"Not one step back."
– Camba-Diaz, Lord Castelan

A new front opens in the Blood Games! Reinforcements arrive to the battlefield for both sides as the military exercise continues. Camba-Diaz, the Siege Master, will help the Imperial Fists hold their position as Amon Tauromachian joins the invading Custodes.

How will these reinforcements affect the tides of battle? Join the Blood Games, try out the new warlords and decide which cosmetic will be unlocked for the Imperial Fists!

As you may know, the Book of Travels experience is one of immersion and discovery, so it makes sense that in this game, level design is as much the work of the art team as Narrative Designers. Here we’re sharing a little bit about our approach to designing levels and the intended play experience we hope to create.


Passing place or site of hidden loot?

Working to a fairly wide brief, artists design spaces where players will discover items, lore or story fragments while taking a rest or cooking up some roots. This means they must take into account both aesthetics and gameplay, so crafting a location that is as intriguing as it is beautiful is just one part of their work.

Of course levels in the game vary greatly in size and scope; some, such as cities and towns are bigger and more interactive, while others, like the one above, may appear to function as a passage or an interlude. But this being Book of Travels, the best things can happen off the beaten track, and all levels are designed to enrich your journey, often in unexpected ways...


Hints of blue behind these trees hint that there’s more to discover.


Working with narrative components as well as items and NPCs, our Level Designer’s task is to ensure that there's not only a good degree of activity and discovery in all areas of the world, but that the experience of exploring them is rich and rewarding. In areas where the player’s field of vision is limited such as the one above, that means revealing small parts of hidden things - they might be spirits, bandits, buildings or beasts - to prompt further investigation. In areas where land is open and a long field of vision is available, levels must work to suggest possible pathways, challenges and rewards.


Obstacles, pathways and discoveries are hinted at from afar.


A large part of this work involves decorating the world with hand painted props made by the 2D art team. These props work to reinforce the feeling of walking around in a painting. Since we don’t have full control over where players will go, the goal is to make every place one where a beautiful view can be enjoyed.


A village will likely have more NPCs to meet, but isn't necessarily where the most interesting things happen, and a quiet pathway might not be as empty as it looks.

But it’s not all about the woods and wilds - following the main road will eventually lead you to one of Braided Shore’s more populated areas where you can find buildings to rest in, goods to trade with and hear a tale or two.


Making a journey at night can be beautiful, magical, dangerous or simply peaceful.

We’ve often said that Book of Travels doesn’t set your direction for you - you’ll be free to go where you wish, unbound by linear narrative or pre-planned player paths. However, levels are designed to offer suggestions to where you could go next. A fork in the road, a structure looming in the distance or dialogue with a passerby are among the many things that might alter your path.

The goal of designing to reward exploration is to have the player find something wherever they decide to go, be it an item, a lurking spirit or just a silent clearing to play an instrument or sit and take stock… But to find what secrets hide in this world you’ll need to take risks and steer away from the roads - we think that you’ll be enticed by the levels that await you!

We hope this gives you a little more sense of how it will feel to roam free in Braided Shore. Please drop your thoughts in the comments right here, and tell us what kind of exploratory games you’ve enjoyed most... Olle, our Level Designer will pop in and respond next week.

Best Wishes!

Helen & the Dev Team

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1152340/Book_of_Travels/
Sign up on our mailing list for news and an in-game treat in our upcoming game at https://m-n-d.games/BoT/Steam/update.

The T in TMO signals an alternative to the more common industry standard MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) putting 'tiny' in the place of 'massive'. That means fewer meetings, which we think means more magic... Read more here: What is a TMORPG?!

Later this year Book of Travels will be available for Early Access on Steam. In Chapter Zero parts of the Braided Shore will be open, and among the places to visit is the gem of the region – the city of Kasa. Read more here.

Join our super friendly Discord to exchange ideas on all things Book of Travels as well as art, games and books. Join here.

Greetings, Champions!

First of all, thank you for joining the Free Weekend! The event was a blast, players filled the servers, Discord was burning and the game hit its ALL TIME PEAK!

Don't worry if you missed the Fee Weekend, you can still try out the Free Demo any time!

Now onto the big event...



We proudly announce that the First Open Grapple Tournament is open to registrations!

This is your chance to show the world your grappling hook skills and vertical combat maneuvers! Join the championship, play with other players and win cash prizes!


Registration: Sign up before 3rd of May!
Tournament: Starting 3rd of May. Estimated to last 4 weeks. One week = one bracket.

• Game mode: Free for all
  
• Map: Any map selected by the players of the match
  
• Bots: No Bots
  
• Round format: 6 players, 3 matches
  
• Round rules: Summarized score of the 3 matches
  
• Winner of a round: top 3 players based on sum score. 3 players advance to the next round.
  
• Score reporting: At least one player must report the results of each round here on Challonge or on Discord.

Find out more about the prizes check the tournament page here.

Ready for the challenge?

As always, please send us your feedback and help us shape the game on Steam Discussions or on the official Discord server.

Join us on
- Official website
- Discord
- Twitter
- YouTube
- Facebook
- Reddit
- Twitch

Q: How to play? I thought it was a simple Connect the Dots! Play up confused!
A: 1. The main interface of the game has a small tutorial in the upper right corner, if you look carefully at the text and the location of the corresponding picture should be able to understand.
2. Remember this sentence "When any part of a mahjong is not pressed by the upper mahjong and there is at least one long side without other adjacent mahjong, it can be taken"

Q: Why can't I start from that level if I lose in the middle and have to start over? Are you deliberately disgusting?
A: Each girl for a large level, the first level to enter, all props have the initial number of 1, after that there are two ways to get new props
The first one: match the mahjong of the corresponding prop style in the level, and successfully match +1 quantity
The second: after successfully passing each level, a random number of props will be +1 at the beginning of the next level
The difficulty of each big level will be lower in the front and higher in the back, so players can save up props in the front to use in the back of the level is the best way to cheat.
On the contrary, if a girl's big level has 6 levels, players play to 5 levels when consumed a lot of props, to the sixth level almost no props, at this time can repeatedly challenge the sixth level instead of allowing players to repeat a lot of useless work.

Q: What is the progress bar on the right after each level is played?
A: Unlock the girl's swimsuit style, unlock the conditions for - players in the raid girl's entire level, the total score to reach the hidden unlock line can be unlocked, which is another reason why the previous question to start over raid.

Q: I unlocked the swimsuit, but why can't I change into it?
A: When the player has finished raiding the last girl, that is, the principal of the Phantom, a new mode will be unlocked "exploration mode", the player in the exploration mode, to select three different girls for an endless random level, here you can choose the swimsuit style when the "battle".

Q: Do you have .... Just ..... kind of ...... patch?
A: Yes, but I still hope you can enjoy the game itself more, because the elimination game is really quite addictive!

Welcome to this month's update!

As we mentioned last time, Project Lead Chris took some personal leave recently - he's now back to full-time work. A quick shout-out to everyone in the community who posted supportive comments when we mentioned this - there can be a lot of negativity in game communities and it's great to hear from the majority of you who are continuing to support the project and make positive contributions! Thank you for this and for being patient as we work towards more public releases.

While progress has understandably been a little slower due to this, the team have used the opportunity to focus on some important back-end tasks....


The first of these is the final part of the change from a single-base Geoscape to a multi-base Geoscape, which is the final separation of the base stores so that each base is pulling from its own inventory just like in the first game (previously items, soldier equipment, etc were shared globally across all bases). This is now done and bases have been fully separated from one another - it's quite a significant change and it's almost certainly caused quite a few bugs which we'll need to catch, but it's good to get this in at this point.


The second thing was adding "nested tooltips" that contain hyperlinks to other tooltips, similar to those seen in Crusader Kings 3. It's a little tricky to explain but you can see a quick example of it in action in CK3 here. This system allows us to prioritise helpful information given to the player while also providing links that lead to more detailed explanations.

Each tooltip ends up being shorter and more focused, but more overall information is available than before.


The third major thing is setting the game up to support translation. This is actually a very big task, but we figured we'd tackle it now given we're going to have to write a lot of text into the tooltips. Essentially we have to find every piece of text in the game that is displayed to the player and reference it into a single giant file that can then be translated into other languages. This system is made more complex because this system also needs to combine with our planned modding system, so that new text added in mods could also be translated if needed.


In terms of art, we've started work on the final set of Xenonaut 3D models and we've been working on an updated design for the alien Gun Drone. We've also been working on the final designs for the two advanced dropships (up to this point we've just been using the old X1 designs as placeholders). There's also been some work done on the 2D art for the aircraft weapons and equipment, and further work on the new strategy UI concepts we've been working on for a while now.


The current plan is to start putting public builds out again in May - we hope to get the entire schedule back on track soon. I will obviously keep you updated as soon as the team is able to target a more specific release date for the Open Beta.

Many thanks for reading and for staying up-to-date with our work - as ever please do join us on Discord, the forums or the Steam community if you have any questions.

Endlich gibt's auch das AdlerTech Auspuff-Sortiment im Programm.
Die Endschalldämpfer sind ab jetzt in einer eigenen Kategorie zu finden.

Dear Florensians,

In the past few days, we had an increased number of reports from people with suspicious activities on their accounts. We want to first and foremost inform you, that no data from GiikuGames has been compromised. This means that none of the data has been leaked or distributed.

However, many people use the same username, password and email combination on multiple online services, including Florensia. This means that if any of those services get compromised, it also poses a risk for any other account. Due to this, we would ask everyone to take their time and rethink their passwords, especially if they are over 2 years old. There are many ways on how you can make your life on the internet more secure, changing your passwords regularly is one of those measurements.

Here is how you can update your Florensia password:

1. Go to https://www.florensia-online.com/en
   
2. Login to your Florensia ccount on the official website.
   
3. Got to “view account” -> “View Account”.
   
4. Click the “Edit” button and change your password.

Having a secure password is at least as important as changing it regularly. Below you can find some resources on how to make your Internet life more secure:

• How to make a secure password (EN): {LINK REMOVED}https://bit.ly/3uamX6G
  
• How to make a secure password: (DE): {LINK REMOVED}https://bit.ly/3t5g84M
  
• A word on password managers: https://www.techradar.com/best/password-manager
  
• Check if your email has been compromised: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

We want to again emphasize that none of our Florensia data was compromised, this is merely a friendly reminder from our side, so that everyone can enjoy their time the most. We are always working to ensure the highest standards of safety and we will keep working on it, to ensure that all your data stays secure.

Fair winds and following seas,
Your Florensia Team

Easter Bunnies leave "Mysterious Eggs" of different colors everywhere. These eggs have different unique bonuses and when eating eggs there is a rare chance to find the Mysterious Needle, which gives the Rebirth effect and the unique title Reborn when it is used! Also in the Auction Events section, Mysterious Eggs can be exchanged for holiday items and some resources.
Harmful poachers started hunting Easter bunnies, and set traps everywhere for them. Thwart the poachers and free the bunnies from the traps, but be careful, there may be hungry wolves around such traps.

Changes to the event:
- Added 2 new event avatars. One can be bought at the auction, the other can be found in the game.
- Added 1 painting - Mr. Rabbit.
- Added a new curse "Curse of the Sacred Duck".
Sacred hares also appeared in the forests. If you are lucky to shoot him, then the Sacred Duck will appear from him. One of the legends said that there is a chance to get immortality if you kill such a duck. But for killing sacred animals, you can get a curse!

The event will last until May 10, 2021 (inclusive).

Other changes:
- The use time of any drink has been increased from 1 to 1.5 seconds.
- Reduced the time between attacks by 0.5 sec for all bolas.

Hello everyone!!
Wow! So much happened this month! Here's a quick update:

We announced the new key art and trailer!



The key art was done by Adrian Wilkins and we're absolutely in awe!


The trailer was done with support from Evolve, we love it so much <3


Demo localised

It's so cool to see the demo localised in so many languages! Japanese! Simplified Chinese! German! French! So glad to bring Kraken Academy to many new audiences °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°





New character intros


Stix owns his own shop at the market called "Stix's Shack". He's a bit sleazy... always looking for ways to rip off students. He's voiced by Dylan Hernandez!



Dimitri is an intimidating, but soft on the inside type of guy. He loves to challenge people to arm wrestle him. He also secretly watches anime and always refers to himself in third person. Voiced by Andy Mack!



Marin is an annoying child who constantly throws his frisbees around. He doesn't like old people (by that he means anyone older than 16) and is best friends with Wendy. Voiced by Jessica Spencer!


New voice actors selected!



Rhiannon Moushall will voice Baba Todorka (─‿‿─)


Torian Brackett will voice Mr Savanovic (`ー´)


Rachel Lee will voice Bernadette (*´▽`*)


Bradley Gareth will voice the Security Guy (￣︿￣)


LudoNarraCon
We just wrapped up an amazing LudoNarraCon, the festival for indie narrative games organised by our publisher Fellow Traveller.

During our stream we interviewed actors Molly Zhang (Simona and Pierre), Aimee Smith (Ms Markova, Ms Petrova and Wendy) and Sean Chiplock (The Kraken, Headmaster and Jean). No worries if you missed it, we will show it in the future at another event!




We're also participating with a song and wallpaper in the LudoNarraCon Supporter Pack, which is still up for grabs for a couple more weeks! Check it out here!

--

That's all for now! Join our Twitter, Discord, Instagram for more updates, and don't forget to wishlist!!

• Wishlist Kraken Academy!! on Steam
  
• Sign up for the Fellow Traveller mailing list

It's the second furniture update patch! The missing furniture from Lunar New Year, Summer and Sakura events are here in one patch with special discount rate. (There's also the valentine furniture coming soon too.)

Yes, as you might have guess, the real work is still on our up-coming dungeon. We are trying to push it to be released next week. But since we got another outbreak of Corona virus, we are force to send our staffs to WFH status. So will the new dungeon be ready next week? Your guess as good as mine, but finger cross and let's hope for the best! };)


- Add 7 new summer furniture, walls and floors.


- Add 13 new sakura furniture, walls and floors.


- Add 3 new lunar event furniture.


- Remove Fay's hat from yukata and hanami dress.

- Add missing satanic poison gem to Death King's collector shop.

- Remove summer campaign events.

- Re-added creeps' EXP to final Forgotten Hall's EXP reward.