First of all, we would like to thank everyone that immediately sent us bug reports! It helped a lot and gave us a chance to fix the issues way faster. So please keep on posting them as it makes the game better for everyone!

We would also like to apologize for the issues with incompatible saves. We try our best to not break them, still sometimes when a major update is done, it changes the structure of saves file. This could cause a huge amount of bugs if loaded in the new game version.

There are good news tho! Ondrej adjusted files for 1.20 update and old saves made in 1.19 should work again! Although this is something we can not guarantee 100% with every major update.

Still, from now on there will be a second branch with the older game version available to everyone. If you get incompatible save error message, switch to the older branch and you can continue playing in the older game version. See the following video to see how to switch the game version

https://youtu.be/xzdGaRGwetQ

• Saves made in 1.19 should be functional again in 1.20
  
• Ship hull hp issue fixed
  
• Lava on landing site damaging drillship was removed
  
• Blast door on the side of the ship won't open underground anymore
  
• Several places where the player could get stuck in ground fixed
  
• Fixed levitating stones and bunch of badly placed rocks
  
• Spelling mistakes + wrong sentences fix
  
• Unlootable COGs can be looted again
  
• No dual ladders in COG drillships anymore
  
• Quest fixes + change in the structure
  
• State selector animation fixed
  
• No giant white boxes underground anymore

Thanks again!

~ Volcanoids Dev Squad

Listen up Partisans,

We saw your feedback, plotted for days and now it's finally here! Build a pilot seat, explore underground maps, mine with your drillship, discover caves, spy on your enemies using the periscope, and more in the Travel Update.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VswT1fR2etQ
Captain put together a quick manual below so you understand how each feature works and don't get toasted the second you jump outta the submarine!















With this update, our intention was to solve following issues frequently reported by community: nothing to do underground, previous traveling system being just a fancy fast travel and not being able to mine with your drillship. This is also only the first iteration. In future updates, you can look forward to things like underground combat, toolbar in the travel map view (for torpedoes, boarding drones, self-repair) and survival mechanics.

Big thanks to our amazing community for helping us name all these new locations! Coming up with names is probably the hardest part of game development (not joking).

• Music audio slider in options
  
• Once a dead COG is looted, the outline no longer shows
  
• New quest hud marker system that keeps markers at the center of the screen
  
• Landing site numbers replaced by names suggested by the community
  
• Ore deposit spawn locations have been decreased, ore respawns only after the eruption
  
• Starter drillship has more items in inventory which makes the first few quests a lot more faster, and less about endless checklists
  
• COG attack groups no longer camp on free landing sites, but run between all landing sites within the node
  
• Unity launcher has been removed
  
• Ability to call drillship to other landing sites is removed, but might be brought back in future (the ability to call it under and above is still available)
  
• Target selector has been removed and will be remembered only in Captain's deck
  
• Map stand has a different texture and will be improved in future

• Get development news and sneak peeks on Twitter or Facebook
  
• Participate in contests and chat with the development team on Discord
  
• See upcoming features on Trello
  
• Watch update trailers on YouTube
  
• See highlights from the office and conferences on Instagram

If you have any questions drop them in the comments below or on our social media.

Enjoy, and don't get lost down there!

~ Volcanoids Dev Squad

https://store.steampowered.com/app/951440/Volcanoids/

Volcanoids got officially translated into the 8 most requested languages by the community. Big thanks to anyone that participated in community translations before this, it made the whole process much easier since we already had a foundation. You guys rock!

From now on you can enjoy Volcanoids in:

• French
  
• Spanish
  
• Portuguese (Brazilian)
  
• Russian
  
• Simplified and Traditional Chinese
  
• German
  
• Czech

To change the language simply click on flags located in the main menu.




In this update, we also made some adjustments to the starter drillship to make the beginning more friendly for new players. The drillship now has coal by default, 4x breach replacements and opened coal power plant.

And if you have Volcanoids in your wishlist patiently waiting for the perfect opportunity then stay tuned as there's a sale coming very soon!

• Get development news and sneak peeks on Twitter or Facebook
  
• Participate in contests and chat with the development team on Discord
  
• See upcoming features on Trello
  
• Watch update trailers on YouTube
  
• See what we're up to in real life on Instagram

Hope you enjoy the new languages!

~ Volcanoids Dev Team

The time has come! The time to pack our 3 PCs along with 27 monitors, leave our cozy apartments and move into a real office.

And this was only possible thanks to you. Thanks to all the support, feedback and love you've been showing this project since the very beginning. We are boundlessly humbled and forever grateful. Thank you!









Share your creations with us in the Artwork Section or in our Discord Server and we'll use them as decoration for all the empty walls we have down here.

We already put up some of the awesome creations you guys shared with us. So keep them coming and help us give these bland walls some style!



Thanks again for making this possible!

~ Volcanoids Dev Team

We released a new update fixing a lot of critical bugs that snuck their way into the game in the Gear Up Update such as "enemy drillships kidnapping player" and so on.

With the fixes, we also added a new feature! If you couldn't tell from the thumbnail, from now on you can destroy just the drill of an enemy drillship to take its ability to go underground.

But remember that COGs can do the same to your drillship as well. The drill can be repaired with the repair tool just like any other module or device.

• Player no longer gets kidnapped by COG drillships
  
• COG Research drillships have turret ammo and turrets shoot at the player
  
• The ghost stone in Area 1
  
• Drillships bring new COGs with bigger delay
  
• Several typos and errors in texts
  
• Bug where stolen drillships from COGs can't reach the Volcano cave

Be the first one to know when Volcanoids receives an update by joining the Volcanoids Discord server and following @Volcanoids on Twitter.

Big thanks to anyone that helped us track down these bugs!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/951440/Volcanoids/

Volcanoids is setting a course towards a new update. This time we would like to try something new and release Developer Updates when we have something to tell or show you not just because the calendar said so. When we were working on the "Gear up Update", there were a few Developer Updates that basically said “we are testing” and that's something we'd like to change.

There's a clue for the next update's big feature hidden in the title and picture. Can you guess what is?

Let us know what you think about the changes and what the big feature is going to be in the comments below!


To all bug hunters! There is a new bounty for BUG 002: COG Drillships Kidnapping Players



REWARD

20$ Gift card sent to a Steam account owned by the bug hunter

RULES & INFO

We know this bug is in the game and that it is happening quite a lot. What we do not know is what exactly needs to happen before this bug happens. The bug hunter needs to find out the exact steps that lead to triggering the bug and be the first one to share this info with a developer that successfully reproduces the bug based on the description. Be warned, saves do not help as the bug fixes itself on reload!

If you catch this bug or have any valuable info, please contact fregy_cz on Steam by adding him to friends and send a message, or through Discord in direct messages to Tomas #9155

Thank you and happy hunting!

https://youtu.be/npaotIhlhao

It’s time to gear up and take out everything standing in your quest of reclaiming your lost home! The armory has been upgraded with a lot of new gear on both sides. The submarine crew has granted access to new weapons, while COGs got many new technology items. You will discover all of it on your path of freeing the island from the evil mechanical race.

Before starting the journey, decide how difficult your path will be. If this is your first quest for silencing the volcano, choose easy or normal. Both contain guidance from the Captain, informing you in the beginning and then always being there if needed. For all the Drillship veterans, the challenge of hard difficulty lays ahead of you. If accepted, prepare for tough fights for resources and territory control. No longer is the first drillship served to you. Instead, attack directly from submarine and hunt down a drillship of your choice.

Drillships systems became more demanding on precise engineering, and one sample of COG technology is not enough anymore. Instead, you need to hunt, steel or scavenge technology anywhere you can. Without that, it’s not possible to upgrade the ship and advance to further areas. Take abandoned tech in villages or directly attack COG surface missions to raid their drillships or hunt down the crew.

Those are all the latest news from the Adranos island. Now report to the Captain for debriefing and good luck on your journey!

Full changelog can be found here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/951440/discussions/0/1770385542769004727/


Be the first one to know when Volcanoids receives an update by joining the Volcanoids Discord server and following @Volcanoids on Twitter.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/951440/Volcanoids/

COGs became even smarter and more difficult lately, which is good on one side, but it would be nice to stand a chance against them. A lot of improvements were done on player detection. Even to a point where attacking a drillship will attract attention and COGs will chase the intruder that tries to sabotage their surface mission. On top of that, missed shots that went past a COG or too much noise also reveal your position. Medkits will become your number one friend.


As the release is getting closer, we are going to frequently update the preview branch. If you would like to help us with polishing the final build, please feel free to join. Post any feedback or bug reports in this public thread. New builds will be announced in this thread with the following changelog of what is new in the current build. Please feel free to subscribe to the channel to get a notification each time a new message is added. Just a reminder, preview branch is a testing version of the new update available for anyone that already owns the game.




Each playtesting round, we come up with many new things that need to be tweaked or balanced. Since this update is heavily focused on combat, we need to ensure players have access to all needed equipment and that the difficulty raises gradually with progression on the map. This includes balancing the loot drops and costs of items. Player should always have a chance to fall back, recover and advance again until reaching the goal.




This update turned out to be a long development marathon. We really got to set a better plan for the next update to ensure it won't overflow so much. What was supposed to be a simple improvement of the research system and weapons turned into a complete upgrade of almost all parts in the game. With 1.17 you will get new weapons, specialized drillships, many new items, difficulty settings, new quest system, countless drillship improvements and much more. The changelog is already a few pages long.






We are going to continue polishing the final 1.17 build, together with the Volcanoids community. The quest line will need to be changed a bit, as we adjusted some of the upgrade recipes based on the community feedback. Still, the game can be played from start to finish already, so if you are already familiar with the features and would like to try the new version, jump right into the preview branch.

Testing, bug fixing and game polishing is running on 100%. The same applies for all sorts of balancing and value adjustments based on gameplay experience. Community testers and us are constantly going through the game writing down notes about bugs or things that could be improved. In this phase we should have the final build for 1.17 ready within a week or so. If nothing major shows up you will soon have the new update. Now let's talk about the development from this past week.


Even though it might sound boring, tons of balancing charts were created to make sure gameplay progression moves forward and every item has its place. All is being implemented and tested immediately in new builds.

The main focus was at COG drillships, their equipment, interior devices and loot randomly generated in storage. This is one of the new features, where drillships will have something new every single time you visit one. The loot is still based on the drillship specialization, but the variety of possible items is much wider.




A lot of thought went into drillship crew and their distribution around the island. In general, COGs got a lot smarter and specialized. So next time you storm a drillship, make sure you know what type it is and who might be hanging around. Refinery COGs are deadly up close, but easy to take out in open field. Also, it is beneficial to wait until all crew members leave the drillship and walk towards their locations before trying to attack. Chances of survival will rise greatly.

Fun fact: you can use COG drillships to produce items, your drillship isn't capable of producing yet. So feel free to produce some of the extra ammunition in case you're running low.




Quests are completed for Area 1 now, and we keep testing them in every aspect possible. Ondrej did a very good job on this since many extra actions that players had to do in the old system were removed.

New quest log and system allowing you to repeat certain quests is a new addition from this week. And since it is up to player now, whether to do quests or not, you can help yourself with a little hint from the Captain whenever you get lost. Also, the difficulty selection screen finally got new art.




Simply test, report, fix, rinse and repeat until the game is in good shape. All the new features will be available on the Preview Branch within a few days. We'll post an announcement in the Steam Discussions as well as in our Discord so keep an eye on that if you'd like to give it an early try.

Alright we gotta get back to testing now, so hope you like the progress that was made this week and thanks for reading!