Darkest Greetings Underlord,

We have a couple of short, almost businessy, announcements for you today, first a long requested service becoming available at last and second some updates regarding War for the Overworld’s regional pricing which may see the price of the game increase to parity with Steam’s recommendations in some regions.

As of this week and by popular request, War for the Overworld is finally available on Geforce Now!

Geforce now is a cloud gaming platform that allows players to connect to their accounts with various PC storefronts (including Steam) and stream games that they own straight from Nvidia's servers to any compatible device!

With WFTO being added to the lineup of games available on the service you can now build your dungeons practically anywhere you can think of without needing to carry your PC with you.

We’ve heard from the people who’ve been playing this week that it handles very well and that it works great. So if you’re a Geforce Now member then be sure to check it out!

Way, way back in 2017 we posted an update on War for the Overworld’s regional pricing in the name of transparency, we even accidentally leaked news of the upcoming addition of the Australian dollar! Whoops!

Today we’re returning to the topic and updating our regional prices once more and we wanted to be as transparent as possible of what this process is and how it affects you.

For those uninitiated, pricing on Steam is based on the USD price for any game, set by the developer and advised by Valve. The myriad of other currencies that Steam also supports are also set on the developer side and again are advised by Valve on the basis of the purchasing power of said regions vs USD.

Back in 2017 we opted to align all regions to the advised pricing given to us by Valve with a critical exception, we chose to forego any changes that would increase the price of the game in any given region.

Today we have reached a point where we must again revisit our regional pricing, this time to align it fully with Valve’s recommendations, which means many currencies will see the price of the base game and expansions increase (along with a small handful of decreases for DLC pricing in some regions). For full clarity: The base USD price is not changing, only pricing in other currencies.

Affected Currencies:

• GB Pounds (£) - 22.99 -> 24.99
  
• Euros (€) - 27.99 -> 28.99
  
• Russian Rubles (pуб) - 499 -> 1,100
  
• Brazillian Reals (R$) - 55.99 -> 88.99
  
• Japanese Yen (¥) - 2,980 -> 3,400
  
• Indonesian Rupiah (Rp) - 139,999 -> 245,999
  
• Malaysian Ringgit (RM) - 51.00 -> 72.00
  
• Philippine Peso (P) - 649.95 -> 910.00
  
• Thai Baht (฿) - 379 -> 590
  
• Vietnamese Dong (₫) - 249,998 -> 385,000
  
• Korean Won (₩) - 31,000 -> 32,000
  
• Turkish Lira (TL) - 49 -> 280
  
• Ukranian Hryvnia (₴) - 379 -> 600
  
• Mexican Peso (Mex$) - 269.99 -> 334.99
  
• Canadian Dollar (CDN$) - 32.99 -> 38.99
  
• Australian Dollar (A$) - 42.95 -> 43.95
  
• New Zealand Dollar (NZ$) - $35.99 -> 43.59
  
• Norwegian Krone (kr) - 200 -> 335
  
• Polish Zloty (zł) - 107.99 -> 138.99
  
• Swiss Francs (CHF) - 29 -> 33.50
  
• Chinese Yuan (¥) - 88 -> 108
  
• Indian Rupee (₹) - 699 -> 1300
  
• Chilean Peso (CLP$) - 11,500 -> 15,500
  
• Peruvian Sol (S/.) - 53 -> 63
  
• Colombian Peso (COL$) - 39,500 -> 70,000
  
• South Afriacan Rand (R) - 175 -> 270
  
• Hong Kong Dollar (HK$) - 129 -> 187
  
• Taiwanese Dollar (NT$) - 438 -> 488
  
• Saudi Arabian Riyal (SR) - 46.95 -> 61.49
  
• Argentine Peso (ARS$) - 329.99 -> 2,100.00
  
• Kazakhstani Tenge (₸) - 3,900 -> 7,600
  
• Qatari Rial (QR) - 59.99 - 64.99
  
• Uruguayan Peso ($U) - 619 -> 885

The root of this is changes to Steam’s minimum price thresholds that Valve put into place last month, and the recommended pricing changes {ENLACE ELIMINADO}published in October 2022.

War for the Overworld’s pricing in several regions has now become so divergent from Steam’s recommendations that in some cases, where markets have shifted substantially, there’s quite a substantial gap between the recommendation and the prices we have listed.

While this isn’t necessarily a big issue on the face of it, the price has dropped so low in some regions (vs USD pricing) that we can no longer discount certain products without locking some regions out of being able to buy that content at all.

It also goes without saying that WFTO is still our only released product (at least until Galacticare releases next year!) and it represents the only income stream we have, and we believe that both the game and expansions are priced very fairly - especially as we regularly run fairly deep discounts.

But in many regions this fair price is not accurately reflected, accounting for changes in markets, inflation, and purchasing power since the prices were originally set in 2015. This means that the price is “fair” in some regions and “more fair” in others.

Therefore in respect to wanting to be fair to both ourselves and our customers and to resolve the issue with not being able to offer discounts on some products we have decided the best course of action is to apply Steam’s recommendations across the board.

Of course we know that some of these swings may look quite extreme, but this is because we have maintained the price at parity with 2015 levels for so long (and refused to increase any pricing in 2017).

Edit (15/09/2023) - We wanted to confirm that we will be reviewing these prices more regularly going forwards following these increases, we'll be looking to Valve's recommendations for decreases to help allay some of these as the global market settles.

Edit (17/09/2023) - We're continuing to engage in the discussions for this topic to provide additional explanation and context on the why and how of this. If you'd like to know more be sure to check out some of our posts.

We hope that clarifies why we’ve taken this decision and we apologize for any disruption caused to those of you who shop in the affected currencies.

If there’s anything you still want to buy and these pricing changes affect you then rest assured that the game and its DLC will be on sale again in the near future. Steam’s policy wisely prevents games going on sale for 30 days after a price adjustment, but we will be placing it on sale as soon as possible.

Finally, as we’re sure this question will be asked, for the time being we are not planning adjustments to the base game price, as mentioned above we still feel the game is fairly priced as our only revenue stream and this is especially so when it is on sale!

Hopefully that clarifies everything there is to know about the regional pricing update! If you have any questions please feel free to comment!

Finally as we’re here and given recent events some of you may be wondering about our relationship with Unity and how their announced changes may impact us, WFTO and Galacticare.

Our official statement went out on our socials a few hours before this post:



The impact of these changes from Unity’s side cannot be overstated, this is going to severely impact many developers who rely upon the engine for their work. It is unlikely that we will be working with Unity for the future after the release of Galacticare even if this requires significant retooling and retraining on our part.

It is not that we are opposed to paying a fair fee for the tools we use, we have been paying significant sums for Unity for the majority of our 12 years in partnership with them. But the way this is being leveraged and the failure to consider the potential risks and edge-cases in their chosen model while ignoring the concerns of the partners means we can no longer see a future with them.

We hope that our customers will continue to support the developers of games you love that have brought great experiences to you via the Unity Engine for the last decade. Many studios will be in a similar position to us and will be carefully considering their options on the road ahead.

Update 15/09/2023 - Just a small clarification that this new policy from Unity does not currently directly impact War for the Overworld in its current state, because it would fall below Unity's yearly revenue requirements. So there's no impact here for WFTO. WFTO is not going anywhere.

We are simply stating our displeasure and our intentions to move away from Unity for future projects, as stated it's not a matter of not being willing to pay a fair price, it's the principle that Unity would foist this massive change in fees upon developers and apply it retroactively to old projects, running massively deprecated versions of Unity, despite assurances this kind of thing would never happen.

It's not the idea, though the exact implementation is poorly thought out and full of holes, it's the principle that Unity is not a trust worthy partner anymore, which is deeply, deeply upsetting.

Until Next Time Underlord,

- Brightrock Games

Join our community on Discord
Follow us on Steam

Darkest Greetings Underlord,

Cast through the aether news of a grand festival has reached the ears of our eager cultists. Simfest 2023 is on and our friends at Auroch Digital have extended us an invitation. Naturally we would be remiss not to involve ourselves and spread the evil word of the dozens of fine sim games which you can find one Steam!

Click to discover more games in the Simfest!

Speaking of simulation games don't forget to check out our latest game, Galacticare which will be releasing soon!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/494730/Galacticare/

Until next time Underlord,

Brightrock Games

Join our community on Discord
Follow us on Steam

Darkest Greetings Underlord,

This is a minor fix to ensure that users can still unlock the Postal Worker Skin by signing up to the Brightrock Games newsletter.

• Fixed an issue which prevented users from signing up to the Brightrock Games newsletter
  
• Fixed an issue which caused the postal worker skin to not be unlocked when signing up to the newsletter

Until next time Underlords,

- Brightrock Games

Darkest Greetings Underlord,

Far above the warmth of your dungeon, something stirs in its antipode; cold, unfeeling beings, drifting in the void, “tending”, and “tinkering”, and mopping up strange vomit, and driven overall by the benign intent to “make things better”. Sickening, really.


These feckless automatons have managed to reach our realm of Kairos through tears in the fabric of space. Fortunately, our creatures reacted appropriately to the intrusion of these machines, and have bashed every such intruder to death with hammers.


An early look at the new skin. Coming this year for owners of Galacticare!

Your workers are now busy havesting the dead machines’ steel, Underlord, and you’ll soon get to see them adorn their meaty bodies with the metals harvested from these useless, smiling invaders when the tome known as Galacticare is safely stored within your Steam “Archive” following its release later this year.

No doubt we shall also find some way to make your presence known in their world as well Underlord… speaking of which.


Rest assured that the time will come when our powers will wax once more, but for now we must bide our time and observe. Fortunately our cultists have developed a way to pierce the aether so that you may partake in a “demonstration” of the latest developments for the next few days while the Steam Fest runs.

Indeed until the 26th of June you may now experience this “Galacticare” for free via the Steam demo.


Should you find yourself short on time, or wish to speak to the development imps we have sent forth to survey this new realm, then you can join them via the gameplay streams on Twitch, Youtube and Steam:

• Wednesday June 21st @ 18:30 UTC (20:30 CEST / 11:30 PDT)
  
• Saturday 24th @ 23:30 UTC / (00:30 CEST / 16:30 PDT)

Until next time Underlord,

Brightrock Games

Join our community on Discord
Follow us on Steam

Darkest Greetings Underlords,

After a long period of silence, we’d like to provide an update as to what we’ve been doing the past few years.

This post is being crossposted from the new Galacticare development blog, where we also just posted a first look at our alien species, but future posts won’t appear on WFTO pages. If you’d like to receive further updates from us, please be sure to wishlist & follow Galacticare on Steam, join us on Discord, follow us on Twitter, and sign up to our newsletter.

We hope you will join us on our journey to the stars, and although WFTO is very much in maintenance mode with the release of the final update (Patch 2.1) last year, rest assured that the dark, homely, depths of the underworld are never far from our evil hearts.


Patch 2.1’s graphics & performance Improvements were a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one

Now without further ado, Read on Underlords!

----------------

I’m Josh: resident Brightrock robot, creative director of Galacticare, and primary author of these blog posts. Over the coming months, we’ll be diving into the features, characters, gameplay, world, and development of the game. We’ll give you insights into what Galacticare is, why we made it this way, and how we’ve grown along the journey.

The post you are about to read focuses on the past, and what brought us here as a studio. We’re going to take a stroll through the last few years and talk about our road from War for the Overworld, to the inspirations for Galacticare, and squeeze in some updates from the studio.

For those of you unfamiliar with our history, I’d like to start by providing links to a few blog posts, videos, and interviews.

• Some of the biggest Dungeon Keeper fans assemble to create War for the Overworld (Eurogamer, November 2012)
  
• Update #1: 31 Hours & £21k (WFTO Kickstarter, December 2012)
  
• A Year in Retrospect (WFTO Blog, February 2014)
  
• State of the Game (WFTO Blog, April 2015)
  
• The story behind War for the Overworld's messy development (Eurogamer, July 2016)
  
• Rocky Road: How Good Communication Can Save a Bad Launch (Rezzed, 2017)

A youthful WFTO team with Richard Ridings and some community volunteers meeting for the first time at EGX London 2013.

We’ve not provided much of an update from the studio since then - so let’s dig into the past few years and the road to Galacticare.

We first started talking about Galacticare (or “Project Star Wards”) in 2015, shortly after the initial release of War for the Overworld. Although we still had a long way to go in order to fully realise our ambitions for WFTO, we couldn’t stop ourselves from theorising about future projects in parallel.


Early concept art for Project Star Wards

A very common request from our fans during (and after) the development of WFTO was that we revisit other legendary Bullfrog and Lionhead titles. Theme Hospital was at the top of that list, both for us and the community.

However, we wanted to do more than create another spiritual successor (not that there’s anything wrong with that - we just wanted more of a challenge!), our desire was to push the boundaries of the management game genre and create something unique.
So, we had a hospital and a broad goal. What next?



Let’s consider the core building blocks of the hospital management experience: patients, diseases, and treatments. What better way is there to push the boundaries of these concepts than by setting the game in space? Aliens, exotic diseases, crazy treatment technologies?

Yes please.

However, an exciting setting alone isn’t going to push the genre forwards. For that, we needed to go deeper. What other elements did we want to add to the mix? What else did we want to look at for inspiration?


There were many answers to that question, and throughout our team’s discussions the overarching theme was that we wanted to create a much more cohesive experience than the genre typically provided.

As opposed to traditional management games, we didn’t want to create a series of independent, semi-sandbox levels with no interconnection. We wanted to create a longer adventure that you, the player, are actually a part of. We wanted you and your capabilities to grow as the game progressed. We wanted you to feel like you were inside a real (albeit ridiculous) universe.

We’re bringing a mix of god-game and RPG mechanics into the hospital management genre...
This led to us exploring numerous gameplay systems and narrative features to build up the rich connective tissue which binds together the systems, content, and stories of Galacticare. We’ll be exploring plenty of these systems and features on this blog over the coming months!


Another key goal was that each level should feel like an episode of a comedic sci-fi anthology. We wanted everything to feel characterful - not just the doctors, patients and mission givers, but also the rooms and everything else, all the way down to the individual conditions that your patients are suffering from.

In order to achieve this, we needed to continue our strong use of voice talent that started in War for the Overworld. Every character and all dialogue in the game will be fully voiced. We’re happy to announce that we’ll have several returning cast members from WFTO, along with a few newcomers - the first of which is Ben Kearns. We can’t wait to reveal more of the cast!

We also wanted to evolve the gameplay side of things. We’re bringing a mix of god-game and RPG mechanics into the hospital management genre by giving the player an ever-growing arsenal of tools and unique hero characters. This is the area we’re most excited to talk about in this blog, so keep your eyes peeled for more updates.

However, the future remained mostly on the backburner until we released patch 2.0 for WFTO in 2018, at which point we moved most of the team over to Galacticare. And then for a while, we stuck our heads down and worked in peace and quiet - until 2020, when the Coronavirus pandemic turned the world upside down.


We switched to remote working as soon as it hit the UK, thinking we’d only be home a few months. As we’ve all since learned, the universe had other plans.

Over the next few months we evolved and reinvented many of our practices and processes. We had to rethink how we reviewed each other's work - no longer could we simply walk across the office and peek over a shoulder. We were also able to change how we approached meetings, as it became more practical for team members to listen in whilst still being at their desk and working.


Some of our Discord channels at the time this post was being written.
Although we already made extensive use of Slack, the video calling features weren’t able to keep up with our needs. We also spent some time with Google Meet and, eventually, moved over to Discord. The permanent voice channel structure was a huge hit within the team; it let us easily stay in contact with each other, demo our work using screenshare, and even communicate with our development partners.

Towards the end of the year we made the decision to go remote permanently, and decided to donate the remainder of the lease to our neighbours on the floor below us - the wonderful Clocktower Sanctuary (a frequent recipient of GamesAid funding) - as they needed additional space to maintain social distancing whilst continuing their vital work.

Going fully remote has given us the benefit of being able to freely recruit from further afield. As a result, several new face (and one returning face) have joined the team!


Say hi to the expanded crew!
Something we knew we wanted to do this time around was work with a publishing partner. While we enjoyed the experience of releasing WFTO solo… it was a lot of work, and publishing a game really does distract from its development. We spoke with quite a few publishers over the years, many of which we admired, but could never find a set of terms that we were comfortable with.

We had resigned to the fact that we wouldn’t be able to find a publisher that we’d be happy working with… until CULT reached out to us last year.

We immediately hit it off, they wanted the same things we did - to make cool things and have fun. Within a few months we’d signed a deal.


We're not far from each others' offices, as CULT is located in the heart of London.
And with all that, we were at long last finally ready to announce the game! Which is exactly what we did a few months ago:


Eager to learn more about Galacticare? You’re in luck!

Today we’ve published not one, but two blog posts. The second is a deep dive into the gameplay, narrative, and visuals of some of the alien species in the game. Check it out here.

We're starting to ramp up testing and, just like we did with War for the Overworld, we'd love to get the community involved in giving us feedback on bugs, balancing, and everything else in order to help make our game as good as it can be.

Recently we've opened up very pre-early alpha builds to a small group of community testers, and we'd like to slowly grow this group over the coming months. If you'd like to get involved please head on over to our sign-up form.


Game development is hard. We’ve been lucky to do it in the company of an amazing team, both in the past and now, and seeing the project we’ve dreamed of take its final shape is incredibly fulfilling - but ultimately, the thing we most look forward to is getting our game in the hands of the players we’re making it for.

It’s been incredibly exciting to share bits of Galacticare with you over the past two months, and we’ve been amazed by the reception so far. We hope this has been an interesting insight into some of our goals for the project, its history, and where things are going from here.

Until next time Director,

- Brightrock Games

-----------

Don’t forget to join us on Discord!

Darkest Greetings Underlord,

Is it strange to apologize for the lack of an unobligated yet fun yearly gaff? We’re honestly not sure. We’ve certainly never seen it happen but we can’t remain silent today.

What we do know is that on this day, every year, without fail, we have pushed out jokes both big and small. We’ve had a lot of laughs with you and, over time, it became something of an institution - something many of you look forward to as much as we do.

Each year we thought of ways to push the boat, to raise the bar on the years before or at least keep it high. It became a challenge for us to push ideas out there that made you, our players who are the reason we get to pursue our dreams, sensibly chuckle on your morning commute, say “Is this real? I unironically want this”, or even, on occasion, fool you entirely.



This is definitely a real game

This year we’ve not been able to make it in time. It’s been a busy year with work on our upcoming new game Galacticare (Don't forget to wishlist!) taking a focus in preparation for its announcement last month.

Before we knew it, it was the 31st of March, 3:30PM and we realized we had to do SOMETHING. We scrambled for ideas in a team-wide meeting, scratched some things together, knuckled down for a mad dash. But we didn’t want to disappoint you with something that fell short, and we feel you deserve a better laugh than...this.


Dr. Medichunder was unironically some of our finest work,

For years, in each April Fools, we joked that Aftercare had been canceled, that we had a new plan entirely. Well this year the tables have indeed tabled and Aftercare, now Galacticare, has canceled April Fools.

This year, we’re the fools. Next year it’ll be you.


Dr. MEDIChunder isn't real, Dr. MEDIChunder can't hurt you.

In the meantime you can enjoy the previous years gaff’s from these links:

Cult of Duty
The Power Hand of Evil
Street Fight for the Overworld
War for the Overworld: Console Edition
Dungeon Hearts
Skargz
War for the Overworld: Australia Edition
The Cynical Imp (Which became real for charity!)
The Democorn

Until next time Underlord,

- Brightrock Games

Join us on Discord

Darkest Greetings Underlord,

This Thursday the 16th of March we will be hosting a Q&A Session on our Discord server where we'll be answering your questions regarding our upcoming new title: Galacticare!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/494730/Galacticare/

We'll also be taking any other questions on War for the Overworld and we'll be joined by our partners at CULT Games to answer questions regarding our partnership with them to bring Galacticare to your Steam library.

Q&A with Brightrock Games & CULT Games

• Date & Time - 16-Mar-2023 21:00 GMT (Click for your timezone)
  
• Venue - Brightrock Games Discord - #stage

Join us on Discord and ask your questions in our dedicated questions thread

Until next time Underlord,

- Brightrock Games

Hello everyone!

Today we’re thrilled to finally unveil our next game: Galacticare, a hospital management game set in a weird and wacky sci-fi universe, releasing later in 2023. Check out the reveal trailer below.



Be sure to wishlist and follow Galacticare on Steam for more updates!



We’ll be hosting a Q&A about Galacticare next Thursday on our Discord server. Be sure to post your question and we’ll get to as many of them as we can!

- Brightrock Games

Darkest Greetings Underlords,

If you were to cast your dark minds back to the year of 2019 you might remember brighter days or indeed darker ones.

You might also remember the start of our partnership with Bandit Camp the devilishly delightful designers for Wicked Ones, a deeply realised free TTRP where you and your friends assume the role of evil dungeon dwelling denizens who through depraved acts of the dark heart expand their dungeon, plunder riches from the goodly folks of the above-lands and squash hapless heroes that wander into your domain. Why does that sound ever so familiar?



In any case last year our partnership bore fruit as the War for the Overwolrd campaign guide for Wicked Ones was unleashed. Allowing you to take explore the realm of Kairos as never before; through the guise of a tabletop RPG by building on top of Wicked One's all too familiar systems!



Better yet it is a product solely devoted to charity as all profits from this book for both ourselves and Bandit Camp are instead donated to Child's Play. In fact we're proud to say thus far we've raised $3380 for this grand cause, and soon we hope to break the $5000 barrier!



But there's more than this good news to share with you today. Indeed whilst we labour hard at our next game the folks at Bandit Camp have worked tirelessly towards their magnum opus.


For the past few weeks Bandit Camp have been running their final (as far as we/they know) Wicked Ones kickstarter for an ultimate, collected release of Wicked Ones and its expansions physically realised in its greatest form yet via high-quality print-run.



This will deliver the books in a superbly high-detail greater than the print-on-demand releases previously run. Needless to say such an offering has neatly destroyed their initial goals


Well firstly Wicked Ones is a great game that if you love Dungeon Management and TTRPGs we highly recommend you play.

Secondly, the WFTO supplement for the game realises the WFTO style of gameplay better than any RPG we are familiar with. It's become a cult classic amongst the Bandit Camp community.

Thirdly, the book includes the Dungeoneer's Guide to the Underworld, and as such is the only way to get this awesome collection of lore and art physically.



Finally, most crucially, that self-same supplement will as of a few days ago benefit from the same high-quality print-run as the other books as an improved add-on option. Still wholly for charity and we'll even throw in a free copy of WFTO for anyone who backs it.

How's that for a trade deal?!


But rest not on your laurels, for the end of the Kickstarter is fast approaching with just a week from writing remaining. This may be the last chance to grab such a high-quality release and save on the postage you might otherwise incur buying them separately. Find out more on the Kickstarter Page

Bandit Camp have also made us aware that sometime in the near future print-on-demand options for hardcovers of their releases will soon be retired. So if you're hankering for a hard-cover book now is the best time to grab it!

For our part we expect that this will be the last time we promote the WFTO Wicked Ones book, and though it will likely remain available via Drive Thru RPG indefinitely we wouldn't want you to miss out on this chance.

• Wicked Ones, a dungeon-building, village pillaging, goodie bashing TTRPG from our friends Bandit Camp is having its final kickstarter for a High-quality print run.
  
• We worked with them previously to make a WFTO supplement for Wicked Ones that translated the feeling of playing War for the Overworld into the TTRPG format.
  
• This was wholly for charity, raising $3380 so far for Child's Play with $5000 quickly approaching.
  
• This same supplement is available as an add-on to the print run in the same high-quality form as the rest of the books.
  
• It's all still for charity, any profits either of us would get from the WFTO add-on go to child's play.
  
• We're giving them Steam Keys for WFTO's base edition anyone who pledges for the WFTO add-on
  
• It's likely the last chance to get this book in a high-quality hardcover print. Even the print-on-demand medium quality will be retired soon.
  
• There's a week left to get it.
  
• We won't be bothering you any more about this!

To find out more and back the Kickstarter:

Visit the Kickstarter Page

That's all Underlords, and as always thank you for your support. We can't wait to talk to you very soon about our upcoming new game.

Until next time Underlords,

– Brightrock Games Team

Visit the Wicked One's Kickstarter

Follow us on Steam!

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• Fixed a random crash issue
  
• CopyMightyScript and ImportMightyScript debug commands now function again, are no longer case sensitive and do not require debug mode to be unlocked
  
• Fixed an issue where Shadow Distance would always reset to Medium
  
• Increased default gamma from 20 to 30