News | 2/6/2011 at 2:16 PM

Latest Magicka Patch Brings Network Stability...Mostly

Magicka received another patch this weekend, making it the 8th since the game was released two weeks ago.  This patch was a major one though with a primary focus on network optimizations.  This means your co-op games are less likely to drop/lag/suck.  As always the patches are auto applied once you fire up Steam.

There's a few other enhancements as well which include some balancing issues, but the change log still includes a handful of known issues the team wants to correct before they ease up on the almost daily patch schedule.  Arrowhead Games also reminds us that Intel HD graphics are NOT supported for gameplay - these chipsets are typically included with most low end laptops.  So if you are having issues and this is your graphics card - you are out of luck sadly.

In testing this weekend most of our Magicka co-op games seemed fairly solid with very minimal lag.  We did experience one crash though - I'm not sure if it was network related or something related to the host though.

In a bit of a bright spot for the team, it seems their hard work is paying off.  Via twitter they've announced that Magicka has gone on to sell over 150,000 copies.  That's good news for co-op gamers.  We'll have our full review of Magicka early this week.

Changelog for Patch #8 (1.3.3.7)- February 4th 

Fixed issues/bugs

Network traffic optimizations. Books of magicks no longer fall through level. Cutscene skip bug in chapter 1 fixed. Player item desync on network clients fixed. (This will solve many different issues.) Fixed crash on clients when exploding objects. Fixed Thunderstorm distribution. Fixed chapter 3 bossfight initialization on clients. Fixed Random Teleport distribution.
New features/balancing Orc Berserkers’ hit tolerance have been increased. Swampthings’ strangle speed and damage have been increased. Mouse is now locked inside the window when playing with keyboard and mouse.
Known Issues Network uplink bandwidth, while improved, can be demanding Steam attempts to install XNA framework every time game is launched or rare occasion Quitting the game while the credits are rolling will not award a game complete