Hello!

We're almost done with all of the major new features for the relaunch, now what remains are lots of balancing, tweaking, basically getting it just right. Without your help that's going to be hard, so we're once again asking for more help. :)




New Monuments
Monuments has been tweaked, rebalanced and replaced with new fancy graphics! Examples below.



We also have proper festivals now with more props and effects!







Needs Design Overhaul
Each need will now have negative consequences if not met, this will lead to problematic behaviours, we realised that players should be awarded more clearly for keeping all needs met. We will also simplify the interface even more (for the better).


Dead Advisors Update
More varied texts and better interface.





Storybuilder Update
The storybuilder in the end now "listens" more to what has happened in your game session, and more flavourful as well. Will tweak texts and designs further probably.





Water UI
With our new overlay you will be able to see where people and animals drain water, so you can more easily understand and do something about it.


New Verbs
You can now order them to trade, wage war and make alliances, with verbs instead of words. More combinations and more direct control.

Updated Tech Tree and Task UI
These are no longer called tech tree and tasks. Tech tree is called "Book of Learning" and tasks are called "Teachings" where you get "wisdom points", to further drive home the point that it's not really technology you develop but rather the culture. Crest is a river culture/iron age civilisation, it's outside the scope of the game to progress through the ages (that would take us a few more years to make, not realistic). The UI has been improved as well.





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Stay tuned! Thanks for your support with new reviews and feedback, it helps a lot. Be back soon, we're moving office in two weeks so we'll probably not write a lot before the test comes.


/Martin

Hey everyone!


Crest relaunch date pushed to December, 2018. The reason is that too many cool games are coming out during the autumn. Sorry for the extra wait, but the good news; more time to polish the game (for example we'll take a look at improving save stability and speed).

The image above is concept art for the new trailer by the way. As you can see we're still working hard to make the relaunch worthwhile. In the interim we really need your help with feedback, reviews and just spreading the word.


We will give you updates on the progress of the build as soon as we've enough information. There will be more public tests as well. Stay tuned!


//Martin and Eat Create Sleep

Hello everyone. I hope you've had time to try the test build, and if you haven't you can read about how to get it here.

The most important piece of feedback is that some people still feel like it's "playing itself", something we take very seriously. It's true that we're making an unusual simulation where followers have agency, but we WANT the player to feel like they make a difference, isn't that the goal of most games? What do you think?

I opened a new thread where you can discuss the test builds, you can find it here.



Thank you for your support!
//Martin

Hello! The test build is now online, hope you are as excited as the dancers above. ;) This is the first test build of many before we release the Relaunch. Below you can read what you need to know; what the build contains, how to get it and what to keep in mind.

Above all please remember that this is not the definitive version of the relaunch, it's buggy, unfinished and unpolished, we're releasing it in the wild early to get great feedback from you.





Tech tree
- Complete tasks to earn tech points.
- Spend tech points to unlock insights, words and monuments.

Monument festivals
- During a monument festival, the owning city gains one or more strong bonuses.

Doctrine traits
- Replaces old doctrine system.
- Cities now have traits, one for each need.
- Traits affects their likes and gives "perks" (can be negative)

Word Associations
- Slowly over time, followers associate words with other words.
- No associations are present at the start of a new game.

Dead followers as advisors
- Dead followers appear in the underworld as advisors.
- They speak of how they died and sometimes what could have prevented it.

1. Right click on the game in your library and select properties.
   
2. Go to BETAS in the tab.
   
3. From the drop down menu select "public_testing".
   
4. The game will overwrite your current build (if you have it installed), wait for it to update and then you're ready to go!

• We will release more builds before relaunch, we haven't decided when next happens.
  
• The game could break or crash, more often than before.
  
• If you have a save from the main official build on Steam and change it to the test build your save file will be deleted and/or overwritten if you press "New Game" in the test build branch. If you switch back to the official build again the same happens as well, but for the test build.
  
• Saves doesn't work in the test build right now (one of the reasons it's not on the official branch).
  
• Saves will break during development of the test build, the main branch will be left untouched until release of the Relaunch.
  
• Saves are disabled in this public test build, we may or may not enable in future test builds.
  
• Features are missing.
  
• It's unpolished, unfinished and buggy.
  
• Art, GUI, animations and VFX are missing in parts, for example the association system is still missing most of their illustrations.

The more feedback we get the better, we have opened a secret group on our Discord called "#divine-testing" which anyone can join if you ask Martin, please remember that we won't be online during the weekend. If you prefer to leave feedback on the Steam forum or somewhere else on social media please do so, but please be specific that you're talking about the relaunch test build and not the main game so as not to confuse others in the community. :)

https://discord.gg/ecs







Thank you for the continued support. Have a nice weekend and enjoy the build!

// Martin & Eat Create Sleep

Hello again,

The most common feedback we've received by far after launch is the lack of progress and replayability. These are the main things we're working on to fix, read on below! Bear in mind that this is work in progress content, so expect changes regarding art, text and interface.



We wanted to make a game where you made your own goals and your own stories, as such we thought reducing the amount of endgame goals would encourage that. But, we realised we pushed it too far. Every game needs some kind of goal even if you can't win the game (which you can't in Crest). So we're correcting our earlier mistakes and implementing some new features.


Tech Tree


The tech tree might look similar to 4x and strategy games you're fond of (if you're into that sort of thing), but the main difference here is that you actually spend points, and not time. The tech points are gained from doing small random quests (each play session will have a different set of quests from the same quest pool).





The tech tree in itself is also randomised, which will encourage you to make different decisions each time you play!


Monuments and Festivals


We're redesigning the monuments, they will be unlocked from the tech tree and will provide unique festivals. So each city, if they have a monument, will have a celebration once every cycle that gives that city a unique bonus, such as higher fertility or more food, think of it as a "golden age".






As before there's more we haven't talked about, I will collect that in a future update.


I asked the team when we can expect to be able to send the build out and it's unclear if we can publish it this week. So expect it to come next week instead.




If you want to follow us anywhere else here's what we have.

https://discord.gg/ecs
https://youtube.com/eatcreatesleep
https://twitter.com/eatcreatesleep
https://twitter.com/crestgame
https://twitch.tv/eatcreatesleepstudio
https://facebook.com/eatcreatesleep
https://instagram.com/eatcreatesleep




Thank you for the support (such as the new reviews), I'll be back soon!


Regards,
Martin

Hello everyone!

We're hard at work on the new features for Crest, just wanted to give you an update.


After all of the feedback after the launch we felt that we would need some major changes to make it into the game you, our fans, deserve. Since May, 2018 we've been working on redesigning and polishing features, as well as visually upgrading the game.

The game will cost as much as before, everyone who've bought it will receive the update without extra cost (of course). The only thing you need to be aware of is that since we're doing such major overhauls the saves will break. I know we promised that we wouldn't do that with future updates, but we didn't anticipate that we'd have to do big overhauls. We're changing a lot of the core mechanics to the better and there's simply too much changes to migrate the old saves from the launch version. We apologise for this. But, what's in store will make up for it!


In short we will give you more replayability and longevity, so more unique playthroughs and longer ones. We're also improving the visuals, the feedback and just generally making the game easier to play. Below you can see some things we're working on now!


New Doctrine System


We felt the old doctrine system was too hard to understand and too rigid so we threw it out and replaced it with this. Each city will have traits that give you negative and positive effects, they will also make them react to commandments.


Ancestors - Cause of Death


In the relaunch the ancestors will change role, they will instead provide immediate feedback about how they died when you visit the underworld.


Visual Upgrades



This update is mainly a programming intensive update, as such we can let the artists polish some visuals to the limit. We've made a new fancy ocean and are working on making the rivers less flat as well.


More to Come!
This is just some of the things we're working on, we will post more updates as it comes.



We're currently prototyping, designing and tweaking and although these things are playable in our internal build we haven't felt it stable enough to release in the wild yet. But we will release public testing soon, they will be available in a build branch here on Steam. More info on that as it comes.

For feedback I can very much recommend our Discord where we've a dedicated channel just for talking about this upcoming test phase. Let the admin, Martin know and you will be added to the discussion group. We can probably open a forum or topic here on Steam too if you prefer that.


We fully understand why Crest has been "downvoted" on Steam, we realise that the game isn't the best it can be yet. But, when we relaunch the game we really need you, the community's help. If we're still on Mixed rating that will hurt our sales really bad, and if the relaunch sells poorly we'll have a hard time supporting the game after September. So it's a help me, help you situation. ;)

So please leave reviews if you think we deserve a thumbs up! If you wait until you can try the test build, that's fine! But if we can push the review score above 70% that would mean a lot to us. With the current rate we only need a handful more. Thank you.


We will give you another update in two weeks, hopefully we'll have a test build ready by then.


Thanks for your continued support!
//Martin and the Eat Create Sleep team

Hey all,

Thanks to all of the great feedback you've given us since launch we feel we need to do the product justice and increase longevity and replayability. This is not a small feat however, and we will need several months to fix it.

We're currently building the new features for Crest's grand update that will arrive after the summer, before then we will need testers. If anyone is up for it join our Discord and let us know!

http://discord.gg/ecs


When the update looms closer you will be the first to know of a launch date.


Thank you for your continued support and patience!
//Martin & Eat Create Sleep

Hey all,

We've gotten a lot of feedback as of late that the game lacks goals or enough meaningful end game content. This is always a conflict when making sandbox games, if you narrow the goals too much it's not much of a sandbox anymore, but if you make it too loose then some people feel they lack motivation.

We're going to find a better balance. So in the end of the summer we will release a new update that builds upon what we already have. The gist of it is that you will be able to shape the religion in more direct ways, for example eliminating some doctrines and having permanent effects on the religion you're building. The underworld and ancestors will provide an important role here.

We still believe Crest can reach more people and have not lost hope in making it the best it can be with the resources we have. The team is really excited about these new features and think it will solve a lot of the problems people have given us feedback about.

---

Before the new update goes live you can help us in some simple but important ways:

* Leave a positive review if you like the game
* Share the game to your friends
* Ask your favourite streamers to play the game (Twitch support)



Thank you for your continued support!
// Martin & The Eat Create Sleep Team

We've secretly been working on a major update and are very happy to now finally be able to present it to you: the Inheritors Update, a free, automatic update for all players on all platforms, available RIGHT NOW!

• Baby animals – Animals now have babies!
  
• Custom Games – You can now customize your games with increased or decreased amounts of resources, animals, islands and overall island quality.
  
• Twitch integration – Built in twitch support now allows streamers to engage their viewers in the actual game! Join cities and vote on commandments to help or disrupt the streamer's plans.
  
• Increased selection – Resources and animals are now selectable and include detailed descriptions.

• Associations logic - Only one word will now be changed when a new association is made with heavier focus on similar words.
  
• War implications – Cities who win a conflict will now pillage and kill followers of the losing city
  
• Feedback icons – Traders, diplomats, priests and warriors going to war now have icons above their heads to make them easier to discover.
  
• City and follower scrolling – You can now easily scroll between your cities by selecting one and clicking the arrows in the city popup. This also applies to all of your followers within the same city.
  
• Last follower death – If a follower is the last remaining follower in the world, a meter will start counting down until its death unless you actively attempt to rebuild society via commandments.
  
• Tutorial skip – A prompt will ask if you wish to play the tutorial in the beginning of a new game if you had the option activated, declining will turn off the tutorial setting.
  
• Improved death symbols – Death symbols will now be easier to spot and give a summary of what killed the followers
  
• Migration – All followers no longer immediately leave the city for the new, leaving the old city with just one follower.
  
• General feedback updates – We have added more tooltips and visual updates to minor things that happen in the game.
  
• Profanity filter – Has been removed completely.
  
• Biomes – Ground blending between biomes has been smoothed out
  
• Other minor updates

• Boats no longer move slowly in higher game speeds
  
• Mountains no longer spawn on lower areas, cutting off rivers from flowing to the ocean and turning entire islands into desert
  
• Trees should no longer occasionally turn blue
  
• Other minor bug fixes

Should you encounter any bugs, please continue submitting them via in-game function. For feedback or general questions, you're always welcome to hit us up on Discord:

http://discord.gg/ecs

Thank you all for your support & have fun playing!

Cheers,
Eat Create Sleep

We've updated our OST with 14 new songs, bringing it to a total playtime of 49:08! This is more than triple the playtime it had before and beside the new songs composed by Tuomas Nikkinen, the OST now includes all the beloved trailer songs as well.

If you already own the OST, the update is completely free of charge and Steam should automatically download the new songs.


http://store.steampowered.com/app/386570/Crest__Original_Soundtrack