The Xen Soundtrack is already out on Bandcamp (and also on Spotify in some regions):
EDIT:
It’s out on Youtube:
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5 Likes
A dev confirmed with me in their discord that Interloper will be 7 maps
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Hm, it was stated in this post in Steam forum.
Or Interlooper could have 7+1 maps, where player could go to 8th map if he would decline G-man’s offer.
Hello. What happend with XEN beta update?
TIME ZONES! that is what happened.
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Still planned for today 
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Patiently waiting…
Thanks for letting us know.
Adam-Bomb just posted Beta time! They’ve pushed all of Xen and Gonarch’s Lair to the public beta branch on steam. The technical beta was just 3 maps, the complete Xen and Gonarch’s Lair is 9 maps.
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So Gonarch’s Lair and Xen are awesome. I’ve played them several times through on all difficulties and it’s actually really smooth most of the time with very little hiccups along the way (most of them in the early chasing sequences with the Gonarch). I do have some other concerns though about everything in general since I’ve gone back and looked at some of the other stuff you added into Anomalous Materials.
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-My primary concern actually is in Anomalous Materials, honestly: During the Resonance Cascade, I was happy to see you finally added the Bullsquids in the cave. I was also incredibly pleased that you added the ability to look around and move, albiet way too slowly not to be jarring. I think you guys should definitely give the player the feeling that they’ve been teleported to the alien world and are there now, not that they’re in a cutscene and can’t move or are in a stasis thing like HL2’s portal incident. I actually agree in slowling the player down a bit, but with the creatures being non-aggressive and the player having no weapons, I really loved the original feeling of being able to walk around at normal speed; it didn’t give away whether or not it was permanent so easily when it was done that way. The slowed down feeling makes it obvious that you’re gonna be ported again any second, revealing that the whole thing is just a sequence to wait out. I think feeling at all trapped in that particular sequence is a mistake. The vortigaunt part can’t be helped and they always kinda take the player’s control in both games, however I think it’s very jarring when you lose FULL control to that screen with them. You should be able to look in 360 in that sequence (it’s all black anyways) just to avoid the feeling of ever being in a cutscene as much as humanly possible. Even if it means just being able to move 50% faster at that part and maybe being there a second or two longer, I think it would dramatically impact the value of that moment as it did in the original. I love local you chose, it’ll be easy to trap the player there so he only has a solid moment to look at his surroundings and have his mind blown.
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-I don’t know how I feel about how you can end up wasting ammo on the gonarch by shooting it at the wrong sequences. I think in every sequence that it harasses you that you should be at least able to stun it for a few moments or something. Maybe you can but I wasted a lot of shots on it from across the chasm thinking maybe I could stop it to look around. I didn’t end up being able to, but then again I had no rockets and she does have high HP in the current state. Speaking of which, I thought maybe it would be a cool idea to have your suit’s energy able to max out at 200 on Xen when using the charging blue crystals, maybe to illustrate their incredible power and why the scientists sought them, etc. Also could serve as a way to deal with the some difficulty concerns by taking some edge off, though many attack go right through armor.
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-The new melee-bullsquid actually reminded me a lot more of the classic bullsquid’s speedy focus on taking things down personally at a lot of ranges. I think that instead of working on a new model (or if you already have one, do this anyways and still make that one melee-only) you should increase the range required for the regular bullsquid to choose spitting at you over chasing you down so that you can more melee battles at medium range. It seems that the bullsquid actually prefers to spit way more than anything else and that you have to get right up on it for it to get physically hostile. Sometimes that’s different, but it really does like to go on a spitting spree if you let it start spitting away. I feel like it’s possibly because of how fast the player is and that the creature can only register the player being that close after it finishes it’s spitting animation. I think by that time the player has moved around so much that it recalculates what to do and ends up spitting again most of the time if you’re not really close it; you’ll see it more than almost any other npc (houndeye being second place in this) spazz out fairly often trying to turn and stuttering, stopping, going to spit, going to run, stopping, then just spitting and usually hitting you cause you couldn’t guess what the fuck it was gonna end up doing after all that dancing lol. I mean go test it out, the melee bullsquid feels… just noticeable more real than the others. I reminded me why I liked them in HL1 and I mean this when I say I honestly forgot.
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-I was hoping maybe you guys could slightly render the big-houndeye a sharper color difference from the rest, maybe a more purple or lilac one? I could barely tell the difference between the regular houndeye and the larger one. For some reason, it made my eyes decide that it looked unconvincing, especially when it got up close. It’s possible that it’s the animations it has also, as it doesn’t seem to be any heavier than the normal sized ones and moves awfull quick for something so large with such comically small legs. All the same, I feel like if it were as colorfully oriented as the other two houndeye types, it would just suddenly stand out in all the right ways. It could be like an alpha breed rather than just ‘big boi’. There’s not really much depth if you ask me to just having a large armored version of the same animal - that doesn’t seem as believable in the vacuum of variety we have in the same way that larger controllers and military aliens do. I love the little glowing houndeyes visually, however I wonder what the hell they are suicidal for and what purpose that would serve them in any eco-system they’re possibly from. I don’t know any animals of that scale that are sacrifical besidesm maybe octupus…? If they die what’s the point of even attacking me first? Maybe they should have a normal speedy houndeye attack but simply exlode on death, requiring you to be far away to kill them…? I don’t know why, but I feel like the 3 of these ideas (the color and movement speed of the large houndeyes, and the attack and/or hostility of the exploding houndeyes) are at least decent enough to consider since I’ve played the beta many times now and there’s the sort of things that stand out to me.
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-You really gotta add a lightning screen effect or something during the use of the vortiguant portals and stuff. It’s very abrupt and feels like I lagged into another zone rather than teleported. It’s too fast, I’m like not even touching the orb before I’m looking in another direction standing still.
Spoiler Idea for Nihilanth boss fight based on some speculation and stuff people are leaking:
-It would be cool if you had to kill the Nihilanth with the crowbar for the final blow, like when his dome was open and he’s about to die, have him summon a forcefield orb around his dome made of the slow gooy stasis stuff from the citadel that had the white lightning in the center that vaporized shit; bullets wouldn’t go through it and missles would slow down and stop, eventually slowly falling to the ground. You would have to slowly drift inside the bubble for the last hit on the crystal inside of his head, shattering it in one hit after all the damage its taken. Depending on how the fight actually goes, that might be silly as shit but I just thought it was cool sounding lol
Can someone translate all of this math? I figured this didn’t need its own thread since it’s Xen related, but I’m genuinely curious what all of this means.
dAD gum IT I am having the DICKens of a time beating Mr. ball sack monster. Is it just ME?
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A lot of people - including me - have also had a really hard time. The devs said they’re looking into it.
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Same here on hard difficulty. Damn.
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Let your son try 
(I’m pretty sure she’s a her?)
He is a he. He was a year old when this team thought about getting together, now he is going to be 15 this weekend! lol! But yeah, I should tell him to fire it up and do a recording and upload his first impression to youtube. That would be hilarious to hear him scream thru it! hahaha!
Dangit, i did a pitiful job of telegraphing what I meant.
I was referring the “Mr. ball sack monster” as being a female (not your son).
ps
and I just got a new forum badge for quoting, thats something I did not know how to do and just lucked into it by accident.
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