Citizens of Sordland! We are currently busy working on a few new things we'll announce soon, nevertheless May has brought some news we want to share with you.

First of all: Suzerain has reached 2000 reviews on Steam. Thanks to everyone who has made it possible!



This week we announced our nomination at the Games For Change awards, in the Most Innovative category, as well as the People Choice's Award. You can cast your vote for Suzerain {LINK REMOVED}here. It is a great honour to be considered for such an important award among great company. The awards ceremony will be held on the 12th of July.



And another milestone: Torpor Games has turned 2. We sadly couldn't celebrate in person but managed to find a picture of the three founders from when Torpor and Suzerain were just ideas. Thanks to everyone who has been part of this journey.



In other news, we have a new addition to the team: Irene Preuss has joined Torpor Games as Marketing Manager. Originally from Barcelona, she has been working in the games industry for the last 4 years in business development, event organisation and marketing roles. She's also Marketing Manager of the Berlin-based indie studio Happy Broccoli Games.

We are very glad to have her work with us. Our experience with Irene has been amazing even before this. She has opened many doors for our game and company in the past before the launch, with her wide network and experience in indie-games as well as the Berlin games ecosystem.



The Torpor Games team will be travelling to Sweden this month to spend 6 weeks at Spelkollektivet, a community for indie game developers in the middle of Sweden, where we are hoping to meet other fellow devs, exchange ideas and find inspiration for future plans.



Finally, a brief update on development from the team. We have been working hard on our yet to be announced Suzerain-related project. Our team has moved forward to finalizing the implementation with only a few design tasks left.

Current estimates expect this work to be completed by the end of June after final polish and bug-fixing concludes. So far, two rounds of testing have occurred with positive results. Our initial performance and optimization challenges have also been mostly solved. Here are a few teaser images:







We are very satisfied with the overall experience and hope to reveal it soon to the masses!

On the other hand we have just finalized the concept phase of our second unannounced project. Currently we are seeking new funding resources to be able to achieve a high standard of quality and to alleviate other pipelines in the company. In June we will be starting the actual design phase which will take many months to conclude. We will share more news and updates regarding this in the upcoming months.

Thank you for being there, stay safe and healthy.

Vectern sis da!

Check out our Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord and our newsletter to get the latest breaking news for Suzerain.



Glory to Sordland!

Citizens of Sordland! Another month has passed and it’s been quite eventful for us. Here’s an overview of our activities during the month of April:

Suzerain won Best Expert Game at the German Game Awards 2021. This is the highest award recognition a video game developer can be honoured with in Germany and we’re extremely proud. Thanks to everyone for making this possible.



Suzerain is also nominated in 2 categories at the Unfold Awards: Best Narrative and Audience Award, for which we will need your vote: ({LINK REMOVED}Vote here) - winners will be announced on the 20th of May!

Last week we participated in LudoNarraCon, the festival organised by our publisher Fellow Traveller, with several activities, including a developer interview and Q&A, the Sordland Documentary by the Templin Institute, as well as the reveal of the fanart contest results:

• @Dy with the drawing of the 4 Presidents

• @IngsocDmnt with the Wikipedia page of Sordland

• and @Pyrde with the website http://sordish.org/ about the official language of Sordland

The winners have received the high recognition of Artist of Sordland in our Discord Server. Congratulations! Vectern Sis Da!

During the festival, Ata also led the panel ‘Good Stories Must Die’, with renowned speakers Annie VanderMeer (Guild Wars 2), George Ziets (Fallout: New Vegas, Wasteland 3) and Märten Rattasepp (Disco Elysium, Death & Taxes). You can watch it here if you missed it.


Last week, Ata also spoke about Suzerain, Torpor Games and indie game development during the Instagram Takeover of Factory, the co-working space and innovative community our team is part of.

On another hand, PC Gamer wrote a great article about Suzerain and the Novel Not New crew discussed Suzerain during an Abnormal Mapping podcast episode. More reviews also from Movies and Game Tech and the German online magazine Spielbar. It’s an honour to have Suzerain mentioned by so many media outlets, thank you!

Finally a reminder to fill out our merch survey - we’ve started the research for the feasibility of ordering merch so don’t miss your chance to share your thoughts with us!

We are looking forward to sharing more news with you soon! Hope you have a great May ahead. Stay safe and healthy. Vectern Sis Da!

Check out our Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Discord and our newsletter to get the latest breaking news for Suzerain.


Glory to Sordland!

Our publisher, Fellow Traveller is an indie games label publishing innovative story-driven games. Their newest game, The Invisible Hand is out today!

The Invisible Hand is a satirical take on stock market trading, where you’ll be empowered to pursue wealth and success… at the cost of everything else, in a story of finance and personal responsibility.

You begin the game on your very first day at the trading firm FERIOS, a brokerage where they turn a blind eye to breaking the rules as long as you deliver results. Profit is what matters and the rules don’t apply to winners. Plenty of others want your position, so it’s up to you to make money, at any cost.


Congrats on your new job, and welcome to FERIOS. It's time to make some money.

Buy the stocks going up, sell before they go down. Short the ones that are going to fall (or the ones you’re going to make fall). The more money you make, the bigger your commission. And you want that commission, don't you? Well don’t worry, the rewards are limitless, if you’re hungry enough.



We’re one big happy team here at Ferios and nothing brings the team together like competition.

So in the spirit of togetherness you better meet your daily profit targets and beat your coworkers’ results if you want to keep your job. We won’t hesitate to fire anyone who can’t or won’t do what it takes to succeed...

Purchase The Invisible Hand on Steam

https://store.steampowered.com/app/628200/The_Invisible_Hand/

Dear Citizens of Sordland,

Patch 1.1.5 is released right before the kick-off of LudoNarraCon 2021 tomorrow. It contains some bug fixes and some polish to improve the overall writing quality! Thank you to our dedicated community members who are posting bug reports on our Discord server.

We will also reveal the art contest winners on tomorrow's Dev QA Livestream at 19:00 UTC on the Steam store page here. Make sure not to miss out on the Live Q&A with the developers Ilke and Ata from Torpor Games. Feel free to ask questions in the live chat or on the Discord server question and answer chat.



[CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT]
[FOR YOUR EYES ONLY - CONTAINS SPOILERS]

Patch 1.1.5 (22/04/2021)

The patch applies on new games.

Balancing

• Early crisis is harder to trigger under certain circumstances

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a leaked scandals trigger that would result in a disappearing scene in turn 09
  
• Fixed a missing company bribe variable regarding fulfilment of a promise
  
• Fixed missing set Gender Equality variable in WLA bill
  
• Fixed wrong conditions in the Final Supper scene regarding Deana's school experience
  
• Changed wrong response description for lobbying decision
  
• Improved some PresiPower tooltip text
  
• Improved some MOD reports
  
• Fixed wrong Franc university codex update
  
• Fixed some typos in the summary screen
  
• 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.


Sign-up to our newsletter to get the latest breaking news for Suzerain.

LudoNarraCon is taking place April 23 - 26, and Suzerain is exhibiting!

You can tune into the Suzerain Gameplay stream right here on the Steam page, at 11am PT Monday April 26 / 8pm BST Monday April 26

About the stream:
The Templin Institute, a YouTuber investigating alternate worlds, streams his Suzerain playthrough! Will he turn Sordland into a communist utopia or a brutal dictatorship?

To learn more about LudoNarraCon, visit the LudoNarraCon website

LudoNarraCon is taking place April 23 - 26, and Suzerain is exhibiting!

You can tune into the Suzerain documentary stream right here on the Steam page, at 12pm PT Sunday April 25 / 8pm BST Sunday April 25

About the stream:
The Templin Institute, a YouTuber investigating alternate worlds dives into Suzerain, and the history of Sordland before Anton Rayne becomes president. Brush up on your Sordish history before you take the up the mantle of president. Sordland is depending on you. How will you lead?

To learn more about LudoNarraCon, visit the LudoNarraCon website

LudoNarraCon is taking place April 23 - 26, and Suzerain is exhibiting!

You can tune into the developer podcast stream right here on the Steam page, at 11am PT Saturday April 24 / 7pm BST Saturday April 24

About the stream:
Watch the Suzerain devs chat with the Adventure Games Podcast team, as they discuss Suzerain and game development.

To learn more about LudoNarraCon, visit the LudoNarraCon website

LudoNarraCon is taking place April 23 - 26, and Suzerain is exhibiting!

You can tune into the developer Q&A stream right here on the Steam page, at 10am PT Friday April 23 / 6pm BST Friday April 23

About the stream:
Join in for a live Developer Q&A with a mix of collected questions and live questions.

To learn more about LudoNarraCon, visit the LudoNarraCon website

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!





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 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.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1548650/LudoNarraCon_Supporter_Pack_featuring_Cyrano

Sign-up to our newsletter to get the latest breaking news for Suzerain.


Glory to Sordland!

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.



The winner will be determined mid-April but with such recognition at the national level, we feel like winners already as a new indie studio! Link to the news in German: https://deutscher-computerspielpreis.de/die-nominierten-fuer-den-deutschen-computerspielpreis-2021-stehen-fest/

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!

Link to survey: https://forms.gle/bSB9q7vu7ogHepiTA

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!

Sign-up to our newsletter to get the latest breaking news for Suzerain.


Glory to Sordland!