Hi everyone!

We've been teasing some big news for a while and, this is it! We would like to announce that on the 26th of August we are removing the demo from Steam, and starting the Prologue! Before anything else, you should head over to the Prologue Steam page and wishlist so you will know as soon as it's available!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2113430/Soulstone_Survivors_Prologue/

Now, why is this big news? Because the Prologue is coming with a TON of new content available for free before the release of the game! Let me show you some of the new stuff you can expect to try in the Prologue:









May not be as flashy as the above but the Prologue will come with a bunch of overall improvements, fixes and optimisations currently not available in the demo!

No, my friend, not even close! We have SO much more in store for the full version (which is coming hopefully by November!), so many new characters, weapons, the fabled Rune system which will shape the way you play the game, the feared Affixes system to make your runs extremely challenging and offer unique rewards, a LOT of new Lords of the Void and challenges to face, unlocks, achievements, endless mode... and the list goes on!

Not quite. We will be temporarily saying farewell to the Spellbreaker, the Sentinel and to the Arcane Weaver. If you played the Demo and unlocked those characters and their weapons, don't worry, your progress is safe! But, they will be taking some time off after killing Alexi so many times! We will also be removing some active skills from circulation for now. They are all coming back in the full release of the game, so if you haven't yet, give the Demo a go, tell your friends, and have some fun with the current content which will be available for only 1 week more!

Yes! When you download the Prologue, while you will have lost access to the 3 characters mentioned above, you will retain your Skill Tree, materials and Soulstones. You will have to unlock the new characters and weapons, and when you do, those will carry over to the full version of the game as well!

No. The Prologue is just a free version of the game where you can enjoy some new content and keep up with the game development, but, if you just want to wait for the full release and play it once it's ready, this is where it will be. We recommend you Wishlist the full game below to make sure you are notified once the full game is available!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2066020/Soulstone_Survivors/

We hope you are as excited to try the new content as we are for sharing it with you! We will keep updating the Prologue with fixes, and improvements, and will continuously share more and more details about the plans for the full game as time goes by!

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out here, in the Steam forums, in Discord, or anywhere you might like, we are here for you =)

Thank you very much for your attention,
Best wishes,
- The Dev Team

Last week, we talked about our latest RoboEngineer Spotlight honoree, Bufflehead! This week, we’re showcasing our new camera selector plus some more vacuum updates!


Currently, there are three camera options in RoboCo: tethered follow, follow, and free look. Speaking of the free look camera, we had a couple of players during the demo ask if there was a way to move it around, and there is! To move the free look camera around the environment, hold the right mouse button and use WASD to place it somewhere new. Once you’ve positioned it correctly, let go of the right mouse button so you can drive your robot again. We've updated the hover tooltip to be clearer about this.



But enough about the free look camera, let’s talk about the new camera selector. To use it, first make sure your camera is in either tethered follow or follow mode. Once that’s done, a new camera focus selector UI will appear in the upper-right corner of the HUD.



You can then choose which robot you would like the camera to follow. Currently, the selector defaults to the largest robot, but you can select a different robot to follow via the HUD. You can also cycle through different robots by hitting Tab on your keyboard (or a remapped key of your choice).



The reasoning behind this addition was simple. Unlike Besiege and other similar games, RoboCo doesn’t have a starting block that limits players to building one mechanism at a time. As a result, we’ve seen players add unattached blocks or constructs to a build zone, which our game would then read as a separate robot. This meant that when the player entered Live mode, the camera would try to find a balance between the two parts, leading to confusing camera behavior like the one showcased below.



This is why the new camera selector defaults to the largest robot. You can also cycle to a different camera to track down the unattached parts. It also allows for a new scenario in which a player can easily have more than one robot on the screen, leading to more ambitious builds and designs!


In addition to the new camera selector, our team has also been finalizing some updates to our vacuum part. First, our WIP vacuum up until now just drew objects closer to it, but now it actually vacuums up small objects into a receptacle. We wanted to make sure that you wouldn't lose important objects, so we also added the ability to reverse the air flow direction so that the vacuum will expel or blow away objects.



It is worth noting that you can only vacuum up and spit back out small “mesh objects” like socks. Bigger objects will just be sucked forward or blown backward while “particle objects” like smashed food mush will just be sucked up and never spit back out.



To switch between the different airflows, you can either flip the airflow direction in the vacuum's Properties Menu or map the action to a key in the Controls Menu. We've also added the action to our custom API so you can use it for programming!



To visually tell the difference between the modes, we added new particle effects. When the vacuum is in normal mode, the airflow will look like little cyclones. When it’s in reverse mode (a.k.a leaf blower mode), the airflow will look like jets.




As we approach Q4 2022, our team wanted to make a habit of including a list of ongoing development projects that may interest players! Some of the things we’re working on include:

Cleaning up defects and usability issues in challenges
Troubleshooting a tricky physics bug
Hooking up sound effects and a little bit more music
Reviewing and editing English text to make everything as clear as possible
Porting the game to work with the file system on the Quest 2
A new robot building feature that will be revealed in a future blog!

And that’s it for this week’s devblog! Are you excited about the new camera and vacuum updates? Let us know in the Official RoboCo Discord or on social media! Next week, we’re unveiling some new RoboRepair Tutorials we’ve been working on that didn’t make it into the Steam Next Demo!

For the latest news on RoboCo, follow us on Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok! You can also connect with other community members and us by joining our official Discord and Reddit!

Don't forget to add RoboCo to your Steam Wishlist!

Welcome to the Symphony of War 1st Battle Screenshot Contest! Show off your photography prowess, try to win Steam Keys to gift to a friend, and get your name in the list of Random names for units in game!

You may participate via Discord, or Steam.

Discord submission instructions
Join Discord: https://discord.gg/rmvmGPaKgK and post your submission in the #screenshot-contest channel. Just the picture please.

Steam submission instructions
Post in this thread: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1488200/discussions/0/3430074255274364904/ with an embedded image or link. Just the picture please.

Rules
1) One screenshot permitted per entrant
2) Screenshots must be of a battle scene. Doesn't matter where, when, or how, just an in-game battle scene. Show the whole game window so we can see your squad setup as well.
3) No story characters allowed - all generics and unique mercenaries are fair game!
4) Any enemy target is allowed
5) Please follow the submission format strictly. One screenshot, no edits other than cropping to screen size, no words in your post, no story characters - any deviation will make your entry ineligible.

Schedule
The submission period will last one week, ending on Friday, August 26th, at 5pm PST. Winners will be announced after judging has finished, hopefully a day or two at most after the submission end date.

Criteria
Your screenshot will be judged on beauty, creativity, coolness factor. Scores will be rated from a 1 to 10 scale. All the scores of the judges will be averaged out to a final top score. Judges are not eligible to participate. Judges are not obligated to explain their reasoning.

Prizes
1st place: 5 Steam Keys for SoW1, and a lore-friendly name of your choice added to the list of random names
2nd place: 1 Steam Key for SoW1, and a lore-friendly name of your choice added to the list of random names
3rd: place: A lore-friendly name of your choice added to the list of random names
All 3 top placements can be featured in the Steam Page screenshot carousel!

Starting these small, will do more contests, but for now, let's see those screenshots! Donar watch over you!

Sincerely,
Phil

The AI has been ramped up one more time. We've implemented many new decision nodes for the AI.

• Improved the AI to perform clean passes.
  
• Improved the AI to run on clear spaces.
  
• Improved the AI to kick to the goal if a clear shoot is possible.
  
• Improved the AI kick decisions.
  
• Improved the AI to use skills (sprint, dribble, chip kick, overhead kick, scissor kick, etc).
  
• Improved the AI of the goalkeeper.
  
• National Teams have different playing styles (NOTE: Teams must be reset, see bottom disclaimer).
  
• Career Mode teams AI balance (playing styles are now more notorious).

Find quick info about what your friends are playing. Join their broadcast or Remote Play Together session!

• Improved the camera movement of the match.
  
• Added the Referee.
  
• Added the Lineman.
  
• Re-balanced the conditions for players to be stunned.
  
• Improved the area of the soccer formation to avoid players pile up.

• Added numerous new UI hints that explain different areas of the game.
  
• Removed the Follow Formation skill and replaced by Tactic Sense (helps CPU players for better positioning on the field depending on what is happening).
  
• Unified the Art style for coaches.
  
• Adjusted several animations for small UI elements.
  
• Added a team preview screen when starting a new Tournament.
  
• Performance improvements (FPS).

• Fixed the grayscale shader in some screens where it was not displaying properly.
  
• Fixed the team name highlight displaying the wrong size at tournament screens for certain resolutions.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused career mode in-match Birds to freeze after an Offside.
  
• Fixed a bug that caused the ball landing spot not to show on some situations.

- As we've mentioned before, WE DO NOT OVERWRITE your custom teams, therefore if you want to use Batovi's team design, you must use the Reset Teams Database option, under Gameplay Settings.
- The new import team options will overwrite your existing team when successful.

Huge thanks to everyone who left us a positive review! If you haven't done so yet, please do and give us your support.

We've been hearing all the feedback since launch, good and bad. We know of every single problem in the game. We're working on it.

Thank you to all the streamers who played! There were rough times for us during the hours of severe issues, but watching you all enjoy the game gave us the energy to keep pushing. We've been working nonstop this entire week and we are finally glad to take a break.

We have plans to help solo players against 1vX ganks. Keep your eyes out for patches next week.

We have a whole list of QoL updates that need to be done.

We have epic plans to keep players engaged and we will turn this game into your dream hardcore medieval PvPvE experience!

Our team may be tiny, but there is nobody else on this planet who can create this game. Thank you to all the believers.

As always, feel free to chat with us on Discord whenever you want.

Also, the devs will be playing this weekend! We will call out on the discord when we play. If you kill us you will get the Dev Slayer discord role. Happy Hunting

- The cube in level 16 can now be collected (There are now 12 cubes and you need 11 for the good ending)
- The alternate entrance in level 16 now opens if you have enough cubes to unlock the good ending

The Actual Nerds team is now LIVE on r/pcgaming for an AMA! Got a burning question about The Tarnishing of Juxtia? Stop by and share it with the team here!

Join us for our weekly dev stream!

We've hit 1000 wishlists! Come celebrate with us as we show off some brand new character animations this week!

- New Character Animations (Idle, death, damaged, bow/arrow)

We'll be interacting with the chat so feel free to come chat with us and share any questions or suggestions you might have about the game.

We stream Super Dungeon Designer every Friday at 8pm ET on Twitch and to our Steam page.

Give us a follow on Twitch to get notifications when we're live:

https://www.twitch.tv/squish_studios

Wishlist from our store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1172920/Super_Dungeon_Designer/

Bug Fixes:

• The Full Tutorial can now be completed.
  
• Fixed the textures in the tutorial fields.
  
• The Free Roam Quick Menu no longer appears in single player.

Improvements:

• Added the offense/defense toggle functionality to the Free Roam Quick Menu.

New Features:

• New skybox for the tutorial field.