This demo is a modernized version of the test build that was available to Early Access players. It takes place in the northern realm of Snow Peak with a mid-game player character.

The adventurer has arrived at the abbey in Snow Peak after getting rid of the Forgotten Folk that had the castle and the surrounding city in a lockdown. Word of the good deeds has reached Queen Ingrid quickly, and she is now expecting our hero in court.

If you've been on the fence about the game, or have wondered whether it will be compatible with your setup, the demo is a good way to find out. There is also a 35% discount on the game until the end of the week. Welcome to Hardland, adventurers!

"An ambassador from Tuskland sinks into a generous chair. An imp pours wine. They speak alone, candles holding the nighttime back. A toast: to a brighter tomorrow, and renewed alliances! Inside the ambassador's cup, the wine would shimmer green in better light."

While we are working on the demo version for Hardland, I thought it would be interesting to show you this illustration I finished last weekend. It's based on one of my favorite passages in the game. I like it a lot because, despite the almost comical difference in the proportions of the two characters, both the imp and the mertusk are very much on equal footing in terms of influence and significance. The concept of size is a theme across the entire game: the player and the fox. That same design language of big and small is echoed throughout the game: player kind of becomes the fox next to the enormous Elder King. At first sight it might give the impression that the other one is the dominant force, but that dominance is always challenged the deeper you get into the world, and the more you get to know various characters and what they are capable of.

I reckon many of you will already have finished the game or at least played a significant portion of it. I'd be very interested to know what are your favorite scenes or characters in the game?

Timo

This update is all about the pumpkins for the Halloween. These guys are on display in a house located in one of the more grim places in Hardland. Where might it be? Happy Halloween in advance you all!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/321980/Hardland/

Includes this update and previous two smaller patches.

- The Halloween House.
- The Elven Lord storyline extended.
- 1 new achievement for a gruesome quest.
- An hourglass icon and better messaging in the loading screen.
- Automatic save game cache file re-creation when loading the world file fails.
- The state of windowed/fullscreen is now remembered across runs when changing it with Alt-Enter.
- Domovoi damage animation playback fixed.
- Fixed a bug where User.cfg was not loaded from a correct location.
- Fixed a bug where pressing "I" next to a stump, outhouse, cauldron, etc. would filter the inventory as if the stump, outside, cauldron, etc. was being accessed.
- Fixed a bug where you could make the game crash by pressing Alt-Enter when the game was loading.
- Fixed a bug where Port of Palms was using wrong cart templates.

- Moved Capra's Windmill next to the "Barry's Windmill" sign on top of the hill with the sheep.
- A Curious Pumpkin goes on a stump now, and won't turn into a Gaping Pumpkin.
- Fixed a bug where, if someone ever found that single Carved Pumpkin in the world, and tried to use it in a recipe, the wrong pumpkin would be produced.
- Quintus leaves his helmet on the Anvil once the boars retreat.
- Added the Boar Blacksmith's helmet to the Death Dealer's list.
- Domovoi can no longer be killed by other NPC's.
- Fixed a bug where the active version of the Eldest King wouldn't get picked up by the Death Dealer.
- Allow restoring any UNIQUE items you've held in your inventory previously, and which have gone away because of a bug. When in the inventory, type RESTORE on the keyboard, and click on the item slots of any missing items with the mouse middle button to restore them. Note that it's also possible to restore items that are meant to go away during the normal course of the game. Trying to re-use them may not work as expected, break immersion, or look buggy.

Enjoy the update,
Kimmo

Why would anyone want to steal the Cartwright Gold?

This update integrates the new location, Cartwright Shrine, to the game world along with all four contest winners. Congratulations once more to Pino, Zebogo, The Fiery One, and Petalwing!

Another major change in this version is a bug fix to seeing just the black screen at startup. If you were one of the players impacted by this, please make sure to download this update.

The bug surfaced if your user account didn't have a permission to write to the folder where the game was installed. The game couldn't create the files it needed, and failed to boot properly. Hardland now plays nicely with Windows permissions by writing to folders where you are guaranteed to always be able to write, but it also means your save games will no longer be located inside the game folder. They will be residing under a special folder called AppData.

The easiest way to reach this folder is by using the Run-command in Windows, pointing it to %appdata%/Hardland, or pasting %appdata%/Hardland into the address bar in File Explorer. The game will migrate any old save games to this new location automatically at start-up.



- Integrated the Cartwright Shrine with the contest winners to the map. (the scene turned out slightly more ambitious than originally planned...)
- More location labels on the map: Elven Court, Tour Guide, Fortuna Road, Boar Woods, Sultan's Camp, Toby's House, Beholder Road, Larry's House and Elena's Peace. (the last one is a small Quest for Glory tribute)
- Steeper walls around Root Hall to prevent access without going through the imps.
- Boosted the item counts for Patissier, Greengrocer and Fishmonger: https://i.imgur.com/cSDHBSc.png
- To make things clearer, healing altars now say "Activate" instead of "Heal", and the healing altar dreams you get say "You can enter the roots" instead of "All your wounds are well".
- Several unique items in player inventory were not tagged as unique, and wouldn't go to the Death Dealer, if misplaced.
- A new area, Boar Woods, next to Root Hall.
- Set dressing for Adventurers Guild.
- Set dressing for Old Path.
- Set dressing for Capra's Windmill.
- The entrances to houses near the Lonely Glen spawn exactly at the ground level now. Some additional set dressing for that location.
- Area definition for the shrine and two hostile areas behind Adventurers' Guild. Added music for them.
- Deeper text dreams set a flag when they are seen. (The functionality is used for one of the achievements)
- Fixed a bug where the save game location was not displayed as accurately as possible when reading the listing that shows the saves.
- Fixed the double heads on the skeleton archers.
- Fixed floating trees and crevices on the tree tops in Old Path.
- Fixed the cart 3d model that was intersecting with Joukahainen: https://i.imgur.com/fMKPeZ7.png
- Fixed 3d mesh gaps in the Beholder Road tower.
- Fixed small gaps in Windmill walls.


5 new achievements.

- Bone Hand at Adventurers' Guild can be grabbed.
- You could kick the Mangled infantry and commander to death in the dream.
- Bumped up the Major Cake quest reward.
- Fixed a bug where teleporting from the Snow Peak boiler room to the Altar Malpris in the Adventurers' Guild, and exiting the building would try to take you back to the boiler room.

Enjoy the update,
Kimmo

Illustration of the new Bounty Hunter character.

He is called Glorious Emmanuel, and this guy is your best bet for gaining access into Root Hall in case you've accidentally locked yourself out of that location by eating too many Great Hearts.


- Added the Bounty Hunter storyline. He also sells Great Hearts.
- Added three new text-based dreams.
- Added clues to point out that killing goblins isn't always desirable.
- Renamed Wilhelm's Graveyard to Lonely Glen. Extensive set dressing for that location.
- Blunderbusses picked up from Ghoul Merchants stack correctly with the regular blunderbusses in the inventory.
- Maude's Graveyard renamed to Ingamoder's Graveyard so it's not leading players to the wrong spot. Added a sign for Maude's Graveyard.
- Fixed a bug where the Secret Hatches all lead to the same cellar, and also always take you back to the same house.
- Fixed bugs where some characters were selling wrong variant of "Hardland Brew" that never showed up in the inventory.
- Fixed a bug where the renderer was getting called from two threads at the same time, potentially wreaking all kinds of havoc to the renderer data, and causing issues, even crashes, all around.
- Fixed a bug where the skip button hint would be briefly displayed at the beginning of the game.


The Bounty Hunter in his in-game glory.

- Added a new quest "Feeding the Pigs" to allow the player to progress the Ulf storyline, even if they decide to save Gooseberry.
- Added the "Bwock" quest for Emmeline.
- Added the "For Tuna" quest to acknowledge when the player has finished the Sultan of Samarkand's dialogue maze.
- Added clues to help the player with the Sultan's maze and emphasize the Raving Lunatic.
- Added new dialogue branches to accept the "Beware" quest from Isidor even after the player has killed the Maudey Dhu, plus another branch pointing to the graveyard outside Snow Peak.
- Edited Ted Barry's dialogue and Mrs Dunyazad's dialogue at the start, to shorten and clarify a few things.
- Edited the Six Eyes dream to point to the Cobold Forest dream as another clue.
- Removed an extra "the" from one ending text sequence.
- Removed the randomized hatch in Mountain Sheep Tavern, it was under a carpet in a room that already has the unique wine cellar.
- Added all variants of beers to the Wine Cellar. Added a small ladder so the publican can reach the top shelf Elven Gold.
- Renamed the hatch in Publican's room to "Publican's Hatch".
- Maude's Graveyard was leading players to the wrong spot so moved it right next to Snow Peak in the place where the story is supposed to play out.
- Original "Maude's Graveyard" renamed to "Ingamoder's Graveyard" and added a description.
- Fixed a bug where the items would disappear from the cauldrons in the Unhealed Wound when loading a game saved there.

Enjoy the update! Next we're working on improving the game flow for the beginning, and fixing any remaining critical issues you all have reported on the forum.

Kimmo

Concept art for a potential DLC location.

The ability to fast-forward text-based dreams was a much-requested feature that has now been implemented. We also pushed out a patch that adds playing instructions under "How To Play" in the main menu, talking a little bit about what players should expect from the game. This is visible for anyone who hasn't yet completed the game. Additionally, dialogue has been clarified and tweaked in several sections of the game to make both the quests, as well as the dialogue itself flow better.

Chandler decided to write a small new questline for the goblin disguise.



If you haven't yet seen Chandler's other work, I wholeheartedly recommend heading over to Castle / Princess / Dragon and checking it out.

- "How To Play" in the main menu.
- Dreams show the left mouse button icon for skipping. Don't show the skip button unless the screen is black.
- The sliding animation is only applied to the player as that is the only character who has it. This fixes a bug where some NPCs standing on ice could be in their T-pose.
- Reduced the price for Lock Picks.
- Added more detail text to the "Stay Away!" sign in the Fortuna well to guide the player back there during the night.
- Edited the introductory dream, and added a tutorial dream to give more guidance on dream recipes.
- Edited NPC clues to point to Milogost and Ezekiel and highlight the categories for dream objects.
- Other minor edits to direct the player better, and trim dialogue.
- Added dialogue branches for the Undertaker to hint at grave-digging as a mechanic.
- Swapped the location of "Pumpkin Grimoire" and "How to Feed a Worm" as the former book is the more important one.
- Ice pieces push objects up so Elena and the northern guards can't get stuck neck deep in ice.
- Added brief dialogue for the pianist in the Mountain Sheep.
- Added descriptions for generic house locations on the map.
- Adjusted the sound volume for sawing and beersteins rolling on the ground, as well as the sound volume and the interval for the dogs barking in the background.
- Improved the performance of the GUI.
- Fixed a bug where the game would crash when loading a world. The entities that have been cycled out wanted a specific entity ID which would conflict with existing entities when the entity database had been completely re-created from scratch and all the entity IDs reallocated.
- Fixed a bug where you could mouse click your way up to a standing pose by the campfire after all the text sequences had run, but before fading in from black.
- Fixed a (potential) crash when sleeping using the gamepad.
- Fixed a timing error in one text sequence.
- Mouse icons for the left and middle mouse buttons.

- The thieves in the Grimaldi Ring sell Hatch Keys along with Lock Picks.
- Added dialogue for Gyrm the Rolling Meal in the Goblin Tavern, along with a small quest where you collect and feed the five goblin recipes to him.
- Edited the sign in the Deep Well to point to Fortuna's Undertaker.
- - Added dialogue branches for the Undertaker to point to Father Holloway as the person with the Coffin Key.
- If Mr Finnegan story is already completed, don't let him respawn upon save game migration.
- Changed the Skeleton King Tomb entrance to use "snap to ground" so it doesn't drop the player from the air.
- Skeleton King's Tomb only has ghoul chests now.
- Old Path: Set dressing with cobwebs and cheese altars for "King Verger". Moved the elf that tends to slide to the water.
- Added another maintenance hatch to Snow Peak that takes player to the castle roof.
- Added a nightmare text sequence, visible after the player "buys a nightmare" from the Sultan of Samarkand.
- Added a mention of Hard Ogres to some of the item descriptions for the relics.
- Added another branch to Gus's dialogue to point the player back to the Port Pulgar docks if they delivered the Prince's Gift but didn't make Praakh sail away yet.


There's a way to get up here now.

The competition has now ended, and we have four winners with all four dreams found.

1st place: Pino with the verse "Siika, pike, picanto, roach."
2nd place: Zebogo with the verse: "that nobody can cross without the lightest feet."
3rd place: The Fiery One with the verse: "In the storm, a monstrous creature stalks."
4th place: Petalwing with the verse: "disturbing the worms that coil in your coffin."

Congratulations to all winners! Timo has sent you all private messages (Zebogo, please check your inbox!) to coordinate selecting the statues, the names that will appear on them, and your additional Steam key to gift to a friend.

Edit: Final dream found! If anyone does find the final dream verse, let us know. You will be able to collect your reward later, even if the official part of the competition is over. Just a small hint to get you on track: the answer involves dreaming deeper, and watermelons.

Kimmo

The latest patch is now live. It adds support for 30 Steam achievements. Should work even for older saves. So if you load a game in which you have fulfilled the requirements for a specific achievement it should unlock the achievements accordingly.


PS. Cartwright Clan Shrine competition is still ongoing! There's been 2 correct answers so far by users Pino and Zebogo. Two verses remain unanswered so you still have a chance to win and get your name in Hardland!

The competition post can be found by scrolling down or clicking this link:
https://steamcommunity.com/gid/103582791436569549/announcements/detail/1575620709897618877

The names in the statues of the Clan Cartwright nobility are worn off. In whose honor were these statues made? Time to find out!


One of these might be you!

The competition rules are simple. There are four dreams with missing verses:

1. Dream I
"You dream about woods."
"About moving deeper into an ancient forest."
"About drinking gold from a horn, and building bridges"
"that nobody can cross without the lightest feet." - Correct answer provided by Zebogo.

2. Dream II
"Snow roars across a frozen battlefield."
"Corpses lie outside high city walls."
"In the storm, a monstrous creature stalks." - Correct answer provided by The Fiery One.

3. Dream III
"Your teeth decay."
"Your skin bloats on your bones."
"You turn in your sleep, and you turn underground,"
"disturbing the worms that coil in your coffin."- Correct answer provided by Petalwing.

4. Dream IV
"You are standing on a sea like glass."
"Its surface shimmers with stars."
"Fish school below your feet."
"Siika, pike, picanto, roach." - Correct answer provided by Pino.

Find these dreams in the game. Once you know the next verse of the dream, post the answer using the Discuss-button below. The first correct answer to each missing verse wins your name on a statue + a Steam key to gift a friend. Only one dream, one statue, and one key per player.

Also, please don't edit your posts after you've given the right answer, because it skews the timeline. We'll look at the time of the last edit, which means if you were the first one to get the answer right, but go ahead to edit the post after someone else has also posted the right answer, we can't verify you had the right answer first, and the prize will go to the other person.

I'll announce the winners formally once all four dreams have been found. They get to pick a name that should conform to the following:

• The name should be a single word.
  
• The name should sound like a person's name.
  
• The name should sound like it belongs in Hardland.

We also reserve the right to modify the names. That's it! As soon as you find your answer, hit Discuss below to post it. Good luck!

Kimmo

https://store.steampowered.com/app/321980/Hardland/

Many of you have been requesting achievements so we're in the process of implementing that as the next feature. It will be available in the next patch!




Btw. anyone tried the new Steam library beta yet? It looks pretty neat, especially the way the trading cards and achievements are integrated to the library view.

- Timo

My sincere thanks to everyone who supported us through Early Access; Hardland exists because of you. The people on the forum deserve a special thanks, because Hardland is immensely better because of you. At the end of the day, we are a tiny indie team who got a lot of help from people in the front lines to find the land mines, the flow issues, and anything that needed attention. Being able to rely on that has been massive. Thank you.

People have been asking what other game Hardland resembles. The most accurate thing would be to say it's a modern Quest for Glory. The Quest for Glory series, for those unfamiliar with it, is an adventure game series by Sierra from the 1990s with role-playing elements sprinkled on top. One of the defining games for both Timo and myself, it's no wonder its influence seeps through strongly to our game.

In a smaller way, it also resembles Her Story. The similarities are less obvious, but in both games, you're trying to assemble a complete picture in your head from smaller individual bits of story. The conclusions you draw over time change depending on how much of the picture you have in your head.

And there's a lot of picture to complete: as Hardland's store page description implies, this game's world is deep. It's not just marketing speak to say there are many secrets to uncover, because there are so many that I've myself forgotten about half of them by now! I don't expect people to find them all in a hurry either.

Hardland can also be a difficult game to grasp at the start, because it does not follow convention. It's quite deliberately trying something new. I hope people will get into the game, and stop to really pay attention, to listen. Bit by bit, slowly, you'll learn the intricacies of the world, and the relationships between people. It's about mastering knowledge. Like the Dark Souls of narrative games.

The release version is out. v1.0, if you will. We'll get some sleep now, and come back tomorrow to continue monitoring that everything goes smoothly and tweak the game as needed. I want to close with screenshots from the release version, showcasing the breadth of the game.


















There!

P.S. It's amusing to look at this picture. There are so many different paths forward from this prototype. When you look back, there's just one.



Kimmo