We'll be celebrating the Steam Summer Sale, and Hanako being only $3USD by hopping on a server tonight at 10PM EST.

If you play in the event and join us on Discord: http://discord.gg/playhanako we will give you ONE free key for a friend to join you on the battlefield.

• Added turn-in-place footstep animations for all classes, they were previously swiveling in place with no motion.
  
• First-pass prototype on Player Level based on your steam account, you will soon accumulate XP per match and work towards permanent account levels.

• Store + Class Loadouts - We will be adding a store soon to offer customizations and skins. The menu is in the works and the Steam Inventory and all of that will be added soon after. We'll start with Weapon skins but eventually ramp up to offer Helmets, Masks, Banners, Animations, and more as the game gets closer to full release.

Our first hotfix/small update since Early Access 3 released back in April is now live! We will be soft-launching a lot of smaller improvements to animations and other gameplay polish a little bit at a time as we work towards larger features in Early Access v.4.

Improvements/Polish

• Re-worked Queues to max out at 2 minutes, afterwords it will find the lowest ping server available. This is an effort to minimize wasted waits while our game is growing.
  
• Added 30fps and 60fps Vsync options.
  
• Adjustments to sprint/zoom cameras to show more of the character and be less jarring.
  
• Slight attack speed changes to make attacks more fluid.
  
• Animation Polish: New block for the Kenshi, experimental prototype for running->sprinting; new animations for landing while moving forward/sprinting on land.
  
• Polish of movement animation logic to make directional movement much smoother for all classes.
  
• Holding block now has a movement penalty.
  
• Ite bots are now part of the AI fillers on servers.
  
• New ambiences in all maps for better audio experience.

Bug/Exploit Fixes

• Fixed a major server-side crash relating to skill trees that's blocked overall patching.
  
• Fixed an exploit relating to Skill trees allowing stacking of stats.
  
• Fixed exploit allowing VIPs on Assassination mode to spawn camp and stay invulnerable, making matches always go down to tie breaker/never ending.
  
• Fixed sound sliders not saving, forcing themselves to 0 and/or not working at all.
  
• Fixed Kage VIP class being scaled, which was causing tons of weapon separation in animations.
  
• Temporary fix in tutorial map where players could open the ESC menu during the skill tree sequence, closing the skill tree and breaking the tutorial flow.
  
• Fix for various audio issues pertaining to sounds playing globally.
  
• Fixed exploit/bug allowing long chat messages that could crash servers.

Happy posthumous birthday to the woman our game is dedicated to, our lead Matt's late mother Janie. She would have been 64 May 27th.

Our Lead Dev, Matt Canei wrote up a comprehensive decade-long history of this project and what it means to him and his hopes for the future:

https://www.hanakogame.com/2017/12/27/hanako-imgur-story-after-my-mothers-death-i-spent-the-last-10-years-making-an-indie-game-hanako-honor-blade-in-her-honor-heres-our-story-it-was-october-9th-2007/

Every Wednesday at 10PM EST on Discord: http://discord.gg/playhanako
We hold a "Destroy the Devs" event. This event pits the community of players versus the dev team. This is a great way to play the game with players while we grow our playerbase and see it in its intended form.

We also test new features and alpha patches during this event to get feedback and polish up new content before it goes out for real.

If testing goes well tonight we'll leave that build live but we've addressed a few issues:

• Matchmaking Tweaks - 2 minute limit that finds a low ping server if no human matches available.
  
• Animation Polish - We'll be polishing animations/animation tech all the way up until release, we're starting to experiment with some additional transitions and camera refinements.
  
• Fix for a critical crash involving resetting skill trees.
  
• Audio settings should now save and persist through opening/closing the game.

Free Weekend April 4th - 7th; $3usd April 4th-17th

New Tutorial

We made a new tutorial from scratch after introducing so many new mechanics since Early Access v.1 & v.2 to help new players find their way around the battlefield.

New Attack Animations

We wanted to address community feedback regarding fluidity of attacks, so we re-worked our melee classes’ heavy stance attacks to allow for more fluid motion but also more weight/impact.

Co-op Vs. AI

Building a player base in an online indie game is a massive challenge. So we added a Co-op vs. AI mode and map allowing for 1-4 players to enjoy destroying AI across 4 different difficulties. We’ll be adding support to our existing maps as quickly as possible.

Skill Trees (Per-Match Leveling)

We’ve wanted skill trees for years in the game, and they’re finally here! Choose between Active Skills, Movement Skills & Stat Skills to customize your play style per-match. (Similar to MOBA’s). This system introduces Movement Skills (called Talents in game) like double-tap dodges/dive rolls and double jump.

Rivals & In-Match Player Dueling

To make the online experience more engaging, we’ve added Rivals and In-Match Player Dueling. Rivals allows a player that’s killed you repeatedly to be tagged and grant bonuses for avenging your own deaths. Player dueling allows you to challenge an opposing player to a protected duel to the death that other players cannot interfere with.

Other Patch Features

• All New Menus
  
• Player Statistics & Leaderboards
  
• Steam Friends/Party System
  
• Steam Achievements
  
• Basic Server Queuing/Matching
  
• Re-designed Capture the Scroll Maps (Yari Foothills and Shiga Forest)
  
• Dozens of Bug Fixes/Quality of Life Improvements

Early Access 3 - Coming in Feb/March

READ THE FULL UPDATE

We've been working since October on our Early Access 3 patch and it is our largest release so far. We think this really brings us close to the goal line of 1.0 Full Release.

Feature Highlights

• Matchmaking, leaderboards/stats/achievements, new menus, parties/social
  
• New tutorial teaching new mechanics, features and more classes.
  Per-match skill trees/leveling
  
• Co-op vs. AI mode (wave-based, play with 1-4 players)
  
• New heavy stance attacks for Kenshi/Naginatashi
  
• Tons of bug fixes and improvements
  
• In-match Rivals & Duel challenging
  
• Testing/Events

We offer public testing of the game and bits and pieces of these features every week on Wednesdays at 10PM EST on our Discord: http://discord.gg/playhanako - This will help us get everything ready for the big time!

New Gameplay Changes

As mentioned above we are bringing three new huge gameplay options, the last of our core gameplay from our original design. Per-match skill trees will allow players to chose between Abilities (think Moba actives), Talents (dodges, double-tap moves) and stat boosts (health, armor, better accuracy, etc.) all to work towards unlocking a powerful MASTER ABILITY.


We're also re-working the Swordsman and Pikeman's heavy stance attacks to no longer be root-motion forced dash attacks that are clunky and hard to aim. We'll allow full range of motion until the attack plants allowing for a more fluid experience:

Release Date
We don't have a concrete release, but we'll be releasing a trailer later in January and hope the patch will be ready by late February/early March at latest.

Important Links

Official Discord

Development Roadmap

Happy 2019 Hanako Family, from the Hanako Dev Team!

TONIGHT at 10PM EST We will be doing the LAST "Play w/ Devs" Event of the Year. Let's make it a good one! We'll be on the US-East Official Server via Join Game -> Server Browser

We wanted to thank you guys for another great year of support. We hope 2019 is the year we finally get to 1.0 Full Release and bring in a self-sustaining player base.

• Matchmaking - Our new logic-based matchmaking has been rolled out. It has some testing and additional refinements required, but it is WAY better than what we've had previously which failed to get a match 99% of the time.
  
• Lots of bug fixes - Fixed the networking/rootmotion/animation glitchiness that's plagued live for the last few months. Combat should be much smoother
  
• WIP new heavy attacks and dodge abilities for some classes - they will continue to be updated as we test/refine gameplay. They allow free movement on the Naginatashi
  
• Skilltrees - This is the last of our large core mechanic. Players get 4 skill points to purchase abilities with across a match. The talent section (Yellow section) that contains movement skills/dodges is a work in progress, those animations are still WIP or non-existent at this time.
  
• Lots of new UI - New main menu, new server browser and host game screens completely overhauled to look way better.
  
• Achievements & Leaderboards & Stats (oh my) - We have a new Player Stats section that lets you view career stats, per game averages for your Steam Account and leaderboards of key stats like Kils, Wins, Avg. DPS per match. We added 13 test achievements and will be adding more over the coming months.

These are core features of our EA3 patch, but we wanted to roll out early iterations so we can get feedback and we felt they were better than what we had previous.

The dev team will be playing on US-East Official server at 10PM EST tonight for a few hours, testing out the new features, playing through some campaigns and having fun with the playerbase. Hope to see you there!

-Matt

Tonight at 10PM EST We'll be celebrating 1 year of Early Access (we're 50% off right now BTW) and will be having our usual Play w/ the devs event but LOTS OF STUFF to test tonight:

We'll be testing the following items (LOTS OF NEW STUFF THIS WEEK):
-Rivals System
-If you get killed 3 times by the same player, they become your Rival, you get bonus XP and reset all of your health/ki/cooldowns for killing them
-New Main Menu
-New main menu header and panels
-Some stuff moved around for the Join Game menu area
-WIP Lobby Chat (doesn't work yet) to get ready for matchmaking
-Gameplay
-Talents are going in - you can unlock Kenshi dodge (Ctrl+A or D for side dash evade) and Ninja -Double Jump from the skilltree.
-Skilltree modifications/improvements
-New heavy stance animations for the Naginatashi (still being polished) that allow you to move freely during the slash until a planting of weight at the end.
-Networking improvements and hit detection on Kenshi improvements
Map
-Test the blockout greybox of the Yamai Village map.

Hop on Discord to chat w/ us: http://discord.gg/playhanako

https://youtu.be/g-VX8fQWr0M
Starting 10/10 at 10AM PST we'll be 50% off for a week to celebrate our 1 year anniversary on Early Access.

We'll be celebrating the 1 year Wednesday at 10PM EST on the US-East Official server and our Discord: http://discord.gg/playhanako