Welcome to the broadcast for June, here is an overview of the most exciting things we have been working on this month.
Our team has been working on a small patch and updating Suzerain on all platforms and stores. We hope to maintain a high-quality experience for existing and new players.
The Suzerain 1.1.9 patch is out on Windows and Mac for you to enjoy. It has some minor content as well!
Our Nintendo Switch version will also have some updates in the future.
For our new project, we are starting to implement our design improvements, iterations, and new additions and will continue to do so for most of the following month.
These new iterations we are working on are things we will be more proud to share with you when the time comes.
It is super exciting to see our universe come alive piece by piece.
Our team moved offices this month as well. We now can enjoy the spaciousness and breeze coming through the windows.
By the way, we are still selling items on our merch store, like the flag in the background of our office.
We would love to see you flaunting your Suzerain merch online. Tag us in your photos!
Enjoy the month, and we will be back soon for our July update.
Hope you are having a wonderful June. We are releasing a minor patch with a few bug fixes and some extra polish to address the bug reports since January. Please read the bottom after the changelog!
[CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT] [FOR YOUR EYES ONLY - CONTAINS SPOILERS]
Patch 1.1.9 (29/06/2022)
The patch applies to new games.
Content
Added minor content in the form of dialogue extensions, codex, report and news
Bug Fixes and Polishing
Fixed an ending altering bug where a coup wouldn't trigger and instead player enters retirement wrongly causing content desync
Fixed an issue with wrong construction variables being checked in game setup
Updated description of Steam achievements regarding construction opening and frugal to reflect conditions better
Fixed date issue in a historical codex article
Fixed wrong appearance of Manoly
Updated negative situation description for military unhappiness
Added a slight content variation for a Stahler comment
Fixed wrong address of PM of Lespia
Improved conditions for Lileas comment on Rumburg war possibility when in alliance
Fixed a few typos in codex, city details, reports and news
Fixed some more typos in scenes
Known issues
Lack of Assembly impeachment content
Certain codex articles don't update such as parties, cities, armed forces
Country reports user interface has small typo
Queen Beatrice can lose dialogue text colour randomly displaying <=color=>
Hyperlinks randomly break and highlight articles or change codex article text
As always you can send feedback and report bugs on our channels. Take a look at our Discord or Twitter! If you liked Suzerain drop a positive review and spread the word.
Suzerain Community Interest Survey
The Torpor Games team has been working hard on a new project, of which we hope to be able to share more news very soon.
Additionally, we are evaluating the potential for the future of our first game, Suzerain, and what our community would be comfortable with financially supporting our development work.
Please note that we are not working on additional content for Suzerain. The purpose of this survey is solely to help us gauge the interest of our community. Torpor Games reserves the right to act as we see fit regardless of the survey results.
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To find out more about our current plans and upcoming news, keep an eye on our monthly broadcast. You can read past broadcasts on our website: torporgames.com/broadcast.
May was a month that went by very quickly on our side of things. Since the prototyping and mobile efforts at the beginning of the year, we rested a bit and are now back with the full team again.
A few weeks ago we attended A MAZE Berlin, an independent games festival in Berlin.
It was very inspiring to see old friends who visited from all over Europe and to explore the current experimental games landscape.
On the development side of things, we have been busy with different evaluations and iteration processes on top of the prototype.
These advances in game development are why we don't feel comfortable sharing details about what we are working on too early. We want to reach a certain quality standard for you all before taking further steps.
One of our key focus points was iterating on the core design elements of the prototype and fulfilling the vision, and reaching market standards and higher quality. Several iterations are happening simultaneously, and some will take longer than others.
We have also undergone a massive narrative design overhaul to craft a holistic, coherent and exciting experience. The keywords have been focus, consolidation and calculated iteration.
Suzerain is a straightforward game with a clear outline, and our aim is to reach the same level of clarity for any future projects.
Compared to where Torpor Games started, we are now attracting the top companies in the games industry to the table. There is a lot to do still, but the progress has been excellent, and we can't wait to take you through the journey in more detail.
Check out the segment 'Trials of Narrative Gameplay Design' to see Torpor Games founder and Suzerain developer, Ata Sergey Nowak featured on the panel.
The panel will discuss pushing the boundaries in narrative design and finding fun and challenging gameplay in narrative-focused games.
To learn more about LudoNarraCon, the festival for narrative indie games organised by our publisher, visit the website.
We got some good news from the development team. Our unannounced project prototype has reached completion! The team in Berlin also had some fun doing some Sordish voice over recordings for environmental dialogues to display the richness of what we are building. It increased the quality of the prototype and was a nice break from the desk for those involved.
Torpor Games successfully established several new pipelines, iterated on them to achieve higher quality, and expanded the studio's vision further. We are now preparing our design documentation and other delivery documents to seek new partners for the future.
Since we are attempting a more ambitious product, we will need established partners to raise enough funds to make more of an impact. After the work-intense months of February, March and April, we will slow down after our deliveries in early May to rest and relax.
In May we will begin transitioning to the production of our vertical slice, in which we are going to establish several new game mechanics and further expand on what we achieved in the prototype.
In other news, we are happy to announce that the mobile version of Suzerain is finished!
For reasons beyond our control we can't share an official launch date yet, but we can confirm that the next release target will be the summer of 2022.
Watch this space for further news on this.
Thank you to everyone who has supported our merch store so far! It has been a big success so far and we are really happy with the initial results.
We love seeing the merch pics from the community, keep them coming.
A reminder that you can purchase Suzerain merchandise on our website.
An exciting reminder that LudoNarraCon (LNC) will be taking place from May 5th-9th. Be sure to tune in to the segment 'Trials of Narrative Gameplay Design' to see Torpor Games founder and Suzerain developer, Ata Sergey Nowak featured on the panel.
The panel will discuss pushing the boundaries in narrative design and finding fun and challenging gameplay in narrative-focused games.
We are looking forward to it.
Finally, we'd like to welcome our new Marketing Manager Clare Goodwin.
Originally from Brisbane, Australia, she studied a Bachelor of Entertainment Industries, majoring in Communication and Music. As a curious thinker, she loves to travel and lived in London before moving to Berlin about three and a half years ago.
Clare is passionate about storytelling and while this is her first role in the gaming industry, Suzerain was a game that intrigued her due to its in-depth pseudo-political nature. Her favourite games as a kid were The Sims, Age of Empires and Crash Bandicoot.
We hereby announce the inauguration of the official Suzerain merch store!
Please read the information on the page and use our contact@torporgames.com address for any issues you may encounter, feedback for future improvements is also welcome.
Thank you all for your patience and we really hope you will enjoy these items made with love. 🖤
The fourth month of the year is already upon us, and with that comes the change of season and the beginning of spring!
Our team has made massive developments in all disciplines involved in our unannounced project prototype. We have closed most of the technical challenges and have moved to improve the existing codebase.
Content creation has peaked recently and we have finished a significant amount of the gameplay content we want to display. Now we are splitting our resources in two: improving the quality of what we added and creating the remaining content.
There is a particular push to make the technical flow work which has increased in complexity to what we are used to from Suzerain. Our visual pipelines have seen massive improvements and our locations for the sprint have been completed.
In this pipeline, we are moving forward to polishing what we have and adding some further eye candy.
Audio has finished its major technical challenges and moved on to adding music and sounds to the experience to finalise. In April we will be working on finishing the content of our gameplay mechanic and finalising the rest of the prototype.
We are excited for the future where we will feel confident to share more.
In other news, we are happy to have finalised the mobile port of Suzerain. A big thank you to Özgun Kilit, Daniel Emig and Juan Franco Lagar for all of the final efforts that were put into this.
The entire Suzerain experience functions well on both smartphones and tablets. The playtesting rounds have been fruitful and led us to discover a few issues which we are currently polishing and fixing to ensure a quality experience.
Thanks to our amazing community, we were able to find out about these rare issues sooner rather than later. More news on this soon
Here are some examples of how our mobile build is looking:
After delaying our initial launch, we have a new official launch date for our merch store: the 7th of April.
An email will be sent out to everyone subscribed to the newsletter on the day of the launch. We are excited for you to finally get your hands on these exclusive items.
A reminder of the items that will be available will be: -Stickers -Map of Sordland -Flag of Sordland -Torpor Games mug -Suzerain art poster
Join our newsletter if you would like to be notified on the day of the launch.
In media news, we were featured in a video interview by the local initiative supporting Berlin indie developers games:net.
Watch the interview below:
We are really happy to welcome a new team member.
Ioannis Petridis has joined the team as a 3D Artist and will work closely with our other 3D artist Stijn. Ioannis comes from a background of architectural design. Before working at Torpor Games he studied architecture in Thessaloniki, while developing a great interest in design, modelling and animation.