Super Animal Royale - Michael


It’s official: we’re finally opening the doors to Super Animal World on Tuesday, December 9th!

This has been the largest and most ambitious project our small team has ever taken on, and we couldn’t be more proud of how it’s turned out. Super Animal World sets a whole new foundation for us to build on for years to come, and we can’t wait to get it into your paws. All your progress carries over into the expansion, which will arrive as a free patch to Super Animal Royale.

Today’s two-part trailer opens with a musical number introducing some of our new characters and activities, and then shifts into an extended gameplay sequence, offering the largest look yet at Super Animal World. We’ll share more in the leadup to launch (and there are surprises sprinkled throughout the trailer), but here are a few highlights:

New Social Hub & Activities
The Social Hub was inspired by seeing how social so many of you are in pre-game lobbies. It’s a living, breathing space to meet, connect, and explore between rounds of fighting to the death.

You can spend as much time as you like in the new, cozier space, hanging out with friends, catching bugs and fish, racing in hamsterballs, meeting NPC characters, and embarking on quests to uncover the island’s twisted backstory. You’ll matchmake into any of the game’s modes straight from the Social Hub, play your match, and then return to the Social Hub to claim rewards and continue your quests: completing the Circle of Super Life.

A lot of these activities are best experienced first-hand, so we’ll save some surprises for release, but at launch, we’ll have 100 total bugs and fish to catch and six hamsterball tracks to race on. We’re also adding long-requested social features, like a cross-platform friends list so you can party up wherever your friends play.

Quests, NPCs, and Story
The expansion includes a large novel’s worth of storytelling (140,000+ words!), in which you’ll uncover the history of the island. For context, that’s 1.5x longer than The Hobbit, and 4.7x longer than Animal Farm (which may or may not have been an inspiration for the events that unfold at Super Animal Farm…).

There are over 100 NPCs to meet and interact with, some familiar and many brand-new. You’ll experience their stories through more than 350 quests, and they'll reward you with XP, Carl Coins, and, now and then, exclusive cosmetic items. Ruben and our translators have been working super hard on all of this, and we can’t wait for you to dive in and explore the island’s mysteries!

New UI, Super Animals, Locations and more
We’ve redesigned and rebuilt the game’s UI top-to-bottom, so that everything is accessible in-world. We’ll have more to share on this soon, but it was a massive undertaking that makes everyday play smoother and more immersive. This also includes a new Settings menu with community-requested features like hiding armor and muting hit sounds in the lobby / Social Hub.

Super Eagle-eyed players will also spot the new Super Hamster as well as the new Hamsterball Stadium location. No more hamsterballs without Super Hamsters!

This is just a sampling of the headline additions that we’ve been working on for nearly 3 years, and we’ll have more to share over the next month.

Console Release in Japan & Across Asia
We’re also finally bringing Super Animal Royale to Nintendo Switch and PlayStation in Japan and across Asia for the first time. It’s a huge milestone for us and we’re super excited for how it’ll expand the global player base even further.

We hope you enjoy the trailer and are as excited for Super Animal World’s release as we are. It would mean the super world to us if you could help us spread the word so we have the biggest possible opening day in December!

For all the latest Super Animal World news, subscribe to our ​​newsletter and follow us on:






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See you on opening day, Super Animals!
10:07am
DFHack - Dwarf Fortress Modding Engine - rome of oxtrot
Highlights
Compatibility with DF 53.02

This release is for compatibility with Dwarf Fortress 53.02.

Announcements
PSAs

As always, remember that, just like the vanilla DF game, DFHack tools can also have bugs. It is a good idea to save often and keep backups of the forts that you care about. Some DFHack tools that worked in previous (pre-Steam) versions of DF have not been updated yet and are marked with the "unavailable" tag in their docs. If you try to run them, they will show a warning and exit immediately. You can run the command again to override the warning (though of course the tools may not work). We make no guarantees of reliability for the tools that are marked as "unavailable". The in-game interface for running DFHack commands ( gui/launcher ) will not show "unavailable" tools by default. You can still run them if you know their names, or you can turn on dev mode by hitting Ctrl-D while in gui/launcher and they will be added to the autocomplete list. Some tools listed as "unavailable" in the docs do not compile yet and are not accessible at all, even when in dev mode. If you see a tool complaining about the lack of a cursor, know that it's referring to the keyboard cursor (which used to be the only real option in Dwarf Fortress). You can enable the keyboard cursor by entering mining mode or selecting the dump/forbid tool and hitting Alt-K (the DFHack keybinding for toggle-kbd-cursor ). We're working on making DFHack tools more mouse-aware and accessible so this step isn't necessary in the future.

Changelog
Misc Improvements
  • Core: added "gps" ("graphicst") to the set of globals whose sizes must agree for DFHack to pass initialization checks

Breadbox - BitfallCo
  • Added new tutorial: Diskettes.

  • Introduced experimental 4K screen resolution options.

  • You can now send support requests directly from the Help panel.

Destructive Contraptions - gamergetik

Hello guys,

  • Physics Update :- I have fixed some bugs on some props. However some bugs are still present in other props. I am aware of it and I will fix it in coming updates.

  • Demo Released :- Demo has been released with 20-25 props. The save files in the demo will upgrade to full version seamlessly.

Since the game graphics is undergoing a major overhaul , some issues with props may arise which will be ironed out in next update 1.0 which is too be out soon. If possible i may do another update with this fixes before hitting 1.0. The Full release is almost round the corner so i appreciate your patience.

Thanks,
Agniv

FrostBound - PentaDemon

Greetings Deckbuilders!

When the last spark of humanity flickered out, we asked ourselves: what if survival meant defending the final ember in a frozen world?

The Spark – How the Idea Started

The main source of inspiration was Game of Thrones, especially its battle scenes—whether between humans or against the White Walkers. Scenes like lighting the flames beyond the Wall to block the undead’s advance left a deep impression on us. These moments helped define the game’s tone: enemies far greater in number, the tension of defense and counterattack, the unity of mankind, and the ever-present winter setting.

In addition, classic RTS titles like StarCraft and Warcraft II shaped our early gaming memories. The thrill of commanding units, coordinating forces, and achieving that “1 + 1 > 2” synergy became a foundation for several core mechanics:

  • Troop synergy

  • Interaction between abilities and keywords

  • Complex, sometimes unpredictable “battlefield chemistry”

We didn’t initially choose the card-game direction because everyone was a fan of TCGs. Instead, cards felt like an intuitive and flexible way to present strategy and decision-making—they could just as easily have been miniature soldiers on a battlefield. But once you introduce “cards,” you inherit a whole world of TCG-related concepts. As development continued, we explored and played similar titles to refine our understanding.

🏰 Early Concepts

In early versions, FrostBound wasn’t the grounded tower-defense game you see today. Players originally commanded a floating fortress. After completing the tutorial, the castle would literally rise from the ground and take flight. The concept was to explore how, after a great cataclysm, a lone ark could search for and preserve civilization.

🃏 Design Philosophy

Ironically, I’m not a particularly seasoned or passionate card-game player—at least not compared to our planners. Naturally, the game’s rules were influenced by titles like Gwent and Slay the Spire.

That lack of deep card-game experience became both a blessing and a curse:

  • We weren’t constrained by what card games “should” be.

  • We spent tremendous effort later to make the logic intuitive for traditional card players.

  • It allowed us to create a subtle “new genre,” blending roguelike, tower defense, and auto-battler elements.

For a long time, we jokingly called it “a card-based version of Plants vs. Zombies.”

⚔️ Building the FrostBound Experience

As a hybrid between card and tower-defense systems, FrostBound delivers a unique “battlefront tug-of-war,” where waves of enemies crash forward and soldiers hold their ground. Including structure cards (which act like relics or permanent effects), the total number exceeds 500 cards.

There are no deck restrictions by hero or class—everything draws from a shared pool. Our goal was to give players extreme freedom and truly emergent strategies, letting each player find their own path to victory.

🔥 The Feeling We Chase

Beyond the roguelike randomness and vast card pool, one moment stands above all others—the defensive counterattack.

Just like in Game of Thrones, humanity starts under overwhelming pressure, then strikes back. During early demos, when players were pushed to the last line of defense and managed a desperate comeback, their excitement was unmatched. We’ve been chasing that feeling ever since.

We designed comeback mechanisms, tuned enemy waves, and refined difficulty pacing to encourage that reversal moment. When a player truly feels like “the last bastion in winter,” retreating step by step until rallying to victory—that alone makes all the effort worth it.

First Steps / Early Prototyping

Since many of us are huge fans of survival games, our early concept gave significant weight to management and survival aspects. It made sense, given that the player is a city lord.

Originally, the player commanded a floating fortress waging wars across snow-covered lands, ultimately to defeat the northern calamity.

A variant of this idea replaced the floating fortress with a hex-grid city builder, where building placement and adjacency created gameplay relationships.

At that time, the game loop was much longer than it is now. Players not only fought battles but also built farms, banks, and other basic infrastructure.

Eventually, we realized that these mixed systems didn’t blend well. The roguelike structure required shorter, tighter sessions, while management systems demanded longer playtime and more complexity.

So we started simplifying. We redesigned the game into one where the player explores the world on a floating city, visiting points of interest, engaging in battles, and gathering resources from forests and mines, while a storm constantly pursued them from the west.

It sounded great on paper, and the initial prototype even worked. But over time, we found that the complexity wasn’t matched by long-term fun. It was novel at first, but hard to balance.

Ultimately, we chose to focus on subtraction, removing the management systems entirely so players could fully immerse themselves in the combat experience. All metadata was reorganized into a clean and straightforward interface, making each run shorter and more focused. That’s how we arrived at the game’s current form.

As for art direction, we experimented with multiple styles early on, but after considering development cost, team capacity, and visual consistency, we settled on the current look and continued refining it from there

Feb 2024 - Pre-production & research stage

May 2024 - First Demo

Challenges & Lessons

Our goal was always to make players truly feel the thrill of battlefield strategy. To achieve that, we went through countless iterations and hard lessons. Early versions were brutally difficult — during prototype testing among friends, the demo’s completion rate was under 5%.

🧊 Early Balance Struggles

  • In early builds, monsters had no attack limit per turn. Once combat began, it was a fight to the death.

  • Combined with higher base stats, this created an intense “last stand” tone that became part of the game’s emotional foundation.

  • Elite cards, now a key source of mid-battle progression, used to function just like regular defense cards — going to the discard pile when defeated and unable to earn reputation unless they scored kills.

Naturally, the overwhelming difficulty led to frustration. During a private playtest about two weeks before the Steam demo, a few hardcore card gamers loved the challenge, but most players were overwhelmed. The idea of “heroic comeback” sounded thrilling, but being powerless against the enemy just felt cruel.

We reflected deeply and made immediate changes.

🧩 Finding the Right Balance

The root causes were complex mechanics, poor onboarding, unbalanced numbers — and most importantly, low tolerance for mistakes and excessive reliance on luck.

Beyond improving tutorials, we implemented two key changes:

  • Elite cards now return to your hand when destroyed or withdrawn.

  • Restart options were added, including replaying a turn and eventually replaying an entire battle.

After these updates, feedback shifted from “this makes no sense” and “it’s too hard” to “I pulled off an amazing round!” and “This game is awesome!” — reactions that kept us motivated.

⚖️ Rethinking “Balance”

Our 500+ cards have undergone at least 2,000 rounds of numerical tuning or reworks. At first, we treated balance like an equation — comparing costs (resources, timing, player decisions) against expected value or payoff.

For a long time, we tried to “balance the math.” We built spreadsheets and ran analyses, but eventually abandoned that approach. In hindsight, there were three main reasons:

  • True balance takes years. With a small team and limited resources, we couldn’t endlessly fine-tune like big studios.

  • Player behavior changes everything. The same card can feel wildly different depending on a player’s build or timing.

  • Emotion can’t be balanced. Players crave moments that feel beyond numbers — the thrill of risk and reward.

🎲 Lessons from the Players

We learned that experience matters more than equations.

For example, there’s a “casino” event with huge variance: harsh penalties but enormous rewards. Players found clever ways to exploit it for massive gains and joked about “smashing the casino.” It became a running community meme.

There’s no “right” conclusion here — we’re still exploring. But perhaps this spirit is why players affectionately call us “Wheelchair Studio.”

Team + Passion

Lyra Studio was officially founded in September 2024. It all began with a few old friends from across the country, people who had known each other for over a decade. Each had gone their separate ways, faced their own setbacks, but ultimately came together again, united by our shared love of games and a common belief.

What’s Next

Next time, we’ll dive into how we built our first enemy faction - and why they freeze their own troops to gain power.

Call to Action

💙 Support our journey:

Wishlist FrostBound on Steam!

Join our Discord!

Follow for Devlog #2

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3649580/FrostBound/

Fiesta Online NA - CM Plumeria

Are you ready for some excitement? 

The gamigo Steam Publisher Sale is live, and we’re turning it into a celebration you won’t forget!

Don’t miss this chance to power up, grab some rewards, and enjoy the celebration with your fellow heroes.

The adventure awaits - are you in?

Server Boost: 50% XP & Drop

Level up your character and enjoy a 50% XP and Drop boost! Take advantage of this opportunity to grow stronger!

Duration: Active until November 12, 2025, 1 AM PST.

Giveaway: Code FO2025GAMIGO

Redeem the code FO2025GAMIGO  via the in-game voucher system to receive the following items:

  • Maleficent Costume (7 Days) (+6% Damage, +6% Defense)

  • Black Bunny Masque (7 Days) (+6% Evasion, +4% Defense)

  • Frilly Black Bunny Eye Patch (7 Days) (+5% Crit, +5% Damage)

  • Quest EXP Booster 30% (1 Day)

  • \[Pickup] Chocaty Puffo (7 Days) (+25 Stats)

Duration: Active until November 12, 2025, 1 AM PST..

Event: Puzzle Time

Join our Puzzle Event on Discord and get a chance to win 10,000 Slime Coins

Visit our Discord server for all the details and participation instructions.

Don’t Miss Out!

Ready to dive in? Log in, claim your rewards, and enjoy the adventure! 

See you in Isya!

Community Announcements - CM Plumeria

Are you ready for some excitement? 

The gamigo Steam Publisher Sale is live, and we’re turning it into a celebration you won’t forget!

Don’t miss this chance to power up, grab some rewards, and enjoy the celebration with your fellow heroes.

The adventure awaits - are you in?

Server Boost: 50% XP & Drop

Level up your character and enjoy a 50% XP and Drop boost! Take advantage of this opportunity to grow stronger!

Duration: Active until November 12, 2025, 1 AM PST.

Giveaway: Code FO2025GAMIGO

Redeem the code FO2025GAMIGO  via the in-game voucher system to receive the following items:

  • Maleficent Costume (7 Days) (+6% Damage, +6% Defense)

  • Black Bunny Masque (7 Days) (+6% Evasion, +4% Defense)

  • Frilly Black Bunny Eye Patch (7 Days) (+5% Crit, +5% Damage)

  • Quest EXP Booster 30% (1 Day)

  • \[Pickup] Chocaty Puffo (7 Days) (+25 Stats)

Duration: Active until November 12, 2025, 1 AM PST..

Event: Puzzle Time

Join our Puzzle Event on Discord and get a chance to win 10,000 Slime Coins

Visit our Discord server for all the details and participation instructions.

Don’t Miss Out!

Ready to dive in? Log in, claim your rewards, and enjoy the adventure! 

See you in Isya!

Starlit Stories - Thomas

We’re live!

Starlit Stories is officially released and ready to play!

Build your campsite, welcome travelers, and enjoy a peaceful escape under the stars.

Thank you all for your support during development, it means the world.

Now go make your perfect campsite!

Desktop Defender - Conradical Games

EVERYONE!

DESKTOP DEFENDER IS OUT RIGHT NOW!

Thank you all so much for all the support pre-launch! Desktop Defender is available for $4.99 or equivalent with a 15% launch discount for the next 7 days! Get it in the link below.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3772810/Desktop_Defender/I'm so excited to release the game, and to continue developing/adding to it with all of your feedback, so if you have anything you want to let me know, do so by joining our super awesome Discord community!

If you want to help make the launch as BIG as possible, here are some key points:

  • Try to reach 50 reviews in the first 24h

  • Share the game with all of your friends

  • ENJOY THE GAME!!!

Thank you all so much for the support, and DEFEND YOUR DESKTOP!

- Conrad, Lead Developer

Farming Life Simulator - The king of devs

Hello everyone!
After a lot of hard work, Farming Life Simulator is finally available on Steam. Grow crops, build your farm, trade with villagers, and enjoy your peaceful rural life in 3D!

💰 Launch discount: 40% off

Check it out and start your farming adventure today:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3807510/Farming_Life_Simulator/?beta=0

Thank you for all your support and for being part of this journey! 🌱

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