Dear Project Backers,
as we're getting closer to our Early Access launch (and of course the test version for our backers with tester's access), we have a lot of news to talk about.
Thanks to our publisher, Team17 (you can read more about that in our announcement from March), the game will be available in different languages - starting already with the Early Access version. That's right! In Early Access, you will be able to play Monster Sanctuary in French, Spanish, Italian, German and Russian.
Surprise news for our Monster Designer backers: We will start the third Community Monster Contest tomorrow (1st of August). The submission period will be open until the end of August. Voting will be done in the first week of September (until the 8th of September). As usual, the contest is happening on our Discord channel and all backers who supported us with 50€ or more are allowed to enter (you may join our Discord server here: Join Monster Sanctuary on Discord).
We are excited to see which Monsters our community will vote into our game this time!
So here's what we've added to the game in July:

• New tier 4 attacks for new and old Monsters alike. Most of these new attacks have different extra effects that make them different from lower-tier skills - skills like Spectral Cannon ignore a large percentage of the enemy's Armor value, while skills like Thunder Strike and Poison Eater have special effects when they're used on shocked/poisoned enemies.
  
  
• New area: Sun Palace. This area is meant to be explored after the other areas we've added to the game so far. It can also be entered earlier if the player knows how to get there and what you need to get inside - but the Monster encounters have a rather high minimum level in this area. The Sun Palace is a large underground area that is illuminated by an artificial miniature sun. There are two distinct parts to the Sun Palace: the sunny "overworld" areas with large open rooms and the dark, watery aqueducts below.
  
  
• Sun Palace will also be the first area to feature more intricate area-wide mechanics. There is a tower in the center of the Sun Palace which needs to be raised to access the higher rooms of the area. The aqueducts of the Sun Palace are overflowing with water, making it impossible to access the lower rooms at first. Throughout the area, the player will find levers to raise the tower and to lower the water levels of the aqueducts.
  
  
• New Monsters: Blade Widow and Sycophantom
  
  
• Sycophantom is one of the winners from our second Community Contest. As the creator (MissingNovice) intended, Sycophantom is very focussed on support skills (heals and buffs), with many skills granting it "Charge" stacks (+damage for next attack) when it uses those skills. Apart from that, it can also apply Chill-Debuff and a new type of stack called "Blind" on enemies.
  
• Blade Widow is a new deadly bug-type Monster. It's a heavy damage dealer with Neutral, Wind and Earth attacks that is also able to apply multiple instances of Might-Buff for physical damage-oriented parties. As the battle rages on, Blade Widow becomes ever stronger and ever deadlier, thanks to Buffs and "Charge" stacks that it gains while attacking enemies.
  
• Finished all Sun Palace rooms and story-content. Now we just need to add more Monsters, implement new mechanics and playtest the new content.

That's all for this month's update! If all goes well, expect the test version for Early Access by the end of August or early September.

On your quest to defeat Capital B, you’ll discover secrets and solve puzzles in the overworld to unlock alternate level states!

Spark some change by hooking up electricity, flood chapters with running water or literally flip them upside down for radically altered challenges!

Check out the brand new trailer below…

https://youtu.be/Yfk72Js6rTE

Join us at 3pm BST / 7am PDT on Thursday 25th July for a Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair livestream! We’ll be showing off some of the alternate level states and have some of the dev team with us to answer your questions!

Tune in on Mixer, Twitch, YouTube, Facebook or here on the Steam store page!



You better bee ready for Capital B's most dastardly challenge yet! Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is coming to Steam later this year!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/846870/YookaLaylee_and_the_Impossible_Lair/

Wishlist the game on Steam or check out the links below to stay in the know!

Keep up to date with the latest Yooka-Laylee news:
Sign-up to the Team17 newsletter
Team17 on Twitter
Team17 on Facebook
Playtonic Games on Twitter
Playtonic Games on Facebook
Team17 Discord

Dear Steam Monster Keepers,

it's been one of the hottest months for Europe ever, but of course we've continued working on the next areas and features of Monster Sanctuary. Here's the monthly progress update for June.

First off, we have another announcement to make. We are closing the Late Backer Shop on June 30th. If you want to become a late backer for the game (to get backer rewards like beta access, the Monster Journal, being able to contribute to the Community Monster Contests), this is your very last chance. You can make your last-minute pledge here on our Paypal Shop: http://monster-sanctuary.com/PaypalBacking.html
If you're reading this after June 30th, don't worry. The game will soon enough go public: We plan to release the game on Steam Early Access in late August or September.

So this is what we can show for June:

• New Monsters: Mogwai, Crystal Snail, Megataur
  
  
• Mogwai is an all-rounder Monster which you may build in a variety of ways. He has access to Snowball Toss (physical damage) and Ice bolt (magical damage), which are both new single-hit water-element skills. He can be a powerful hybrid combo-finisher, or he can be a great support Monster.
  
  
• Crystal Snail is an extremely tanky Monster with a unique set of Resistances and Weaknesses. Only magical water- and wind-element attacks are super effective against it. He can protect his allies and take hits for them, gravely punishing enemies whose attacks land on it.
  
• Megataur is the evolved form of the Blue Caves Champion, Minitaur. It loses a bit in Attack and Mana, but makes up for it with much greater tankiness. Also, Megataur focuses more on ice-attacks, can dish out some magical damage and gains Life Wave as a heal.
  
  
• Finished Snowy Peaks rooms and story-content. So we've also been busy play-testing Snowy Peaks and fixing any bugs we've found so far. To finish the story-content of Snowy Peaks, you will have to defeat a new Champion Monster which we will reveal at a later time.
  
• Again, we've been especially busy with adding new Tier 4 skills to both the new and the older Monsters. That's why we'd like to give you a sneak peak into some of the new skills your Monsters will be able to learn. Keep in mind that any skill may still change during testing if it's found to be too weak or too strong.

A new active Tier 4 heal. Monsters with this skill: Caraglow, Mogwai (maybe more)


A new passive that allows for "Critical Heals" which trigger Critical-passives like Critical Mass. Monsters with this skill: Caraglow, Monk (maybe more)


Charge stacks increase damage of the next attack by 3%. Monsters with this skill: Spectral Toad, Magmapillar, Magmamoth, Rocky (and more)


A new passive to slay tanky enemies with a high Health rating. Monsters with this skill: Vaero, Nightwing, Goblin Hood (and maybe more)


Gives your Monster's attacks quite a bonus against enemies with high Defense. Monsters with this skill: Specter, Nightwing (and maybe more)


A new type of stack which can stack indefinitely and doesn't vanish. Monsters with this skill: Grummy, G'rulu, Goblin Warlock, Rocky (and more)


Each Age stack grants the Monster these bonuses.


There will be different version of this skill for Defense, Mana, etc. Monsters with Health Focus: Blob (2 instances of it), Druid Oak, Spectral Wolf, Megataur (and more)

That's all for this month's update. Of course, there are even more new skills we've already implemented and that we're planning to implement still - this is just a small selection of them.

We hope we'll be able to show you our next area for Monster Sanctuary soon!

Dear Project Backers,
as summer slowly settles in, it's time to show you what we've been working on in May with another monthly progress update.

During the first weeks of May, the Monster Designer Backers were once again able to vote for the community Monsters that shall be featured in our game. Here are the winners of the 2nd round of our Community Monster Contest:
● 1st place: Kanko, the pipe fox Monster, by Zuty!
● 2nd place: Sycophantom, the phantasmal elephant Monster, by Missing Novice!
● And our Developers' Pick: Thanatos, the clown-masked reaper Monster, by The0neFreeMan! A close candidate that almost won the first two contests by vote and that already caught our eyes from the first contest. We like Thanatos' design, it reminds us of some of the enemies/villains of Snes RPGs, and it seems like a fitting enemy for the later areas that we've got planned for the game. 

Again, we'd like to remind everyone that there are still three more contests left! A lot of Monsters this time just barely missed second place by votes, but there were also a lot of Monsters overall that we could have imagined to have in our game. Both times so far, it was a very difficult choice for us to make our Developers' Pick among so many creative Monster designs. Monster Designers can try again in our next contest that we will start some time around the Early Access release of the game (~late summer).
Together with the winners from the first Community Contest, that makes 7 community Monsters so far that will be featured in our game. If you would like to see the winners of the second round, you can view them in our Discord channel, which is open for all: Join our Discord

With our Backer Beta testing phase officially concluded, we were able to fully focus on new content again:
● New area: Snowy Peaks. This area is linked to the beginning area, Mountain Path. The player will be able to enter Snowy Peaks as soon as they have gotten the Double Jump boots from Blue Caves and a Monster with the flying exploration skill (Vaero, Frosty, etc.) - meaning it's not required to explore Ancient Woods or Stronghold Dungeon first. This area will feature two large mountains that the player will be able to scale, as well as many crystalline caverns within the mountains, and an icy lake that is surrounded by myths and rumors. There will be many vertical rooms with lots of challenging jumps.

● Almost all of the rooms of Snowy Peaks have already been finished. The next test version of the game (Early Access test version) will feature two new areas: Snowy Peaks and another area that we will reveal in the future.

● New Monsters: Ice Blob, Caraglow, Aurumtail

● You may recognize Caraglow and Aurumtail from our first Community Monster contest: Caraglow was one of the winners by popularity vote, while Aurumtail was our Developers' pick. They are the first Community Monsters to be implemented into the game as new collectable Monsters. They will both be found in Snowy Peaks. Caraglow is a unique support Monster that can heal like no other Monster in the game, whereas Aurumtail will require you to build around its Mana-heavy skill kit to fully utilize him. Caraglow will be another Monster able to light up dark areas in the game, and Aurumtail will be the first Monster in the game that the player can mount to travel faster from one place to another.

● Ice Blob will be one of the common frost-themed Monsters of Snowy Peaks. It is somewhat similar to its green cousin from Mountain Path, but it has adapted to the icy climates of Snowy Peaks: It has wind- and water-element attacks, with several Chill (Debuff) synergies, and it is a very tanky Shielder as well.

● The minimap has been reworked. It now features icons for several important NPCs and places in the game (a highly requested feature), and it can now be scrolled - because the world just became too big to fit on the screen without scrolling.
● Adding new skills. Since we will be adding Tier 4 skills (Level 20+ required), we will need a lot of new Monster skills. Skill trees will also be bigger at Tier 4, meaning there will be more skills to choose from at Level 20.

That's it for May's progress update! What do you think of the residents of Snowy Peaks (that have been revealed so far)? Are you excited to explore the upcoming areas of Monster Sanctuary? Let us know in the comments!

With E3 approaching and Hell Let Loose releasing on the 6th of June, it’s fair to say that Team17 has a very busy week ahead! In fact, next week we’ll be unveiling not just one but TWO BRAND NEW GAME ANNOUNCEMENTS!

You’re not going to want to miss these announcements, and we really can’t wait to share the trailers with you. To ensure that you’re the first to hear about these new games right here on Steam, make sure to follow the Team17 Publisher Page.

In the meantime, you can find a couple of cryptic clues in the image above, and if you hop over to the Team17 Twitter account, make your predictions, follow and re-tweet then you’ll be entered into a prize draw to win a copy of these two games, and Hell Let Loose, upon release!

Thanks for reading, and we’ll see you next week!

Dear Steam Monster Keepers,

here's our monthly Progress Update for April! Here's what's been happening with Monster Sanctuary in April.
As of writing, the submission period for the second Community Monster Contest has ended. Once again, an astonishing amount of amazing Monsters have been entered to the contest! We are excited to see which Monsters will win the voting process this time. As last time, we as the developers of the game will also pick one Monster as our Dev Pick Monster to feature in the game.

From today until the 8th of May, "Monster Designer" backers (50€+) will be able to vote on which Monster they want to see in the game. We will reveal the winners shortly after. All of this is happening on our Discord server, which you may join by clicking on this link: Join us on Discord

A lot of dev time this month went towards fixing the bugs and issues our Beta Testers found in the beta release. We released two Beta Patches with many bug fixes, some new content and some rebalancing - the patch notes can be found here: Beta Patch 0.3.1 and Beta Patch 0.3.2. These will probably be the last patches to the Beta for a long while - look forward to the next test version when we get closer to the Early Access release of the game in late summer.

Here's a list of the things we've added to the game and the things we've changed:

• Added two new Monsters to the Beta: Raduga, a new Champion found in Ancient Woods, and Toxiquus, a new regular Monster in Stronghold Dungeon. As a Beta Backer, you may fight and conquer them now as well! Steam updates your Monster Sanctuary Beta automatically when you log on to Steam.
  
  
• Added a much-needed feature to the Beta: An options menu! Among other things, it includes volume settings, key bindings and a highly-requested feature: a combat speed option! You may set the speed of combat animations to 1.0x, 1.25x, 1.5x and even 2.0x. This feature will be highly useful for all future testing of the game and it has already quite accelerated our own test runs of the game.
  
  
• Enemy leveling system has been revamped (changes also live on Beta now):
  
• Previously, enemy Monsters levels were based on the number of Champions the player had already defeated. This meant that wild Monster levels suddenly rose after beating a certain number of Champions, which penalized players who went directly for Champions, but also made the game quite easy if players skipped optional Champions. Especially since we're planning to make the exploration of the game more open, it seemed unnatural to bind enemy Monster levels to Champions. For instance, players could potentially explore 90% of Ancient Woods without fighting the Goblin King, then go back to Stronghold Dungeon and fight against severely under-leveled enemies.
  
• Instead, enemy leveling is based on exploration now. Whenever the player enters a room with a new Monster encounter in it, the enemy level is slightly raised. At certain thresholds, the enemy Monster levels rises one by one. A particular change with this new system is that wild Monsters will now stay at the level that they were originally encountered at (for instance, it'll be easy to farm Mountain Path Monsters for eggs now). Certain enemy encounters and areas will still have a minimum level.
  
  
• Lots of balance changes and bug fixes. You may find a complete list of them in the patch notes linked above (and found here on the Steam boards).

Dear Monster Keepers,

this is the second patch for the beta and includes a bit more changes this time.



Two new Monsters added
- Raduga, new Champion east most of Ancient Woods (a new room was added for him)
- Toxiquus, encountered in southern parts of Stronghold Dungeon
Also, monster distribution in Stronghold Dungeon and Ancient Woods was adjusted a bit



Options Menu added to the game
Includes Combat Animations Speed, Volume settings, Key Bindings for keyboard and Resolution settings. The game launcher dialogue got removed now.

Enemy encounter levels changed
Enemy levels are no longer raised when the Keeper rank increases, instead, after the first area (Mountain Path) the enemy encounter level increases based on how many rooms with monster encounters were discovered.
This gives a smoother progress instead of the previous difficulty spikes, independent of which areas the player explores first.
Also this way the player isn't incentivized to avoid Champion encounters. If loading an old savegame, the enemy levels will automatically adjust in the order the areas were explored in that savegame.

Combat ranking adjustments
The "Overkill Damage" rating in combat was renamed to "Overkill" and is now also increased by 1% for every buff one of the player monsters have at the end of combat, by 1% for every debuff an enemy had when killed
and by 3% for every poison or burn dot damage that was triggered on them.
This should make compositions that rely on dot damage be a bit more competitive now in regard to getting a good score.

Keeper Lancer rank
It is possible to reach the 'Keeper Lancer' rank now, which enables to buy a couple of +3 Equipment at the shop (Helmet/Wizard Hat/Impact Ring)

New Equipment
Added a new equipment 'Sun Pendant' (dropped by Raduga) that applies a shield to the wielder whenever receiving a buff

Balancing Changes

• 'Lifesteal' reduced to 15% from 20%
  
• 'Bite' lifesteal part reduced to (100 + 50% attack) from (100 + 100% attack)
  
• 'Mad Eye' base mana stat reduced to 4 from 6
  
• Druid Oak's 'Shielding Leaves' replaced with 'Soul Beam'
  
• 'Crit Damage Plus' skill node now increases critical damage by 20% instead of 15%
  
• 'Berry' and 'Grapes' now increase critical damage by 5%/7% instead of 4%/5%
  
• 'Flashfreeze' damage reduced to 75% from 100%
  
• 'Antipode' damage reduced to 125% from 150%
  
• 'Katana' critical damage part increased to 15%(+2% per upgrade) from 10%(+1% per upgrade)

Bugfixes

• Fixed an issue that sometimes you weren't able to navigate between the teleporters in the map menu
  
• When evolving a monster that is following the player, it no longer stays in that form following the player
  
• Player can no longer become stuck in the goblin structure that leads to the northern parts with the Goblin King
  
• You can no longer place rocky/mushroom obstacles inside enemies to trap them
  
• Fixed Glowfly not being able to increase mana base stat above 10 (savegames that gained skillpoints this way will have the skills of glowfly resetted)

This is the last patch planned for the beta and we will focus on the new content for the planned Early Access launch in august. People still wanting to get onto the beta train can do so in our Paypal shop.

Balancing changes:
- Wild enemy monster's health scaling lowered a bit, especially the difficulty jump at level 10 shouldn't be as drastic now
- Enemy levels of the western part of blue caves reduced to 9 from 10. Specter's level reduced to 10 from 11.
- Frosty grant more 'Difficulty' score points now when fighting against them
- Fixed wild frosty being able to cast Ice storm even when below level 10
- Slightly increased the exp gained from enemies

Bugfixes:
- Fixed Monster Journal not being available when loading a demo save that completed the blue caves
- Fixed Camera being misplaced rarely in combat
- Fixed possibility to repeatedly evolve the same monster
- Fixed visual glitches occurring when casting Shield
- Fixed player able to land inside or on top of walls when using a vertical room transition
- Fixed bug when switching between actions while having buff info view open
- Fixed not being able to do the second jump while using monster flying ability
- Fixed not receiving exp rewards for all 6 enemies in keeper battles (you only got those for the last 3)
- Multi Barrier description fixed
- It is no longer possible to summon rock obstacle on spikes (and skip to Keeper's Stronghold early in the game with Crystal Shards)
- Fixed following monster possible to get stuck inside the ground in the magic barrier puzzle room in Ancient Woods
- Fixed Level 20 Badge icon
- Fixed possibility to display lore of hidden Monster Journal entries when changing page
- Fixed inability to load a savegame when the first three save slots are empty
- Fixed possibility to place the rock or mushroom inside enemies to prevent them from moving
- Fixed Restore lvl 3 not removing two debuffs
- Some text/typo fixes

We are eager to get your feedback, especially on the current difficulty of the game. After some first feedback, the enemy health scaling was slightly reduced. Also western Blue Caves are now more accessible at around lvl 9.
Its best to post it to our discord into the #feedback subchannel.

There is another bigger patch planned to be released in 2-3 weeks that will include a new Monster, a new Champion, probably the options menu and some more smaller changes/bugfixes.

Dear Monster Keepers,

the Backer Beta for Monster Sanctuary is now live. If you're a 25€+ backer, you will be sent an Email with a Steam Beta key to the Email address associated with your Kickstarter/Paypal account very soon. Please check your spam folder if the Email doesn't arrive soon.
If you wish to participate in the Beta, you can still become a late Backer on our Paypal shop.
The new areas added in the Beta are balanced for Lvl 10-12 Monsters. You may continue your save files from previous demo versions of the game, but if your Monsters are higher than Lvl 12, the new content will be very easy for you. We recommend starting a new save file to experience the modified starting areas.

We added following new content to the Beta:

• New story content that takes you through the Stronghold Dungeon & the Ancient Woods to uncover a terrible plot that threatens the Monster Sanctuary. The story content features three Keeper Battles and two new Champion Monsters. The new areas are larger than previous areas and offer a lot of optional rooms to discover + you may complete the new areas in any order you wish. The new areas are east of the Keepers' Stronghold.
  
• Thirteen new Monsters
  
• New area: Stronghold Dungeon
  
  
• New area: Ancient Woods
  
  
• New feature: Keeper Battles
  
• New feature: Monster Journal
  
• New feature: Monster Evolution (2 evolutions have been added to the game)
  
  
• New feature: Monster Renaming
  
• Monster explore abilities have been reworked
  
  
• Old areas have been modified with some new rooms

• Fungi mana base stat increased to 7 (from 5)
  
• Multi Poison additional stacks only have half effect
  
• Grummy mana base stat increased to 7 (from 6)
  
• Grummy now has "Purify" passive instead of Defense+
  
• Blob now has "Magic Proc" passive instead of Magic+
  
• Steam Golem now has "Tackle" attack instead of "Heavy Punch"
  
• "Improved Regeneration" now gives +10% healing to Regeneration buff (from +5% increased)
  
• All shielding actions now have a base value but reduced defense scaling
  
• All healing actions now have a base value but reduced magic scaling
  
• Health scaling for monsters modified (difference between low base health stats and high base health stats decreased)
  
• The amount by which mana is increased per level was raised slightly
  
• Defense - damage reduction scaling formula reduced
  
• Defense values of many accessories slightly reduced
  
• Critical Chance and Critical Damage values of equipment increased
  
• Some of the other equipment values and some skill values were modified
  
• Infinity Arena is available at 'Keeper Seeker' rank now and enemy monsters start at lvl 15
  
• Infinity Arena stacks damage boost increased to 30%.
  
• Infinity Arena rewards changed
  
• Reward Box Lvl1 contents changed, reduced amount of possible common equipment/egg drops
  
• Player jump physics are now a bit faster / less floaty
  
• Drop chances for rare rewards slightly increased and there is now a 33% chance to receive two rare rewards instead of one.
  
• Resurrected Monsters no longer get to act within the turn they were revived

Hey Monster Keepers,

We’re Team17 and we’re very excited to announce our partnership with Moi Rai Games on Monster Sanctuary.

To celebrate the new partnership we’ve released a trailer that you can watch below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRopvZW6Cr4


Firstly we’d like to say that we think Monster Sanctuary is awesome, it’s great to see such a passionate community already forming around the game.

Secondly, we’d like to reassure you that we’re not here to take over the development of the game or anything like that. Team17 is here to work alongside Moi Rai Games and the community to further enhance the Monster Sanctuary experience.

That pretty much wraps up today’s news! We’re incredibly excited to be here and look forward to chatting with you all as we join in on Monster Sanctuary’s epic adventure.

Now, we must dash, there’s a debate raging in the office about which spectral familiar is the best and why…