Great news — the Pompeii: The Legacy demo is once again available for download!
You can try it out starting today, but act quickly, this version of the demo will only be accessible until Monday, August 4th.

If you don’t manage to play it in time, don’t worry, the demo will return once more, about 10 days before the Early Access release on September 16th. That final version will be even more polished and closer to the launch state, so there’s still plenty of time to dive in before release.

In Pompeii: The Legacy, production chains form the economic backbone of your city. Turning raw materials into useful goods is vital not only for development, but also for citizen satisfaction and survival. Here are a few early-game production chains you’ll encounter, each one with a unique rhythm, role, and visual identity.

Sand Pit → Glasswork

Fine grains of sand are gathered from open pits, often located on the outskirts of your city near dry or coastal terrain. Once collected, this seemingly simple resource becomes a vital ingredient in one of Rome’s most prized materials: glass.

In the Glassworks, skilled artisans heat the sand to high temperatures, shaping it into bottles, cups, and decorative items. While not a luxury good at first glance, glass plays an important role in various services and production processes, and becomes increasingly valuable as your city advances.

Iron Mine → Blacksmith

Deep beneath the hills surrounding Pompeii lie rich iron veins, waiting to be mined. Once extracted, this iron is brought to the Blacksmith, where it's forged into tools and equipment used across your city.

Blacksmiths are essential for civilian life, from farming tools to construction materials and building reinforcements. Without them, production slows, efficiency drops, and your city becomes vulnerable to decay and unrest.

As for military needs, those are handled by Armorers and Weaponsmiths, but we’ll cover those specialists in one of the next dev blogs.

Clay Pit → Charcoal Burner → Brickwork

The clay pit offers one of the most versatile raw materials in the game: the brick. But raw clay isn’t much use on its own, it needs heat, and for that, you’ll rely on charcoal burners.

Wood is gathered, slowly turned into charcoal, and then used to fuel the Brickworks, where clay is fired into durable bricks. This chain is one of the most foundational in the early game, providing materials for everything from housing to civic buildings.
But be careful, deforestation for charcoal can become a serious problem if not managed wisely.

That’s it for this update!
As always, thank you for playing, testing, and wishlisting Pompeii: The Legacy. Your support means the world.

I’ll be back soon with more, and of course, more screenshots, systems, and surprises to share.

Zeljko
Solo Developer, Pompeii: The Legacyhttps://store.steampowered.com/app/2632240/Pompeii_The_Legacy/

• Reduce onboarding friction
  
• Does not change gameplay (yet)

• Improve difficulty expectation to player between branching choices
  
• Fix: Frontier 2nd battle difficulty spike
  
• Make action buttons clearer
  
• Fix wrong sprites
  
• Change number of visible node ahead to 4

ProPLAY™*, as you know it, is evolving on PC. The revolutionary gameplay technology we introduced on Gen 9 in NBA 2K24 has pushed the authenticity on the court to new heights—and in NBA 2K26 we’re taking it another step further.

Using actual NBA footage, we’re able to directly translate your favorite NBA stars’ signature moves and distinct movements to create thousands of realistic animations. Experience immersive gameplay that looks smoother, feels faster, and flows more seamlessly than any NBA 2K game to date. Let’s dive into this year’s all-new features and detail what makes NBA 2K26 such a game-changer. 

ProPLAY powers all-new dynamic motion in NBA 2K26; generated from real-world NBA footage that influences all on-court movement—offense, defense, and off-ball. This new Motion Engine is the biggest change to player movement since NBA 2K21 and further advances the one-to-one realism in gameplay, which took a giant leap forward with the Dribble Engine introduced in NBA 2K25.

New machine-learning technology in NBA 2K26 on Gen 9 offers more precise, lifelike movement, which is noticeable in the most fundamental elements of the game. Dynamic lower-body pose matching adjusts the exact positioning of players' legs and feet on the fly to remove the “skating” seen in past games and ensure that players launch, plant, and cut realistically.

Together, these systems work in harmony to not only make motion look better than ever before, but also leads to improvements across all areas of gameplay to create a fresh and authentic feeling when playing—so you can compete at the highest level.

Watching so many of you discover and embrace the Rhythm Shooting mechanic to improve your shooting ability has been thrilling and rewarding. Seeing heightened competition has inspired us to push the envelope of Rhythm Shooting and bolster its strengths.

In NBA 2K26, Rhythm Shooting extends beyond mimicking each player’s signature shooting animation to giving you full control over every aspect of the shot. This shooting control method still relies on a DOWN-UP flicking motion with the shot stick, but now your Shot Timing and Tempo will actually manipulate the shooter’s upper body and impact how the shot looks throughout the complete motion by reflecting how you move the shot stick.

From the start, you’ll see and feel the difference between early, late, slow, and fast releases. If you flick UP early and rush your shot, you can do quick releases. If you flick UP late and slowly, you’ll see the effect with a delayed pushing motion and lazier release.

This enhanced feature grants more freedom than ever before to decide what type of jump shot you want to take. Counter a close-out from a defender by initiating a quick release and intentionally rushing your shot, and still knock it down by executing excellent Rhythm Shooting tempo. 

Overall, players who take advantage of the Rhythm Shooting mechanic will experience more responsive and authentic jumpshots that simulate a true shooting motion.

Develop a robust post game with all-new Signature Go-To Post Shots and become a lethal slasher with custom layups. Gameplay in NBA 2K26 has been improved to be more well-rounded and suitable for all archetypes.

Green or Miss Shot Timing will be universal in NBA 2K26, so that each mode has an even playing field. This means on higher difficulties, including most competitive multiplayer modes,  only excellent timing “greened” shots will go in; however, shot timing windows scale by difficulty and will be less forgiving in competitive modes like Proving Grounds and Pro-Am, but more forgiving in team-control modes like MyTEAM where you have to adapt to different shot animations.

In addition, Layup Timing is permanently enabled to separate skilled finishers and make those highly contested finishes at the rim even more spectacular and impressive.

Ultimately, we wanted to emphasize skill-based, competitive gameplay where your actions on the sticks provide more control of the outcomes you see in-game. This renewed focus will be felt across multiple gameplay areas, from shot outcomes to successful blocks and steals, and loose balls and rebounds.

It’s been encouraging to see players incorporate Signature Go-To Shots into their game and leverage real-world crossovers to create separation, like Stephen Curry and Tyrese Haliburton’s signature dribble-step-back jumpers.

While we’ve shown a lot of love to the elusive playstyles of the NBA’s greatest backcourt players, this year’s system is growing to better support the dominant big men we see in the modern NBA. Utilize all-new Signature Go-To Post Shots by holding the right stick UP while in the post. Lean into a host of new moves, including shimmy floaters, baby hooks, and up-and-unders.

In the past, your single signature layup package determined all of your layup types. But in NBA 2K26, you can mix and match layup styles to draw inspiration from signature packages from around the league. These advanced layup types consist of:

• Normal and Reverse Layups

• Floaters

• Quick Scoops

• Euro Steps

• Hop Steps

• Spins

Wreak havoc on the competition by utilizing Steph’s graceful layups, James Harden’s shifty euro-steps, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s elusive hop-steps, and Nikola Jokic’s nimble spin moves to create a dominant custom package. Explore the bevy of post move and layup options when customizing your MyPLAYER and editing players in rosters.

Play freely and with physicality in NBA 2K26 using body-ups and collisions to antagonize opponents. 

NBA 2K26 uses system-driven technology to generate player-to-player collisions that are more reliable compared to previously scripted motion-captured animations. Coupled with new dynamic motion, this change improves the freedom of movement for both the dribbler and on-ball defender.

Interior Defense has been redesigned so that it’s easier to get strong body bumps in the air when contesting finishers at the rim. Bigs will feel increased physicality when roaming in the paint.

In NBA 2K26, a green meter will flash beneath your player’s feet to indicate a well-timed rebound attempt. The ideal time to jump for a rebound is just before the ball makes its final bounce off the rim, and higher rebounding attribute ratings will make it easier to nail your timing. Excellent timing can significantly boost your chances of securing the board.

Dictate every facet of the game with new and revamped controls for a more intuitive, deliberate, and free-flowing experience.

With this, overall game speed in NBA 2K26 is now sped up to reward players with faster decision-making, who can read the court, anticipate their opponent, and react quicker!

Ball handlers can now tap the Left Trigger to initiate Quick Protect movements to shield the ball and evade steals. If you see a defender reaching for a steal and react quickly enough with a Quick Protect, you can counter it. This balances the steal system by introducing more skill-based outcomes.

You can also put defenders in a compromising position by using Quick Protect while driving to the rim. Decelerate and pin your opponent against your hip to trap them in defender jail. Some of the craftiest ball handers—Jalen Brunson, Luka Dončić, and Trae Young—all excel at this, making them incredibly challenging to guard.

Hold the Left Trigger when receiving a pass while standing still to square up, catch the ball high, and seamlessly transition directly into your shooting motion in rhythm to get the shot up quickly. Knock down shots like Klay Thompson and Ray Allen as defenders race to close-out before your release.

Signature Size-Up controls have been improved for a more intuitive experience. Now, you can rock the Pro Stick back-and-forth, left-and-right, or repeatedly flick the Pro Stick up to execute two different Size-Up combinations. These Size-Ups will help you create separation from your defender while retaining the realistic look provided by ProPLAY.

After initiating a euro-step, you can hold the Left Trigger at any point to deliberately decelerate mid-move to throw defenders off and create space with a slow-motion drag step finish. Slither through the lane and control the pace to send defenders careening past you.

Wrap passes now have a dedicated control by double tapping CIRCLE/B. This expands the toolkit for playmakers to determine when you want to do a wrap pass and ensures you aren’t throwing the ball straight into the back of a defender.

Catching an alley-oop now requires more skill. Once the pass is thrown, the finish button for the receiver will be randomized on higher difficulties to one of the four face buttons on your controller, instead of always being SQUARE/X.

Screeners can now control which way you want to face. Tapping the left stick slightly left or right from the direction you are currently screening will turn your player 45 degrees, and tapping the left stick in the opposite direction will turn your player 180 degrees. This will help high IQ bigs who can help get your ball handlers open to stand out.

Enjoy enhanced AI that adapts strategically to your every move, regardless of whether you’re on offense or defense.

Offensive AI are now equipped with a new intelligence module that enables them to actively look for scoring opportunities through drive-and-kick plays to generate offense, completely outside of regular plays. This module helps the AI understand defender rotations to locate the open man and chain together drive-and-catch opportunities. It also helps the AI locate receivers in pick-and-fade situations.

With this, NBA 2K26 features three-phase offensive AI that can attack through plays, freelance, or drive-and-kicks, or a combination of all three!

Help defense can now dynamically adjust based on both the off-ball defensive pressure you’ve assigned and the position of the basketball in relation to the basket, so that your off-ball AI defenders can help on drives in the paint more consistently. 

As the ball gets closer to the basket, defenders will now be affected by the gravity of the ball and adjust their positioning to help recreate collapsing NBA defenses to protect the paint and then recover back out to shooters.

These improvements work in tandem with the improved drive-and-kick intelligence and complement each other to create a secondary level of ball movement that gives you opportunities to attack close-outs on defense and to make the second and third pass on offense.

When playing as your MyPLAYER, your AI teammates will now consider your position on the court even when you don’t have the ball, which helps them determine floor spacing outside of plays and isolations.

Together with the improved drive-and-kick intelligence, your AI teammates will find you off-ball more consistently when penetrating or running a pick-and-roll action with you. 

This allows for a new set of Quick Plays that can be called by you, when playing off-ball, to alert your AI teammates to scoring opportunities. For example, you can alert your team’s ball handler that you are coming to set a screen for them, or call quick post-up and floppy actions for yourself.

Double team defensive logic in NBA 2K26 has been improved to better track moving targets. AI will identify dangerous players more effectively, better anticipate when to send a double team, and close out more intelligently.

AI defenders now have improved logic to choose the best route around screens and obstacles on the court. You’ll notice more decisive positioning and movement to go over, under, or through the screen, depending on your strategy.

Playbooks in NBA 2K26 have been expanded to hold up to 80 plays! This allows playbooks to more authentically replicate teams’ offensive systems that they use in the real-world.

Ten new variables have been added to even more effectively differentiate the AI’s abilities across lower and higher difficulties including awareness of help defense rotations, speed at which help defense will commit once called for, how quickly defenders can recognize when a pass was initiated to react for pass lane steal opportunities, and more. 

These are in addition to the variables introduced in NBA 2K25 and further improve how AI effectiveness scales with game difficulty.

In Play Now and MyNBA, a new AI/CPU slider called “Shot Timing Ability” allows you to separately adjust how skilled AIs are at timing jumpshots and layups. This is more effective than previous shooting sliders and leads to more expected results without impacting the AI’s intelligence in other areas so that you can fine-tune and customize your experience.

In NBA 2K26, a new Intermediate Tutorial bridges the gap between the existing tutorials and drills that cover beginner fundamentals and advanced techniques. You’ll learn about the different types of layups and dunks, how to execute simple plays like the pick-and-roll, and more. 

Learn 2K is the best place to grow your 2K skills, whether you’re a veteran who wants to practice this year’s upgraded Rhythm Shooting and refined controls, or a rookie who is learning how to play NBA 2K for the first time.

Gameplay in 2K26 is intended to feel smoother, faster, and more seamless than ever before. In the next Courtside Report, we’ll dive into this year’s Presentation enhancements and how they complement the gameplay for all-encompassing, authentic immersion. 

If you missed the Roadmap Courtside Report, be sure to check it out to see all of the key feature dates leading up to Early Access** on August 29. Get up to 7 days of Early Access when you pre-order the Superstar or Leave No Doubt Edition, and receive additional bonus content!

*Only available on NBA 2K26 for PlayStation®5, Xbox Series X|S, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2.

**Early access only available for NBA 2K26 Superstar and Leave No Doubt Editions (Digital) only available on Playstation®5 and Xbox Series X|S and PC. Availability restrictions apply. For details, see https://nba.2k.com/2k26/faq/

This update adds the following...

1. Your wingman will now report when picking up and dropping off interior and sling load cargo.

2. Fixed a bug which would cause air defence units to not fire on you correctly if a fixed wing aircraft was also nearby but not actually in range. This effected all units but was most noticeable with the Tor. Hopefully it is fixed but I'm still not 100% sure what was actually causing the very strange behaviour.

3. Tweaked A.I. landing behaviour so that there shouldn't be any chance ending up in a situation where they have nearly landed but not quite!

Greetings Sire! Today we have a chunky patch for Stronghold Crusader: Definitive Edition. We've hit over 200k sales, and over 16k concurrent players, so that's a lot of Building, Battling and Besieging from our beloved community. We're diligently going through each and every bug report from you, so please continue to log them with us and it won't be long before we have more information coming on the Free Update pack and DLC 1 coming this Autumn.

- Update Size: 749MB + 700MB for any language with speech -

We've adjusted the delay calculation, which should lead to a general improvement in the lag/delay. We hope this improves the multiplayer experience, and will continue to investigate further changes if needed. 

• You can now enter “-skipvid” in the steam launch options, and it will skip the intro animation

• Well workers will now help Allies put out fires

• Enabled food eaten/not eaten Marketplace toggles in Multiplayer

• Various improvements to how Teams are displayed in Custom Skirmish and Multiplayer

• The Skirmish Game Type will now be displayed in the Skirmish Briefing Screen

• Added Classic Sorting option to Skirmish Map display (shift click the header to change sort modes!)

• In the Co-Op Lobby, it will now display a pip to notify of a message received

• Added prompt to show which Lord has a message for you

• Added several missing Temple Guard voice lines

• Richard’s ‘Afraid?’ voice line will now play when you click on the mission skip Chicken

• Added updated skull visual in the Skirmish Masters screen

• Adjusted the radius of healers, so they can now heal anyone on the same tower

• You can now place undug moat over an enemies undug moat

• In Multiplayer, non-hosts can now view the Team Setup panel (round table)

• Increased range around enemy keep of blocked moat placement (15 tiles)

• Improvements to speech & input delay when requesting resources from Multiple AI

• Armour will now be counted towards the “Calm Down, Rambo!” Achievement 

• "Rotate Building" hotkey settings text, updated to say "Rotate Gatehouse"

• Swapped a voice line for the Wolf when defeating an enemy

• In the Map Editor, you can no longer place Arabian Horse Archers & Heavy Camels on top of walls

• Decreased the Vegetation Cap in the Map Editor from 3999 to 3399, to allow count left for a player of the map to place apple farms

• The Starting Goods display will now disappear when you die

• Improvements to flattened Stockpile visual

• Further small improvements to the Tutorial

• Multiple French Localisation improvements

• Multiple Simplified Chinese Localisation improvements

• Multiple Arabic Localisation improvements

• Multiple Polish Localisation improvements

• Multiple German Localisation improvements

• Fixed the auto-trade / food exploit (Good catch, Udwin!)

• The Bedouin Outpost is no longer fireproof!

• Engineers will no longer vanish, or turn into enemy units

• Placing Cesspits will no longer remove Farmland

• Swordsmen will now properly attack Camel Lancers while in 'Aggressive' stance

• Allied Walls no longer shrink when hit by allied mangonels

• Added a missing Engineers guild to one of the Pig’s Castle Designs

• You can no longer select or disband siege equipment while the game is paused

• Incorrect images will no longer display in the Allies panel

• “Calm Down, Rambo!” Achievement should now correctly trigger

• “Mute Player” Button no longer covers the Team Shield in the Multiplayer Chat Menu

• Allied Attack Orders will no longer persist once the AI is dead

• Buying multiple Archers will no longer break the Tutorial

• Updated UI visual for the Slave

• Weasel Turd video is now playing correctly

• Bessy will now leave a European gravestone on death

• Mangonels will no longer automatically target the gravestones of dead Lords

• The text of a Selected Stone Keep will no longer say Wooden Keep

• When you kill a Lord, claimed goods are now called “Captured Goods”

• Fixed uneven icon spacing on the Classic Trail menu screen

• Save file names will no longer become lowercase

• When playing as the Scribe, Churches no longer have text calling them Mosques

• Report Screen now displays a neutral face for 0, rather than a happy face

• Arab Swordsman text updated to say Arabian Swordsman

• In Missions 39 & 40 of the Classic Trail, Richard the Lionheart will now build his Barracks

• In Mission 15 of the Classic Trail, Richard the Lionheart will now build his Marketplace

• In Co-Op Mission 7, farmland can now be built next to the northern player

• In Co-Op Mission 3, the keep will now properly register as enclosed

• When completing the Campaign The Baron's Crusade, the text now appears alongside the speech

• The Merit Panel in Crusaders States Missions 4 & 5 now show the correct team shields

• In the Map Editor, invisible, walkable Rocks will no longer appear

• In the Map Editor, you can now place walls right next to ruins

• In the Map Editor, deleting buildings will no longer attribute goods to the Keep

• In the Map Editor, placing a rock directly on top of a wall will no longer cause a visual bug

• In the Map Editor, multiple ruins icons are no longer cut off at the sides

• Hiding the UI in map editor no longer deselects your current brush

• Map ‘The Great River’ and ‘Crater Lake’ now have a lower amount of foliage, so no more mass death of trees, or disappearing apple farms

• Map ‘Border Patrol’, removed tiles that were preventing farm placement

• Map ‘Distant Encounters’, removed tiles that were preventing farm placement

• Map ‘Armenia’, Iron Mines will now be built correctly

• Map ‘Arrival’, Invisible Shrubs have been removed

• Corrupted Speech Files (which in some cases and languages were causing speech lines to “merge” into each other, or instances of garbled noise) have all been fixed

• Incorrect mission names in Polish Localisation have been updated

• The Seventh Crusade is no longer called the Sixth Crusade in Polish

• The Help File links in Polish Localisation now all link to the correct place

• The Slinger now has a helpfile description, which was missing across multiple Localisations

• Fixed instances of Story Text being cut off, across multiple Localisations

• Hungarian Localisation no longer has any English speech play

• The Historical Campaign menu background, now correctly frames the screen in the Arabic Localisation

• The sounds settings text is no longer cut off in the Arabic Localisation

Please note that you will only see Multiplayer lobbies of other players on the exact same version of the game as you. Make sure you're on the latest version if you'd like to play Multiplayer.

Also, we're aware with issues regarding loading saves in Co-Op. We are working on fixing it for a future patch.

• Experimental features like “Undo Action” and “Speed-up Animations” may cause issues as they are still being iterated on.
  
• In Multiplayer, characters can get locked in a preview state when two players start creating characters at the same time. A workaround for this is to create characters one by one, or to delete the stuck character and create it again.
  
• In Multiplayer one of the users gets returned back to the Outpost main screen if two players click simultaneously on the same action in a sub menu.
  
• Desyncs can occur in Multiplayer.
  
• In Multiplayer, the “Quest Debriefing” screen shows placeholders if the party loses a quest after a client first creates a character in the Outpost.
  
• Localization is a work-in-progress and you might encounter content that is untranslated or capable of improvement when playing the game in certain languages.

We’re excited to announce that UNHEIM’s final level, the Toy Store, has entered Beta testing! Here’s what’s waiting for you:

• Toy Store level, featuring a brand new Sorrowling entity.

• Speed dial reworked.

• New Tool: Chrono-Plasmatic Nullification Surge When your speed dial reaches full charge, unleash an EMP-style discharge that fixes all active anomalies and scares off any entities.

• New Camera Enhancement: Alternating Tetraocular Surveillance Monitor Activate to view four camera feeds at once. Click any feed to focus on it and exit the enhancement.

• Numerous balance tweaks and bug fixes under the hood.

Be warned: The Toy Store is extremely tough (maybe too tough even, tell us about it!), and you will have to use all tools available to you to survive the night.

Before we roll this out to everyone, your input is crucial! Does the Toy Store feel challenging in the right way, or for the wrong reasons? Maybe it's too easy? Is the Chrono Plasmatic Nullification Surge overpowered? How does the four view workflow fit into your playstyle? Please share your thoughts!

(Also let us know if we accidentally broke anything. Although our moms are testing full-time, sometimes they miss a bug or two)

To access the BETA, please follow these steps:

1. Open Steam

2. Right-click on UNHEIM in your library

3. Select Properties

4. Go to the BETAS tab

5. Enter the password: pepperonipizza

6. Choose "community-beta" from the Beta participation drop-down list

7. Wait for the game to update the files (if nothing happens, restart the Steam client)

8. Launch the game

We would love to hear your feedback, either in the steam discussions or on our discord!

• Global release of the Toy Store level once testing wraps up.

• First major price update: the global Toy Store launch will include a new, higher price point that better reflects all the work that’s gone into UNHEIM. We will make a separate post addressing this is detail.

• Another Big Update addressing the Twitch integration and streaming features!

As you might have read before, we're working on a big free content update for Deck of Haunts!
Today, we give you the third sneak preview.

A third area, next to cards and rooms, where the game will get more beefy, is creatures.
We have been wanting to add them for a while, and now we finally had some time to create them.

The total amount of creatures will still be limited, as we want to make them more than just "spawn and forget" (and we're only a team of 4 ;) ). But if players like them, we definitely have a desire to add more of them to the mix!

There will be two kinds of creatures:

• Those linked to a starter deck: you will get a room that you need to build to spawn them, and they will remain in your house as long as you have that room built. Like the Witch that needs the Belltower or the Grim Reaper that needs the Crypt to be built.

• Those you can spawn through spawn cards: they will only dwell in your mansion for a limited amount of time, but that will be ample time for them to wreak havoc!

All new creatures will also have ability cards that will be added to your deck when they are roaming your house. So, instead of just spawning a creature and letting them roam, you can also use your deck to play with your creatures' abilities.

Here is a creature we selected that is ready for the public eye!

We give you: Imps.
They are one of the creatures that can be spawned through cards.

As they are nefarious little buggers, we found it fitting to give them a spawn card with that exact name:

And here you can see an ability card for your Imps:

This is just one of the creatures that is coming in the future. If you have other creature ideas that you want to share, feel free to do so in the comments!

This concludes all the sneak previews you are going to get before we release the update. The next thing to share will be the release date 👀.

If you missed the previous ones:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3179730/view/518593743825143697?l=englishhttps://store.steampowered.com/news/app/3179730/view/518593488304996411?l=english

If you like the game and the direction we're headed in, feel free to leave a review, as this helps us more than you think!👻

And again, a big thank you for playing and all your feedback ❤️