Oct 13, 2022

Suzerain - claregoodwin94

Good day citizens of Sordland. Welcome to the monthly broadcast for September.

As we close off the last of summer, our development of the vertical slice of the new project is kicking off. We have begun writing our first dialogues and reviewing the implementations to improve the narrative flow. This project has many new challenges that we want to address early enough in the vertical slice to prove the executability of production. Our recent camera system experimentation and iterations have paid off in the usability of smaller environments from different angles. This gave us a lot of freedom but also pushed us to increase the visual quality of all perspectives of our vertical slice location.

There has been solid progress on the first few character introductions. Some characters and quests show great potential for exciting expression and choice. Still, there are a lot of steps, like quest logic and game design elements to be implemented and layered on the content in the next two months to realise the entire vertical slice goals. Additionally, we have begun greyboxing a new area. This way, we will be one step closer to displaying the whole unfinished vision of the project versus what we have in the experience we are building now.

Several historical events and some characters had narrative design passes. In October, one of the core narrative pillars that serves as the emotional cornerstone is beginning production.

More on that in the next broadcast!

In other news, we have added some new items to our merch store. We now have two t-shirt and one sweatshirt design available for you to purchase.

T-shirt option #1 is printed with the Torpor Games coffin on the front and Torpor Games logo on the back.

T-shirt option #2 is printed with the Torpor Games logo embroidered on the front.

The sweatshirt has the Torpor Games coffin embroidered on the front.

To celebrate these new additions, we are sharing a 20% discount code valid until the 19th of this month! Use the code MERCHSTORE at the checkout.

Another exciting announcement is that we have a new team member.

Joni van der Leeuw is joining the team as Business Developer. Joni brings over ten years experience in indie game development and has worked on games such as Reus, Godhood and most recently Cat Cafe Manager in different roles including Producer, Business Developer and Project Manager. He is joining to help us find the best partners for our upcoming projects.

Welcome Joni!

A reminder that our Suzerain mobile launch is coming later this year. We are so excited to finally get this rolled out to you all. We will announce the final launch date with the next broadcast.

That's all for this month, we will be back next month with some more important updates.

A morgna wes core!

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

Vectern sis da!

Sep 6, 2022

August Broadcast

Suzerain - claregoodwin94

Hello fellow citizens, and welcome to the monthly broadcast for August. Let's take a look at what updates we have for you.

August was a critical transition period for our new project, in which we re-targeted our production plans. Most of the design elements reached structural completion in August, except for the iterations of a few features. Currently, we are gearing up to produce the written and other gameplay content.
That being said, we have exciting new developments. The team added lore articles about three key locations, and two new characters have been drawn and added. The art team is focusing on realising essential sections within these locations. We also settled on our first branching quest design!

Our narrative design and content design have progressed very well. As September kicks off, we are getting ready to get writing again. We aim to make a compelling branching narrative that is easy to enter but hard to circumnavigate, just as it usually is with Torpor Games content.

The goal is to produce a Vertical Slice of the experience and test all of our ideas in execution. The VS will represent a small part of the game and, as intended, will be incomplete in many areas. We aim to be technically and conceptually complete for the designed slice of the game in a few months.

We are very excited about the next steps, and thank you for your support!

We are also happy to officially announce that the mobile version will be coming out in a few months to celebrate the original Suzerain launch anniversary. As soon as we have a final date we will share it with all of you!

Want to brush up on your Sordish language skills? One of our superfans, Pyry Paavola has gone above and beyond and added http://sordish.org/’s dictionary file on Github as a public repository, meaning the raw data for the dictionary is available for use and access. Take a look here.

We would also like to thank our beloved SKTheCrusader for another amazing and heart-felt review on YouTube! You can watch it here:

Ata had the great privilege of being part of a very unique panel about foreign policy dissemination through games at the Gamescom congress with the prestigious organizations of Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office) Germany, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and Goethe-Institut e.V..

Thank you to Cigdem Uzunoglu from Stiftung Digitale Spielekultur and Gamescom for organising the exchange.

With the project “Auswärtigesspiel”, the Federal Foreign Office together with the Digital Games Culture Foundation wants to use the popularity and potential of digital games to convey basic foreign policy knowledge and to make the dilemmas of foreign and security policy decisions understandable.

Another highlight at Gamescom was seeing our friends from Paintbucket Games present their new game, “The Darkest Files." We have been long-term admirers of their game “Through the Darkest of Times," a political narrative game about the Nazi resistance in Berlin, and are very excited about this new project.

Finally, there is someone willing to meet you in Downtown Holsord. Head there to receive further instructions. Those who seize the power justly will be honoured with authority. Those who don’t will be regarded as fabricators of the truth.

That's all for this month, we will be back next month with some more exciting updates.

A morgna wes core!

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

Vectern sis da!

Aug 9, 2022

July Broadcast

Suzerain - claregoodwin94

Hello dear community,

The month of July brought about some major iterations of our core systems for our next project, and we have concluded a significant portion of the necessary core elements. We are currently working on deepening our key unique features to create a consistent design that encompasses the game while feeding other systems and receiving inputs effectively.

Further developments have led to a significant visual overhaul which has brought us closer to the art direction we set at the beginning of the project. Our artistic team have been doing a great job with realising the vision and we have now seen the first sections of this universe come alive. There is still plenty to do, but the train is on the move and gradually gaining more steam!

We will conclude the remaining design in August and begin building our vertical slice. What this means is directing a total focus on creating the final narrative design for the beginning of the experience.

In addition, the narrative work will be followed by a lot of writing and producing the flow both technically and content-wise. The process of implementing all of our new designs and our narrative design revisions will take several months. Our team believes this is for the betterment of the final product you will experience in the end.

We can't wait to share more about this in the next couple of months.

In this broadcast, we also wanted to bring some clarity to the timeline of our Suzerain mobile launch. Due to some business developments, we had to prolong the initially intended launch date. We wanted to communicate why this happened since our community is one of the most essential elements of Torpor Games.

Initially, we wanted to launch our mobile version in Q1 2022. However, we were inclined to hold the launch due to a significant business proposition. We are still a small company, and this deal was substantial enough for us to hold back until we got a definitive yes or no. This caused us to delay our launch and in the process, led to us not being able to uphold our initial promises about the mobile launch.

The discussions are still ongoing but we have received the green light to be able to release the mobile app. Therefore, we have decided to set the launch date for Q4 2022, regardless of the outcome of the deal.

We are excited for Suzerain to reach new audiences, and our team is excited to let everyone in the community and beyond enjoy the game on an easily accessible platform.

From a technical perspective, the development of the mobile version of Suzerain for smartphones and tablets is fully complete. Below is a gameplay video where you can see some examples of how the gameplay will appear on mobile devices, along with some images of the mobile display.

While the game is ready to be launched on both iOS and Android platforms, we are still preparing our marketing and launch plan so that the mobile version will be able to reach more audiences effectively.

Our marketing team are working on getting the ball rolling so that everyone can easily enjoy the Suzerain experience on smartphones and tablets, wherever you want.

Stay tuned.

We are really happy to see more political games such as "Papers, Please" (one of our inspirations), arrive on the mobile platform. Congrats to Lucas Pope for bringing this masterpiece to the small screen so that we can explore this game in another format.

In other news, we have made some updates on our website that you should check out.

We have added a couple of things, including the Suzerain Universe codex.
Click here to read more about it.

A lovely highlight of the month was that our whole team was able to connect for the first time in Berlin! We felt that this rare moment was due for a celebration and took the opportunity to get to know each other more outside of the office.

We began floating down the Berlin river with a barbecue lunch, we played an Escape Room and then we went up to the famous Berlin TV tower where we enjoyed 360 degrees of the city and dinner together. It was certainly a day to remember!

Finally, we would like to give a big thank you to u/boukhalistan for creating their incredible Suzerain fan art project which included wikipedia entries of different Suzerain countries and factions.

That's all for this month, we will be back with some important news next month.

A morgna wes core!

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

Vectern sis da!

Jul 5, 2022

June Broadcast

Suzerain - claregoodwin94

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.

Read more about the patch here.

We have also released a community survey to evaluate what the potentials are for the future of Suzerain. We would love to hear from you!

You can complete the survey below:

Survey Link Here

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.

Vectern sis da!

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

Vectern sis da!

Jun 29, 2022

Patch 1.1.9 Released!

Suzerain - Mr. Nowak

Dear Citizens of Sordland,

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.

Survey Link Here

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Thank you for all your support.

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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.