I was really happy with the new visual style I had developed over the previous few months of development, but what I had done up to this point was really just conceptual stuff and nothing that would really function properly as a game, so I had to start thinking about the kind of things I wanted to be in the game and how I would represent them in this new style.



First off, I simplified the design of the buttons that line the bottom of the screen to give them a bit more energy, and gave them some functionality so they spawn particles when they're popped which get sucked in by the player, refilling their energy or health bar depending on the colour, and also emit a laser type thing that will take out enemies.

At this point I was still interested in trying to implement the Zoetrope frames, but was starting to be a bit more open to just abandoning that altogether if I felt it wasn't working. I also changed the background colour so I could play around with the enemy colours a bit more.



I wanted to implement a simple multiplier system as well (the multiplier bar increases with every enemy kill and when full ticks up the multiplier, or ticks it down if you take too long and the bar empties), so I had a look at some other Norman McLaren films to get some ideas for how it might look, and ended up going with this design based on the visual representation of the sound track on a piece of film...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmSzc8mBJCM&feature=emb_title



I'm still not 100% convinced on this design, but it's been there ever since so I'll probably end up sticking with it!

So most of the basic elements of the game were in place now and I was pretty happy with how it was looking, but the placeholder enemies felt like they were sucking some of the energy out of it, so the next period of development was focused on coming up with a few enemy types while trying to maintain the visual language I'd established...

With just one week to go until the launch of our game, we're sitting at the very edge of our seats and giving everything a final check-up to clean up any lingering issues and give everything a good polish!

Naturally, there has been a lot of activity from our side, so here's our weekly news roundup!

This was something that our community has requested many times throughout the year, so we're happy to tell you that we have heard you and we have acted. We put in some time to clean up a few issues on our past demo build and have created a new Steam page for it!



So, if you've ever wanted to try our game, or if you're the type of person who wants to try a game before purchasing it, you can do so here.



Next up we have the Steam Game Festival! It's becoming a bit of a tradition for us to take part and this time round is no different, Raji: An Ancient Epic is taking part in the Autumn Steam Game Festival! This is an excellent online festival that has always helped countless new people discover our game!



So to all of our new community members and new fans, we welcome you here with open arms!



Time for some hot news! We've been in talks with several huge subreddits about the possibility of us holding an AMA with them, so we're really happy to finally announce them!



Our first one will be on the 16th of October on r/pcgaming at 8am PDT/ 10am EST/ 7:30pm IST / 06:00 pm CEST.

For those of you that do not know what an AMA is: it is an event where a person (or a specific group of people - in our case the game's development team) announce to everyone that they will be at a specific (virtual) location and the anyone can join and ask us anything that they way (AMA = Ask Me Anything!). We'll then do our best to answer your questions as honestly and openly as possible!



For the game development fans out there, we made a blocktober special video. As we're very close to launching, this is a perfect opportunity to really look at how far we've come.





And that's it for this week's post, don't forget that our game launches on the 15th of October so next week this time, you'll all be in-game fighting the demons that have invaded ancient India!

Hello everyone! We have deployed a hotfix based on your feedback. List of resolved issues:

1) Fixed issue when you could get stuck at the security PC at the first level.
2) Fixed issue when you could get stuck in Geekspot's security room.
3) Fixed errors where some parts of the menu weren't working if you use Dualshock controller.
4) Fixed glitches on credits

If the update didn't appear, try restarting Steam or verifying the game's files' integrity.

We continue working on the improvements of the game; thank you for your suggestions and feedback!

Khaldhun's loyalty quest is now available! In Rite of First Refusal you’ll know more about her master in necromancy arts, and a powerful artifact.

You can start it getting a letter from Scota in the crow spar, after finishing Corrupted Circle quest.

NOTE: the quest is narrative-focused to give the player a legendary, powerful item, but we didn’t implement that system yet. We’ll offer you a stat-boosted weapon instead for the moment!


We've added a friendly notification system to keep track of everything you unlock, loot and find in a new, easy way! You'll find notification icons on the right side of the screen, as you can see in the image below.




Shops
We've improved interactions with store items. Now you can select multiple items to sell them at the same time. Also, we've improved the way we group similar items.

Codex
We've fixed a bug that prevented the codex images from displaying in the right way. We've also made changed in the Codex tab sub-navigation.

New shortcuts
We've added new friendly shortcuts for several menu tabs:

• P for Characters/Party tab
  
• I for the Inventory
  
• M for Local Map
  
• J to open the Missions tab

• Gold material reflections and the blood river in the underworld may create weird visual glitches.
  
• Sometimes the player character can dissapear in Back to Life
  
• Some combinations of helmets and hairs cause an overlay issue when you open the menu. Unequip and equip again solves the problem, but it will happen again if you open the menu.
  
• In Khaldun's loyalty quest, if you go to the exit in Chamber of Revelation cave before you complete the quest, the game becomes unstable and crashes.

Although these issues are not currently fixed, we are working on that. Thanks for your feedback and reports!

Hey Survivalists!

We're absolutely losing our bananas that The Survivalists is now fully launched on Steam! Thank you to everyone for your support so far and we hope you have an absolute blast in the game!

We'll stop monkeying around, here's our launch trailer:


https://store.steampowered.com/app/897450/The_Survivalists/


If you haven't heard of The Survivalists before it's a procedurally generated and adventure-filled survival sandbox set in The Escapists universe. Explore, build, craft and even train monkeys with up to three friends in a desperate bid to survive. Have you got what it takes to be a Survivalist?




Explore a procedurally generated world of islands, full of exciting biomes, quests and more to discover! Each new character made generates a entirely new world, plus join online games to enter a friends set of unique islands!




Don't just survive... thrive! Build a new home or epic base for you and friends! Bolster you defenses against a whole host of hostiles that could raid your camp and take your supplies!


Shipwrecked life in The Survivalists is helped through its unique Monkey Mimic system, where players train up to 20 local primates to do a raft of tasks and help automate systems, from cooking and crafting, to collecting resources. Tasks can be chained together like a production line, so monkeys help make island life run a little smoother. 




Get crafty and become a master tinkerer in island contraptions. Make tools, furniture, weapons and more that will help you survive on the islands.




Danger stalks the islands with bands of orcs that patrol the shores. Many more hostile creatures will happily make a meal out of you. Arm yourself and your monkey friends to defend your new home and stay safe on your adventures. Also keep a tab of your hunger as you need to stay in good health for island life!






Wait, what is that?


We sincerely hope you have an amazing island adventure! There will be more content on the horizon in future patches but we'll share more on that a little while after launch celebrations!

For all the latest news check out these links:

The Survivalists Discord
The Survivalists Twitter
The Survivalists Facebook
Team 17 Twitter
Team 17 Facebook
Team 17 Discord

Hi,

my name is Emil and I am a semi-solo developer of Graviter, a smart game about Gravity.

Graviter is a real world physics based game about manipulating the gravitational forces.
You shrink and enlarge bodies, move them around to find your way through over a hundred different levels of varying complexity.
It not only features 101 diversified level of gravity issues but delivers a nice & instriguing story behind...

Well, Graviter is semi-solo developer game.
I did coding, game design, levels (101!), graphics.
The nostalgic music you can hear in the game was created by Kai Engel.
I mean it is semi-solo because some ideas have been Q&A-ed, polished and updated in collaboration with No Gravity Games.
Hope you enjoy it!

I spend over a year on Graviter, it has had some twists and turns and I really like the final outcome.
My dev journey is about to finish, Graviter should be released in Q1 2021.

Let's watch my "developer play" video.
I will explain the game mechanics and tell how cool the game is.

Oooh, did not mention to tell you to play the demo, right? :)
Enjoy it as much as you can and leave your comments, I really appreciate your support!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1255920/Graviter/

Thank you all!
Emil

Hey!

As promised, we’re coming back with the best paintings of September made by the members of our amazing SuchArt community. Yeah, we’re a bit late again and yeah, we cheated with the number, but sorry, we’re still not robots (unfortunately). And you’re reading this either to look at cool pics or find yourself on the list, right? So who cares about the number thing at all.

Anyway, our discord server where we’re giving out demo keys (if you see this during the Steam Autumn Festival, pls note that you can get permanent access to the demo there) and where people share their paintings has grown quite a bit: in the August top we wrote that we almost hit 1k, but now it’s already more than 2.7k members, isn’t it awesome? No wonder it’s getting harder and harder to only pick 10 works, as there are just too many good ones now.

Okay, don’t wanna keep you any longer on the intro, so let’s make the rest quick:

Join our discord here: discord.gg/4vTRcfS

Read about SuchArtober painting contest here (you can win the full game Steam key, so it’s worth checking out, really)

Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/SuchArtGame

And now let’s get started!




Art critics would say that it’s a pentaptych showing the falling of a small solar system body in outer space (wait, would they?). But I’d say that’s the most elegant way to replace a big canvas I’ve seen so far.




Datura becomes a regular of our tops, but whose fault is it that he’s just so good at virtual painting? It’s a truly amazing job — keep it up, Datura, and we’ll make sure to reserve a place in the next top for you!




It’s also not the first time Denis485 makes it to the top 10, and he also totally deserves it — we love how the colours mix in this painting, it’s just so satisfying to look at.




Minimalistic yet extremely vivid and stylish elephant — kinda wanna hang this in a scandinavian-style apartment (and it’s a compliment!).




Oh, I miss the ocean badly, so this work makes me feel both really good and kinda bittersweet-bad at the same time. Nevertheless, it’s beautifully painted and doesn’t look static as it often happens with the water paintings, all thanks to the great work with colours and dynamic waves.




A beautiful portrait of a beautiful girl — sometimes you just don’t need anything extraordinary to make something awesome.




The second elephant in the top, but totally different from the previous one — I love the calm colours and the cartoonish style. And come on, it’s just ridiculously cute.




I’ll be honest, i’m a quite big anime fan, so painting Korosensei from assasination classroom was pretty much enough to melt my heart. Moreover, the painting itself is really detailed, bright and clear. Combo!




That owl eye stares right into your soul. But really, very nice work with the feather texture, and the eye… well, it strongly reminds me that an owl is a predator after all.




It was really hard to pick one of the author’s work, as all of them are amazing, but ultimately we decided to go with this one — super stylish black-and-white (well, almost) portrait, nice composition, good posture, quite big yet precise strokes. Well done!




The third elephant, and again, absolutely different from the previous ones — sometimes it amazes me how different people do the same thing, like, in totally different ways. It’s bright, bold and kind of street-art style. And look at that trunk!




At a first glance this work may seem unfinished, but after a few sec you see that everything’s in its proper place here — anything extra would draw attention from the astonishing blue hair Spir painted, and who would want that?




And, again, another super stylish portrait, this time it’s Joker. I love the light and shadows here, those are really expressive and take the work to the next level.




It’s one of the most professional murals created in SuchArt I’ve seen so far — everything including the lines is so clear and precise, and the choice of colours is perfect. Like, even if I wanted to find weak spots here, I simply can’t.




Super relaxing pastel colours, clouds, glitter — have I died and gone to heaven?





I had to make an extra category for this one — it gets the “best copy of a masterpiece” award. I still smile every time I see it. And that’s saying a lot, because my favourite meme made me smile only for the first 3 times. Seriously, it’s amazing!



And, I guess, that’s it for September. Of course we could have added many more great works, but this post isn’t infinite, right? So don’t worry if you haven’t made it to this top — I’m 100% sure we’ll see you in the later ones!

Don’t forget to join our discord, participate in #SuchArtober, follow us on Twitter and, of course, wishlist the game if you like it — this is the best possible way to support the project at the moment.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1293180/SuchArt_Genius_Artist_Simulator/

Thank you so much for your attention, and see you soon!

Explore the city of Grant, join the Gilded Claw resistance and learn the ropes of our unique Alchemy system as you battle the Mephistians in engaging strategic content.

Along with the demo, We will be livestreaming a new section of Black Legend during the event. The demo covers the first area of the game including a tutorial and first quest showing you the basics of the game and atmosphere.

Benoit Sokal and Microids are proud to announce today the release of the prologue for the new Syberia adventure, free on Steam 👌



🎮 By letting players access the game ahead of its full release, Benoit Sokal and Microids wish to welcome the fans back into the unique and dreamlike world of Kate Walker’s first adventures. Going back to its roots, Syberia will immerse players in a brand-new story filled with travels, plot twists and emotional situations...

🎮 The game soundtrack is written by the returning composer Inon Zur (Fallout 4, Dragon Age, Prince of Persia), already responsible for the music of Syberia 2 and Syberia 3. The fans will be greeted by a mesmerizing and unforgettable score, paired perfectly with the fascinating universe created by Benoit Sokal.

👉 So be sure to check out the free prologue! 👈

Benoit Sokal and Microids are proud to announce today the release of the prologue for the new Syberia adventure, free on Steam 👌



🎮 By letting players access the game ahead of its full release, Benoit Sokal and Microids wish to welcome the fans back into the unique and dreamlike world of Kate Walker’s first adventures. Going back to its roots, Syberia will immerse players in a brand-new story filled with travels, plot twists and emotional situations...

🎮 The game soundtrack is written by the returning composer Inon Zur (Fallout 4, Dragon Age, Prince of Persia), already responsible for the music of Syberia 2 and Syberia 3. The fans will be greeted by a mesmerizing and unforgettable score, paired perfectly with the fascinating universe created by Benoit Sokal.

👉 So be sure to check out the free prologue! 👈