We're both humbled and excited over the engagement you showed in helping us give this new species a name! Both phases are now successfully complete and we are happy to announce we can finally unveil the results!






The winner is clear, but it was a tight race for all the runner-ups. The names are listed in the image below in order of most votes at the top and least at the bottom:



A huge congratulations to everyone who both suggested and voted for Molebert! It will from now on be the official name of the new species!




And this concludes our latest Naming Contest. A huge thank you is in order to everyone who joined in!

And as always, feel free to hop into our official official Discord server if you haven't already and say hi. We always love hearing from our players!



Until next time,
// The Neat GotS team

Hey all, it's been a looooong time!

I've been hard at work on my next project the last couple of years and the engine I use has gone through some major updates meaning working on ERSATZ was largely a lot of effort for very little personal gain.

However, spurred by an odd error a windows user was having and upcoming plans for Steam with my next game, I've added a new Beta branch to ERSATZ which hopefully fixes this issue and also adds Russian language translations a friend did for me a while back.


Some things to note:

This Beta branch is only available in Windows. I no longer have access to a Mac that runs on late enough software and my Linux partition has been lost to time. Both of these platforms account for a very small chunk of my user base I'm afraid so to update these and possibly not fix anything is very low on my priorities. I'm very sorry!

The Russian language should be well translated from a fluid speaker and a native speaker. But I haven't yet formatted the text to visually fit in all menus, so you will likely come across issues of text overlapping or going off screen. If this is impacting you, please do not hesitate to post in the forums and let me know and I'll bump up fixing it in my priorities!

If you wish to try out this build either for a fix or the Russian Language, then in your Steam library, right click the game and select properties. From there select "BETA" on the left and in the drop down select the only available beta. There is no passcode. The game should begin redownloading in your download queue. Any issues, please let me know!

We have finally decided on our plans for a new IRONCLADS 3 project and is in a hurry to share them with you.

https://youtu.be/mC20L8nncxk

We have finally decided on our plans for a new IRONCLADS 3 project and is in a hurry to share them with you.

https://youtu.be/mC20L8nncxk

We have finally decided on our plans for a new IRONCLADS 3 project and is in a hurry to share them with you.

https://youtu.be/mC20L8nncxk

We now have a cool new menu!
We decided to make the game even more interesting and upgrade the player's school locker. A scanner camera has now been added to the locker, which opens access to the glove and a panel with buttons for selecting a level.
The number of levels has increased and at each of them it will be more difficult and more interesting for you to play. There are new items and the ability to combine them for different dirty tricks that will infuriate the teacher.
Isn't it cool? The menu has become more user-friendly and there will be something new and interesting at each level. Already waiting for an update?

Well, looks like you all really enjoyed this years April Fools for Airships, which introduced a set of in-game ads for a variety of strange and frightening products and services. While April 1 has passed, by popular request, the ads will resurface occasionally in loading screens.

If you missed them, here's all the ads, plus some commentary:



These were a real product in late 19th century America. I changed frighteningly little in this ad from the original. Given the way they're advertised, you'd expect them to contain cocaine or amphetamine, but it was actually worse: they contained strychnine - hence the line about rat poisons at the bottom. I also drew the third face in the picture to show signs of risus sardonicus, also know as rictus grin, which is a symptom of strychnine poisoning.

So why would you put strychnine into these pills? My guess is that as a nerve poison, a small dose would make you tense up in a way that might be mistaken for increased vigor.



"Make easy money at home" scams have a long history extending to today. Of course, no one actually wants those geckos you're breeding, and the FAQ I wrote suggests that the real business model is selling overpriced anti-gecko tincture to the marks.



A silly pun. The three monks have beards that look like monk's beard - barbe di frate, a type of vegetable. I always get confused and call it frate di barbe instead - monk of the beard.



Floatmead is full of Suspendium and hence provides unique challenges in drinking. The contraption here is basically an upside-down Belgian beer glass holder.



These are partially a reference to Triscuits, a long-running brand of biscuit with an unclear etymology. Likely they were named Triscuits because they were baked with elec*tri*city. But "biscuit" really means "twice baked", so it should be "thrice baked", which they aren't. Anyway, Heptascuits *have* been baked seven times, rendering them akin to some new kind of metamorphic rock with infinite shelf life and zero edibility. Which brings us to the other reference, ship's biscuits or hardtack, which were the standard ship's ration during the age of sail, and only slightly more edible. Remember: if the biscuit floats, it's safe to eat. If it sings, it's not.



In our world, "moon hoax" refers to the conspiracy theory that people never actually landed on the moon. In the world of Airships, there are three moons, and no one claims to have visited them. But they're central to the dominant religion of the world, so this "moon hoax" book is really an attempt by cultists to recruit new members. There's a long tradition of cults and other fringe organisations operating their own tiny publishers to create materials and sometimes act as fronts.



Mushroom Wine from the Unterzee! This is a reference to the Fallen London universe, and Sunless Sea in particular. I'm really pleased with how the drawing of the mushrooms turned out.



This is a reference to that infamous scene in A Clockwork Orange. See "Burgess" and "Alexander Lane".



Of course I had to include a dubious "tonic". There were a lot of those in the 19th century, and some of them are in fact still around. Their ingredients ranged from harmless plant extracts to highly dubious substances, including, again, strychnine. The joke - yes, this is where I explain all the jokes - is that it's deliberately left unclear what the relationship of spiders to this tonic actually is. For spiders, against spiders, made with spiders, who knows? The offset of the color and the black is intentional, of course, meant to evoke shoddy printing.

Finally, if you look at the detail on the bottle, the ingredients include:

• Pennyroyal - a toxic flower traditionally used as an abortion-inducing tea.
  
• Castoreum - beaver scent gland extract used in perfumes, and as a food additive in the 19th century.
  
• Parsley - a common and pretty harmless herb. It might help with digestive issues.
  
• Certain Essential Saltes of Animals - a reference to HP Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.

The Six Day Stilt is a location in Caves of Qud, another favourite game of mine.



Moustache tonics are a real thing. Here's one with Suspendium in, allowing for truly improbable arrangements of facial hair.



The shape of the landship is based on a giant mining truck. Note also the suggestion of two watchful eyes in the trees.



Another product that is far less altered from its original than you'd expect or hope. Wine fortified with cocaine was a real thing, and yes, there really was a brand that claimed to be endorsed by the pope.



The world of Airships lacks cows, so they have to make do with Corned Wurm, made from giant angry lizards.



Also available in a substitute version. Please don't ask what it contains, you would not like the answer.

Finally, here's a list of ideas that I didn't get around to, because I didn't have the time, or I didn't know how to draw them:

• Hiddelsten's Vibrating Underwear
  
• Mr Stockton's Safe Aerial Descent Device
  
• The Todestrieb Institute recommends that men, women, and children of all ages smoke thrice daily to calm the lungs, clear out harmful Suspendium dust, and prevent disease from taking hold. (I nixed this one because I didn't want to make the lives of recovering smokers any harder.)
  
• Try Floatcheese from Floatgoats!
  
• The Floating Fireplace: Spreads Light and Warmth throughout the House
  
• Mizzenmast's Candied Jellies
  
• Athory's Blood Purifier Engine

We are super excited to finally be able to properly announce The Lightbringer, a poetic puzzle/platformer we’ve been working on for some time now :)

We will share loads more information on this semi-isometric, poetic journey very soon but for now, we happily invite you to join our Discord:



Make sure to wishlist and follow us here to get the latest updates, we have lots planned!

Follow us on social media:
Facebook
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You can also sign up for the newsletter on the game's offical website: https://www.zordixpublishing.com/title/the-lightbringer/

Talk soon!

Love / Rock Square Thunder

Today's update contains a Save System file rework, which vastly improves how we store and manage save files on Steam.

What does this update change?
- This update changes the way save games are stored – before it was using Chromium's local storage, now it uses system files. This prevents them from breaking due to weird localstorage limitations/bugs, and also gives “truly infinite” save games potential, limited only by your disk space
- It introduces “Restore points”, which are essentially backups of your game save roughly every month of game time, which you can then re-load/go back in time. Very useful in case of messing up, or trying different builds!
- A few new settings were added under Settings -> General. These allow you to control granularity of game saving as well as these restore points.
- Some additional load/save handling improvements were done, to prevent bugs, or some other issues i.e. When going back to game menu (when game also saves the game again), the game will now prevent any interaction until the game was properly saved.
- We're also testing a mini fix to resources flickering on the resources tab (more flickering improvements to come in next updates)
- It also fixes a bug where the notification row would not display at the bottom
- Some other performance and display bugs were fixed

You can now also access your save files in your folders, usually stored at:
Windows: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Simpocalypse\saves
Ubuntu Linux: ~/.config/Simpocalypse/saves OR /home/ubuntu64/.config/Simpocalypse/saves

This makes it easier for you to simply copy all saves from there in case you want to make backups. However NOTE: Do NOT delete the sp_game_saves file, as that will make any existing saves not appear in your game anymore. Currently you also can't simply copy other game saves into this folder if you want to add them (you have to go from in-game loading files) – but this is something we hope to also add soon :)

This update was just a necessary stepping stone to prevent some users getting issues with their save files, so we can now fully focus on our next upcoming massive update, which will focus primarily on improving game features, balance and other things to improve your experience and make the game more fun at later stages!

Make sure to follow our Roadmap to see more details about upcoming updates. We are currently fully working on Steam achievements, implementations of Linux builds and working on a set of balance improvements for the next update.

Agoraphobia "Knock Knock" Released a few days early, enjoy the horror. Thank you to everyone who contributed to bug fixes and overall game-play. As all ways may for temperatures be low and your frame rates be high.