Dec 4, 2021

Suzerain - hopppi

Citizens of Sordland!

Your President is addressing you today on this special date. It is an honour to celebrate with all of you the first anniversary of the release of Suzerain. Here is a list of highlights of the last 12 months:

December 2020
- Suzerain launches on Steam, GOG and Humble on Dec 4, 2020 and is immediately widely acclaimed by fans and press.
- First reviews come in giving Suzerain a Metacritic score of 81 and is praised by prestigious press outlets such as Vice, Rock Paper Shotgun, PC Gamer and Spiegel.
- Received angel investment, as well government grant to port Suzerain.

January 2021
- End Game Summary screen and customisable Anton are added.
- Publisher initial investment recouped.

February
- Suzerain breaks its previous record and reaches 460+ concurrent players on Steam.
- Largest patch 1.1 released.

March and April
- Suzerain wins Best Expert Game at the German Game Awards.
- Torpor Games runs it's first fanart contest, picking 3 winners: @Pyrde's Sordish language website http://sordish.org/, @Dy's illustration of the 4 Presidents and @IngsocDmnt's Wikipedia page of Sordland.
- Irene Preuss joins the Torpor Games team as Marketing Manager.
- Suzerain participates in the most important festival for narrative games LudoNarraCon.

May
- Suzerain reaches 2,000 reviews on Steam.
- Suzerain launches on the Epic Store.

June
- The Fateful Hour Bundle is launched on Steam, together with The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante and Yes, Your Grace.
- Daniel Emig joins the Torpor Games team as Programmer.

July
- Suzerain wins The People's Choice Award at the Games for Change Awards.
- Juan Franco Lagar joins the Torpor Games team as Programming and QA Intern.
- Held a successful Hearts of Iron IV Community event with the dev team.

August
- Second largest patch to date 1.1.6 is released. Patch 1.1.7 launches shortly after.
- The We Live in a Society Bundle launches on Steam, together with Death and Taxes, Orwell, Beholder, Do Not Feed the Monkeys, Not For Broadcast and Mind Scanners.
- Torpor Games team gets a dedicated office.

September
- Steam Rich Presence is enabled.
- Suzerain launches on the Nintendo Switch and receives immediate praise from the press.
- Tokyo Game Show selects Suzerain for their Indie Exhibit.
- Kamila Shirinova joins the team as Art and Programming Intern.

October
- Stijn Verstraete joins the Torpor Games team as 3D Artist.
- Achievements added to GOG.

November
- Suzerain is nominated in 3 categories in the German Developer Awards (Best Game, Best Design and Best Story), as well as in 2 categories in the GermanDevDays Indie Awards (Best Game and Best Story)
- We reach 3,000 reviews on Steam.

We want to thank everyone who has purchased the game in any platform, left reviews, shared on social media, press and partners. A special shoutout to our mods Kay, Naro, Aysar Siddiqi and PAB, our amazing community, and as well as the whole team at Fellow Traveller. None of this would have been possible without you! Danki!

To celebrate the anniversary our office is holding a contest to look for the lyrics of the new anthem of the state of Sordland. We look forward to recieve your lyrics (in English or Sordish).

Submissions will open next week Friday Dec 10th, on our Discord. We will post rules and details during the upcoming week.

We ran another AMA last week, this time on the r/NintendoSwitch subreddit. You can check it out here.

Finally, we can officially confirm that we've started setting up our merch shop and we hope to have it up in the upcoming weeks. Here are some teasers of what we're working on.

Stay healthy! We'll have some important news to share with you at the beginning of next year.

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

Vectern sis da!

Nov 5, 2021

October Broadcast

Suzerain - hopppi

Citizens of Sordland!

October has been very fruitful with major developments in both our projects. We have neared the completion of our implementation phase and even begun deploying on all operating systems we are targeting to release on for Project #2. However, several larger issues remain. There have been some memory challenges in one of them which we are trying to overcome as we speak. Our focus will be to finish the implementation and starting the testing phase in November.

The unannounced secret project has made massive steps forward with our first environment nearing prototype level completion. We have began sketching the second environment we are going to create. There has been major feature development progress, so we are very positive about the current status of what we achieved. Yet there are some major design hurdles and creative questions that have come up. We are trying to refine the core of what we are trying to build, and it is proving challenging. But we all are excited by these learning challenges which push our studio to improve. We are hoping to be able to reveal more before the end of the year.

We are very satisfied with the Suzerain Switch reviews, as well as with the interest from the Reddit community.

The most recent review on StackUp scores Suzerain on Switch with a 9 out 10.

We ran an AMA on the r/Nintendo subreddit at the beginning of the month, which you can still check out here in case you missed it. We're also planning to run a second AMA on r/NintendoSwitch in the upcoming weeks. Keep an eye on our Discord, Reddit or Twitter to not miss the dates.

On other news, Torpor Games continues to grow with Stijn Verstraete joining as a 3D artist, welcome Stijn!

Originally from Belgium where he studied Digital Arts & Entertainment, and worked for the VR games studio Critical Charm for just over a year, Stijn has joined Torpor as a 3D artist, mostly focused on environment and technical art.

Stijn enjoys telling stories through art, evoking certain feelings and making people think about our world, while making things look pretty.

Join our Discord to read more about Stijn's role and interests!

We look forward to sharing more news very soon!

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

Vectern sis da!

Oct 1, 2021

September Broadcast

Suzerain - hopppi

Citizens of Sordland! September has been an intense month for us, with many developments and news.

First of all, Suzerain is OUT NOW on Nintendo Switch. Check it out here.

We're very happy with the reception so far, including several mentions in the press!

HeyPoorPlayer: Suzerain Review: Re-elected for a second term on the Switch

Nindie Spotlight: Mini Reviews: September 27th Edition [Nintendo Switch eShop]

Pixel Magazin (German): Das politische Drama “Suzerain” ist jetzt für Nintendo Switch erhältlich

On the 8th of October at 7pm CEST / 1pm EST, we will be holding an AMA on the official r/NintendoSwitch subreddit, come join us.

Suzerain is also part of Tokyo Game Show this weekend, with a -25% discount on Steam running until the 4th of October!

In other news, a new member has joined the Torpor Games team, welcome Kamila Shirinova!

Kamila is joining as Art and Programming Intern and is currently studying Information Engineering. Before that, she studied Computer Science for 2 years and has enjoyed drawing since an early age.

Join our Discord to read more about Kamila's motivations and interests!

Earlier this week, Ata spoke to Riad Djemili, CEO of Codecks, our favourite Project Management tool, about the development of Suzerain in the Game Production Podcast series. Listen to the interview here.

During the month of September, the studio has been very active, with our production capacity nearly doubling, due to Kamila joining the team and other members increasing their commitments. It was also the first time when most of the company was together in Berlin after 3 relocations were completed. It is usual to work with international colleagues online but having most of the team together in our new office is really something else.

This week we have also released our latest patch on GOG including the achievements feature.

After the release of Suzerain on Switch, we are now working on two main production pipelines.

The Suzerain-related second project is now speeding up in the implementation phase as we are increasingly adding more UI elements. Research also has begun on some OS specific subjects. We hope to share some teasers soon!

Meanwhile our second pipeline, the unannounced secret project, is ticking along very well with strong visual concepting and experimentations being concluded. We are also experimenting in a new visual environment, which is very exciting. Narrative design has received an overall push forward with the timeline being detailed and story subjects being documented at the high-level. Additionally we have begun the first UI mockups to begin designing the user experience from a visual and information standpoint.

To support some infrastructure and database questions of a completely new caliber than before, we have reached out to some developers from other games who have helped us raise the right questions and find the right answers. This was very helpful overall and shows the importance of the strong gamedev network as we also help out other developers with their questions.

All in all September has shown a great amount of progress. Looking forward to what October has in store.

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

Vectern sis da!

Sep 7, 2021

August Broadcast

Suzerain - hopppi

Citizens of Sordland! There have been some important news in August, and we have also some updates coming up very soon.

Here's a little update from the team! As you have heard our Switch release is coming soon on the 23rd of September with pre-orders kicking live on the Nintendo Store on the 16th with a launch discount of -20%!

Mark that date down and tell your Switch friends! At the start of August, we made the final deliveries for the Switch release build. We achieved a high standard of quality for a platform we have never developed something for before. It was a great learning experience that took intense development time from the arrival of the dev kits in early January 2021.

To break it down the timeline looked like this:

Early Research and Design: December 2020 – February 2021
Implementation Tests: March 2021 – April 2021
Design Completes and Implementation Finishes: May 2021 – Mid June 2021
Testing and Polish: Mid-June 2021 – Early August 2021

All in all, we are very happy that this massive challenge for the development team is mostly out of the way. As usual we are already looking forward to updating the Switch version with a small polishing patch after we receive feedback from the players. Gamedev never stops!

Here are some fresh Switch screenshots:

As some challenges end new ones begin. Design work on the secret project has advanced as several feature concepts were laid out by our main designer Ilke with strong collaboration from the team.

Torpor Games is very excited to attempt to break game design norms (succeeding is another story 😉) by experimenting where we can and where it makes sense within the creative vision. Most of experimentation can be thrown away so we are not getting attached but attempting something fresh and new maybe even for the games industry is always exciting. Expect a tease about this in Q4!

Throughout August we worked on two Suzerain patches: 1.1.6 and 1.1.7. Both went live with a list of content updates, balancing, lore improvements, bug fixes and polishing. The two patches both contained 2.5 months of internal changes to the game.

We are happy to have reached a very high standard of quality and stability on the Suzerain PC version. Additionally, we have added Steam Rich Presence with live status updates from the game (some including your biased choices) landing on your profile and friends list. Juan has done a great job supporting the development initiative here.

The long-requested GOG Achievements also made it to the testing phase and once approved by the store should go live in September.

Mid-August we have decided to reset the repository of our unannounced project to start fresh on certain parts to refactor and improve while retaining old code structure to save time on development time. It’s been a bit challenging to get the ground running but we are very excited to have caught up on momentum with our first testable delivery coming internally in the second week of September. This project is key to helping Suzerain reach new audiences and to spread the message of our studio beyond our current reach.

Something else we announced in August is the We live In A Society bundle, which includes games that portray a systematic dilemma with social and political consequences.

You can now get all of this games with a -15% discount:

-Suzerain
-Death and Taxes
-Orwell
-Beholder
-Do Not Feed the Monkeys
-Not For Broadcast
-Mind Scanners

Get the bundle here: https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/22112

Finally, Suzerain has been selected in the official Tokyo Games Show line-up. We're super excited to see so much interest from overseas!

That's all for now! All hands are on deck, and we are cruising forward! We thank for your patience and support.

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

Glory to Sordland!

Sep 3, 2021

Patch 1.1.7 Released!

Suzerain - Mr. Nowak

Dear Citizens of Sordland,

We hope you heard of our new big announcement at the Indie Houses! We are also releasing another minor patch with a new Steam feature to make your friends see what you are kind of up to in Suzerain!

Steam Rich Presence will now be enabled for all users.

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

Patch 1.1.7 (03/09/2021)

The patch applies on ongoing games.

Content

Added Steam Rich Presence which displays in-game updates

Balancing

Adjusted tax change conditions
Slight changes to mid-game crisis triggers
Revised some war success conditions

Bug Fixes and Polishing

Fixed a broken link in Turn 05 scandal scene
Changed gender equality situation update to be more actual
Fixed the resignation enthusiasm of Nia Morgna
Minor lore fix in Wehlen Civil War entry
Fixed a wrong Petr death fragment in retirement
Fixed a wrong news trigger for women's rights laws passage
Fixed a wrong Koronti ally comment condition in election speech
Removed wrong title of a PM in newspaper
Fixed several typos in codex, reports and news
Fixed several typos in scenes

Known issues

Lack of Assembly impeachment content

We are super excited to have shared our new platform launch for Suzerain. Take a look at our Discord or Twitter! If you liked Suzerain drop a positive review and spread the word.

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Thank you for all your support.

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