Darkest greetings Underlords,

Yesterday, your cultists brought word of an astounding new development in the War for the Overworld multiverse which, as many of you no doubt surmised, was a most ingenious and clever ruse in honour of a special day in which we get to make stupid jokes.

Read all about it here!


Unfortunately the chatlog is not a work of parody, people actually talk like this to each other.

Indeed there is no WFTO MMO, which would be a singularly foolhardy idea as a follow up to a popular cult dungeon management game – almost as ill-fated as a perhaps overly-greedy mobile entry into such a franchise. But you needn’t be told that, do you, Underlord?

In any case, what follows April Fools day every year is a day even more special to us: War for the Overworld’s birthday, April 2nd; the day the game released from early access in 2015. There’s a lot to get through, including a small War for the Overworld patch, what’s next for us at Brightrock, the return of the pen & paper RPG, and finally, an announcement regarding our latest game – Galacticare.

Read on Underlord!


That’s right: War for the Overworld turns ten today! Technically it’s even older if you consider the two and a half years of Early Access before that, but who’s counting? (Us. Unfortunately, we’re now 10 years older and no longer bright faced youths but grizzled game developers in our own right!)


The Archive, the oldest screenshot on the Steam Community which haunts us to this day.

What followed release was three years of active development, endless patches, expansions, free content, imps, the works – all to try and build a dungeon management game that would leave our fans and customers satisfied that WFTO, in the end, reached its potential.

We hope that those of you reading this feel that, despite the pitfalls and stumbling blocks that first ol’ game of ours went through, it ultimately filled a space that’d been left empty in your libraries – and even in the genre – and provided many hours of entertainment.


An Archive for the Modern Era, with distinctly less cultists smashing their heads into bookcases

We’re celebrating this marvelous milestone with a new patch. It brings a new worker skin; the opportunity to unlock the most exclusive skins in the game, including the dev only skin; several more visual upgrades; performance enhancements; and more. You can find the summary for that and the release notes below!

When we first started on this journey, we couldn’t have imagined we’d still be sharing our love of dungeon management with you all these years later. WFTO has been a journey and a half – and one we’re all very proud of. We hope you’ve had a blast with us along the way… and that you’ll join us for the next decade of Brightrock’s story!

We’re sure you’re all wondering what’s next for Brightrock now that Galacticare and its first expansion (more on that below) are out of the door.

Despite the wider turmoil and uncertainty in the industry, things are going well for us at Brightrock. We’re expanding the studio to increase our capacity, bringing on new coders, designers, and more, with the goal of boosting our ability to make more great games – and get them out to you more often.


The team in Warsaw shortly after the release of Galacticare, gathered to celebrate and discuss future plans

We’ve also partnered up with Mythwright, who will be taking over publishing responsibilities for War for the Overworld and several upcoming projects. These new games are quite varied in their size, scope, and genre… and one of them does involve returning to the underworld (but it’ll likely be a few years before we have much to share on that one).



For War for the Overworld, Mythwright will be polishing up the store pages and making a few other minor changes behind the scenes (with the overall aim of allowing us to focus on development instead). This has included price drops in a few currencies, as well as tweaking the bundling options (the Ultimate Edition now includes the Seasonal Worker Skins and has a higher bundle discount percentage).

We’re extremely excited about our partnership with Mythwright and the future of Brightock. We can’t wait to share more details about our upcoming projects with you!

To celebrate War for the Overworld’s 10th anniversary, we did the most evil thing we could think of – cancelling our remote-work arrangement and calling Stumpy the Blood Imp back into the dungeon. He’s been with us since the beginning, and there are no insipid “retirement plans” in the Underworld! We must admit that he is getting on a bit, though…



He now joins your dungeon, world-travelled, world-weary, and suffering from an other-worldly case of scoliosis. He says it’s due to carrying the results of his labours in his backpack for a decade. We say he’s trying to squeeze us for work injury-related compensation.



Whatever the case may be, Underlord, simply launch War for the Overworld at any time to unlock this Wizened Worker for your own collection – for free and in dark perpetuity.


One of the community’s most prevalent wishes since the game wrapped has been to complete your skin collections – imp skins, we’re hoping – which was impossible due to several exclusive skins which have become unobtainable over the years:

These skins are:

• The Yogscast Worker, given out as a special code as part of the Yogscast Jingle Jam event in 2017
  
• The Golden Worker, given out to select community members who made great contributions via map creation, fan art, QA volunteering, and more
  
• The Silver Worker, given out only to developers of War for the Overworld.

We’ve heard you, and we’re giving you the opportunity to earn these fancy, exclusive imps!



We want to somewhat retain their rarity so that snagging them is an accomplishment, rather than simply giving them out. Firstly, we’ll ask for a donation to charity; as such, you’ll need to own any tier of the Cynical Imp Charity Bundles. Then, to unlock each skin, you’ll need to complete a specific selection of achievements as detailed in the unlocks menu in-game.

You asked for it, Underlord – now prove you truly want to earn these precious skins. We look forward to the first player who shows off their new, formerly developer–exclusive Silver Skin for completing practically the whole game!

This patch includes more visual updates across the game, with several rooms receiving a lighting & materials pass.





We’ve also rolled out the new character shader to the Skarg, which needed a little bit of an uplift.



Of course, there’s more than that – including some performance improvements, a fix here and there, and more general stuff. See the full patch notes below!

Per yearly tradition, the Oni Ashigaru worker has returned for you to claim. Simply log in before the end of April and he will join your collection permanently!



Don’t miss out – for if you fail to catch the wandering warrior, he will be gone for another year!



We’re pleased to announce that the War for the Overworld supplement for Wicked Ones, which allows you and some friends to conspire and build your dark lair as faithful servants to your Underlord (a combined GM/Player character) is now completely free!



It’s an innovative take on both Pen and Paper roleplaying and the Wicked Ones system. If you haven’t given this a go, and fancy something new to try out, grab your free copy today!



Wicked Ones itself entered the public domain last year so is available to download for free. So we’re also releasing the supplemental book as a free download.

Download the War for the Overworld Wicked Ones Campaign Supplement

Download Wicked Ones via this link!

Note: The paid/charity version of the WFTO Campaign Supplement originally included the Dungeoneer’s Guide to the Underworld. As the supplement is now free and under particular licence terms that allow redistribution we have removed the Dungeoneer’s Guide from these files. The Dungeoneer’s Guide is available in the Underlord Edition of War for the Overworld.



Finally, if you love the art in this gorgeous book as much as we do, please give the artist - Victor Costa - a vigorous applause with your single, massive, evil hand.

Looking beyond the borders of your dungeon walls, we also have news from the far reaches of space - our new game Galacticare has released its first story expansion!



Galacticare: The Voice Beyond features an all-new story campaign which picks up shortly after the events of the original game. The galaxy is aflame – and an invasion of vicious machines from beyond the galaxy’s edge is ripping through known space.

Galacticare jumps into action aiding the victims of the invasion, but must fend off attacks from robotic saboteurs seeking to undermine their every effort. Equipped with new security Craftech, and faced with an array of deadly new conditions, Galacticare must quickly adapt – and unravel the mysteries of the ancient CABAL.

Galacticare: The Voice Beyond is available now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3334930/Galacticare__The_Voice_Beyond/

Not yet grabbed Galacticare? There’s no better time than the present! For the next few weeks it’s available at its lowest ever price as part of the Steam daily deal! Get ready to save the galaxy, one patient at a time.

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

• The Wizened Worker, a new worker skin is available for free in non-campaign modes and features unique animations, VO and a high-detail mesh and texture.
  
• The once exclusive Yogscast, Golden and Silver workers are now able to be earned via achievements if you own any of the Cynical Imp charity bundles

• Several rooms have received an art update, enabling shadow casting and revised lighting:
  
  • Foundry
    
  • Empire Foundry
    
  • Alchemy Lab
    
  • Empire Alchemy Lab
    
  • Crypt
• Several room props are now classified as important for shadow casting, and will now render on shadow settings important or higher:
  
  • Archive Workbenches
    
  • Beast Den Portal
    
  • Crypt Pyres
    
  • Alchemy Lab Cauldrons
    
  • Foundry Anvils
• The Following Units have received shader and material updates:
  
  • Skarg
• Increased the default brightness from 30 to 35
  
• Decreased the effects of cosmetic darkening game-wide slightly for readability improvements
  
• The Evil Hand now illuminates a greater radius
  
• Improved Worker Run animations

• Decreased the Medium shadow distance value
  
• Significantly decreased the rendering overhead of the following objects:
  
  • Natural Lava Tiles
    
  • Gold Piles (Vault & Dropped)
    
  • Founder’s Theme Walls, Floors, Ownership Indicators, Connectors
• Optimised rendering of the Sovereign theme slightly, especially when shadows are enabled
  
• Slightly reduced the performance cost of Shadows being enabled

• Added an option which allows the player to select non-recommended shadow settings, this is disabled by default. If you were previously using non-recommended shadow settings then your shadow settings will be disabled by default.

• Fixed an issue in Level 2 of the Heart of Gold campaign where the artefacts would become invisible after loading a save
  
• Fixed Empire Theme lights being so intensely bright they’ll burn the eyes out of anyone who wanders in the dungeon

Until next time Underlord,

Brightrock Games

Darkest Greetings Underlords,

Emerging from our dormancy, we blink, raising our arthritic hands to block out the invading light carried by the gnarled imp that appears at our door.

“Master”, it gurgles from its awful, malformed gullet, “the Underlords, they summons us!” The goblin-thing holds out a scabby hand. Clutched within a rotting roll of parchment, marked with an incomprehensible repeating message of “+1”, repeated again and again by different voices, overlapping in cacophonic disorder – perhaps in some sinister, evil ritual that causes a monkey paw to curl somewhere.

Well, your demands have been heeded Underlords; after a brief foray into SPACE, our next game in the War for the Overworld franchise is just around the proverbial dungeon corner – and in a form you might not expect.



We’re proud to finally introduce WORLD OF THE WAR FOR THE OVERWORLD: ONLINE! That’s right Underlord, we’re making the next logical leap for a real-time strategy game, the inevitable, inexorable march towards the MMORPG genre!



Grab your Wizard robe and hat, open your wallet, sign up for our game time subscription, and create your Underavatar.

Select from your favourite evil races; Gnarlings, Augres, Chunders, Imp, Humans and, of course, Bards, who – let’s be honest – are more monster than man. Pick from a range of classes and strike out into the depths of the Underworld!


Some of the available race/class combinations in our upcoming Alpha Test

Team up with your fellow Underlords in a massively multiplayer role playing experience. Loot and pillage the vast caves of forgotten ruins, face deadly foes and answer the quests of dungeon delvers and denizens.


Stumpy the Imp has aged in the intervening years, and now serves as an important character in the story

Should you survive your perilous journeys beyond your walls, you can return to your own personal home realm, and use your newfound treasures to build up your dungeon in familiar dungeon-building gameplay. Build vaults to store your loot, lairs to house your guardian minions, and workshops to build deadly traps for any who may dare wander in – for indeed no dungeon is truly safe from external threats, both PVE and PVP based!


When you're done outside in the Wolrd of the War for the Overworld you can return to your dungeon and shape it with your winnings in a totally new, original game

This unique, two-tier gameplay of RPG and Strategy is how we’re bringing everything you know and love and hammering it into an unrecognisable shape until all the charm is gone, and what remains is an indistinguishable mush of flesh and bone that all gamers are sure to enjoy! At least, that’s what our marketing analytics say.

We’ve been watching developments in the MMO space closely these last few years – and especially the rise of “Hardcore” experiences. We want to take the tension, the pressure, and the immersion even further!

So we’re introducing Hardcore Absolutely Real Death Mode or HARD Mode. For the low price of £2,100 a month (and a signed waiver by you) our in-house specialist, Geoff, will come to live with you with the explicit goal of linking your fate to your characters.

If you eat in the game, Geoff force feeds you coffee biscuits. Get stabbed by a goblin? Geoff cuts you with an actual knife. Fall off a cliff? Geoff breaks your legs. Die in the game? Geoff snaps your neck like a carrot!

Better yet, while playing HARD Mode, your character never truly logs out, so the peril never stops! Find a safe space for your character, eat when they do, sleep when they do. Geoff is always there, all seeing, all knowing. Geoff is there for your immersion. Trust Geoff.


One artist’s (Henry Fuseli) impression of Geoff just doing his job

This new commitment to the hardcore experience is sure to provide hours of entertainment to the five viewers of your twitch stream!

*Producer’s Note: FOR INTERNAL REVIEW ONLY DO NOT INCLUDE IN PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT!!!*

There’s a bunch of awesome ways we can monetise this shit on top of the subscription and make some EZ DOSH. People will buy anything these days y’know? Suckers. Anyway if you figure out a way to make this fit into the announcement in a way that gets people hyped it’s here for you. JUST MAKE SURE IT’S NEVER SEEN!

• Mounts! - You seen those suckers paying £50 for a goddamn horse these days? That’s more than the whole game! Get in! While you’re at it, throw some VFX on it in an afternoon, and we can probably make a premium version cost a bit more. Cha-ching baby!
  
• Convenience! - Everyone’s getting older and busier plus, we’ve harnessed the power of dark design to make it so everything just feels a bit more like a slog, but you can never put your finger on why. That’s great because it means we can sell people stuff like character boosts, reputation boosters or other useful consumables so they don’t have to play the game or talk to anyone. Win-win I’d say!
  
• Seasons, Seasons, Seasons! - You gotta keep people playing man! No matter what the cost, have an arbitrary system that hands out piecemeal rewards which we’d have previously given out in bigger batches. We can get more playtime out of the same work on our part, and more playtime means more sunk cost! Keep them in the net like the minnows they are!
  
• In-Game Money - Goldsellers are a plague – getting all that fake money in our game, and making real money by selling it to people. But I’ve got a great idea – instead of banning these suckers and their customers as the cheats they are, we can just become gold sellers ourselves. Just abstract it out to give the option to get game time for in-game money and vice versa, then bob’s your uncle – we’ll outcompete the gold sellers AND make a tidy profit. What’s that? Concerned about the integrity of the game economy? Truly don’t give a toss.
  
• Geoff Customisations - Geoff has insisted, as part of his contract, he gets all sorts of “swish human cloth” sent to him. Listen, I don’t want to fuck with this guy – he scares me, and if we don’t do it he might eat my appendix. Let’s just add a bunch of micro transactions and call them customisation for the player’s personal Geoff. As long as it keeps him busy, we’re good. Just get it done, for Christ's sakes.
  
• The Billionaire Special! - Why stop at letting people buy gold and levels? For our biggest whales, let’s offer a service where some cheap labour plays the game for them, getting them the best gear while they sleep; all so our most venerable whales can feel a sense of true accomplishment and “earn” the admiration and respect that their joyless, empty, money golem heart truly desires. Just make sure it’s not too obvious. We don’t want people upsetting our biggest cash cows by rightfully claiming they’re frauds, or something.

That’s just a few of the things, I’ve got more of these than I can shake a stick at. Let’s book a powwow on Thursday to go over it! Thanks! - CFO

The fun doesn’t stop there, Underlord; we already have a comprehensive roadmap for what comes after release.

Of course, this’ll take the form of seasons, which we’re sure so many of you are familiar with now. It’s a great system that can’t ever be shaped into something that makes something actively less enjoyable for you! Gone are the days of exploring at a pace that suits you – now we’re going to roll out semi-content so quickly that you’ll always have something to keep you in the game, and earning amazing, unique rewards!


You'll need to team up with the Underavatars of other Underlords if you want to take on the hardest challenges

We also know what you’re thinking; “do we actually get to war in the overworld in The World of The War for the Overworld Online?” Well, we’re pleased to say that our Season 4 update is already penned to add The Overworld as a playable Overworld to The World of The War for the Overworld: Online, in a season we’ll be calling The World of War for the Overworld: Online Season 4 – The War Over the Underworld in the Overworld.

In the meantime keep a keen eye out our future dev diaries in coming weeks as invitations to our first public alpha start as early as TOMORROW!

See you warring in The World of The War for The Overworld Online Underlord,

- Brightrock Games

Join our community on Discord
Follow us on Steam

Signup to our newsletter!

Darkest Greetings Underlord,

Today we bring tidings of a new minor patch, a new pact through which you can take home a little devil and new allies whose efforts to bring despair upon the goodly folks of the surface may excite you.

Read on Underlord!

We’re pleased to announce that a dark pact has been sealed with the fastidious creators over at Makeship to bring your loyal imps to life in a dastardly soft new form. Bear witness and tremble Underlord!



You can place your orders now for this devilish, yet delightfully squishy, Imp plush over at Makeship, make haste Underlord as it is made to order and shall be available only for a flicker of time before it is consigned to history. You have but 21 days to place your order!

Should you wish it you could also acquire the fabriced visage of Medi from our latest endeavour Galacticare. Perhaps, should the whimsy take you you may find a way to combine them into the horrifying Medi Imp?!



Don’t miss your chance Underlord, grab them now at Makeship!

• Blood Imp Plushie
  
• Medi Plushie

Woven magics seal the pact and allow our mana to form a new soft and squishy vessel. As of today all Underlords can now choose to summon Plushie Workers into their dungeons instead of their regular blood and bone workers.



This Worker Skin is unlocked automatically for everyone, for use in any non-campaign game mode.



As with our prior minor updates we’re continuing to adjust some of the visuals in the game. This is a minor side-project as WFTO is well and truly into its maintenance phase of life.

The Sanctuary has had its lighting & shadow overhaul, the room generally always had a moody tone and we were keen to preserve and enhance this. Outside of the major change with the Altar’s light the changes are subtle but hopefully give the room a signature sinister feeling.




The Hero Sanctuary meanwhile needed much more work, neglected because it doesn’t appear in any official levels and thus only appears if you’re playing non-campaign modes as an empire dungeon theme it didn’t really get much love. We've looked to rectify this historic oversight, giving the room it's own identity other than "Blue".




The rituals that are cast also had a lighting & shadow overhaul so they should now light up more of the room when being cast.

Another area of interest was the default worker skin which now benefits from a more modern shader which was implemented for the Plushie Worker. The underlying art is still the same but the way it appears is updated, more consistent and respectful of in-scene lighting and aligned with the intended appearance even when team coloured.



This change should make the worker fit into the environment a bit better while still standing out enough that they can be seen.

• New Unit: Unbound Disciple - By community request we’ve added a Unbound version of the Disciple similar to the Ghoul, this is a Disciple that does not require a master, good for map making!
  
• New Worker Skin: Plushie Worker - Sinister, Soft & Squishy this new worker skin is sure to brighten your dungeon corridors and is free for everyone!

• The Default Worker utilises a new shader, this should allow the underlying detail to pop more.
  
• Room Visual Updates
  
  • Sanctuary - Lighting & Shadows pass, New Underfloor
    
  • Hero Sanctuary - New Water Material, New Colour Palette, Lighting & Shadows Pass, New Underfloor
• Spirit and Soulbound workers now appear as dwarves in hero based themes.
  
• Updated the VFX of several ritual cast animations.

• Disabled shadow casting on a large number of VFX planes, this should yield some performance increases when shadows are enabled in certain conditions.

• Corrected a normal map error on the default worker skin
  
• Fixed the dwarven dungeon theme incorrectly using the standard sanctuary props

A few weeks ago some of our development imps were at a mighty meeting of malevolent minds known only to the underworld as Gamescom. It was there that we spied our evil brothers in arms Myron Games and their unique VR twist upon the quintessential evil-em-up. Underworld Overseer!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2909910/Underworld_Overseer/



If you're the kind of Underlord who's longed to take the slapping of minions and building of dungeons into your own evil hands then perhaps this is the experience for you, as at long last you can god game with your own hands!



As you no-doubt know we love this most evil of genre's dearly so it's always a pleasure to share fellow developers embarking on their own crusades for the good of all evil. We hope you'll give them a wishlist!



Until next time Underlord,

- Brightrock Games

Join our community on Discord
Follow us on Steam

Signup to our newsletter!

Darkest Greetings Underlord,

Today we release both a new creation, Galacticare and a small but mighty patch for War for the Overworld. Read on Underlord!



To celebrate the release of our new game, Galacticare, we have added a new worker skin to the game, the Medi Worker Skin! Your faithful blood imp workers have slain invaders from beyond an aethereal rift and salvaged their unusual armour as their own.



This fantastic new skin can by deployed into the dungeon by owners of Galacticare which released today!



In return, owners of War for the Overworld will be able to bring the essence of the Blood Imp to Galacticare with the Blood Imp Medi Skin.



We hope that you'll check out our new game Underlord, and we humbly thank you for all the support you've given us over the years. We would not have made it this far without you!



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



We didn't want this patch to just be about the new worker skin however, so some of our development chunders have devoted their personal time to delivering something a little more substantial for your dark tastes.

Continuing on the developments brought in Patch 2.1, where we looked at all of the existing cores and shrines in the game we've started to dedicate some eyes onto the other rooms. Specifically in this case the Barracks, Archive, Garrison, Lair and Slaughterpen and the Empire equivalents of these rooms.




As part of this we've enabled dynamic shadows in all of these rooms, provided your graphics settings are set to the appropriate level. We've also added a new level of shadow setting which will enable extra shadow casters on certain lights in these rooms (primarily to provide more options in balancing fidelity with performance)




Additionally the Barracks and Garrison have also had new (old) wall decor added to their tilesets, which greatly increases the detail of the room.




As we detailed when we first added dynamic shadows, please remember that they are a super expensive graphical feature and will cost a lot of FPS due to the number of dynamic light sources that WFTO uses.

For best performance we recommend using Low Shadow Distance when using "All" Shadows and Medium Shadow Distance when using "Important & Optional" Shadows. Not all of the visual improvements require shadows to be enabled and the visuals may be different with shadows off (as the lights will no longer be blocked by objects.

• Permanent spirit workers (spawned by the Artefact of Workers) have been renamed to Soulbound workers and have a new appearence to differentiate them from temporary spirit workers

• The following rooms have had dynamic shadows enabled on their light sources:
  
  • Barracks & Empire Barracks
    
  • Archive & Empire Archive
    
  • Garrison & Empire Garrison
    
  • Lair & Empire Lair
    
  • Slaughterpen & Empire Slaughterpen
    
  • Beast Den
    
  • Severral Stone Bridges
• New Wall Decor has been added to the following rooms:
  
  • Barracks & Empire Barracks
    
  • Garrison & Empire Garrison
• Additional wall meshses have been added to the empire version of the Slaughterpen.
  
• An additional option has been added to the shadows option to enable more shadow casters on room and other lights
  
• Spirit Workers & Soulbound Workers will no longer cast shadows (because they're ghosts)
  
• Spirit Workers & Soulbound Workers now also feature worker lights with their team colour

• Gregor Valench should now be placeable again in the map editor and god mode
  
• Fixed incorrect shaders used on Slaughterpen Floor

That's about everything we have for you, for now. We hope that you'll appreciate these changes, and though WFTO is deep into maintenance mode we hope there will be time in the future to continue delivering some of these simple improvements.

Please let us know if there are any problems with the latest patch as there's always room for some hotfixes to the above features.

Until Next Time Underlord,

- Brightrock Games

Join our community on Discord
Follow us on Steam

Signup to our newsletter!

Darkest Greetings Underlord,

Beyond the walls of the dungeon the aether continues to churn and new discoveries are stumbled upon by your most loyal cultists. Read on to discover the latest developments from across the Aether.

Recently, incursions from a previously undiscovered realm have been occurring all over Kairos — metal clad invaders, no larger than a Skarg, have breached the defenses of the dungeon.

Fortunately they proved to be unbelievably inept fighters, waving their arms as if to greet our defenders with cheer. When the dust settled, the ones which weren’t rendered to scrap metal retreated to the breach from whence they came. The remains of those left behind are now donned by your loyal workers.



This new skin will be available for free to all Underlords who acquire a copy of the video game Galacticare for themselves. So rest not on your laurels Underlord, the time is nearly upon us.



Our Cultists have scried this realm through the Aether and, to our shock, have discovered an advanced civilisation that seems obsessed with, of all things, helping others. Sickening stuff really. See for yourself Underlord.



What’s more, it seems their metal spies returned knowledge of our activities to their world, and have seemingly adopted the aspect of the ignoble blood imp. To what purpose we are unsure, perhaps a fetishistic tribute to their new foe?



In any case, a new adventure awaits beyond the Aether; you need only take the leap.

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

Galacticare is releasing on May 23rd at 07:00 PDT / 10:00 EDT / 14:00 UTC / 15:00 BST / 16:00 CEST / 23:00 JST.

But perhaps your attentions remain somewhat closer to home, and an invasion of some far-off realm does not yet excite you. While our foundries lie quietened, and the attentions of the development chunders are focused on the void, other Underlords have been busy crafting devious realms with which to test your mettle.

Here’s a selection of such creations from the workshop. As always, featured authors will receive the coveted Golden Imp.

• Keepers Comeback - Campaign by Padelboot
  
• Oberon Reforged - Campaign by 123
  
• Seven Sins. Trials of Inquisitor. Church of Light Chronicles. - Campaign By Green.Sliche
  
• Binding of Mendechaus - Randomised Map by Dismellion
  
• The Number of the Beast - Scenario by 123
  
• My Pet Dungeon 2021 - My Pet Dungeon by Ripps

That’s just a small selection of the new content that continues to be realised by dedicated Underlords like yourself – but the workshop is host to all manner of creations, with new ones emerging every week. Be sure to check it out, Underlord.

War for the Overworld Workshop

Some time ago, news of an ancient evil completing its most momentous task yet reached our ears. After many, many years of hard labour, our fellows in evil at Keeper Klan released version 1.0 of Keeper FX – an open-source remake and expansion to Dungeon Keeper, which served as a great inspiration to War for the Overworld.

Visit the KeeperFX Website for details.

KeeperFX uses all new, original code to create a much improved experience on modern computers, with UX Improvements, Higher resolutions, Bug Fixes, Multiplayer Support, New Campaigns and even modding support!

Be sure to check it out, there’s no better time to discover our inspiration.

Until Next Time Underlord,

- Brightrock Games

Join our community on Discord
Follow us on Steam

Signup to our newsletter!

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 {LINK REMOVED}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!