The clouds of black powder smoke hide the battlefield well but the enemy is so close now you can make out the patterned lace on their uniforms. Their boats lie discarded on the shore, the distant threat from their ship safely hidden from sight. Men either side of you raise their muskets in time with yours along to the orders shouted above the chaos. Another flash and crash to signal the volley. It’s too late to run now and so only one question remains. Can you stand?

We are most excited to announce that Holdfast: Nations At War will be released through Steam Early Access on September the 21st!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbprpZls3z4
Holdfast: Nations At War is an online multiplayer first and third person shooter focusing on a combination of teamwork and individual skill. Take part in historic clashes on land and at sea waged by the most powerful nations during the great Napoleonic Era.

We said this year and we meant it. While this might seem like an overly short interval we wanted to be in a position where we could be confident in delivering on the date and not end up being forced to postpone. Our systems are in place, our assets locked in and our testing is well underway. While this is but the first in a series of stepping stones to the eventual full release; we are expecting to deliver a polished and very playable slice of our dream come September. There’s still a whole lot to show from the game which we have yet to reveal and quite frankly it’s not going to be possible to show each and every bit of content before Early Access!

From the outset we have been developing the game with open communication with our community and testers, gathering their feedback and iterating on our systems to best deliver a game that we all want to play. The intensity of this was increased tenfold when we first announced Holdfast: Nations At War on the 18th of January 2017. We did not expect such a great following combined with an overwhelmingly positive response towards the game. For this we are extremely thankful; you have been amazing.

Be sure to follow us on our Steam store page so you don’t miss the release day!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/589290/Holdfast_Nations_At_War/



We are completely dedicated to make Holdfast: NaW the next big “thing”. Thanks to your feedback, support and a lot of hard work during these 3 and a half years of development, we’ve built our dream game from the ground up.

The game itself has also changed after interacting with the community; our priorities are very different to what they were at the outset in terms of content. You’ll also see this being reflected in our development roadmap for the game.

When the game is released on Early Access we will be in need of a new method to easily gather opinions from a wider audience due to the inevitable growth of the community. We will start submitting polls so that our players can vote on the prioritisation of new features that make it into the game for instance.

We will of course always be there on our discord, forums and social media. You have our word that the Holdfast: Nations At War is and will always be community driven!



We will be releasing the development roadmap for Holdfast: Nations At War when the game is released on Early Access this September. This roadmap will include a list of new features on both land and sea along with improvements to existing mechanics within the game.

We believe that being open and transparent with our community is far more important than the potential hype over a hidden surprise. We will need your help to refine the feature list as we progress. To that end, we are also open to iterating or including new features within the roadmap for the game if there is a demand for that from our community.

Within our future Q&A blog we’ll be addressing the following subjects; confirm our ongoing dedication towards supporting high player counts, continue working with the community to improve upon and add more depth to the directional melee combat system, how we’ll be working on cavalry during early access, the inclusion of additional factions and ships, our ongoing dedication to competitive play and how we’ll continue involving the community in the development of the game. And more!

Until then, feel free to head over to our discord or forums if you have any questions about the game.



Simply put, we very well understand our responsibility towards our Early Access supporters in bringing it out of that phase and into a full release. In order to achieve this in a timely fashion, we will be pushing out regular updates and improvements to the game based on our development roadmap. We will also be releasing changelogs with each and every build to provide you with greater visibility of our progress. We feel that visibility and community involvement within development will be the secret to a successful transition from Early Access to release.



Holdfast: Nations At War will still be undergoing development so some of its features and content are more polished than others. It will not be the final release version of the game. Our vision for the game is expansive as you can already tell from the short sneak peek of new features and improvements that we’ve talked about earlier in this blog post.

It is safe to say that the scope of the project is grand. As we have already mentioned; what we revealed in our developer blogs is but a small sneak peek of what’s currently in the game.

We have yet to show off more maps on land, sea and the coast. There are more naval vessels, a directional melee combat system with our entire selection of melee weapons and an even greater selection of classes to play. This is without even mentioning our work on ‘under the hood’ player count optimizations, advanced sailing mechanics, dynamic weather system and the selection of options available to favour performance over graphical quality. Due to feedback we have also implemented a wide array of key bindings and re-worked the bullet trajectory mechanics. Oh did we mention the library of voice acted orders? There is even more but it can wait for future releases. Our point is; Early Access is going to be a bit of a roller coaster of existing content which will only grow as we progress.

We would really appreciate it if you decide to support Holdfast: Nations At War while it’s still in development. The main reason we have chosen to go into Early Access is for us to be communicating directly with you when it comes to game mechanics. You can expect regular communication and ample opportunity to shape the game as it progresses into something that we all want to play.

We would like to express our heartfelt thanks for all of your support so far. The prospect of playing and working with you all in Holdfast is extremely exciting for us.



Early Access plays a key role in allowing us to remain independent. We are currently self-funding Holdfast: Nations At War to avoid any sort of outside influence to the development of the game and remain community oriented. We also want to create the game without the need for accepting donations or loans largely as part of our overall motivation and dedication to this project.

Shaping the game together with the players is going to be the key ingredient to our success with Holdfast. We have been gathering feedback since the very early stages of the game’s development and we will continue to do so. Early Access will enable all of our followers with an opportunity to provide us with direct feedback allowing us to continually improve and include new content within the game.



Holdfast: Nations At War is best played in groups. It is very rewarding and exciting for us to see all of the crews and regiments that are already being formed in anticipation of the game. We hope that you will have enough time to get yourselves organised before our release in September! You might want to hit the servers on day one to get that extra edge because...

We will be directly supporting the competitive scene by hosting official events as well as the inclusion of additional features within the game itself. Within our roadmap, we have plans to allow you to host single elimination tournaments, form up your own crew or regiment and recruit to it as well - all from within the game. How this is realised will be formed by conversing with you, the community. This will include support for individuals or groups to host their own events as well.

If you haven’t joined a crew or regiment yet we would suggest that you look for one! You can do this both on our discord and forums.



The competitive scene is important to us - We want to provide a precedent for regiments and crews to compete in. We will be hosting official events soon after the game is out on Early Access on both land and sea. It’ll be a great way to nourish and grow what we hope will be a fierce and fun competition based culture among player organisations. We’ll also be looking for help from the community for hosting these events.

Here’s a shot from one of the “Sunday Napoleonic Battle” events we’ve been hosting with our play testers. As some of you already know, we have been in contact with a number of YouTubers, casters and streamers. This is partly in an effort to widen the coverage of these events as well as the game in order to reach the widest audience possible.



It would be also good to know that we have also been directly working with members from the competitive community to provide us with direct feedback on the features which are at the heart of all of this. These largely unsung heroes have been essential to the early balancing of core features as well as fast tracking the bug fixing process.



We’ll be inviting YouTubers, streamers, regiment and crew leaders and members of our community to a pre-release event for Holdfast: Nations At War. This event will take place shortly before the Early Access release and is designed to give players a good look at how the game will actually play. More on that later!

Server files for Holdfast: Nations At War will be made publically available for our community on the first day we’ll be releasing the game on Early Access! The server files will be coupled with documentation that will detail how to host and freely configure your own server.

We will of course also be hosting official servers ourselves in a variety of different regions.



There’s still a whole lot to show from the game which we have yet to reveal and quite frankly, it’s not going to be possible to show each and every bit of content before September! We will, however, be revealing additional content throughout this month and the next on our social media.

Give us a follow on Facebook and Twitter if you fancy seeing some of the content we have planned for the game.

Holdfast: NaW Facebook | Holdfast NaW: Twitter


To celebrate this day we are revealing one of the uniforms for another class that will be available within our Early Access release. In their most glorious form throughout the battlefield; we present to you... the British and French Flag Bearers (Ensigns)!





It’s been a long road to get to this point and we still have a long way to go. But being able to give you a release window has made everyone in the team perk up with excitement. We are so close!

Before we leave we really want you to know just how much we appreciate you. Whether you are discussing game features on Discord, providing us with feedback, testing the game, spreading the word through YouTube and social media, organising regiments/crews or sending us supportive messages, we really can’t thank you enough. The least we can do is make it one to remember.

Feel free to join in the discussion on our forums here and as always, may good health be yours.

The clouds of black powder smoke hide the battlefield well but the enemy is so close now you can make out the patterned lace on their uniforms. Their boats lie discarded on the shore, the distant threat from their ship safely hidden from sight. Men either side of you raise their muskets in time with yours along to the orders shouted above the chaos. Another flash and crash to signal the volley. It’s too late to run now and so only one question remains. Can you stand?

We are most excited to announce that Holdfast: Nations At War will be released through Steam Early Access on September the 21st!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PbprpZls3z4
Holdfast: Nations At War is an online multiplayer first and third person shooter focusing on a combination of teamwork and individual skill. Take part in historic clashes on land and at sea waged by the most powerful nations during the great Napoleonic Era.

We said this year and we meant it. While this might seem like an overly short interval we wanted to be in a position where we could be confident in delivering on the date and not end up being forced to postpone. Our systems are in place, our assets locked in and our testing is well underway. While this is but the first in a series of stepping stones to the eventual full release; we are expecting to deliver a polished and very playable slice of our dream come September. There’s still a whole lot to show from the game which we have yet to reveal and quite frankly it’s not going to be possible to show each and every bit of content before Early Access!

From the outset we have been developing the game with open communication with our community and testers, gathering their feedback and iterating on our systems to best deliver a game that we all want to play. The intensity of this was increased tenfold when we first announced Holdfast: Nations At War on the 18th of January 2017. We did not expect such a great following combined with an overwhelmingly positive response towards the game. For this we are extremely thankful; you have been amazing.

Be sure to follow us on our Steam store page so you don’t miss the release day!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/589290/Holdfast_Nations_At_War/



We are completely dedicated to make Holdfast: NaW the next big “thing”. Thanks to your feedback, support and a lot of hard work during these 3 and a half years of development, we’ve built our dream game from the ground up.

The game itself has also changed after interacting with the community; our priorities are very different to what they were at the outset in terms of content. You’ll also see this being reflected in our development roadmap for the game.

When the game is released on Early Access we will be in need of a new method to easily gather opinions from a wider audience due to the inevitable growth of the community. We will start submitting polls so that our players can vote on the prioritisation of new features that make it into the game for instance.

We will of course always be there on our discord, forums and social media. You have our word that the Holdfast: Nations At War is and will always be community driven!



We will be releasing the development roadmap for Holdfast: Nations At War when the game is released on Early Access this September. This roadmap will include a list of new features on both land and sea along with improvements to existing mechanics within the game.

We believe that being open and transparent with our community is far more important than the potential hype over a hidden surprise. We will need your help to refine the feature list as we progress. To that end, we are also open to iterating or including new features within the roadmap for the game if there is a demand for that from our community.

Within our future Q&A blog we’ll be addressing the following subjects; confirm our ongoing dedication towards supporting high player counts, continue working with the community to improve upon and add more depth to the directional melee combat system, how we’ll be working on cavalry during early access, the inclusion of additional factions and ships, our ongoing dedication to competitive play and how we’ll continue involving the community in the development of the game. And more!

Until then, feel free to head over to our discord or forums if you have any questions about the game.



Simply put, we very well understand our responsibility towards our Early Access supporters in bringing it out of that phase and into a full release. In order to achieve this in a timely fashion, we will be pushing out regular updates and improvements to the game based on our development roadmap. We will also be releasing changelogs with each and every build to provide you with greater visibility of our progress. We feel that visibility and community involvement within development will be the secret to a successful transition from Early Access to release.



Holdfast: Nations At War will still be undergoing development so some of its features and content are more polished than others. It will not be the final release version of the game. Our vision for the game is expansive as you can already tell from the short sneak peek of new features and improvements that we’ve talked about earlier in this blog post.

It is safe to say that the scope of the project is grand. As we have already mentioned; what we revealed in our developer blogs is but a small sneak peek of what’s currently in the game.

We have yet to show off more maps on land, sea and the coast. There are more naval vessels, a directional melee combat system with our entire selection of melee weapons and an even greater selection of classes to play. This is without even mentioning our work on ‘under the hood’ player count optimizations, advanced sailing mechanics, dynamic weather system and the selection of options available to favour performance over graphical quality. Due to feedback we have also implemented a wide array of key bindings and re-worked the bullet trajectory mechanics. Oh did we mention the library of voice acted orders? There is even more but it can wait for future releases. Our point is; Early Access is going to be a bit of a roller coaster of existing content which will only grow as we progress.

We would really appreciate it if you decide to support Holdfast: Nations At War while it’s still in development. The main reason we have chosen to go into Early Access is for us to be communicating directly with you when it comes to game mechanics. You can expect regular communication and ample opportunity to shape the game as it progresses into something that we all want to play.

We would like to express our heartfelt thanks for all of your support so far. The prospect of playing and working with you all in Holdfast is extremely exciting for us.



Early Access plays a key role in allowing us to remain independent. We are currently self-funding Holdfast: Nations At War to avoid any sort of outside influence to the development of the game and remain community oriented. We also want to create the game without the need for accepting donations or loans largely as part of our overall motivation and dedication to this project.

Shaping the game together with the players is going to be the key ingredient to our success with Holdfast. We have been gathering feedback since the very early stages of the game’s development and we will continue to do so. Early Access will enable all of our followers with an opportunity to provide us with direct feedback allowing us to continually improve and include new content within the game.



Holdfast: Nations At War is best played in groups. It is very rewarding and exciting for us to see all of the crews and regiments that are already being formed in anticipation of the game. We hope that you will have enough time to get yourselves organised before our release in September! You might want to hit the servers on day one to get that extra edge because...

We will be directly supporting the competitive scene by hosting official events as well as the inclusion of additional features within the game itself. Within our roadmap, we have plans to allow you to host single elimination tournaments, form up your own crew or regiment and recruit to it as well - all from within the game. How this is realised will be formed by conversing with you, the community. This will include support for individuals or groups to host their own events as well.

If you haven’t joined a crew or regiment yet we would suggest that you look for one! You can do this both on our discord and forums.



The competitive scene is important to us - We want to provide a precedent for regiments and crews to compete in. We will be hosting official events soon after the game is out on Early Access on both land and sea. It’ll be a great way to nourish and grow what we hope will be a fierce and fun competition based culture among player organisations. We’ll also be looking for help from the community for hosting these events.

Here’s a shot from one of the “Sunday Napoleonic Battle” events we’ve been hosting with our play testers. As some of you already know, we have been in contact with a number of YouTubers, casters and streamers. This is partly in an effort to widen the coverage of these events as well as the game in order to reach the widest audience possible.



It would be also good to know that we have also been directly working with members from the competitive community to provide us with direct feedback on the features which are at the heart of all of this. These largely unsung heroes have been essential to the early balancing of core features as well as fast tracking the bug fixing process.



We’ll be inviting YouTubers, streamers, regiment and crew leaders and members of our community to a pre-release event for Holdfast: Nations At War. This event will take place shortly before the Early Access release and is designed to give players a good look at how the game will actually play. More on that later!

Server files for Holdfast: Nations At War will be made publically available for our community on the first day we’ll be releasing the game on Early Access! The server files will be coupled with documentation that will detail how to host and freely configure your own server.

We will of course also be hosting official servers ourselves in a variety of different regions.



There’s still a whole lot to show from the game which we have yet to reveal and quite frankly, it’s not going to be possible to show each and every bit of content before September! We will, however, be revealing additional content throughout this month and the next on our social media.

Give us a follow on Facebook and Twitter if you fancy seeing some of the content we have planned for the game.

Holdfast: NaW Facebook | Holdfast NaW: Twitter


To celebrate this day we are revealing one of the uniforms for another class that will be available within our Early Access release. In their most glorious form throughout the battlefield; we present to you... the British and French Flag Bearers (Ensigns)!





It’s been a long road to get to this point and we still have a long way to go. But being able to give you a release window has made everyone in the team perk up with excitement. We are so close!

Before we leave we really want you to know just how much we appreciate you. Whether you are discussing game features on Discord, providing us with feedback, testing the game, spreading the word through YouTube and social media, organising regiments/crews or sending us supportive messages, we really can’t thank you enough. The least we can do is make it one to remember.

Feel free to join in the discussion on our forums here and as always, may good health be yours.

It has been a rather busy few weeks for us lately with being so close to our initial release and all! It seems like all of our time is over the hills and far away, as they say… We will need to Guard our excitement so that it doesn’t get too out of hand… Ok, I will stop now. This blog features a couple of classes that may interest you.



Role: Offense

The Guards were usually chosen from the most experienced Grenadiers. This meant that they tended to be rather big men with proven skill at killing. They excel at engaging and defeating other infantry.





Abilities
Guard - Duty bound to guard the high-command. You passively increase the HP of nearby allied officers.

Traits
Elite Infantry - Battle hardened veterans. This trait slightly increases the HP of the Guard to give him a better chance of survival in battle. It also increases damage dealt by melee weapons.

Bayonet Specialisation - Excels with using bayonets. Your melee damage when wielding a bayoneted musket is slightly increased.

Weaponry
Bayoneted Musket - Muzzle loaded firearms equipped with a pointy end. They’re your best bet at making quick work of your enemy if things get up close and personal.

Sword - The French Guards come equipped with a sabre briquet.

You’ll be seeing more of the Old Guard within the game and related army-based content. It is one of the things that we are most looking forward to seeing ourselves.



Role: Offense

This class needs little introduction, but for those that have managed to completely miss any reference to the ‘Green Jackets’; As the Napoleonic Wars dragged on, the importance of skirmishing and sharpshooting units was realised. The Riflemen were given the more accurate “rifled” weapons which became weapons of marksmanship skill over faster reload speed.





Traits
Marksman - Crack-shot. Your accuracy when using firearms is increased but the rate at which you reload your firearm is slightly decreased.

Light-Footed - Fast and nimble. Your running speed is slightly increased.

Chosen Men [British] - The prestigious 95th. You're a chosen man! It makes you feel special.

Weaponry
Rifle or Musket (Without Bayonet) - Rifles for the 95th and smoothbore muskets for the French Tirailleurs.

Sword - The French rifleman comes equipped with a sabre briquet while their British counterparts make use of a sword bayonet.

We assigned the Corsican Tirailleurs the Rifleman role for gameplay balancing purposes as the British Green Jackets generally fared very well against their non-rifled musket armed French counterparts. Riflemen are crack-shots and even though they’re only available in limited numbers, they can still be a very effective force on the battlefield.

As we have previously mentioned; we cannot guarantee that everything we list in the following developer blog for the class system will be ready and done by the time we go into Early Access. We're doing this to gather an idea of what the community thinks about our approach to class design.



Our Firearm mechanics have undergone a complete overhaul. Bullets no longer drop in a straight line but are instead slowly pulled towards the earth through gravity (arching bullet trajectory) which impacts the distance each projectile travels. It should be noted that we have also made sure that the re-worked mechanics reflect the inaccuracy of black powder weaponry. These values are also configurable per weapon so that we can give different characteristics to rifles, muskets, pistols and other firearms. Further tweaking and balancing during Early Access are expected upon more widespread player feedback, though we feel the current system is a significant improvement.

This overhaul came into effect after consulting the community. We invited some of the current closed testers who have been very involved in related competitive scenes (and possess a depth of knowledge in this period) with direct feedback. Together we have spent many hours engaged in a discussion on firearm mechanics and directly adjusting values for each and every firearm in the game.

Thanks to their efforts we have seen a significant improvement in how the game plays out when the muzzles start to flash. Here’s a preview of how the bullet trajectory for the muskets looks after the overhaul. The colourful lines and data on bullet trajectory to the right-hand corner of the screen won’t be present in the actual game. These are tools that we use for development purposes and for the testers to see a visual representation of the changes as we adjusted the values at runtime.





We have now reached almost 800 followers on our Facebook page alone! Both our Facebook and Twitter pages are great ways for us to reach interested individuals and continue to bolster the community. We will also be increasingly using our social media to keep you updated with the on-goings of the game especially as we get closer to the game’s release this year. Be sure to head over and give us a follow to keep yourself up to date.

Holdfast: Nations At War - Facebook
Holdfast: Nations At War - Twitter

We’ve been clear in our blog posts that there’s a whole lot more to the game than just what we have currently revealed. This is why we decided to give our website another look. For now, we have started with updating the selection of classes we have revealed in our blog posts and an easier way to navigate to our social media and discord from the menu bar.

Head over to the link below to check out the updated class list. Once again, the classes shown on our website doesn’t make for the entire class selection that will be playable within our Early Access release! We have yet to reveal more...

Holdfast: Nations At War - Features - Class System





Members of our community have been invited to join us for an in-game stress test in preparation for the game’s release on Early Access this year. A big shout out goes to all of you who have accepted our invitation. We really appreciate the extra help with testing this vital part of the game.

The primary objective of this test was to identify what will need/can be optimised in our ongoing efforts to support high player counts. It will also be important to enable us to spot and then fix any bugs which have made it through the cracks from all of the previous play sessions and countless in-house hours that have been spent testing the game ourselves.

We are very pleased to say that the stress test went extremely well. We’re not spilling the beans on player count just yet as we have even more optimisation planned before we go into Early Access. Keep in touch on our forums, discord and through our blog posts. We’ll be sure to let you know where things currently stand before we release the game on Early Access.

Please note that the work and dedication towards supporting high player counts will continue throughout the game’s Early Access phase and even into full release. We want to see epic battles as much as you do!

A good way of keeping up to date with Holdfast news as well as meeting other interested individuals is to peruse the various different Regiments and Crews that are being formed for the game. You will want to hit the ground running on release as it will only be a few short weeks until we host the first official competitive event!

Join a crew or regiment!


Even though almost everyone loves his Sharpe and a good Guard unit; we have something even more special to announce within our next blog post! Keep an eye out for this one. It’s going to be great.

Until next time, feel free to join in the discussion for the following blog here and may good health be yours.

It has been a rather busy few weeks for us lately with being so close to our initial release and all! It seems like all of our time is over the hills and far away, as they say… We will need to Guard our excitement so that it doesn’t get too out of hand… Ok, I will stop now. This blog features a couple of classes that may interest you.



Role: Offense

The Guards were usually chosen from the most experienced Grenadiers. This meant that they tended to be rather big men with proven skill at killing. They excel at engaging and defeating other infantry.





Abilities
Guard - Duty bound to guard the high-command. You passively increase the HP of nearby allied officers.

Traits
Elite Infantry - Battle hardened veterans. This trait slightly increases the HP of the Guard to give him a better chance of survival in battle. It also increases damage dealt by melee weapons.

Bayonet Specialisation - Excels with using bayonets. Your melee damage when wielding a bayoneted musket is slightly increased.

Weaponry
Bayoneted Musket - Muzzle loaded firearms equipped with a pointy end. They’re your best bet at making quick work of your enemy if things get up close and personal.

Sword - The French Guards come equipped with a sabre briquet.

You’ll be seeing more of the Old Guard within the game and related army-based content. It is one of the things that we are most looking forward to seeing ourselves.



Role: Offense

This class needs little introduction, but for those that have managed to completely miss any reference to the ‘Green Jackets’; As the Napoleonic Wars dragged on, the importance of skirmishing and sharpshooting units was realised. The Riflemen were given the more accurate “rifled” weapons which became weapons of marksmanship skill over faster reload speed.





Traits
Marksman - Crack-shot. Your accuracy when using firearms is increased but the rate at which you reload your firearm is slightly decreased.

Light-Footed - Fast and nimble. Your running speed is slightly increased.

Chosen Men [British] - The prestigious 95th. You're a chosen man! It makes you feel special.

Weaponry
Rifle or Musket (Without Bayonet) - Rifles for the 95th and smoothbore muskets for the French Tirailleurs.

Sword - The French rifleman comes equipped with a sabre briquet while their British counterparts make use of a sword bayonet.

We assigned the Corsican Tirailleurs the Rifleman role for gameplay balancing purposes as the British Green Jackets generally fared very well against their non-rifled musket armed French counterparts. Riflemen are crack-shots and even though they’re only available in limited numbers, they can still be a very effective force on the battlefield.

As we have previously mentioned; we cannot guarantee that everything we list in the following developer blog for the class system will be ready and done by the time we go into Early Access. We're doing this to gather an idea of what the community thinks about our approach to class design.



Our Firearm mechanics have undergone a complete overhaul. Bullets no longer drop in a straight line but are instead slowly pulled towards the earth through gravity (arching bullet trajectory) which impacts the distance each projectile travels. It should be noted that we have also made sure that the re-worked mechanics reflect the inaccuracy of black powder weaponry. These values are also configurable per weapon so that we can give different characteristics to rifles, muskets, pistols and other firearms. Further tweaking and balancing during Early Access are expected upon more widespread player feedback, though we feel the current system is a significant improvement.

This overhaul came into effect after consulting the community. We invited some of the current closed testers who have been very involved in related competitive scenes (and possess a depth of knowledge in this period) with direct feedback. Together we have spent many hours engaged in a discussion on firearm mechanics and directly adjusting values for each and every firearm in the game.

Thanks to their efforts we have seen a significant improvement in how the game plays out when the muzzles start to flash. Here’s a preview of how the bullet trajectory for the muskets looks after the overhaul. The colourful lines and data on bullet trajectory to the right-hand corner of the screen won’t be present in the actual game. These are tools that we use for development purposes and for the testers to see a visual representation of the changes as we adjusted the values at runtime.





We have now reached almost 800 followers on our Facebook page alone! Both our Facebook and Twitter pages are great ways for us to reach interested individuals and continue to bolster the community. We will also be increasingly using our social media to keep you updated with the on-goings of the game especially as we get closer to the game’s release this year. Be sure to head over and give us a follow to keep yourself up to date.

Holdfast: Nations At War - Facebook
Holdfast: Nations At War - Twitter

We’ve been clear in our blog posts that there’s a whole lot more to the game than just what we have currently revealed. This is why we decided to give our website another look. For now, we have started with updating the selection of classes we have revealed in our blog posts and an easier way to navigate to our social media and discord from the menu bar.

Head over to the link below to check out the updated class list. Once again, the classes shown on our website doesn’t make for the entire class selection that will be playable within our Early Access release! We have yet to reveal more...

Holdfast: Nations At War - Features - Class System





Members of our community have been invited to join us for an in-game stress test in preparation for the game’s release on Early Access this year. A big shout out goes to all of you who have accepted our invitation. We really appreciate the extra help with testing this vital part of the game.

The primary objective of this test was to identify what will need/can be optimised in our ongoing efforts to support high player counts. It will also be important to enable us to spot and then fix any bugs which have made it through the cracks from all of the previous play sessions and countless in-house hours that have been spent testing the game ourselves.

We are very pleased to say that the stress test went extremely well. We’re not spilling the beans on player count just yet as we have even more optimisation planned before we go into Early Access. Keep in touch on our forums, discord and through our blog posts. We’ll be sure to let you know where things currently stand before we release the game on Early Access.

Please note that the work and dedication towards supporting high player counts will continue throughout the game’s Early Access phase and even into full release. We want to see epic battles as much as you do!

A good way of keeping up to date with Holdfast news as well as meeting other interested individuals is to peruse the various different Regiments and Crews that are being formed for the game. You will want to hit the ground running on release as it will only be a few short weeks until we host the first official competitive event!

Join a crew or regiment!


Even though almost everyone loves his Sharpe and a good Guard unit; we have something even more special to announce within our next blog post! Keep an eye out for this one. It’s going to be great.

Until next time, feel free to join in the discussion for the following blog here and may good health be yours.

We are rather excited this week as we finally get to talk about the mysterious white uniforms you saw in our trailer! To better understand some of what we talk about below you might want to refer back to our blog on the entire class system.



The Coast Guards is yet another military branch present in Holdfast: Nations At War! We have included them within the game as distinct entities due to the addition of coastal based engagements. It is rarely seen within games to feature combat taking place fluidly on both land and sea and we want to make the experience as enjoyable as possible.

Within the game, you will see these classes being played on coastal fortifications to defend against incursions by an enemy navy.

Role: Offense

Protects the coast. Excels at killing infantry and the use of cannons.





Abilities
Artillery Basics - Trained with the use of cannons. You can fire and operate them.

Swim - Familiar with the ways of the sea. You can swim for a short amount of time.

Traits
Cannon Specialization - Excels with the use and firing of cannons and mortars. You can fire and operate these artillery pieces at a faster rate.

Weaponry
Bayoneted Musket - Muzzle loaded firearms equipped with a pointy end. They’re your best bet at making quick work of your enemy if things get up close and personal.

Sword - The French coast guards come equipped with a sabre briquet.



Role: Offense

Quick footed infantryman which protect the coast. Excels at killing infantry.



Abilities
Swim - Familiar with the ways of the sea. You can swim for a short amount of time.

Traits
Skirmisher - Drilled with knowledge on skirmishing tactics. Your musket reload speed is slightly increased and your melee combat damage slightly decreased.

Light-Footed - Fast and nimble. Your running speed is slightly increased.

Weaponry
Bayoneted Musket - Muzzle loaded firearms equipped with a pointy end. They’re your best bet at making quick work of your enemy if things get up close and personal.

Sword - The French customs come equipped with a sabre briquet.

We also have a uniform ready to be integrated into the game for the British Customs class! As Britain did not have a specific coast guard at the time but used a selection of different forces to guard the coasts we have created an umbrella militia unit. They will be stationed inside forts along the coast and will be taking the role of the customs class. We still have some work to be done however before we can show them off.

As we previously mentioned, not everything we list in the following developer blog for the class system will be ready and done by the time we go into Early Access. We're doing this to gather an idea of what the community thinks about our approach to class design.



We have also been working on the coastal siege game mode in preparation for our release on Early Access this year. We played this game mode during our last closed playtest on Sunday and according to our own plans and the feedback we received it’s already at a stage where it could be considered functional and playable for an Early Access release. It’s just one more step towards our goal of giving you a high-quality experience even on day one of Early Access.

The coastal siege game mode is one where two forces battle for a stretch of land along the coast, often revolving around some sort of fortification or settlement.

The attackers are aboard a small fleet of ships and their aim is to cripple the enemy’s defences and eventually capture their objective. To do this they will need to use their cannons, manoeuvrability and numbers. Smaller row-boats can be launched from their ships to allow their Marines to take the fight to the land and a good Captain would cover their advance under the fire of his own artillery. This is an example where several different game-play options are presented to the player and they must work in tandem to overthrow the opposition.



Do you bombard the enemy to create a breach in their walls before landing your troops? Do you wait until you are very close to shore before launching your Marines or do you stay back in the relative safety of range?

The defenders must prevent the assaulting forces from taking control of their fortifications. While they have a tactical advantage with fortifications and the fact that the enemy must land troops via ships, your number of respawns are limited so every life has to count. Do you push your forces to the beach and hope that the cannon on the fort will distract the ships from your position? Or do you withdraw behind your walls and engage the enemy at long range, biding your time until they are committed to a beachhead before rushing at them?

All of the coastal maps also have secondary objectives and sometimes they have more. The Shipyard objective location on Fort Imperial will allow the attackers to spawn closer to the fort in limited numbers. Another example of a secondary objective are locations that will also allow you to spawn near artillery batteries to bring down the fort’s walls. It’s up to the team to decide the course of battle!



You may have heard that we have generally placed a higher priority on land based content based on feedback from our community. This does not at all mean that we have neglected the wetter parts of our game and if anything it has led to a richer experience in our coastal engagements.

We’ll be releasing with a total of 3 coastal siege maps by the time we go into Early Access. All of the fortifications featured in these maps are destructible. We’ve previously written an entire blog about Fort Imperial, shown a sneak peek of Martello Tower on our social media and we’ll be leaving the other map for our upcoming blog posts.



Be sure to look forward to the development roadmap we’ll be releasing when we go into Early Access this year for an overview of our plans for coastal siege battles!



We’ve mentioned that we are working on a system that allows you to toggle specific elements of the User Interface. We are happy to announce that this is now complete and will be available within the release into Early Access this year!

You can selectively disable the minimap, chat, crosshair, kill-feed, centre screen dot, reload indicator, friendly player indicators, friendly name tags, your personal score and even the objectives panel. Customise what you see to make your experience the best it can be.



Most of you will be aware that we conducted a slightly larger test recently with our closed group of testers. It went extremely well and the feedback we have received both during that session and the previous tests have been monumental in helping us fine-tune our efforts to create an enjoyable game. Bug fixes, feature tweaks and even game balance have been discussed and improved over the past several months. We are incredibly grateful to all that have helped both in these tests and with suggestions and feedback based on the footage we have shown. We hope that it is clear to you that we are listening and taking it in.

Next is a big shout out to all the Regiments and Crews (clans) who have been assembling in anticipation for Holdfast: NaW’s release! You’re more than welcome to get in touch with us to share your ideas about the game - We are paying close attention to competitive play and have been working on polishing those features at the heart of the competitive side of the game for our initial release into early access. We will continue to support the competitive scene both with the integration of new features within the game, allowing administrators to freely configure their own servers and the hosting of official competitive events.

We are also still in search for map concepts and ideas from our community, specifically a pressing need is to design a training map for regiments. This can range from areas to practice melee combat, shooting, artillery and to also have a nice place were promotions to those deserving few can occur! Due to the nature of the game, it would preferably be in the form of some sort of realistic military camp (real or imagined). Please do head over to our forums and forward us your ideas in the following thread: Map Concepts - Share with us your Ideas!

If you haven’t joined a crew or regiment we suggest you look for one on our recruitment section on our discord or forums.

Here are a few YouTubers who have taken an active interest in being a part of our community, we would like to share what they have to say about the game:

Pixelated Apollo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSmuSlF2p9c
Alex The Rambler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2bZN2hqqjo
HForHavoc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh96nlpAFcE
TheFrenchMonk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daptP9bmOks



Head over to Discord to join in the conversation! Well, a conversation. There was one last week about what edible sauces came out of soldiers from different nationalities. We are all active on there and have been enjoying seeing the community grow.

You can join in the community discord channel down below:
https://discordapp.com/invite/XsHBUNs


Thank you from all of us once again for being so enthusiastic, open to change and most importantly of all willing to give us honest feedback on our game. We are working very hard every day to listen to what is being said and then make sure that Holdfast: NaW matches up to expectation as closely as possible. That being said this is an ongoing process and Holdfast: NaW will be a community driven project from now, through Early Access and into its full release.

Until next time, feel free to join in the discussion for the following blog here and may good health be yours.

P.S. You might want to stay tuned for our next blog. We have a very special something we plan on revealing.

We are rather excited this week as we finally get to talk about the mysterious white uniforms you saw in our trailer! To better understand some of what we talk about below you might want to refer back to our blog on the entire class system.



The Coast Guards is yet another military branch present in Holdfast: Nations At War! We have included them within the game as distinct entities due to the addition of coastal based engagements. It is rarely seen within games to feature combat taking place fluidly on both land and sea and we want to make the experience as enjoyable as possible.

Within the game, you will see these classes being played on coastal fortifications to defend against incursions by an enemy navy.

Role: Offense

Protects the coast. Excels at killing infantry and the use of cannons.





Abilities
Artillery Basics - Trained with the use of cannons. You can fire and operate them.

Swim - Familiar with the ways of the sea. You can swim for a short amount of time.

Traits
Cannon Specialization - Excels with the use and firing of cannons and mortars. You can fire and operate these artillery pieces at a faster rate.

Weaponry
Bayoneted Musket - Muzzle loaded firearms equipped with a pointy end. They’re your best bet at making quick work of your enemy if things get up close and personal.

Sword - The French coast guards come equipped with a sabre briquet.



Role: Offense

Quick footed infantryman which protect the coast. Excels at killing infantry.



Abilities
Swim - Familiar with the ways of the sea. You can swim for a short amount of time.

Traits
Skirmisher - Drilled with knowledge on skirmishing tactics. Your musket reload speed is slightly increased and your melee combat damage slightly decreased.

Light-Footed - Fast and nimble. Your running speed is slightly increased.

Weaponry
Bayoneted Musket - Muzzle loaded firearms equipped with a pointy end. They’re your best bet at making quick work of your enemy if things get up close and personal.

Sword - The French customs come equipped with a sabre briquet.

We also have a uniform ready to be integrated into the game for the British Customs class! As Britain did not have a specific coast guard at the time but used a selection of different forces to guard the coasts we have created an umbrella militia unit. They will be stationed inside forts along the coast and will be taking the role of the customs class. We still have some work to be done however before we can show them off.

As we previously mentioned, not everything we list in the following developer blog for the class system will be ready and done by the time we go into Early Access. We're doing this to gather an idea of what the community thinks about our approach to class design.



We have also been working on the coastal siege game mode in preparation for our release on Early Access this year. We played this game mode during our last closed playtest on Sunday and according to our own plans and the feedback we received it’s already at a stage where it could be considered functional and playable for an Early Access release. It’s just one more step towards our goal of giving you a high-quality experience even on day one of Early Access.

The coastal siege game mode is one where two forces battle for a stretch of land along the coast, often revolving around some sort of fortification or settlement.

The attackers are aboard a small fleet of ships and their aim is to cripple the enemy’s defences and eventually capture their objective. To do this they will need to use their cannons, manoeuvrability and numbers. Smaller row-boats can be launched from their ships to allow their Marines to take the fight to the land and a good Captain would cover their advance under the fire of his own artillery. This is an example where several different game-play options are presented to the player and they must work in tandem to overthrow the opposition.



Do you bombard the enemy to create a breach in their walls before landing your troops? Do you wait until you are very close to shore before launching your Marines or do you stay back in the relative safety of range?

The defenders must prevent the assaulting forces from taking control of their fortifications. While they have a tactical advantage with fortifications and the fact that the enemy must land troops via ships, your number of respawns are limited so every life has to count. Do you push your forces to the beach and hope that the cannon on the fort will distract the ships from your position? Or do you withdraw behind your walls and engage the enemy at long range, biding your time until they are committed to a beachhead before rushing at them?

All of the coastal maps also have secondary objectives and sometimes they have more. The Shipyard objective location on Fort Imperial will allow the attackers to spawn closer to the fort in limited numbers. Another example of a secondary objective are locations that will also allow you to spawn near artillery batteries to bring down the fort’s walls. It’s up to the team to decide the course of battle!



You may have heard that we have generally placed a higher priority on land based content based on feedback from our community. This does not at all mean that we have neglected the wetter parts of our game and if anything it has led to a richer experience in our coastal engagements.

We’ll be releasing with a total of 3 coastal siege maps by the time we go into Early Access. All of the fortifications featured in these maps are destructible. We’ve previously written an entire blog about Fort Imperial, shown a sneak peek of Martello Tower on our social media and we’ll be leaving the other map for our upcoming blog posts.



Be sure to look forward to the development roadmap we’ll be releasing when we go into Early Access this year for an overview of our plans for coastal siege battles!



We’ve mentioned that we are working on a system that allows you to toggle specific elements of the User Interface. We are happy to announce that this is now complete and will be available within the release into Early Access this year!

You can selectively disable the minimap, chat, crosshair, kill-feed, centre screen dot, reload indicator, friendly player indicators, friendly name tags, your personal score and even the objectives panel. Customise what you see to make your experience the best it can be.



Most of you will be aware that we conducted a slightly larger test recently with our closed group of testers. It went extremely well and the feedback we have received both during that session and the previous tests have been monumental in helping us fine-tune our efforts to create an enjoyable game. Bug fixes, feature tweaks and even game balance have been discussed and improved over the past several months. We are incredibly grateful to all that have helped both in these tests and with suggestions and feedback based on the footage we have shown. We hope that it is clear to you that we are listening and taking it in.

Next is a big shout out to all the Regiments and Crews (clans) who have been assembling in anticipation for Holdfast: NaW’s release! You’re more than welcome to get in touch with us to share your ideas about the game - We are paying close attention to competitive play and have been working on polishing those features at the heart of the competitive side of the game for our initial release into early access. We will continue to support the competitive scene both with the integration of new features within the game, allowing administrators to freely configure their own servers and the hosting of official competitive events.

We are also still in search for map concepts and ideas from our community, specifically a pressing need is to design a training map for regiments. This can range from areas to practice melee combat, shooting, artillery and to also have a nice place were promotions to those deserving few can occur! Due to the nature of the game, it would preferably be in the form of some sort of realistic military camp (real or imagined). Please do head over to our forums and forward us your ideas in the following thread: Map Concepts - Share with us your Ideas!

If you haven’t joined a crew or regiment we suggest you look for one on our recruitment section on our discord or forums.

Here are a few YouTubers who have taken an active interest in being a part of our community, we would like to share what they have to say about the game:

Pixelated Apollo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSmuSlF2p9c
Alex The Rambler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2bZN2hqqjo
HForHavoc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh96nlpAFcE
TheFrenchMonk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daptP9bmOks



Head over to Discord to join in the conversation! Well, a conversation. There was one last week about what edible sauces came out of soldiers from different nationalities. We are all active on there and have been enjoying seeing the community grow.

You can join in the community discord channel down below:
https://discordapp.com/invite/XsHBUNs


Thank you from all of us once again for being so enthusiastic, open to change and most importantly of all willing to give us honest feedback on our game. We are working very hard every day to listen to what is being said and then make sure that Holdfast: NaW matches up to expectation as closely as possible. That being said this is an ongoing process and Holdfast: NaW will be a community driven project from now, through Early Access and into its full release.

Until next time, feel free to join in the discussion for the following blog here and may good health be yours.

P.S. You might want to stay tuned for our next blog. We have a very special something we plan on revealing.

Right let’s get straight into it, shall we? This blog is another batch of items that we are ready to talk about for our upcoming Early Access release. We have another look at our map list, talk about gameplay on specific maps, some UI changes and finally a note about our closed playtesting sessions.

In-game footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZtqS9EgGVY
Having a stroll around Arendan River - one of the army based maps playable on the release of Early Access this year. You will do yourself good to watch out for fellows trying to take shots at your person in the quiet countryside village!

We needed a scenario large enough to be able to play on competitively, have a mix of long range and closed quarters density and finally attempt to balance it from both sides. What we ended up with is Arendan River, a scene featuring rolling open green, lightly wooded countryside and a small village.



Both sides will start looking down into the river valley from fortified positions (each featuring two field guns) but will need to push the open spaces and the village to win.



Close quarter combat will take place in the village halved by the river. Infantry garrisoning these buildings will be hard to get to as many feature narrow entrances and even upper floors. The fighting will be fierce, quick and often rely on the bayonet over the musket ball.



Charging across the stone bridge from one side to the other will also prove to be a difficult challenge. The village itself is quite the sight and features things like a peach orchard, an outhouse, watermill, lanterns, a piano and plenty of benches to rest on!



Outside of the village, the river can be crossed by a natural crossing on one side of the village and a small wooden bridge on the other. Both of these pathways serve as great flanking positions for those who aren’t looking forward to direct confrontation.



In contrast with the village, the rest of the terrain consists of gentle slopes, rock formations and various fauna. Fighting outside of the village will be over larger distances but will be no less deadly with the presence of artillery batteries on both sides.



It is important to note that while right now they are unrealistically sturdy, we will eventually change these buildings to be destructible after taking enough damage. On top of that, there will be a change later on that will allow players to swim across the river at the cost of their ammunition.





We have shown off a number of our finalised assets but we are keen to enter Early Access with a good selection of maps. Army-based maps are of particular importance to the community and we want to deliver.

The next map we will be talking about is based on a particular soft spot for a member of our team; the Scottish Highlands!

We are also taking what you are saying into account when it comes to their design. With the most obvious example being, creating a place for you and our entire community to share with us your map ideas! You’re most welcome to join in the discussion by heading here:

Map Concepts - Share with us your Ideas!



As you can already tell from the above video, we have significantly reduced the size of the minimap. We’ve also added some polish to the objectives panel as well as the nameplates themselves in an attempt to make it even easier to understand the situation at a glance. This has the bonus effect of decluttering the screen which leaves more open space to enjoy the game itself on.

We’re also working on a system that allows you to toggle on and off specific elements of the user interface including the minimap. This was a highly requested feature from our community so we’ve made sure to slot in some time for it. We’ll talk more about this in our next developer blog!



We’ve been gradually inviting YouTubers and members of our community to the game so they can provide us with direct feedback and help us with testing the game. The emphasis has been selecting individuals with a passion for this type of gameplay.

All the feedback we received from all corners within our community has been very helpful for us and we have you to thank for that. We will be looking for more active fellows on our Discord and forums to help us out in future playtests. We’ll also be inviting some of you to take part in our pre-release event for the game!

Do check out the below YouTube videos for a listen to what Malakith, Warrior of Sparta, Chadtopia and Resonant have to say about the game. Every hit we get is a new potential player to fill the servers and grow the community so we would ask that you support us by supporting content like this.

Malakith Skadi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-5GZnbCMVs
Warrior of Sparta:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SXNrzCqt54
Chadtopia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o77MRwnM13Q
Resonant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GY5ZUu53x4

We would like to close this blog by expressing once again our heartfelt thanks to all of you who have been providing us with feedback and suggestions for the game on our Discord, forums and everywhere else within our community. We’re working hard to make the game more widely available so that your patience is not tested for much longer!

Here's a link to our forums and Discord:
http://www.holdfastgame.com/forum
https://discordapp.com/invite/XsHBUNs

You can join in the discussion yourself on the following blog here and until next time, may good health be yours.

Right let’s get straight into it, shall we? This blog is another batch of items that we are ready to talk about for our upcoming Early Access release. We have another look at our map list, talk about gameplay on specific maps, some UI changes and finally a note about our closed playtesting sessions.

In-game footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZtqS9EgGVY
Having a stroll around Arendan River - one of the army based maps playable on the release of Early Access this year. You will do yourself good to watch out for fellows trying to take shots at your person in the quiet countryside village!

We needed a scenario large enough to be able to play on competitively, have a mix of long range and closed quarters density and finally attempt to balance it from both sides. What we ended up with is Arendan River, a scene featuring rolling open green, lightly wooded countryside and a small village.



Both sides will start looking down into the river valley from fortified positions (each featuring two field guns) but will need to push the open spaces and the village to win.



Close quarter combat will take place in the village halved by the river. Infantry garrisoning these buildings will be hard to get to as many feature narrow entrances and even upper floors. The fighting will be fierce, quick and often rely on the bayonet over the musket ball.



Charging across the stone bridge from one side to the other will also prove to be a difficult challenge. The village itself is quite the sight and features things like a peach orchard, an outhouse, watermill, lanterns, a piano and plenty of benches to rest on!



Outside of the village, the river can be crossed by a natural crossing on one side of the village and a small wooden bridge on the other. Both of these pathways serve as great flanking positions for those who aren’t looking forward to direct confrontation.



In contrast with the village, the rest of the terrain consists of gentle slopes, rock formations and various fauna. Fighting outside of the village will be over larger distances but will be no less deadly with the presence of artillery batteries on both sides.



It is important to note that while right now they are unrealistically sturdy, we will eventually change these buildings to be destructible after taking enough damage. On top of that, there will be a change later on that will allow players to swim across the river at the cost of their ammunition.





We have shown off a number of our finalised assets but we are keen to enter Early Access with a good selection of maps. Army-based maps are of particular importance to the community and we want to deliver.

The next map we will be talking about is based on a particular soft spot for a member of our team; the Scottish Highlands!

We are also taking what you are saying into account when it comes to their design. With the most obvious example being, creating a place for you and our entire community to share with us your map ideas! You’re most welcome to join in the discussion by heading here:

Map Concepts - Share with us your Ideas!



As you can already tell from the above video, we have significantly reduced the size of the minimap. We’ve also added some polish to the objectives panel as well as the nameplates themselves in an attempt to make it even easier to understand the situation at a glance. This has the bonus effect of decluttering the screen which leaves more open space to enjoy the game itself on.

We’re also working on a system that allows you to toggle on and off specific elements of the user interface including the minimap. This was a highly requested feature from our community so we’ve made sure to slot in some time for it. We’ll talk more about this in our next developer blog!



We’ve been gradually inviting YouTubers and members of our community to the game so they can provide us with direct feedback and help us with testing the game. The emphasis has been selecting individuals with a passion for this type of gameplay.

All the feedback we received from all corners within our community has been very helpful for us and we have you to thank for that. We will be looking for more active fellows on our Discord and forums to help us out in future playtests. We’ll also be inviting some of you to take part in our pre-release event for the game!

Do check out the below YouTube videos for a listen to what Malakith, Warrior of Sparta, Chadtopia and Resonant have to say about the game. Every hit we get is a new potential player to fill the servers and grow the community so we would ask that you support us by supporting content like this.

Malakith Skadi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-5GZnbCMVs
Warrior of Sparta:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SXNrzCqt54
Chadtopia:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o77MRwnM13Q
Resonant:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GY5ZUu53x4

We would like to close this blog by expressing once again our heartfelt thanks to all of you who have been providing us with feedback and suggestions for the game on our Discord, forums and everywhere else within our community. We’re working hard to make the game more widely available so that your patience is not tested for much longer!

Here's a link to our forums and Discord:
http://www.holdfastgame.com/forum
https://discordapp.com/invite/XsHBUNs

You can join in the discussion yourself on the following blog here and until next time, may good health be yours.

We’re back with a bit of a mix of information today. As we draw ever closer to our release into Early Access we are fine-tuning assets and gameplay systems across the board. We have a special something to begin with! Napoleon and Wellington both didn’t like their officers duelling but sometimes disagreements were still decided by blood in secret...

In-game footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1s3TTvz1vM
Beat the drums! One good chap meets his unfortunate end in a duel between two officers. What you’re seeing here is raw unaltered footage taken directly from the game. Everything here is still being fine-tuned and should be considered a work in progress.

That video highlights another important aspect of our vision for the game. We feel that the type of gameplay we reward here should have more depth than just point scoring. We have already talked about our focus on community, competitive gameplay mechanics and planned content.

It is another direction that we would like to draw attention to here today. ‘Roleplay’ sits quietly in the corner of a game like this, taking form in small ways like spontaneous duels on the battlefield and even bigger ways like entire servers dedicated to the simulation of a garrison or battlefield.

To support our community to play the game as they want we are allowing server administrators free-reign when it comes to game settings and server configuration. One example might be the epic onslaught of an open field battle with an extended time-limit and reinforcements spawning in waves; watch the day-night cycle swoop by as the forces clash over and over again. We're also working on new functionality right now which will further increase the dynamicness of the battlefield.

On top of that our environments and systems have had that extra level of interaction and polish; for instance, you may have noticed pianos, walking, voice-acting, musicians, interaction with lanterns, and other in-game objects. You can also take a seat with your friends for a moment's respite in the middle of a battle!



We have a list of features we want to include after our initial early access release to both increase the depth of the game as well as give the players more options in terms of how they can play it. This includes things like detachable bayonets, surrendering, 3D VOIP and more musicians. Players will also have control over the 3D VOIP system - You will be able to adjust the volume, mute other players and server administrators will be able to directly disable 3D VOIP functionality from their servers. As the game progresses we look forward to continue working with our community to fine-tune features and work out our priorities for new systems.



Preferences in terms of look and feel are very subjective and so we have decided to ship with several options for players to pick from in terms of colour palette. Some might prefer a more ‘grim’ look to their games compared to the vibrant colour scheme you have seen so far. We can cater to both!

Normal - This is the default colour scheme of the game. It’s quite bright and colourful.



Gritty - This is the first of our selectable colour profiles. It’s a personal favourite of mine and makes everything look more gritty.



1800 - A colour profile for your atmospheric screenshots and videos.



Experiment with them all and choose one that suits you best. Feel free to put forward your ideas to us for additional colour profiles.



We heard that our players will need somewhere to practice their skills in close combat and so our scene-makers have produced this little area for just that purpose. Server options to disable firearms for the deathmatch game mode were also included for admins to force combatants to only use melee weapons. Be it organised competition, practice or even normal gameplay we hope this smaller scene will suit your needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vycBtDCUX70
Close quarter arena specifically designed for melee combat. Four interactable lanterns stand in the middle of the field to increase visibility during night time. We have also sped up the dynamic day-night cycle for showcase purposes.

Right now we’re in the middle of finalising work on the objectives panel to the left of the screen and the in-game chat.





We are working on several scenes that are designed to be played with larger player numbers and bigger game-goals. These environments take time due to their size as we have to balance the aesthetics, interesting locales, game balance, interaction and performance all at the same time.

Now that we have finalised both the snow scene and the arena map that we’ve shown in the developer blog; we’re working on yet another army based map. We know how important content on army based features and functionality are for our community so we’re putting all the time we can invest into that before our early access release.

The next map we’re currently working on is designed with the intent to promote both close quarter and long range combat. Close quarter combat will take place inside two small urban areas situated in the middle of the map. Both of these urban centres are separated by a river, but a bridge connects them both. We surely hope to see some intensive charges taking place here! We’ll be leaving the rest for another blog post. We’re very excited to show it off.



Members of our community have expressed that we could do with a couple of improvements to the forward musket running animation. So we did just that! We added more movement to the shoulders and sway to the musket so that the movement now looks more natural and fluid.

The list of animations in Holdfast: Nations At War has grown to be quite substantial. Since we opted for developing a directional melee combat system into the game the number of animations required has also increased tenfold! We’ll continue working on improving and polishing our animations both before and during early access.


We hope that by now we’ve shown both our dedication to this project and a willingness to listen to our community. You’ll also see this being reflected in its entirety in our roadmap for the game we’ll be releasing when the game is out on early access this year.

Anvil Game Studios is hoping to create more than just a single release with Holdfast, our priority is the creation of a community around a shared vision. Therefore we are committed to increasing the scope of the original game after the official release as well as working on more content to start to build up a franchise. It makes sense for our intended playerbase to be a big part of that and we really appreciate all of the support and suggestions that you have been giving us up until now.


Do join in on our Discord. We’d love to get to know you better and gather your thoughts about the game!
https://discordapp.com/invite/XsHBUNs

You can join in the discussion yourself on the following blog hereand until next time, may good health be yours.

We’re back with a bit of a mix of information today. As we draw ever closer to our release into Early Access we are fine-tuning assets and gameplay systems across the board. We have a special something to begin with! Napoleon and Wellington both didn’t like their officers duelling but sometimes disagreements were still decided by blood in secret...

In-game footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1s3TTvz1vM
Beat the drums! One good chap meets his unfortunate end in a duel between two officers. What you’re seeing here is raw unaltered footage taken directly from the game. Everything here is still being fine-tuned and should be considered a work in progress.

That video highlights another important aspect of our vision for the game. We feel that the type of gameplay we reward here should have more depth than just point scoring. We have already talked about our focus on community, competitive gameplay mechanics and planned content.

It is another direction that we would like to draw attention to here today. ‘Roleplay’ sits quietly in the corner of a game like this, taking form in small ways like spontaneous duels on the battlefield and even bigger ways like entire servers dedicated to the simulation of a garrison or battlefield.

To support our community to play the game as they want we are allowing server administrators free-reign when it comes to game settings and server configuration. One example might be the epic onslaught of an open field battle with an extended time-limit and reinforcements spawning in waves; watch the day-night cycle swoop by as the forces clash over and over again. We're also working on new functionality right now which will further increase the dynamicness of the battlefield.

On top of that our environments and systems have had that extra level of interaction and polish; for instance, you may have noticed pianos, walking, voice-acting, musicians, interaction with lanterns, and other in-game objects. You can also take a seat with your friends for a moment's respite in the middle of a battle!



We have a list of features we want to include after our initial early access release to both increase the depth of the game as well as give the players more options in terms of how they can play it. This includes things like detachable bayonets, surrendering, 3D VOIP and more musicians. Players will also have control over the 3D VOIP system - You will be able to adjust the volume, mute other players and server administrators will be able to directly disable 3D VOIP functionality from their servers. As the game progresses we look forward to continue working with our community to fine-tune features and work out our priorities for new systems.



Preferences in terms of look and feel are very subjective and so we have decided to ship with several options for players to pick from in terms of colour palette. Some might prefer a more ‘grim’ look to their games compared to the vibrant colour scheme you have seen so far. We can cater to both!

Normal - This is the default colour scheme of the game. It’s quite bright and colourful.



Gritty - This is the first of our selectable colour profiles. It’s a personal favourite of mine and makes everything look more gritty.



1800 - A colour profile for your atmospheric screenshots and videos.



Experiment with them all and choose one that suits you best. Feel free to put forward your ideas to us for additional colour profiles.



We heard that our players will need somewhere to practice their skills in close combat and so our scene-makers have produced this little area for just that purpose. Server options to disable firearms for the deathmatch game mode were also included for admins to force combatants to only use melee weapons. Be it organised competition, practice or even normal gameplay we hope this smaller scene will suit your needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vycBtDCUX70
Close quarter arena specifically designed for melee combat. Four interactable lanterns stand in the middle of the field to increase visibility during night time. We have also sped up the dynamic day-night cycle for showcase purposes.

Right now we’re in the middle of finalising work on the objectives panel to the left of the screen and the in-game chat.





We are working on several scenes that are designed to be played with larger player numbers and bigger game-goals. These environments take time due to their size as we have to balance the aesthetics, interesting locales, game balance, interaction and performance all at the same time.

Now that we have finalised both the snow scene and the arena map that we’ve shown in the developer blog; we’re working on yet another army based map. We know how important content on army based features and functionality are for our community so we’re putting all the time we can invest into that before our early access release.

The next map we’re currently working on is designed with the intent to promote both close quarter and long range combat. Close quarter combat will take place inside two small urban areas situated in the middle of the map. Both of these urban centres are separated by a river, but a bridge connects them both. We surely hope to see some intensive charges taking place here! We’ll be leaving the rest for another blog post. We’re very excited to show it off.



Members of our community have expressed that we could do with a couple of improvements to the forward musket running animation. So we did just that! We added more movement to the shoulders and sway to the musket so that the movement now looks more natural and fluid.

The list of animations in Holdfast: Nations At War has grown to be quite substantial. Since we opted for developing a directional melee combat system into the game the number of animations required has also increased tenfold! We’ll continue working on improving and polishing our animations both before and during early access.


We hope that by now we’ve shown both our dedication to this project and a willingness to listen to our community. You’ll also see this being reflected in its entirety in our roadmap for the game we’ll be releasing when the game is out on early access this year.

Anvil Game Studios is hoping to create more than just a single release with Holdfast, our priority is the creation of a community around a shared vision. Therefore we are committed to increasing the scope of the original game after the official release as well as working on more content to start to build up a franchise. It makes sense for our intended playerbase to be a big part of that and we really appreciate all of the support and suggestions that you have been giving us up until now.


Do join in on our Discord. We’d love to get to know you better and gather your thoughts about the game!
https://discordapp.com/invite/XsHBUNs

You can join in the discussion yourself on the following blog hereand until next time, may good health be yours.