Hi all,

The last challenge (here) was some time ago and it's time for a new one! The prizes are the same as last time - the winners get Steam keys for all our released games.

This time let the poor Goblins prove their usefulness!

The rules are as follows:

• The winners are the first five players who reach 20.000 gp in Treasure!
  
• Only Greenskins' heroes are allowed and you must start a new game!
  
• With exception of the hero, you team must entirely consist of Goblins (that's is: Goblin, Goblin Archer, Goblin Assassin, Goblin Rider, Goblin Sapper).
  
• Before every battle take a screenshot (during Deploy Turn) and also take a second screenshot of your team in a shop after every battle (it will display your Treasure)!
  
• Please keep a savegame! The game tracks and logs all battles (for debug purposes) and you might be asked to provide your savegame.

Please post your victories here:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/882410/discussions/0/1768134097437896797/


PLEASE REVIEW OUR GAMES!

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Take care,
Les & AOF Team

Deep within the mountains lives the Dwarf King. He is as rich as old. He got minted of the labour of other Dwarves and of speculation on the Kingdom’s Stock Market… You all know the story of the last CGO (Collateralised Gold Obligations) crisis.

Alright, the next faction comes to the Age of Fear: The Free World. Dwarves are probably the most powerful individual units in game, moreover they can complement their forces with Constructs (Canons included!). They are also slower than other factions and their numbers are more limited. And, of course, no magic! (unless you capture a spellcaster)

I would also like point to coming release of the Age of Fear: The Undead GOLD which is planned for early June. The Undead King Gold is a greatly expanded version of the series' very first entry, a game originally released seven years ago. This project aims to bring Age of Fear series into Open World theme! The work has entered the Beta-test phase and we plan a release for early June 2019.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/832770/Age_of_Fear_The_Undead_King_GOLD/

In this patch we have also released the Desertion mechanic. The feature is disabled in Experimental options and we would like to ask for your help with testing and balancing it. If you are interested, please visit this post:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/882410/discussions/0/1768133742958439296/

PLEASE REVIEW OUR GAMES!

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Take care,
Les & AOF Team

One major change in this series of patches is more love for Greenskins faction! After 72 emails (I kid you not!) exchanged with Werdi-eh wherein we discussed Greenskins, we are implementing a number of buffs for those savages.

The key challenge with this faction is that it dies a lot from ranged attacks. However, that’s Greenskins' charm and changing that, for example by adding more powerful ranged units, will make them less unique. Therefore, we went into a different direction and improved them strategically so they can cope with losses easier. More balance tweaks for Greenskins will follow.

PATCH NOTES:

• NEW: Warboss upgrades for Greenskins which will increase total number of units you can have with this faction. Two additional Trolls / Ogres should balance out the lack of firepower within that faction!
  
  
• NEW: Elder Tutor for Greenskins should help to cope with unavoidable losses when playing Greenskins. Newly recruited units get initial +100 / 200 experience bonus, thus army can be recycled much easier.
  
  
• NEW: Swift (+2 Defence vs. ranged) attribute for Wolves, Goblin Wolf Riders, etc. This should make flanking easier and give Greenskins a way to fight artillery units.
  
  
• NEW: Scavenger upgrade for all Goblins. At the end of battle, your Goblins will pillage every enemy corpse to get a small amount of gold (just Greenskins can replace killed units easier).
  
  
• NEW: Confidence Booster potion restores Morale and additionally adds High Morale bonuses to a unit.
  
  
• UPDATE: The Strategy Guide Extension - we have currently writing on other factions as well.
  
  
• UPDATE: Disease Totem also poisons enemies.
  
  
• UPDATE: Battle Rage’s attack bonus limited to 3.

ONGOING FEATURES:

• ONGOING: Desertion - discontent units will attempt to desert. Enslaved units won’t desert.
  
  
• ONGOING: The Undead King Gold is a greatly expanded version of the series' very first entry, a game originally released seven years ago. This project aims to bring Age of Fear series into Open World theme! The work has entered the Beta-test phase and we plan a release for early June 2019.
  
  https://store.steampowered.com/app/832770/Age_of_Fear_The_Undead_King_GOLD/
  
  
• ONGOING: The Free World Workshop Manager - following the success of the Age of Fear: The Free World (ca. 40,000 downloads!), we plan to backport the Workshop Manager into this product as well. It requires some preparatory work and we plan it for mid-2019.
  
  
• ONGOING: The Free World Extension - we have already released Chaos Demons and we are currently editing campaigns for the remaining factions (Dwarves and Forest Folk).
  
  
• ONGOING: The Global Events Extension - we have 40+ additional Global Events scheduled and being worked on. Those events will introduce side-quests.
  
  
• ONGOING: Faction Bases which can be upgraded as you explore the Age of Fear world. Investing in base upgrades will unlock additional recruitable units, skills and locations to explore! This feature will be released first in The Undead King Gold and then we will add it to other games in the series.
  
  
• ONGOING: Invisibility mechanics are already coded in, but require more testing to make AI aware of this feature. Invisibility will add an element of surprise to battles and mess up your tactics! Prepare for the unexpected!
  
  
• ONGOING: Unit Voices are currently being re-recorded. There are 80+ voice-bundles and we have about 40% ready. ETA for this update is mid-2019 and hopefully this improvement will be well received!
  
  
• ONGOING: Desert Battles - we have already drawn a number of new terrains and themed objects like Giant Scorpion, Djinn, Cactuses, etc. Those will be added to existing environments.
  
  
• ONGOING: The Age of Fear 4 - the main story is already written and we are working on scripts and game flows. The release is planned for 2020 and we will surely push out more news before that.

PLEASE REVIEW OUR GAMES!

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Take care,
Les & AOF Team

Beastmaster

As tough as a nail, the barbarian princess travels with your party for her own motives. Even the bravest of men should think twice before insulting her as they might end up on the wrong side of her deadly bow. Half-tamed herself, she can speak many beast tongues and sway wild animals to join you.

Hi all,

With this update we are introducing two of the most-awaited features, namely - Beastmaster who can tame wild animals and Chaos Demon faction!

Chaos Demons are known from Age of Fear 2 where a sexy succubus is doing everything in her power to escape her Underworld’s masters. Then she meets a handsome knight Percival… The story is quite pleasing and has a surprising twist, but, like (almost) all stories in the Age of Fear series, ends well.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/341150/Age_of_Fear_2_The_Chaos_Lord_GOLD/

Chaos Demons make up quite a strange faction which heavily relies on powerful Summoners and Chaos magic. The majority of its units are Fire-resistant and Evil-bound (as you will expect from Demons!), as such, you will need to find innovative ways to mix other factions’ units to this army. Chaos Demons also offer a number of very-Demonic skills such as Sacrifice, Domination and Unholy Strength spells as well as their own collection of specialized items.

• NEW: Golden Clover is a new Relic which will help you getting gold a bit faster.
  
  
• BALANCE: A number of balance tweaks were applied to Chaos Demons and Greenskins factions - we haven’t finished with neither of them and it deserves it’s own post.
  
  
• UPDATE: Chain spells and skills target only units in range. This change was introduced to balance powerful spells like Chain Lightning.
  
  
• UPDATE: Dark Castle Quest, Well of Souls, etc. - sacrificed unit is now selectable. This has been achieved by new script commands (’select-unit-manual’ command) therefore expect more of this functionality.
  
  
• UPDATE: New icons for Dwarven Runes and a few other other enhanced ones, for example: Scavenger and Warboss.
  
  
  
• UPDATE: Refactoring localization - about half a year ago we started recoding our engine to support different languages. Over the last weekend we finally implemented all elements: UI, attributes, conversations, messages, levels, selection dialogs, and so on. We already have a French mod and Japanese in the making
  
  
• UPDATE: World Map triggers are executed in parallel (previously in sequence). This optimisation should speed up loading up of World Map and Global Events.
  
  
• UPDATE: AI optimizations - we have added a number of routines, mostly to support Invisibility feature. That slowed down AI and we had to refactor portions of the code to optimise for that. However, those chances result in overall performance improvement.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Vanishing units from Reserve.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Quicksilver Armour was applied after vulnerabilities / resistances.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Un-equipping Djinn’s Lamp was not removing additional items.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Global Events were not triggered if any script was broken.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Counter-damage from Reflection Shield was not always working.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Heat Ray was not exploding barrels.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Berserker should not attack static objects anymore.

We are also working on a number of other features such as Desertion, localisations, better balance for Greenskins, and bringing Workshop Manager to the Age of Fear: The Free World. Please also bookmark in your calendars the release of Age of Fear: The Undead King Gold (June/July 2019):

https://store.steampowered.com/app/832770/Age_of_Fear_The_Undead_King_GOLD/

PLEASE REVIEW OUR GAMES!

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Hi everyone,

In the recent months we have done huge amounts of work re-factoring our ten-year old engine (yes, AOF is that mature!) to support dynamic loading of text across UI elements and dialogs, attributes, units, conversations, and eventually also story in levels.

We greatly simplified the sources of text to just a few files and created a sample mod which we hope could be used by translators:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1669028839

Currently there are two community-driven translation projects:

• French, started by Targus929:
  
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1580639367
  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1609454629
  
  
• Japanese (Kanji), started by Synctam:
  
  https://synctam.blogspot.com/2019/02/age-of-fear-free-world_23.html

The current plan is to keep localizations modular as mods that can be installed from the Steam Workshop. We still need to figure out how to replace fonts for non-latin characters as well as few minor issues that came out during testing.


PLEASE REVIEW OUR GAMES!

Links
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Take care,
Les & AOF Team

Hi all,

Over the last few weeks we have been busy with adding new features and content, balancing factions, fixing bugs, and so on.

The pressure is high and our players-base greatly expanded - currently the Age of Fear: The Free World has OVER 31,000 DOWNLOADS!!

• NEW: Bard - few weeks ago a player suggested another unit with musical skills and here we finally have one ready. The Bard is an all-around unit: a bit of magic, above-average battle stats and, of course, songs! The Bard comes with his own side-quest!
  
  
• NEW: Reflection Shield - an upgrade for Mages and Archmages. Deflected melee strikes have a chance to damage attacker.
  
  
• UPDATE: expanded Team Morale explanation in Tutorial. It’s quite a complex feature, therefore more detailed text was needed.
  
  
• UPDATE: Very Happy Team Morale provides 15% experience bonus.
  
  
• UPDATE: Djinn and Bard’s voices.
  
  
• UPDATE: Dwarven Canon is being re-balanced with cooldown mechanics.
  
  
• UPDATE: New icons for a number of attributes, for example: weapon and armour upgrades, Poison/Acid Cloud, Acid Splash, etc.
  
  
• UPDATE: OpenAL sound engine has been updated to version 1.1.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Auto-triggerable attributes were limited to one, now they are run in sequence.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Unusable items were equipped when stolen, for example Noble Cloak.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Totem descriptions were updated to correctly reflect their features.

There is also a long list of ongoing features which we are working on and are planned to be released later:

• ONGOING: The Undead King Gold is a greatly expanded version of the series' very first entry, a game originally released seven years ago. This project aims to bring Age of Fear series into Open World theme! The work has entered the Beta-test phase and we plan a release for early June 2019.
  https://store.steampowered.com/app/832770/Age_of_Fear_The_Undead_King_GOLD/
  
  
• ONGOING: The Free World Workshop Manager - following the success of the Age of Fear: The Free World, we plan to backport the Workshop Manager into this product as well. It requires some preparatory work and we plan it for mid-2019.
  
  
• ONGOING: The Free World Extension - we are currently editing campaigns for the remaining factions (Dwarves, Chaos Demons and Forest Folk). The extension release will be synchronised with Workshop Manager.
  
  
• ONGOING: Desertion - discontent units will attempt to desert.
  
  
• ONGOING: Taming Beasts - we are still working on Taming skill, allowing you to capture Beast units. Along with the Demons Pact released recently, one will be able to capture all unit types soon.
  
  
• ONGOING: The Strategy Guide Extension - currently the Strategy Guide lists the first three factions, but we are currently writing on other factions as well. We should be ready with an updated document mid-March.
  
  
• ONGOING: The Global Events Extension - we have 40+ additional Global Events scheduled and being worked on. Those events will introduce side-quests.
  
  
• ONGOING: Faction Bases which can be upgraded as you explore the Age of Fear world. Investing in base upgrades will unlock additional recruitable units, skills and locations to explore! This feature will be released first in The Undead King Gold and then we will add it to other games in the series.
  
  
• ONGOING: Invisibility mechanics are already coded in, but require more testing to make AI aware of this feature. Invisibility will add an element of surprise to battles and mess up your tactics! Prepare for the unexpected!
  
  
• ONGOING: Unit Voices are currently being re-recorded. There are 80+ voice-bundles and we have about 30% ready. ETA for this update is mid-2019 and hopefully this improvement will be well received!
  
  
• ONGOING: Localization is coming too! We have started with French (thanks to targus929!), but once this update is stable we will look into other languages.
  
  
• ONGOING: Desert Battles - we have already drawn a number of new terrains and themed objects like Giant Scorpion, Djinn, Cactuses, etc. Those will be added to existing environments.
  
  
• ONGOING: The Age of Fear 4 - the main story is already written and we are working on scripts and game flows. The release is planned for 2020 and we will surely push out more news before that.

PLEASE REVIEW OUR GAMES!

Links
Twitter
Facebook
Website


Take care,
Les & AOF Team

THE AGE OF FEAR KNOWLEDGE CHALLENGE HAS FINISHED!
(Please keep checking for new challenges!)

Hello there,

Following the joyful experience of our last Dragon-Slayer Challenge, we have prepared a new competition opened to everyone!

This time we would like to invite you to The Age of Fear Knowledge Quiz!

The rules are as follows:

• we will post the quiz link here 9th February 2019 (Saturday) at 12:00 Eastern Standard Time (which is 18:00 in most of Europe, but please check)
  https://www.opinionstage.com/les4/age-of-fear-knowledge-challenge
  
• as in the last Challenge, the prizes are Steam Keys for all games from the Age of Fear series!
  
• the quiz has seven questions, all of them have to be answered correctly!
  
• after answering all questions, please screenshot the result and send it to support@age-of-fear.net
  
• the first ten players with all good answers will get the prize!
  
• only one prize per player!

And, by the way, over the weekend we have reached 20,000 DOWNLOADS!! I cannot say “Thank you“ enough for such a great Community. Without you all, the Age of Fear series wouldn’t be the same.

Links
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PLEASE REVIEW OUR GAMES!

Take care,
Les & AOF Team

Mephistopheles

Hello,

I am pleased to announce that we currently have over 17,000 downloads and around 100 concurrent users (peak 137 users). That is AN ASTOUNDING ACHIEVEMENT - The Age of Fear: Free World is still going very strong!

Over the last two weeks, we have applied a number of patches and improvements which are detailed below:

• NEW: Demon Pact - we have introduced a way to recruit demons! (aside from paying them thousands of gold). You heroes (but non-Holy ones only!) will have the opportunity to meet Mephistopheles himself and sign a Demon Pact...But what’s the price?
  
  
• NEW: Dominate Mind - an interesting addition to demonic magic available exclusively to the Demon Mistress. This spell works in a similar way as Time-Shift - it grants a selected unit an extra turn, but in exchange said unit is damaged. However, unlike Time Shift, it can be casted multiple times on a given unit.
  
  
• NEW: Djinn’s unit - the Djinn’s Lamp quest has been expended and the Djinn himself can now join you! Will you release the poor creature from its golden prison?
  
  
• NEW: Skeletal Beast - this has been promised a few months ago and during the last weekend we received the completed graphic assets. The Raise Dead spell will raise this fast unit from dead animals like Wolves, Spiders and Rats.
  
  
• UPDATE: Wave icons - we have replaced another set of icons, for example here are new waves:
  
  
  
• UPDATE: Team Size - when starting a random battle, the dialog specifies how many units will be deployed. Please note that units can be exchanged with reserve in the first turn (same as items).
  
  
• UPDATE: AI performance optimisations - it was highlighted several times that the AI is sometimes slowing down. This is the result of all the new mechanics and spells we have added - The AI is evaluating all tactical options available before deciding what to do next and this is computation-intensive. To counter that we optimised and refactored many helper methods and achieved ca. 30-40% speed up in those calculations.
  
  
• UPDATE: Raise Dead spell was nerfed a bit - raised units now have their corpse upgrade level minus one.
  
  
• NEW ITEMS: a few more treasures and other items have been added for variety: Sapphire, Sea Shell, Black Pearl, Ring of Poison Resistance, etc.
  
  
• UPDATE: Transmutter Laboratory now also upgrades Sea Shells to Pearls. The upgrade price has been raised to 2,000 gp.
  
  
• UPDATE: Units in Nairi's campaign cost gold. Campaign has been updated as well to include gold prizes.
  
  
• UPDATE: Troll Throwers can now use melee weapons.
  
  
• BUGFIX: occasionally unit xml files were not loaded correctly and this was crashing the editor. Those were the remains of localisation-related code refactoring and should be fixed now.
  
  
• BUGFIX: Fallen Knight Hero was not initially upgraded to Black Knight. We have fixed it and introduced a routine to backwardly update all Knights.
  
  
• BUGFIX: A number of bugs related to Coward, Demon Heart, Survivor, Battle Forged have been fixed- those can be actioned outside battles and it was causing bugs.

Also, we have a first player who spent more than hundred hours in Age of Fear: The Free World - Lachanche! Congratulations!

We have received lots of valuable feedback and suggestions - thank you all for your input! It's great to have such active and grateful Community!

Links
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PLEASE REVIEW OUR GAMES!

Take care,
Les & AOF Team

Hello everyone,


Let's do a small tournament! Nothing less worthy than a dragon-slaying challenge, that's it ^^

THE RULES:

• Only the first hero from any class will be awarded a prize!
  
• A player must provide two screenshots: (i) a battle before the killing blow (Black Dragon with two HP at most) and (ii) the hero stats and equipped items.
  
• A hero must fight alone! (no other units allowed)
  
• The difficulty is Normal at least!
  
• The most recent patch must be applied!
  
• No summoning spells allowed! (Avatar included)
  
• Age of Fear: The Free World only!
  
• A Player can only be awarded one set of Steam keys.
  
• The screenshots shall be posted here:
  https://steamcommunity.com/app/882410/discussions/0/1739980540118051019/

A worthy hero will be awarded Lordship and a priceless prize (accompanying Steam keys to all our games in the Age of Fear series)!

Will you take this challenge? (Black Dragon was just updated to be more deadly!)

THE HALL OF FAME:

• (DONE) Knight/Paladin - by Lord Mordrakus!
  
• (DONE) Mage/Archmage - by Lord Clownbaby and LordLolchair!
  
• (DONE) Monk/High Priest - by Lord El-Gator!
  
• (DONE) Orc/Chieftain - by Lord Rutaki!
  
• (DONE) Shaman/Warlock - by Lord Shimdom!
  
• (DONE) Troll/Troll Thrower - by Lord Tempest!
  
• (DONE) Fallen Knight/Black Knight - by Lord Lachanche!
  
• (DONE) Necromancer/Lich - by Lord Dru!
  
• (DONE) Banshee/Ancient Banshee - by Lord Crayons!

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PLEASE REVIEW OUR GAMES!

Take care,
Les & AOF Team

(impressions over time chart - all direct visits from Steam Client)

Hello everyone,

A week ago we have pressed the 'Release' button and impatiently waited for first feedback. How will players receive it? Are there any game-breaking bugs? Argh, I forgot to debug this line in code!

Today I can summarise it in one sentence:

"WHAT AN AWESOME WEEK!"

Age of Fear: The Free World has overrun all our estimations! The game has been downloaded 10,000 times and, at this moment, there are 100+ concurrent players. Age of Fear: The Free World is also listed in Popular New Releases!

There were few minor bugs, hopefully all are fixed. The most amusing mistake was the popularity of Monk over Black Knight hero :) It was later found to be a bug with hero upgrading and, since then, the Black Knight has climbed to a respectable 4th place (Monk stayed at the bottom).

The reviews are very positive (90% score!) and also full of helpful suggestions. The re-occurring note is great depth and complexity of the series and that's a signal we have to develop even more comprehensive Strategy Guide and in-game tutorial.


(The Strategy Guide can be downloaded here here)


The shocking success of this release also put us in the spotlight. With such a player base we need to carefully balance features and improvements.

I would like to re-iterate the things we are working on now:

• FACTION BASES which can be upgraded as you explore the Age of Fear world. Investing in base upgrades will unlock additional recruitable units, skills and locations to explore!
  
• INVISIBILITY mechanics are already coded in, but require to make AI aware of this feature and more testing. This feature will add a element of surprise to battles and mess up your tactics! Prepare for the unexpected!
  
• UNITS' VOICES are currently being re-recorded. There is 80+ voice-bundles and we have about 30% ready. ETA for this update is mid-2019 and hopefully this improvement will be well received!
  
• LOCATIZATION is coming too! We have started with French (thanks to targus929!, see note below), but once this update is stable we will look into other languages.
  
• DESSERT BATTLES - we have already drawn a number of new terrains and themed objects like Giant Scorpion, Djinn, Cactuses, etc. Those will be added to existing environments.
  
• AGE OF FEAR 4 - the main story is already written and we are working on scripts and game flows. The release is planned for 2020 and we will surely push out more news before that.

You guys simply rock. Without such amazing Community, the Age of Fear series wouldn't be the same!


Links
Twitter
Facebook
Website

PLEASE REVIEW OUR GAMES!

Take care,
Les & AOF Team