.
• Achievements! Along with quests, we're also launching with a selection of unlockable Steam Achievements. With a range of challenge levels, your goals to unlock some achievements are clear, while other are hidden and will need to be discovered.
• Game Saves! One of our most requested features is here! Each time you win a fight, or escape a dungeon your progress will be auto saved!
• Controller Support! Our other most requested feature is here too! You can now throw your keyboard and mouse in the bin and enjoy Shroom and Gloom from the comfort of your couch!
• Simplified Chinese langue support! Shroom and Gloom is now playable in Simplified Chinese! Support for additional languages will roll out in Early Access over time.
* UI/ UX and QOL improvements! We've put a lot of effort into improving the moment to moment card play in Shroom and Gloom. Targeting in both combat and explore has been vastly improved. Each card now indicates if it'll hit a single enemies, multiple enemies, or apply a buff to you. Targeting cards in your hand has also been streamlined, with any ineligible targets falling away. We've also added a card inspector, which should help when playing the game on handheld devices.
• Secrets! The less said here the better, just know that we've sprinkled some fun things into the game for you to discover!

What's next?We couldn't be more stoked to set off on this next phases of development, working more closely than ever with the Shroom and Gloom community in Early Access.

In short, our big picture plan it to keep improving on the game, add even more characters and eventually open up the third and final pathway to The Gloom. Between here and the final 1.0 release, we'll roll out a few major updates to introduce new characters and cards. And between those big updates, we'll drop smaller ones, fine-tuning the existing content.

Our first step will be building out a roadmap. What exactly this will look like depends on the community. Your feedback will help to shape and direct future development of the game. So, if you do pick the game up in Early Access, leave us a Steam review, and become a part of our lovely Discord[discord.gg] to join future discussions about how we can continue to make Shroom and Gloom the best game it can be.

Go eat some mushrooms!
We could swoon over this dreamy moment forever, but you have more important things to do! The Facility won't unlock itself, and someone needs to clean that mess up!

Thank you so much to you for being a part of this moment, and extra thanks to all the wonderful members of our community who have encouraged us and supported this project up to this point. We couldn't possibly be more grateful, or excited about what comes next.

Stay rad and be excellent to each other!

Shroom and Gloom

384

69

139 people found this review helpful
2 people found this review funny

Recommended

12.6 hrs on record

Posted: September 10

Product received for free

Early Access Review

Waited for years for this one and it was very worth it! Excited to see what else is in the pipeline for it but this is an excellent early access release. https://youtu.be/H6eiA9msO4I

Olexa

800 products in account

4

"Last Drop" was in my initial hand after the last fight where it was created

"Last Drop" was created by the Syringe card that costs 0 and is Temporary. Somehow a Last Drop ended up in the first four cards I drew the next match.

1

theorgg

2 hours ago

Bug Reports & Technical Issues

23 people found this review helpful

Recommended

16.3 hrs on record

Posted: September 12

Early Access Review

Shroom & Gloom is an excellent entry in the deckbuilder genre, blending atmosphere and gameplay in a way I have been looking for in other titles. There's already enough in the current version of Early Access to justify the price, and if you want to play this blind, I would say it's definitely worth a purchase.

Gameplay

There are a lot of ideas here that I have seen in other games, but not in quite the same form. The concept of building 2 separate decks is present in Griftlands, the atmospheric and immersive visuals are reminiscent of Inscryption, as is the first-person perspective which you can also find in Diceomancer. A unique aspect of this game is that the currency you spend in shops is represented by actual cards added to your deck, calling back to the grandfather of the genre, Dominion, where winning requires clogging your deck with victory cards.

But these similarities are only surface-level; the actual game is a unique and well-executed blend of mechanics that compliment one another, building the game's unique identity. If I were to describe that identity in one word, it would be scrappy.

The game encourages you to view everything as a resource: the enemies you kill can be turned into food cards. Those can be used to heal, as the game intentionally lacks any block mechanics, or can be saved and later spent at shops. Encounter rewards don't actually give you any new combat cards, instead granting you camping cards for your second deck that you use at rest sites in-between combats. There, the game turns into a push-your-luck puzzle where you try to get as many activities done before moving on, using cards to interact with the environment to recover health, gain and improve combat cards, all while taking increasing damage with every turn spent at the camp.

This design presents the player with a lot of interesting and meaningful decisions. Do you kill the enemy as quickly as possible, or should you wait until you can use a card that turns them into food? Should you then use that food card to heal, or do you want to keep it for the upcoming shop or to spend at the camp site? Do you want to use those camp sites to fully recover your health, or would it be better to take damage to improve your combat deck as much as possible? Should you use a card to increase your maximum health, or would it be better used to interact with one of the items at the camp?

Another way in which the game stands out is that unlike most other deckbuilders, you spend as much time improving your existing cards as you do adding new ones to your deck. Many events and objects give your attacks or skills permanent bonuses and new abilities, meaning that by the end of a run you often end up with cobbled-together cards with a bunch of added keywords, further contributing to the scrappy feel of the game.

The vibe

The visuals in the game remind me of Edmund McMillen's games -- they're both ugly and charming, often blurring the line between the two as the game presents you with cute mushrooms and eldritch horrors alike.

The cards you use feature different tools, items, trinkets, bugs, animals, and anything else your character managed to scrounge up before and during your expedition into the depths. The enemies become increasingly more deformed and disturbing was you venture further, starting with cute sentient mushrooms and ending with cosmic terrors during the final encounters. In contrast, the music is often ambient and sometimes even serene, at least until you face the final encounter.

I do, however, find the self-aware humor used by merchants and some other NPCs a bit distracting, as it takes me out of the otherwise immersive experience.

This is where I beg the developers to change the sound effect for playing ferrets. Why do they sound like horses? Please add dooking sounds.

The feel

The cardplay is very smooth and responsive. Although this is a deckbuilder with no maximum hand size, there are good accommodations made to make that decision work, like zooming out the view of your hand once you have a lot of cards or stacking identical cards on top of one another. You also have a good system of card tooltips where if one card references another, the latter will pop up to the side. I hope they will add the option to lock those tooltips in place to inspect the pop-up, as currently you can't view the keywords on the second card.

During the camping phase, the game also highlights the applicable targets of your cards, allowing you to see your options at a glance. For example, holding a matchbox will highlight the cooking pot, the campfire, the torch, and the gloom to show that you can interact with them.

I am having some mild performance issues with the game, getting around 30-40 fps despite the game's simple visuals, though thankfully this is a genre where complete responsiveness is necessary, though it is a bummer.

Progression

At the moment, there are 2 acts in the game (3rd coming soon) featuring unique playable characters (5 total), maps, and environments. Completing the game unlocks new cards, characters, and reveals explored parts of the map.

A big part of progression is learning the different item interactions in the camping phase, turning the game from an exploratory experience into an optimization puzzle. The per-run progression often involves stacking buffs on a select few of your cards rather than building highly synergistic card packages, though the latter can still happen.

The game currently lacks difficulty options, so the runs can get somewhat trivial as you get better at the game, but I imagine that will be added later.

Conclusion

I like the game

Birbo

343 products in account

0

28 people found this review helpful

Recommended

1.5 hrs on record

Posted: September 11

Early Access Review

I don't want to say that this game lacks personality (you'll know that's not the case just by looking at a random GORGEOUS screenshot) but the complete lack of story or even an explanation of why we're exploring these dungeons leaves a huge hole.

You, the protagonist, have no personality, and neither do the mobs and bosses you encounter. They don't even have designated names. It's a missed opportunity, and it's something I'd love to see the devs address at some point. Giving the world, its creatures, and the protagonist some actual identity could go a long way toward turning this from a damn good game into a truly unforgettable one.

With the shr...doom and gloom out of the way, like I mentioned earlier, this game is frikkin gorgeous. It's super polished, responsive, and clearly very well thought out from a mechanical and gameplay perspective. The dual-deck system (one deck for exploration and another for combat) can get surprisingly complex very quickly, but that makes pulling off a good combo all the more satisfying. Shroom and Gloom is essentially a deckbuilder, roguelike, and crafting/survival game rolled into one, borrowing some of the best ideas from each genre and combining them into something that works remarkably well.

There is an absurd amount of eye candy here, and the runs themselves are consistently satisfying and fun. Because of this, I simply can't give this game a thumbs down in good faith, especially considering just how technically polished it is at launch, even in Early Access.

That said, by the time Shroom and Gloom leaves Early Access, I'd really like to see the narrative side of things fleshed out. Give us some motivation to keep pushing forward, some context for what we're actually doing down there, or even just a glimpse of a bigger story waiting to be uncovered. Do that, and I think Shroom and Gloom could go from a gorgeous and incredibly fun game to a truly complete and memorable experience.

Shandu

521 products in account

0

Lab is too RNG coded

I have already beaten the lab with the janitor, even fully mapped the lab. But the activist, as liberal as the character is, cannot just vibe through the lab in the same way. Their starting cards don't lend any help to the lab's mechanics in the same way the janitor does. Primarily, I struggle with the final boss of the lab, in its third phase when it adds the card that deals 10 damage to you if it would be discarded. I actually save scummed this fight (quitting to menu before my death animation plays out...

6

VenomousViperKin

6 hours ago

General Discussions

Screenshot

Award

47

39

ΦΣΡΜΔΝ

View screenshots

Why Does New Card Damage Keep Going Up?

title. basically I can have a card that does 1 damage 3 times, I see it offered later in the game and the damage has been raised way up. This is good I just have no idea what mechanic is controlling this. If I did I would be doing it more lol

2