Heartfelt greetings from the Torpor Games team to all of you! We are super excited to share that we are attending LudoNarraCon, the digital convention for all kinds of cool narrative games right here on Steam. Narrative games come from the heart and soul and it is such a great opportunity to be among these talented studios and games.
Not only that but we are also going to be streaming some interesting content like a live Q&A with the Devs next Friday the 23rd of April at 19:00 UTC / 12 AM PST. Followed by a different piece of content like Templin's Documentary, a Templin gameplay livestream, and the Adventure Games Podcast to keep our store page alive on different days!
Don’t miss it, Sordland is awaiting you.
This is an inclusive event that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere. Fans of weird and interesting narrative games will be able to join together in a digital space to hear news about exciting upcoming games, play demos, and hear from talented creators on www.ludonarracon.com!
View the exhibitors with 20+ game demos!
Good Stories Must Die Panel & More at LNC
In this casual panel led by Ata from Torpor Games, we will explore games and developers who faced the difficult challenge of ending their games. The panel will go over the topics such as branching narratives and how multiple endings function, the impression that a game leaves at the end of the experience, and the challenges which were faced in bringing everything together in a conclusive and satisfying manner.
Join us next Saturday at April 24, 10am PT. Listen to the discussion of our amazing panelists like Annie (Astroneer, Guild Wars 2, Destiny), Märten (Disco Elysium, Death & Taxes), George (Fallout: New Vegas, Wasteland 3, Torment, Pillars of Eternity), Ata (Suzerain). Discover the challenges of endings and find out how and how not to do endings.
There are dozens of more interesting panels to discover at LNC! See here.
The LudoNarraCon Supporter Pack
The Supporter Pack includes Cyrano, a compilation album of music; and a treasure trove of wallpapers made up from the exhibitors of LudoNarraCon 2021. The LudoNarraCon Supporter Pack will be available on Steam for a limited time.
The Supporter Pack is an exciting new addition and will give fans an opportunity to show their love and appreciation for indie narrative games, and to help support the event.
Hope you all had a good March behind you, we certainly had a good time! Torpor has been active on many fronts so let’s get to our recap and a glimpse to what awaits us in April.
Let’s kick it off with the big news! We got nominated to the the Best Expert Game category at the German Game Awards 2021. This is a major milestone in the local market where our company is based. We stand next to established titles like Desperados and Port Royale.
Podcasts podcasts and more podcasts! We had a very good chat with Seorsie from the Adventure Games Podcast about the adventure that was Suzerain. We tackled many subjects like the creative process, the artistic vision, and the challenges of development.
Rob Zacyn from VICE Waypoint and Freelance Writer Sin Vega (Previously at RPS) went on the Three Moves Ahead podcast to talk about Suzerain for an entire two hours! It feels great to have created something that is worth talking hours over!
We also took part at the Developer Dialogue podcast to talk with Youtuber Historical Gamer and StrategyWarGamer about the game. Thank you Matt and Jean for the opportunity to shed more light to the development of the game.
Torpor Games also took part in the Hamburg Games Conference under the BMVI (German Ministry of Transportation and Digital Infrastructure) banner and we even won the XSOLLA Secret Nominee Award! The event allowed us to network with other developers and businesses.
We also began a survey to determine the feasibility of merchandising. If you are interested in buying merch related to Suzerain please make sure to contribute with your opinion and votes. This will help us gauge true interest!
The first Art Contest began with the initiative of our moderation team. If you have any artistic skills please contribute to the ministry-of-art channel on our Discord! http://discord.gg/H2F6xxg The details of the contes are as follows. We chose the theme: "Sordland". We would love to see the fans interpretation of Sordlands culture, landscapes, values, history, potential, its new president Rayne and his family, anywhere you mind may take you. Contest will last for another week. Ending on the 12th of April 13:00 CET.
Oh and our wonderful April fools joke with that amazing jam from James Spence is right here!
Let’s move on to what our team has been up to. We can’t precisely share what we are working on because there is still a lot to do but we can tell you a bit about the processes we are doing. As you might have seen, Suzerain’s release is continuously being supported with bug fixes and additions to increase the quality bar even further.
The team is focusing on designing UI/UX and control elements on a Suzerain related project. At the same time we are concepting new things for another project as well so lots happening behind the scenes! We are very early on in the process and it will take many many more months until we can share anything about these initiatives.
Let’s talk about what April holds in store for us! On the 13th of April we will be part of the German Game Awards 2021 followed by the LudoNarraCon festival which will take place between the 23rd and 26th of April. There will be a live Q&A livestream with two developers from Torpor Games so we will collect all questions at the dev-question-and-answer thread on Discord prior to the livestream. However, we will also take a few live questions during the event.
Additionally Ata will be on a interesting panel at LNC 2021! More on this once the festival details will be released soon.
We are looking forward to seeing you partake to any of the mentioned activities! Hope you have a wonderful April yourself. Stay safe and healthy. Vectern Sis Da!
Our publisher, Fellow Traveller is an indie games label publishing innovative story-driven games. Their newest game, Genesis Noir is out today!
Genesis Noir is a noir adventure spanning time and space. When a love triangle between cosmic beings becomes a bitter confrontation, you'll witness a gunshot fired by a jealous god—otherwise known as The Big Bang. Jump into the expanding universe and search for a way to destroy creation and save your love.
Genesis Noir blends interactive storytelling and generative art into a narrative tale of time, space and music.
With a focus on tactile puzzles and exploration, you’ll experiment with objects to discover how they can be manipulated to progress your journey. Dial a rotary phone; destroy a civilization; plant a garden; improvise with a musician; create life—all in your search for a way to save Miss Mass.
If you love narrative games as much as we do, check out Genesis Noir on Steam!
Patch 1.1.4 is released! We made several improvements to economy related feedback and adjusted some scenes. Some balance updates were made around public opinion and several bug fixes were made to increase the quality of the game. You can find the changelog at the bottom of the post.
We also have a new art contest happening now!
Art Contest!
Today we would like to announce the start of the first major community event for Suzerain. As you might have noticed some reforms have happened to make the discord easier to navigate. This came with an extra channel #ministry-of-art at our Discord server.
So starting today we will hold an art contest to find the best our community can offer. For our first theme we want something that encapsulates Suzerain best. That is why we chose the theme: "Sordland". We would love to see the fans interpretation of Sordlands culture, landscapes, values, history, potential, its new president Rayne and his family, anywhere you mind may take you.
Contest will last for two weeks. Ending at the 12th of April 13:00 CET.
Prizes:
1 Steam key
15 minute chat with one of the devs!
The winners will be shared on all our socials like the official Twitter, Reddit, Discord etc
A special Discord role called "Artist of Sordland"
If the art is of excellent quality it might be canonified and added to the game/lore. No promises here though
Rules of the Art Event:
Art should portray or be related to the theme "Sordland"
No NSFW
Follow of the code of conduct of the server
Your submission must be posted in #ministryofart
Your submission must contain the text #AMorgnaWesCore
Your submissions must be direct images/public whitelisted links in #ministry-of-art
A maximum of 1 submission per contestant
You may add a short paragraph why you think this art reflects Sordland best
The winner will be picked the following way. Each @Justice will grab a couple of entries which will be presented to Mr. Nowak and his team. From these entries the winners will be picked.
[CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT] [FOR YOUR EYES ONLY - CONTAINS SPOILERS]
Patch 1.1.4 (25/03/2021)
UI
Added colour code to government budget
Added dynamic cost tooltip for rural education institutes decree
Content
Added some hidden bonuses to Prologue study choices
Added several new summary lines for some endings and other game choices
Added new debt warning reports and crisis reports
Added slight feedback from Lucian about a potential crisis
Improved retirement speech by adding new responses and adjusting old ones
New inner thought responses about each character on resignations scene
Economy and debt related feedback in scenes was improved and made more consistent
Added Increase of Depression high severity situation for a set of rare choices
Writing improvement pass on regional economy reports
Updated narrative support triggers around capital withdrawals to be more direct and informative
Updated war reports to be more negative to avoid creating a false sense of hope in case of loss
Improved logic of some economic reports
Added Alliance Break info and Budget Debuffs to Join ATO or Join CSP choices
Balancing
Added a new system to make late game economic growth or contraction more consistent
The economy is now slightly easier to recover unless a series of negative events strike the player
It is possible to decrease taxes with -1 budget now
Public opinion balancing pass to reduce excessive bonuses
Public opinion damages increased on certain events and several modifiers added to reduce them
Updated the triggers of mid-game trade war and market crash for better balancing
Reduced the economic damages of the mid-game crisis and the likelihood of triggering
PM Maartin Van Hoorten is slightly easier to piss off in the talks
There are more conditions to be able gain the extra votes of the Supreme Court
Certain prologue choices can factor adversely to the votes of the Assembly
Capitalist and Democrat achievements should be slightly easier to trigger now
A previously default economic damage is now optional and related to choice
Bug Fixes
Fixed a wrong coup trigger for non-violent unrest
Fixed a bug that led to experiencing the leaked scandal scenes content twice
Fixed the wrong response condition of the Sordish League of Women donation decision
Removed all double spaces in dialogues
Fixed a condition check for Monica's women's rights response
Fixed wrong text for law policy regarding vetoes
Fixed wrong regional economy report titles
Fixed wrong logic about turn 05 investigations to be updated in turn 07 to work
Fixed certain wrong checks in the speech scene for imprisoned political figures
Certain updates like imprisonment for some characters are delayed in the codex now for narrative purposes
Fixed a few typos in codex articles
Fixed several wrong responses
Fixed several scene typos and bad wording
Fixed a dozen news and reports typos
If you liked Suzerain drop a positive review. Much love from from Torpor Games.
Glad to have you here for the February Broadcast! Let’s recap on the developments and what’s been happening at Torpor Games!
Our 1.1 patch has been released on the 11th and was received very positively by everyone! We broke our 350 concurrent player count from January with 460+ players on the 13th of February. The game also surpassed 1.5k reviews on Steam as of today!
This big patch was a massive effort for our studio and the ideal core improvement post-launch. We have followed up on the big update with smaller improvement patches to consolidate the balancing further and fix the remaining issues.
We are very happy with the current state of the game and will continue to push smaller updates like the upcoming 1.1.4 to polish the experience further. It’s not easy to maintain a game like Suzerain which has so many branches and backend value changes so supporting the game does take considerable effort and time.
If you do have improvement suggestions please send them over at our Discord server. We are particularly keen on improving typos, grammar issues and other smaller writing problems.
Also a big thanks and shoutout to Tung Thanh Cao (Khassian) who completed his internship with us and helped the release and the post-release period significantly. It’s been a wild 5 months of game development together. Good luck on the path.
Some good news! The German federal government has accepted our grant application and we are looking forward to what we can achieve with this. There will be a future announcement regarding the developments related to this grant.
Additionally, we have seen the requests to localize Suzerain into other languages. Due to the massive wordcount (450k+) of the game and our current financial situation we can’t afford localisations as of now. We are very sorry and will let you all know if this situation changes.
Ata from Torpor has also attended two podcasts which will soon release their episodes. The first one is Developer Dialogue and the second one is the Adventure Games Podcast. Tune in to these once they are out!
Thank you all for your continued support and the awesome reviews everywhere! If you want to support us further please drop a positive review on Steam if you haven’t and advocate for the game and its message. That’s how indies survive after all.
Suzerain is now -20% off with our week-long publisher sale! Time to grab it for yourself and see how you would manage Sordland. Already have Suzerain? Gift it to a friend who wishlisted it or likes these sorts of games.
Got some good news. Patch 1.1.3 is released! We have made further improvements to go along with this nice occasion in order to polish the game experience further.
This is a live update and won't require starting a new game to apply.
[CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT] [FOR YOUR EYES ONLY - CONTAINS SPOILERS]
Patch 1.1.3 (01/03/2021)
Improvements
Added a more dynamic debt ceiling system
Up to -5 debt is allowed for stronger economies and -3 for weaker economies at the start of turn 09.
-9 Debt or higher at turn 09 start will automatically cause a debt crisis which can lock the player's economic progression
Added a debt crisis situation which has a negative influence on economic bonuses
Added dialogue feedback to the economy scene regarding extraordinary economically damaging events
Central Bank independence has influence on most negative economic damages in late game
Added additional checks to the Assembly to allow for popularity bonuses if all checks fail on certain assembly groups
Improved current government budget bonuses for election calculation
Added more economic bonus rewards for first and second projects with certain new combinations
Added more influence of Presidential Powers policies to the economy in general
Reduced Alcohol Tax economy damage
Added cheaper military industrial expansion (-2) for players who increased military funding
Added a tooltip for the cost of the relocation to rural areas
Pandemic severity can also be reduced through a combination of special policies
Added several new and clearer responses to piss off the AN that can lead the player to lose the chance to isolate Rumburg
Improved war economy balancing. Economy plays a bigger role in war now.
Added a potential assassination
Education has economic bonus influences on some additive economic investments
Increased the potential damage the Oligarch Withdrawal can cause but added dynamic modifiers to it
Added delayed economic bonus for passing Women's Liberation Act to Turn 10
Media bias reduces Assembly fail and Court fail opinion damages more
Added a potential budget bonus for a rare combination of economic choices at turn 06
Improved regional economy statuses and unlocked some optional reports regarding these
Slightly improved tax situations
Added total civilian death counts to summary in the post-war situation
Adjusted some numbers in the summary screen to reflect impact
Bug Fixes
Fixed a rare narrative discrepancy regarding a green economy bar resulting in depression
Fixed wrong trigger for Less Smoke Bill
Fixed overlapping short description text for industrial expansion decision
Fixed wrong database implementations for banning youth groups
Fixed empty space typo in Mixed Economy policy
Fixed wrongly triggering employment situations
Fixed wrong Alvarez petroleum mention in trade scene
Can't hype people to vote for a Lileas who is in jail anymore
Not possible to praise Koronti after betraying him
Fixed a semi-wrong condition check that resulted in anti-Bludish responses in the debate scene
Corrected wrong tax responses in the debate scene
Fixed some issues with the regional economies
Fixed some issues with the early game pandemic metrics
Fixed random Valgslandian army invasion report
Fixed Monetary inaction situation
Fixed Crocodile Tears achivement
Added more unified situations for media
Fixed rare odd setup situation in the conscription scene
Updated some economy and media checks to be more in sync with dynamic choices
Fixed wrong Insider Trading notifier in response
Fixed Mansoun Leke response at the Assembly scene to be more accurate to the calculation
Fixed trade sanction damages not working for cancellation of Agnolia, Lespia and Valgsland alliances
Fixed empty space in one of the summary values
Fixed Bill exploit
Fixed a rare broken link in late game Monica scene
Some other minor fixes and misc issues were resolved
If you liked Suzerain please drop a positive review. It helps our studio a lot! Much love from from Torpor Games.
After monitoring and analyzing the remaining issues we decided to release a patch. 1.1.2 addresses dozens of bugs, makes a few balancing changes, and adds some minor content.
This is a live update and won't require starting a new game to apply.
[CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT] [FOR YOUR EYES ONLY - CONTAINS SPOILERS]
Patch 1.1.2 (25/02/2021)
Improvements
Increased starting economy by 1
Added economy damage to war situation
Unlocked industrial expansion decision to be default
Increased military industrial expansion cost
Changed low debt ceiling to maximum -2 government budget in late game
Improved Supreme Court vote calculation
Added some negative effects to starting rich to offset personal wealth bonus
Increased Assembly lobbying cost for max level lobbying to 4 personal wealth
Balancing pass on all late game decisions and bills with stronger economic and opinion effects
Vetoing certain bills has negative effects now
Added economic damages to some pandemic situations
Added more public opinion effects to pandemic
Improved balancing of Dome strategy and war results
Added war highway bonus to second phase for Dome
Added a few war reports and adjusted a few election and war reports
Added extra lines to war scene for more accurate situation feedback
Adjusted more public opinion damages or buffs according to media
Improved media deal influence on Assembly vote calculation
Reduced coup chances in certain situations
Added assassination for an edge case
Edited a small section in the Valgsland talks
Added veto removed policy
It is possible to increase production through military funding and expansion now
Added new election bonus to a certain voter group for fulfilling certain term focuses
Added two neutral answers at the end of the Lileas resignation scene
Added a few lines to Congress scene
Improved clarity of political group funding and added cost indicator
Improved one scene music choice and reverted some to old ones
Added compression to music files to reduce memory usage
Bug Fixes
Fixed issue with missing resolutions
Rumburg should no longer attack when player is very peaceful and paid reparations
Fixed impeachment issue where no violations were said by Nia
Fixed backend impeachment potential leaker vs actual leaker categories for accurate scene content
Purged Valken won't break out of prison to give you military advice for the war
Petr won't arise from his grave to be there with you during the final supper
Petr won't arise from his grave to hang out at the Congress
Fixed some wrong conditions in the war scene that led to wrong advice
Fixed wrong condition for Alma matter resulting in LBS for DUC graduates
Fixed broken limited veto reforms
Fixed Soll's Legacy achievement
Fixed Centrist achievement
Made Authoritarian achievement easier
Fixed impeachment ending for successful emergency path
Fixed Rag to Riches achievements which now won't be possible if you start as rich
Fixed wrong women's rights feedback in scenes and reports
Fixed wrong reverse Lileas and Nia lines
Fixed some wrong regional investment statuses
Improved several articles and fixed typos in codex, decisions, news, reports, journal, policies and situations
Fixed a few wrong Albin convince scene flow issues
Fixed wrong situation naming for military industrial complex
Fixed wrong congress reports
Fixed several wrongly triggered policies and situations
Fixed rural education institute typo
Fixed Gendarmerie typo
Fixed Young Sords typos
Fixed Beatrice Livingstone typo
Fixed Thornbourgh typo
Fixed missing policy and situation for luxury goods tax
Fixed missing policies for industrial expansion decision
Many more misc fixes
If you liked Suzerain please drop a positive review. It helps our studio a lot! Much love from from Torpor Games.
Suzerain is -20% off for the Steam Lunar New Year!
We have just released a major content patch so it’s the perfect time to grab it for yourself to see if you can solve the troubles of Sordland or crumble in the attempt to do so.
As President Rayne, lead Sordland into ruin or repair during your first term in this text-based role-playing game. Navigate a political drama driven by conversations with your cabinet members and other significant figures. Beware or embrace corruption; shirk or uphold ideals. How will you lead?
Patch 1.1
New Features
End Game Summary Screen
Based on the feedback we received, we decided to update the conclusion in a more visual way, outside of the Epilogue. We’ve built a summary screen, featuring three sections that display how your Anton government has done and the results of your choices. It displays data and details about the first term. Images speak louder than words so here you go!
This should give you a better overview of what you did or didn’t achieve. The compass focuses on the in-lore ideologies and shows where other characters are positioned on it. We hope you share your playthrough results with everyone!
Anton Customisation
After playing Suzerain for more hours than you can imagine, the portrait of Anton at the bottom left corner began to stare deep into our soul. So, we’ve decided to give everyone the option to change it up, and have built an Anton customization system. You can change his hairstyle, facial hair, accessories and background image. Share your Anton's on social using the hashtag #MyRayne!
Here are some images to show you potential variation! Special thanks to İpek Ünal, our talented character artist for creating these assets.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
New Content
The Election
We added a brand new election debate at turn 10 to strengthen the election ending. This scene also introduces Denis Stahler of the Communist Party as a character, who can be a potential rival for the election debate. Denis also gets a brand new portrait!
A new election calculation with more detailed voter groups has been added, Early polling have also been included at the political overview scene to show how your election prospects are. These additions come with some new newspapers and reports as well!
The War
The war plans scene has been expanded with new choices. We’ve also added new win and lose calculations for the war, which are affected by several of these choices in the scene and the ones the player has previously made that could relate to the war.
Several minor additions and changes were added to the war win and lose scenes as well. A dozen or more reports made their way into turn 10 to give a more accurate indication of how the war is going to players.
New music design and new tracks!
Our sound designer / composer James Spence has made changes to improve the music implementation and make the audioscape more dynamic. We’ve also added two brand new tracks to improve the audio experience. These will also be released for free to OST owners along with the hidden suspense track.
Yes you heard it right. Suzerain now will have a total of 86 achievements. The new achievements are public. Whatever you do, don't try to kill Orso please.
[CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT] [FOR YOUR EYES ONLY]
1.1.0 (11/02/2021)
Features
Added Summary screen
Added Anton Customization screen
Sordish political compass
Content
Added Election Debate scene
Added New War Plans scene
Expanded Political Overview scene
Added a new decision for election
Added news and reports for all the new scenes and some more
Implemented 42 new Steam achievements
Art
Added Denis Stahler portrait
Added backgrounds, hairstyles, accessories, attire and facial hair for Anton
Added ACP and SSP symbols
Audio
Updated music design across the game
Added new Diplomacy track
Added new Security track
Added new Summary track
Updated gavel sounds for Epilogue
Improvements:
Added more details to "convince Gloria" scene
Added minor details to war lose and war win
Added more feedback to emergency success and lose
Made Lucian more dangerous
Added clarification for investigation switch
Improved VP character distinctions
Corrected several conditions and improved flow for "convince Albin" scene
Added nuance explaining the women's rights situation better
Small content addition to Monica
The assembly vote is slightly more difficult - this was intended to be hard
The economic recovery should be slightly more difficult now
New election calculation based on voter groups and more factors
New war calculation based on alliances, previous choices and war choices
General proofreading and editing on a dozen scenes
Closed some small narrative gaps like congress cancellation during future war
Gave limited vetoes new narrative support content
Added ACP and SSP codex entries and updates
Fixed 50+ typos and improved English consistency
Music trigger logic was improved
Dozens of more minor writing additions and improvements
Bug fixes:
We fixed a couple of remaining broken links that were super rare but would have stopped player progression nonetheless
Economy balancing was improved and is more in sync with the narrative
Fixed issue that caused people with a good economy to fall to depression instead of stagnation due to high debt
Fixed wrong impeachment variable for owning Sordland Today being mistaken with having a media deal with Marcel Koronti
Fixed wrong gendarmerie check for war calculcation
Impeachment endings triggers fixed
Made Assembly triggering impeachment very very difficult
Wrong conditions for trialling Tusk after he had fled the country were corrected
Fixed misleading public opinion and war reports
Fixed halfway cut gavel tapping sounds for Epilogue
Fixed wrong Aschraf anniversary trigger for scene which resulted in both decision and scene appearing at the same time
Fixed escape to menu crash during Epilogue to Credits transition
Removed duplicate and unused news articles
Other wrong database implementations on several news and reports were mended
Tooltip hover being stuck was resolved
Fixed wrong dialogue option with Franc related to propaganda
Fixed wrong Oligarchs discontent trigger
Fixed a dozen wrong policy and situation triggers
Dozens of more bugfixes!
1.1.1 (12/02/2021) Bug Fixes
Fixed wrong condition check for economic stagnation which could lead to depression
Fixed rare broken link in election debate scene
Fixed wrong relocation report
Fixed wrong scandal news
Fixed wrong choice of Nia mentioning Lileas in scene
Fixed some typos and wording in codex articles
Edited some Ciara responses about education
Increased some Summary screen values
Added commas to some Summary screen values
Lowered economic protest trigger threshold
Fixed Antel Rock codex entry typo
Hope you enjoy this major update as much as we enjoyed making it. Please drop a positive review if you liked Suzerain! Much love from from Torpor Games.