The ocean has always attracted researchers with its secrets. Especially the demon Nero Seer. He plowed the ocean on his ship and even sank to the seabed with the help of magical objects.
But during one of his dives, Nerod encountered a tiburon, a powerful ocean predator. The demon defended himself as best he could, but died in an unequal battle. The wizard who was on the ship did not manage to save Nerod in time, but still took revenge for his death.
The team recovered the bodies of the demon and the ocean predator from the bottom. The researcher was buried with honors, and the Tiburon was taken to the observatory. The shamans studied Nerod’s killer for a long time, rebuilt it to live on land, and breathed new life with the help of runes. Now Tiburon roams the land with its new owner.
Hello! If you had plans to upgrade the hardware or movement parts on your armoured vehicle or change the bonuses on the parts that you’ve already upgraded, now is the best time to do so! During the event, you will only need one additional part (the same as the one you’re upgrading). Don’t miss out on this opportunity!
The event is available on all platforms from 12:00 GMT on June 28 to 11:59 GMT on July 1!
Please note that some parts are NOT participating in the event:
The reduced upgrade cost is not available for parts from the reward scale of the current season and/or event.
A number of other specific parts also can’t participate in the event. Please check the in-game list of eligible parts.
For more information on Crossout, follow these channels:
Windstorm is a series of movies, books and games centered around the eponymous black stallion and his friend and rider, a young girl called Mika. Previously, the stories around Windstorm across media have primarily taken place around the Kaltenbach Estate in modern day Germany.
How, then, is Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori going to add to this same story by taking place in 13th century Mongolia? Read on to find out.
🚧Work in Progress🚧
Myths of Origin
Mongolian Culture and Folklore is rife with myths and legends surrounding horses, as the animals have been critically important in everyday life on the steppes for centuries. The Windstorm movies take inspiration from that horse-based culture in the myth of Nojrsodsch, the sleeper – a person with the gift of understanding the language of the horses.
In the series' history – across movies, books and games – the Windstorm universe plays around with how it treats this understanding, sometimes implying an actual mythical power, sometimes focusing more on horses' real-life needs and body language, and how those sometimes get ignored in modern competitive equestrianism.
🚧Work in Progress🚧
Until now, the connection between the Windstorm narrative and Mongolian myth has been on the subtler side. That Kaltenbach’s horse loving hermit and Mika’s eventual mentor bears the name of Mr. Kaan is no coincidence for example, but a deliberate nod to the Mongolian inspirations.
With Windstorm: The Legend of Khiimori however, we are taking the Windstorm story to the source of its inspiration – and opening up a whole new world with it. We’re thrilled to confirm that Mika will play an important role in this game’s story, but that your protagonist will be customizable.
🚧Work in Progress🚧
Choosing Premise and Setting
When Aesir Interactive was working on early concepts for a new Windstorm game, we were initially discussing a modern, European-based setting and a gameplay loop focused on equestrian competition. In contemplating the game’s appeal to different audiences however, we came to realize that we had a chance to do something quite different: Once that thought sparked, we realized this pivot in setting would make sense on multiple fronts:
🚧Work in Progress🚧
🔺While Windstorm and Mika participate in the occasional equestrian show in the movies, a focus on competitive riding does not really fit the narrative spirit of the series. The Windstorm stories are all about freedom, friendship and fairness in how we treat our four-legged companions, not about fame or glory.
🔺Within the niche of “Horse Games”, we noticed a desire for something new: Anyone who’s played games in this genre has inherited an old barn and built it up with money earned in show jumping competitions a dozen times over. We wanted to give the horse enthusiast audience something new and exciting, not just more of the same. Many people who have grown up with horse games are ready and eager for a more mature approach to horse-focused gameplay.
🚧Work in Progress🚧
🔺We wanted this game to appeal to a wider audience than Aesir’s previous horse riding games: Being a courier rider in historical Mongolia is going to sound cool to a lot of players who would not consider picking up a modern stable simulator game. By thus expanding our audience, we see a chance to bridge the gap between the horse game niche and the wider gaming world in a way that even successful past horse-focused games have not been able to.
🔺Choosing to take the Windstorm series to this setting was immediately exciting for everyone involved. Our Artists dove into researching materials and ancient craftsmanship, our Game Designers plunged into lists of flora and fauna that would fit the steppes and mountain ranges of Central Asia. And blessedly, all the involved decision makers were similarly excited to brave new frontiers in making a historical horse game for the very first time.
🚧Work in Progress🚧
Balancing Authenticity, Realism and Fun
Realism and authentic representation are a crucial topic in this project: For our horses to have the depth and complexity that horse lovers want (and deserve!), we’ve been researching the finer details of horse coat color genetics and building complex control rigs for equine facial expressions.
🚧Work in Progress🚧
We’re conducting early playtests with the horse enthusiast audience to get the feeling of riding right, and we’re launching in Early Access very early in our development process, precisely so we can improve and iterate with the feedback of those that care the most.
🚧Work in Progress🚧
In order to do justice to our Mongolian setting, the entire team has been researching, watching documentaries and consulting with people from Mongolia. We have the opportunity to tackle a setting and time period that doesn’t usually get represented in mainstream media, and we intend to treat that with all the care and respect it deserves.
🚧Work in Progress🚧
While realism – cultural, historical and equine – is a big part of our process as you can see, our main goal remains making a game that is fun and engaging to play. We, therefore, take liberties with our source material wherever it makes sense for gameplay reasons. An early example of this is that our camp structures include wooden pens for horses, to give players an easy way to access their steeds, while a real life Mongolian nomad might have trekked for a few miles to wherever their herd was grazing, since wood can be a scarce resource on the treeless steppes.
🚧Work in Progress🚧
Stay tuned for more!
Thank you for reading! We’ll be sharing more insight and some WIP footage on our socials, so make sure to give us a follow and join the official Aesir Interactive Discord server! Please also consider Wishlisting if you have not already! 🧡
This is a very small update for our recent Milestone 4 Stable release which fixes another crash, and adds some more research text.
Fixes & Changes:
Fixed a crash that could occur when trying to commence certain Terror Site missions (due to a corrupted dishwasher tile that appeared in certain maps).
Added research text to the Harvester UFO Xenopedia project.
Help Us Improve The Game!
Thank you so much for your continued support of Xenonauts 2! We genuinely appreciate all the feedback you’ve provided. Your thoughts are incredibly valuable to us, so we invite you to share a Steam review to help us keep improving the game.
👨🏻🔬 What have the devs been working on in June? 👨🏻🔬
June has seen a stratospheric rise in our surface view gameplay.
We've been doing more work on our Flybys, Orbiters, and Landers. They are progressing well with regards to gameplay and how they fit into the wider game and systems.
It’s now possible to gather ‘Astrobiology’ whilst playing on the surface, this is the game-winning resource that allows for players to discover all the necessary ingredients for discovering life. This shortened loop has meant our design team are able to look into balancing the surface view gameplay.
The whole team continues to play and refine all of the surface view elements. Our stellar QA team are now on board and helping us find any unwelcome bugs.
- Matt Holmes, Producer for Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life
As they look to build their rocket and lead their space agency to Mars, it's been amazing to see the community discovering the game for the first time, almost 4 years since it launched.
If you're playing Mars Horizon, get involved with the community over on our Discord!
👩🏻🚀 What Have Our Partners Been Up To? 👩🏻🚀
Our partners for Mars Horizon and Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life, the European Space Agency (ESA), have been sharing a variety of materials recently that we feel the Mars Horizon community would thoroughly enjoy. 🎤 Astro Chat with John McFall | ESA Explores Podcast - John McFall, a member of the European astronaut reserve from the ESA astronaut class of 2022, discusses the ground-breaking "Fly!" feasibility study in this recent podcast. 🧱 The Space Bricks Have Landed - ESA scientists have been exploring how a future Moon base might be built from materials on the lunar surface. Inspired by LEGO building, they have used dust from a meteorite to 3D-print 'space bricks' to test the idea. Check out the blog for more information.
🌍 Recent Mars-related News 🌍
There have been a number of news stories circulating around space travel and even new discoveries! Here are links to some stories we think the Mars Horizon community will enjoy:
🛰️ Dazzling mystery on Mars leaves scientists baffled - Metro UK
🌊 Is there liquid water on Mars today? Marsquake data could tell us - Space
👽 Unexplored holes on Mars could be home to alien life - Indy 100
🧊 Scientists make 'impossible' discovery on Mars - Frost near the equator - Forbes
🚀 Europe's new Ariane 6 rocket on track for 1st launch on July 9 - Space
📖 From the Archives 📖
Take a look back at a great Mars Horizon stream from our archives. In this stream, we were joined by Libby Jackson who was Human Exploration Programme Manager when we streamed with her, but is now Head of Space Exploration at the UK Space Agency!
One of Britain’s foremost human spaceflight experts, Libby has worked as a Columbus flight director on missions to the International Space Station. She managed the hugely successful UK Space Agency program that supported Tim Peake’s mission. She tells us what its really like in mission control and how she got into working in the space industry!
🛰️Join The Official Mars Horizon 2 Socials🛰️
There's never been a better time to follow our social channels! This will ensure that you don't miss out on the cool content we'll have to share throughout the development journey and some behind the scenes looks at what we get up to. 👀
Hello. I'm calling this one a maintenance update because it doesn't really bring in new content but has additions and fixes for many little things. The game is once again taking part in G.Round testing and as a result many changes improve the new player experience but there's also plenty for existing players.
I should mention that currently Horde Hunters is on sale for under 3 bucks on the Steam Summer Sale! It'll likely be a long time before it's this low again so tell your friends or gift them to support the game.
New player settings
You really enjoyed the player healthbar introduced in the previous update. So much so that you wanted more from the feature so here we go. You can now also show the energy bar and as a bit of a bonus enable player and party member outlines for better visibility.
New difficulty selection screen + changes
Difficulty is still the number one feedback point I see with new players. I've now introduced a new difficulty selection screen before the tutorial begins to help make a more informed choice. There's also some extras to help players on the lower difficulty to complete their runs. You'll also note that weapon upgrade costs now vary on all difficulty levels (except Normal).
FYI there are 5 new achievements for completing the main maps with the very hard difficulty. Sorry to say if you've previously done these they won't count because I wasn't tracking that information. Still, with the new weapon upgrade cost changes you may be facing an additional challenge.
Honorable mentions
Other interesting additions include being able to Level Up Later, quickly toggle Auto-aiming with a hotkey and the Run mode changed so now you have to keep pressing the button like in most other games. For all the other changes see the full changelog below. Cheers
Full changelog:
General
New setting: Player health bar - None, On hit, Always (Default: On hit)
New setting: Player energy bar - None, Always (Default: None)
New setting: Player and party member outlines (Default: No)
New shop action: Level Up Later - Allows to take a peek at the next level up rewards but also viewing character/gear without having to level up
New achievements (5) for completing main maps on Very Hard difficulty
New difficulty selection screen when starting tutorial
Weapon upgrade costs are relative to difficulty
Lower difficulty (Easy and below) end-game is a bit easier. Also extra open inventory slots on start
Difficulty screen: Corrected that "playing below the default" means the Normal difficulty
Auto-aim can be quickly toggled in-game with the [F1] key
Run mode changed: Hold button to run (instead of toggle on/off)
Energy Shield item will also knock back and stun surrounding enemies upon hit
Every time you're hit the energy recharge stops for 1s. With Ginseng your energy will still go up by 50%
Boss top healthbar removed. Added next move information on top of boss
Top "Main Menu" changed to read "Back" instead
Terrain speed information did not align properly to bottom of screen if there were no consumables
Added a new music track when losing a run
Added text to power-ups screen that they are saved for each character and map separately
Auras will have additional instructions for first time use
Replaced the player damage sound with another
Character stat information is shown when hovering the character panel healthbars with a mouse
Consumable amounts are shown again (when paused)
Active consumables are better highlighted
Map goal information moved to the zoomed out phase. Removed the big message from the start of run
Weapon stats are not seen on level up screens to declutter information
Some GUI color changes
Bugs
Protect and Rescue mission timers didn't pause when outside area
Dwarf smash effect (visual only) did not align properly with character size and direction
10k+ leaderboard achievements do not pop immediately after run
Light Wand weapon was broken (fired a small blip in front of the character)
Gamepad navigation with shop consumables and weapons had minor issues since moving to the new GUI system
Minor graphical issues if Steam Deck plugged into a monitor
Power-ups navigation had some scrolling issues when using gamepad
Player can get stuck in the mountains after elite push (maybe fixed, hard to reproduce)
Boss battle may not trigger on certain game speeds due to rounding error
Some issues with building messages and ongoing mission happening during boss battle
When adjusting music volume during the game, the music stays on (although being muted on pause)
Mouse scroll speed was somewhat limited. You can now scroll e.g. consumables faster