I want to apologize for the complete lack of communication. I was just going to reply in the forums, but figured this was worth an actual news update.

The question seems to be, “What’s the status of development on Punch Bomb?” and “When will it be updated?”

And the answer is...complicated. And it’s a long story.

If you’re reading this post just to find out whether the project is dead or not - rest assured that it’s not dead. It’s just been on hold in my life for a while. I have no intention of officially killing the project or never working on it again.

If you want the whole story, I guess I’ll start at the beginning.

None of this is an excuse. It’s just how it is.

Punch Bomb, originally, was supposed to be my first experiment with game development. It is, was, and always will be an experimental game. My specialty (and career) is visual effects and computer graphics, and I wanted to make a VR game. This was a learning experience, and I am a 100% solo developer. Everything in the game (barring music/sound I got from royalty free databases I subscribe to) has been created by me. From scratch. In Blender and UE4.

It was supposed to be a quick, simple project that I got out the door so I could make more projects. It was supposed to be a learning experience, and I was having a ton of fun.

I released the game in December 2016 in Early Access after having spent a year working on it, and I wanted to finish it within a year. That obviously didn’t happen. Developing a VR game while working a 40 hour per week job that pays the bills is very draining.

A mixture of burnout, self-doubt, and the creeping, constant reminder that my passion project for the past two years was a complete financial failure that almost no one cared about definitely made development slower than it should have been.

However, in spite of all of that, I was still working on it. I had made promises, and I had a game to finish.

2018 came around, and development was still moving but slowed further as I got sick. Really sick. I was exhausted 24/7, and I was having constant night sweats for the entire first half of the year. I was misdiagnosed with the flu multiple times, and then mono. The eventual truth was that I had infective endocarditis caused by strep bacteria on my aortic heart valve, and I had open heart surgery to replace the valve at the end of May in 2018.

Recovery was a long process. Three months for physical recovery (I wasn’t allowed to move much or lift anything heavier than 10 pounds), but the depression lasted a lot longer and still seeps in occasionally.

During the physical recovery, I couldn’t do much other than sit around and either watch TV or play non-physical (read: non-VR) video games. During that time frame, I got really invested in Fortnite and actually started streaming it on YouTube (later moved to Twitch) because I had the time, and it was something that made me feel like I was being at least somewhat productive in my current state.

While recovering, I managed to build a small community around the stream and continued to grow that throughout the rest of 2018, 2019, and the first half of 2020 (still going strong).

My schedule for 2018 and most of 2019 was 40 hours a week at the full time job, streaming for 4 hours 5 nights a week, and improv classes on Wednesday nights.

I also spent a large chunk of time and a lot of late nights in 2019 chasing after/being there for a suicidal girl who struggled with alcoholism. (She got help, she’s doing much better now, we still occasionally keep in touch)

After Twitch Con in San Diego last year, I moved my stream schedule back to 3 nights a week to focus on production value and stream graphics in my new off time. Then, at the beginning of 2020, I made it my new year’s resolution to upload one video every week of 2020 to my new channel that offers stream advice and tutorials. So far, I haven’t missed a week.

I guess the long and short of it is that I got caught up in life.

I also never could figure out what to do next with Punch Bomb. As an experimental game and my first attempt at game development, I was making it up as I went along for the new game mode, and I hit a “developer’s block” of sorts. I didn’t really have a solid vision, I ran into a lot of performance issues with UE4 and my old PC (eventually figured out the issue was one line in a notepad document), and a lot of what I had originally planned just...wasn’t fun…


But throughout ALL of that, I’ve had the constant nagging voice on the back of my neck telling me that I need to finish Punch Bomb. I need to get in there, and I need to finish it. It's my passion project, it's my baby, and I've neglected it.


So what’s the current state of development?
It’s about where the current early access build is...plus a few experiments and additional enemies I’ve tried in my free time for the tunnel mode.

What’s the plan going forward?
For the time being, I’m going to start dedicating at least one live stream per week to working on Punch Bomb over at twitch.tv/oraclefishlive.

It’s not much, but it’s a start towards easing myself back into development. One step at a time.

This week will be Saturday Morning (4/30/2020). Feel free to stop by and tell me how much you hate me for not finishing the game yet.

A lot of what I had planned for the tunnel mode (high quality robot boss battle, etc) is out of scope for one person to handle, so I’m going to simplify the mode and make it an endless mode with leaderboards - putting the focus back on fun, solid mechanics.


I realize that I’m going to upset some people by saying I haven’t really worked on it for the past two years, and I’m genuinely sorry for that and the lack of communication.

But you also bought a fairly polished, fun game with great art for the price of a large cup of coffee. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ - I’ve always priced the game for what I think it’s worth at its current state of development.

So I’d appreciate your patience.

I will finish this game.

It's finally time. After 2 years (and change) of Early Access, the 1.0 release of Them's Fightin' Herds is finally here! But before we get started with the patch notes…

• All options/button configurations have been reset! Please take a moment to reset your preferences before you start playing.
  
• We intend to reset casual ranks at some point soon after release, but not for this update.

We will be streaming a runthrough of Story Mode Chapter 1 with commentary on the development process. The broadcast goes live on Friday the 8th at 3pm PT on our Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/manesix.

Alright! Now check out this fancy new trailer, followed by a list of the items included in the 1.0 update.

• The beginning chapter of story mode (featuring Arizona) is now available!. Our story mode is a unique blend of fighting game, RPG, and adventure. It's certainly been a long time coming, and we're very excited it's finally ready to play.

• Pixel lobby controls have been rearranged so they are more in parallel with Story Mode.
  
• There is now a health bar chaser for the overworld HUD (Damage taken in battles show as red health)
  
• Green (partnered) Pixel Lobby servers can now grant online unlockables such as Shadow Palettes.
  
• There is now a sound effect when you enter the pause menu.
  
• Fixed a casual rank bug that would overwrite your rank with the rank of the player you were spectating. This is why a lot of people were jumping up to max rank inexplicably.

• Fixed a ton of minor bugs that are too numerous to list.
  
• Versus CPU Mode is now available.
  
• All characters now have animated crouch idles.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the manual button icon display toggle on button config to not affect anything.
  
• The AI has been revised overall. You should see a lot more intentional behavior.
  
• Fred has new tutorial portraits.
  
• Fixed a number of typos in the tutorial.

• Fixed a coloring issue on the back of her head when she turns away from the camera in various animations.
  
• Cross Canter now costs the correct amount of super meter(!)

• Oleander's command list now shows that Fred attacks can be held.

• Tianhuo now has updated fire effects on many of her moves.

• The panther has new swipe animations.

-Gamepad auto-search was improved
-Large fonts for dialogues in Video submenu option can be switched (accessibility improving)
-Smooth camera when landing
-Dialogues bubble some bugs were fixed
-Goblins with spears always attack screaming (even if attack begins out of the view)
-CN/JP some hieroglyphs in the menu options were fixed
-Gif tips and bubble texts GUI alignment was improved

-Team mode in multiplayer. Play 2v2 or 3v1 or 2v1v1!
-Option to disable handicaps in games
-Balancing changes to Ibis and Golems
-Teleport spells are no longer removed when portal appears
-Multiplayer games with +powers now have more magic cubes
-Spell packs from the mobile versions are now available in Steam
-Fix for seeing eye not being able to spy on all opponents spells
-Fix for Warlocks graves exploding
-Fix for rare graphics bug

Fixed a serious issue with Clear buttons for custom maps, which would cause them to clear official map save files instead of the custom ones.

1, We increase the resolution to 1920*1080, it’s no longer a windowed game.

2, Redesign the interface of the combat system

3, Redraw the world map, it’s now much bigger

4, We redesigned some of the character, more appropriate with our new resolution

5, Updates some of the story (from next update we will mostly focus on the story)

6, Add 2 more classical character for the player to choose

7, And many small optimizations (options, interfaces, effects, etc.)

Kindly remind: Because we still have a lot of stories that need to put into the game which means the old saves will not be able to play with our updates.

Version 1.6.7 is now available for Acceleration of SUGURI 2!

The update adds support for 2 new languages: Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.


In addition, a new option from the pause menu now lets players enable/disable a display for hitboxes while in Training or Memory mode. This lets you see collision areas for attacks, characters and other objects!


Stay tuned for more updates!

“Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”

― Napoleon Bonaparte

Greetings Hamlet Dwellers!

Today we wanted to give a glimpse into some of the mechanical changes as well as the release date for The Butcher’s Circus. Grab a friend or a foe and prepare yourselves because the Circus arrives at the Hamlet on May 28th.

In just a few weeks, all players who own Darkest Dungeon on Steam can join the fray! We can’t be more excited to have a release on the horizon as we’ve been heads down deep on Darkest Dungeon 2 and Circus development and haven’t had the pleasure of being able to present something to our community in some time. Soon, we can welcome you inside the big tent for us all to celebrate what we think is an interesting new way to play Darkest Dungeon.

As a little preview, let’s go over probably the biggest difference players will see when jumping into the ring: changes to turn order and initiative.

Normally in Darkest Dungeon, at the start of each combat round we roll all combatants’ initiative to establish a turn order. This initiative is the combination of the character’s speed plus a die roll. We don’t explicitly show who will act next because we like there to be some amount of unknown information that represents the chaos of a fight. Instead we use gold pips on the actors to show who has yet to act. However, in the Circus, it works quite a bit differently.



At the start of a match there is a coin flip, whomever wins the flip acts first. That is of course quite valuable, so the loser gets a special team-wide buff that lasts for the entire first round.

The starting player then gets to choose which hero to use first. That’s right–no initiative!

After that hero acts, play passes to the other player and they in turn get to choose a hero to act. Action continues to alternate back and forth between players in this way until all heroes have acted. Then a new round begins.



Although we are fans of some good old-fashioned RNG (as you well know), relying on the base game initiative system would introduce too much randomness into the outcome of a single PvP combat match.

This new mechanic introduces a huge new layer of decision making into combat. Do I go for immediate damage with Crusader or Leper? Or do I set up some marks with my Houndmaster or Bounty Hunter so that my Arbalest can score big kills? Should you activate the hero most vulnerable to being stunned first, even though ideally you’d like to leave them for last in order to combo or do a saving heal? It creates an interesting cat and mouse dynamic for the first half of the match as you attempt to outmaneuver and activate your chosen strategy while interrupting your opponent’s.

Along with the initiative change, we’ve also made other combat changes to enhance the PvP experience, but we’ll leave you to discover those in the Arena. It’s a whole new battle out there! However, rest assured that the single player campaign and combat will continue to function as they always have.

Add The Butcher’s Circus to your Steam’s Wishlist today and be notified the minute the DLC releases on May 28th! In anticipation of the release, we also invite you to join our Discord and speculate wildly with our welcoming community!

Discord link: https://discordapp.com/invite/darkestdungeon

Blog link: https://www.darkestdungeon.com/the-butchers-circus-dlc-releases-on-may-28th/

[Update]

・Added EASY MODE
　By turning on the EASY MODE from the option menu,
　You can play the game with no time limit.
　( Instead of making the game easier, you'll no longer get a time bonus. )

[Improvement]

・Added the adjustment function of BGM and SE.

Your feedback is very important so this update contains a completely new hacking system.

Version 0.2 aka April Update has also more changes:
- cyber defense system
- bigger fonts and better contrast of texts
- some UI changes
- information about detection risk
- fix several bugs (and add new ones)