Hi Fruit Racers,

As you know last Thursday we announced the 4th of September as our early access go live date. The response so far has been great but it has already thrown up lots of questions that we can reply to already.


Some concerns were raised that in the trailer the frame rate appeared to drop in multiscreen, the trailer was created from a version of the game from a couple of months ago and was already stable. Having said that we have improved the fps even further during the last two months and will continue to do so throughout the early access. We are happy with where we are but are striving to improve further.




A kart racing game lives or dies with its gameplay, our aim is for the game to be easy to play but hard to master indeed it’s our mantra. We added a strategic element with the powerups to ensure player engagement, let us explain more.

Each kart has a juicer on the back and each juicer contains 4 tanks. Fill each tank by collecting the relevant fruit along the track. Once 1 tank is full you can use a special move however if wait until 2 tanks are full then the special move will be more powerful and even more so with 3 full tanks. Now wait until all 4 tanks are full and you can use your mega-juice move, each character has a unique special mega-juice move you will need to try them all to find your favourite.




We read several comments about the fact that All-Star Fruit Racing has an all-female cast some positive and some less so. We wanted to leave just a little bit more of suspense but... 😊 The cast is male and female although the majority​​​ are female. We sketched dozens of characters and simply chose the ones we liked the most of which are of the gentler sex. p.s. we discarded the characters that we thought were too sexy as it was not the feel we were looking for.




Fruit why fruit? This is our first game so obviously we don’t have a catalogue of characters to pull from so we needed something else that everyone could identify with. Fruit ticked all the right boxes as everyone recognises fruit and almost everyone thinks of fruit with a degree of affection. Most importantly a fruit theme gave our artists incredible flexibility and really go their “Fruit juices” flowing (sorry couldn’t resist). Join our early access and you can see if you can spot the several tributes to our favourite movies.

But there's more to it....




Lots of comments regarding Mario / CTR / Sonic and the Sugar Rush game in the film Wreck It Ralph, we love all of these games and films and we played and watched them constantly during our design period so yes of course they had an influence but it was only a starting point. We really hope to have brought a new dimension to kart racing for sure it’s the first true next gen kart racer and nothing previous has had the cool fresh look of fruit or the not so hidden tributes mentioned earlier.

Keep your questions and comments coming and remember All-Star Fruit Racing available 4th September in Early Access.

Hi Fruit Racers,

As you know last Thursday we announced the 4th of September as our early access go live date. The response so far has been great but it has already thrown up lots of questions that we can reply to already.


Some concerns were raised that in the trailer the frame rate appeared to drop in multiscreen, the trailer was created from a version of the game from a couple of months ago and was already stable. Having said that we have improved the fps even further during the last two months and will continue to do so throughout the early access. We are happy with where we are but are striving to improve further.




A kart racing game lives or dies with its gameplay, our aim is for the game to be easy to play but hard to master indeed it’s our mantra. We added a strategic element with the powerups to ensure player engagement, let us explain more.

Each kart has a juicer on the back and each juicer contains 4 tanks. Fill each tank by collecting the relevant fruit along the track. Once 1 tank is full you can use a special move however if wait until 2 tanks are full then the special move will be more powerful and even more so with 3 full tanks. Now wait until all 4 tanks are full and you can use your mega-juice move, each character has a unique special mega-juice move you will need to try them all to find your favourite.




We read several comments about the fact that All-Star Fruit Racing has an all-female cast some positive and some less so. We wanted to leave just a little bit more of suspense but... 😊 The cast is male and female although the majority​​​ are female. We sketched dozens of characters and simply chose the ones we liked the most of which are of the gentler sex. p.s. we discarded the characters that we thought were too sexy as it was not the feel we were looking for.




Fruit why fruit? This is our first game so obviously we don’t have a catalogue of characters to pull from so we needed something else that everyone could identify with. Fruit ticked all the right boxes as everyone recognises fruit and almost everyone thinks of fruit with a degree of affection. Most importantly a fruit theme gave our artists incredible flexibility and really go their “Fruit juices” flowing (sorry couldn’t resist). Join our early access and you can see if you can spot the several tributes to our favourite movies.

But there's more to it....




Lots of comments regarding Mario / CTR / Sonic and the Sugar Rush game in the film Wreck It Ralph, we love all of these games and films and we played and watched them constantly during our design period so yes of course they had an influence but it was only a starting point. We really hope to have brought a new dimension to kart racing for sure it’s the first true next gen kart racer and nothing previous has had the cool fresh look of fruit or the not so hidden tributes mentioned earlier.

Keep your questions and comments coming and remember All-Star Fruit Racing available 4th September in Early Access.

• Reworked Bike's Interface:
  
  — Skill cooldowns integrated
  — Current score added
  — Color dependencies
  
  
• Quick Join button is hidden when no lobbies are created.
  
• Now you can't join to a full room.
  
• Cleared some bugs from Leaderboards.
  
• Minor interface improvements and bugfixes.
  
• New sounds added.
  
• Added new music tracks from Isidor.

• Expanded Leaderboards, fixed some issues with statistics.
  
• Now you can see your place in the Leaderboards.
  
• Skip Counter button now works as it should.
  
• Ready/Rematch button bug fixed.
  
• Texts and Descriptions spellcheck.
  
• Few bugfixes before weekends.

• Individual Collisions detector to create interesting game situations.
  
• Co-Op 2v2 (not yet confirmed)

• Reworked Bike's Interface:
  
  — Skill cooldowns integrated
  — Current score added
  — Color dependencies
  
  
• Quick Join button is hidden when no lobbies are created.
  
• Now you can't join to a full room.
  
• Cleared some bugs from Leaderboards.
  
• Minor interface improvements and bugfixes.
  
• New sounds added.
  
• Added new music tracks from Isidor.

• Expanded Leaderboards, fixed some issues with statistics.
  
• Now you can see your place in the Leaderboards.
  
• Skip Counter button now works as it should.
  
• Ready/Rematch button bug fixed.
  
• Texts and Descriptions spellcheck.
  
• Few bugfixes before weekends.

• Individual Collisions detector to create interesting game situations.
  
• Co-Op 2v2 (not yet confirmed)

-keyboard shortcuts editor added in options.
-new order command: 'follow me'. (this order is selected by default)
-when you unlock the camera and can scroll by pressing the middle button of the mouse.
-1 new tower: 'ice tower'.
-1 new spell: 'chain lightning'.
-5 new perks: 'army of the dead', 'cavalry', 'levitation', 'theology', 'visual acuity'.

New appearances:
-2 new male faces.
-1 new male cloth.
-1 new male shoes.
-1 new female hair.
-1 new feline female ears.
-2 new female dresses.

Balancing:
-poison immunity added to lich transformation.
-buff bonus are scaled up by your skills.

Bugs corrected:
-death count in statistics corrected.
-some fixes for mods.
-few bugs corrected.

-keyboard shortcuts editor added in options.
-new order command: 'follow me'. (this order is selected by default)
-when you unlock the camera and can scroll by pressing the middle button of the mouse.
-1 new tower: 'ice tower'.
-1 new spell: 'chain lightning'.
-5 new perks: 'army of the dead', 'cavalry', 'levitation', 'theology', 'visual acuity'.

New appearances:
-2 new male faces.
-1 new male cloth.
-1 new male shoes.
-1 new female hair.
-1 new feline female ears.
-2 new female dresses.

Balancing:
-poison immunity added to lich transformation.
-buff bonus are scaled up by your skills.

Bugs corrected:
-death count in statistics corrected.
-some fixes for mods.
-few bugs corrected.

Graphics

• New world map graphics for all terrain types and some sites (3 sizes of 2 city variants and wizard towers). There are still aspects of the world map pending overhaul: armies, the remaining sites, province borders, rivers, coastlines, fog-of-war.

Battle Engine

• During battles hovering over a unit will display it's stats, attacks and abilities on a "unit card" panel. The display is sticky until hovering over a new unit, and has a minimize/maximize button.
  
• Spells can be cast during battles. Many battle spells do not have implemented effects yet and the ones that do, do not have any sound or visual effects yet.
  
• Added a pre-battle phase, where depending on the nature of the battle and opposing forces there may be one or more choices to make. These can affect the battle or even potentially avoid it (e.g. a successful retreat before battle occurs).
  
• Battles can now be paused.
  
• The Battle Window now stays open when a battle ends, allowing the player time to read the log and inspect the battlefield, until clicking the close button.
  
• The Battle Window log now appends messages to the top instead of the bottom.
  
• Reworked physical damage bonus due to strength to depend on weapon-specific values and be less advantageous to strong units
  
• Changed battle window side-specific unit and log colors to be more readable and accommodate color-blindness.
  
• The Battle Window log now includes a timestamp for each line.

Spells and Magic

• Fireball (battle spell). It deals 8 Fire damage to up to 10 targets in a unit.
  
• Power Word: Pain (battle spell). It deals 4 Dark damage to 20% of the targets in a unit. The unit suffers -1 Discipline, -1 Shock and -1
  Melee Skill for 10 seconds if living and not mindless or hardy.
  
• Terrible Visage (battle spell). It gives the target unit the Terror special ability for 4 seconds. This ability reduces the effective courage of opposing units which are not mindless or terror-causing - and as such the spell can also be used to grant (temporary) immunity when faced with a terror-causing foe.
  
• Shrapnel (battle spell). It inflicts 25 + (25% of target unit size) hits for 4 Physical damage, increased to 6 if target unit has armor less than 3.
  
• Curse of Rust (battle spell). Reduces armor of a unit by 7 (down to 0). Can only target units with metal armor and/or the Metal tag.
  
• Hellfire (battle spell). It causes the target unit to suffer 2-10 hits for 3 Dire+ 3 Dark damage very 4 seconds for 16 seconds. While in effect, any Demons attacking the target gain a temporary buff "Vigor: Hellfire" which gives +2 Melee Skill, +2 Fire Damage and +3 Courage.
  
• Lightning Bolt (battle spell). It which deals up to 5 hits for 12 Lightning damage to the target. If the unit is
  wearing metal armor, the numbers of hits is doubled and the damage increased by 50%.
  
• Magic Missiles (battle spell). It causes 7-18 hits for 6 Arcane damage to the target.
  
• Blur (battle spell). It gives Ranged Avoidance to the target for the remainder of the battle (or until dispelled).
  
• Rapid Reload (battle spell). It halves the reload delay of a crossbow-using unit for 8 seconds. It is not auto-granted by mastery progression but needs to be researched (prerequisites are Artifice 3 and War 1).
  
• Boost Constructs (battle spell). Usable on Constructs, giving +1 Melee Skill, +1 Melee Power, +1 Melee Shock, +2 Movement for 5 seconds.
  
• Disassemble (battle spell). Usable on Constructs, causing 5-25 hits for 10 True damage, but with (5+Hit Points+Controller Artifice Mastery)% to resist. Each kill grants 1 Mana to the caster. The spell is not auto-granted by mastery progression but needs to be researched (prerequisites are Artifice 5 and Destruction 3).

General

• Compression is now used to reduce the size of save game files.
  
• Optimized the save game code. As the majority of turn processing is taken up by the auto-save, this has a significant impact on turn processing speed.
  
• Foundations for localization/translation added. The language can be changed in the Game Settings window. Currently only the main menu is translated. Also note the list of languages is not final, and may or may not reflect the order in which localization occurs.
  
• Extended the tutorial to cover the different parts of the Wizard/Magic window.
  
• Names are now generated for Oceans, Seas and Lakes.
  
• New terrain types: Arctic Hills, Arctic Mountains, Taiga (Arctic Forest), Arid Hills, Arid Mountains, Shrublands, Marsh, Forested Hills, Forested Mountains, Desert Hills, Desert Mountains. World generation will place these according to local climate and humidity.
  
• City-based rebels can now assault their origin city without sieging. This also fixes an issue where the rebel AI could not take back an undefended city due to a reluctance to commence a siege.

User Interface

• Wizard Project cost penalty text has been changed to be more clear.
  
• Added a fade-in effect for tooltips
  
• Changed tooltips for masteries to have 2 columns
  
• The City Window now has a button which switches between "Construction" and "Buildings" for player-controlled cities, so that you inspect the already constructed buildings.
  
• When a follower suggests a task, the dialog now has a side panel with portrait+info for the relevant follower.
  
• The (active) level up dialog now shows portrait+info for the relevant follower and has tool tips with trait/skill mechanics for the choices.
  
• The (passive) level up dialog now has tool tips for followers and traits/skills.
  
• The choice of what to do with the leader of a conquered city (depose/execute/exile/etc.) now includes portrait+info for the leader character.
  
• Added a button next to the minimap which toggles province borders on/off.
  
• Added a button next to the minimap which toggles army visibility on/off.
  
• Added a button next to the minimap which toggles site visibility on/off.
  
• Added a toggle to hide all the filter buttons.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue with the text in the Wizard Project window being oddly aligned.
  
• Fixed issue with the text in the Construction Project window being oddly aligned.
  
• Fixed issue with army icons being minimized without reason.
  
• Fixed issue with charge status not being applied correctly during battles.
  
• Fixed issue with units being able to hit retreating enemies from a rather extreme distance with melee attacks
  
• Fixed issue with weird battle reports in the Encyclopedia for battles resolved via the new battle engine
  
• Fixed issue with the Demonic Strength spell being permanent instead of lasting 6 turns
  
• Fixed some difficult-to-click buttons in the game setup.
  
• Fixed some tooltip alignment issues (particularly visible when using UI scaling).
  
• Fixed issue with lengthy tooltips extending below the edge of the screen. These are now split into columns, trying to divide along paragraphs/sections.
  
• Fixed issue with the game setup windows disappearing and bugging the game setup flow.
  
• Fixed issue with province labels not being cleared when quitting a game until starting a new one.
  
• Fixed issue with corrupt save games making the load dialog unusable. They will now be marked as unloadable instead, allowing the player to delete
  them and/or load a non-corrupted save game.
  
• Fixed issue with unit/attack abilities: Anti-Cavalry, Anti-Monsters and Monster Slayers. These would cause crashes and hangs in the battle engine.
  
• Fixed issue with some map sprites being off-center.
  
• Fixed issue with AI factions conquering a player city not triggering a notification.

Graphics

• New world map graphics for all terrain types and some sites (3 sizes of 2 city variants and wizard towers). There are still aspects of the world map pending overhaul: armies, the remaining sites, province borders, rivers, coastlines, fog-of-war.

Battle Engine

• During battles hovering over a unit will display it's stats, attacks and abilities on a "unit card" panel. The display is sticky until hovering over a new unit, and has a minimize/maximize button.
  
• Spells can be cast during battles. Many battle spells do not have implemented effects yet and the ones that do, do not have any sound or visual effects yet.
  
• Added a pre-battle phase, where depending on the nature of the battle and opposing forces there may be one or more choices to make. These can affect the battle or even potentially avoid it (e.g. a successful retreat before battle occurs).
  
• Battles can now be paused.
  
• The Battle Window now stays open when a battle ends, allowing the player time to read the log and inspect the battlefield, until clicking the close button.
  
• The Battle Window log now appends messages to the top instead of the bottom.
  
• Reworked physical damage bonus due to strength to depend on weapon-specific values and be less advantageous to strong units
  
• Changed battle window side-specific unit and log colors to be more readable and accommodate color-blindness.
  
• The Battle Window log now includes a timestamp for each line.

Spells and Magic

• Fireball (battle spell). It deals 8 Fire damage to up to 10 targets in a unit.
  
• Power Word: Pain (battle spell). It deals 4 Dark damage to 20% of the targets in a unit. The unit suffers -1 Discipline, -1 Shock and -1
  Melee Skill for 10 seconds if living and not mindless or hardy.
  
• Terrible Visage (battle spell). It gives the target unit the Terror special ability for 4 seconds. This ability reduces the effective courage of opposing units which are not mindless or terror-causing - and as such the spell can also be used to grant (temporary) immunity when faced with a terror-causing foe.
  
• Shrapnel (battle spell). It inflicts 25 + (25% of target unit size) hits for 4 Physical damage, increased to 6 if target unit has armor less than 3.
  
• Curse of Rust (battle spell). Reduces armor of a unit by 7 (down to 0). Can only target units with metal armor and/or the Metal tag.
  
• Hellfire (battle spell). It causes the target unit to suffer 2-10 hits for 3 Dire+ 3 Dark damage very 4 seconds for 16 seconds. While in effect, any Demons attacking the target gain a temporary buff "Vigor: Hellfire" which gives +2 Melee Skill, +2 Fire Damage and +3 Courage.
  
• Lightning Bolt (battle spell). It which deals up to 5 hits for 12 Lightning damage to the target. If the unit is
  wearing metal armor, the numbers of hits is doubled and the damage increased by 50%.
  
• Magic Missiles (battle spell). It causes 7-18 hits for 6 Arcane damage to the target.
  
• Blur (battle spell). It gives Ranged Avoidance to the target for the remainder of the battle (or until dispelled).
  
• Rapid Reload (battle spell). It halves the reload delay of a crossbow-using unit for 8 seconds. It is not auto-granted by mastery progression but needs to be researched (prerequisites are Artifice 3 and War 1).
  
• Boost Constructs (battle spell). Usable on Constructs, giving +1 Melee Skill, +1 Melee Power, +1 Melee Shock, +2 Movement for 5 seconds.
  
• Disassemble (battle spell). Usable on Constructs, causing 5-25 hits for 10 True damage, but with (5+Hit Points+Controller Artifice Mastery)% to resist. Each kill grants 1 Mana to the caster. The spell is not auto-granted by mastery progression but needs to be researched (prerequisites are Artifice 5 and Destruction 3).

General

• Compression is now used to reduce the size of save game files.
  
• Optimized the save game code. As the majority of turn processing is taken up by the auto-save, this has a significant impact on turn processing speed.
  
• Foundations for localization/translation added. The language can be changed in the Game Settings window. Currently only the main menu is translated. Also note the list of languages is not final, and may or may not reflect the order in which localization occurs.
  
• Extended the tutorial to cover the different parts of the Wizard/Magic window.
  
• Names are now generated for Oceans, Seas and Lakes.
  
• New terrain types: Arctic Hills, Arctic Mountains, Taiga (Arctic Forest), Arid Hills, Arid Mountains, Shrublands, Marsh, Forested Hills, Forested Mountains, Desert Hills, Desert Mountains. World generation will place these according to local climate and humidity.
  
• City-based rebels can now assault their origin city without sieging. This also fixes an issue where the rebel AI could not take back an undefended city due to a reluctance to commence a siege.

User Interface

• Wizard Project cost penalty text has been changed to be more clear.
  
• Added a fade-in effect for tooltips
  
• Changed tooltips for masteries to have 2 columns
  
• The City Window now has a button which switches between "Construction" and "Buildings" for player-controlled cities, so that you inspect the already constructed buildings.
  
• When a follower suggests a task, the dialog now has a side panel with portrait+info for the relevant follower.
  
• The (active) level up dialog now shows portrait+info for the relevant follower and has tool tips with trait/skill mechanics for the choices.
  
• The (passive) level up dialog now has tool tips for followers and traits/skills.
  
• The choice of what to do with the leader of a conquered city (depose/execute/exile/etc.) now includes portrait+info for the leader character.
  
• Added a button next to the minimap which toggles province borders on/off.
  
• Added a button next to the minimap which toggles army visibility on/off.
  
• Added a button next to the minimap which toggles site visibility on/off.
  
• Added a toggle to hide all the filter buttons.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed issue with the text in the Wizard Project window being oddly aligned.
  
• Fixed issue with the text in the Construction Project window being oddly aligned.
  
• Fixed issue with army icons being minimized without reason.
  
• Fixed issue with charge status not being applied correctly during battles.
  
• Fixed issue with units being able to hit retreating enemies from a rather extreme distance with melee attacks
  
• Fixed issue with weird battle reports in the Encyclopedia for battles resolved via the new battle engine
  
• Fixed issue with the Demonic Strength spell being permanent instead of lasting 6 turns
  
• Fixed some difficult-to-click buttons in the game setup.
  
• Fixed some tooltip alignment issues (particularly visible when using UI scaling).
  
• Fixed issue with lengthy tooltips extending below the edge of the screen. These are now split into columns, trying to divide along paragraphs/sections.
  
• Fixed issue with the game setup windows disappearing and bugging the game setup flow.
  
• Fixed issue with province labels not being cleared when quitting a game until starting a new one.
  
• Fixed issue with corrupt save games making the load dialog unusable. They will now be marked as unloadable instead, allowing the player to delete
  them and/or load a non-corrupted save game.
  
• Fixed issue with unit/attack abilities: Anti-Cavalry, Anti-Monsters and Monster Slayers. These would cause crashes and hangs in the battle engine.
  
• Fixed issue with some map sprites being off-center.
  
• Fixed issue with AI factions conquering a player city not triggering a notification.

Going forward, we want to give our community the opportunity to get their burning questions answered! Do you have anything that you'd like to ask us? 🤔

Throw us your questions into the comments and we'll answer as many as we can in our next Community Blog! 📚

(Please DO NOT use this post to leave game suggestions and/or report bugs.)

Going forward, we want to give our community the opportunity to get their burning questions answered! Do you have anything that you'd like to ask us? 🤔

Throw us your questions into the comments and we'll answer as many as we can in our next Community Blog! 📚

(Please DO NOT use this post to leave game suggestions and/or report bugs.)