Nov 1, 2022

New World: Aeternum - timmyopa

Greetings, Adventurers!

New World Update 1.7.1 downtime will begin at 11:00PM PT (6:00AM UTC) on November 1 and includes fixes to Brimstone Sands quests.

WORLD EXPERIENCE

NOTABLE FIXES

Castrum Principium spawn rate has been adjusted to better match other Elite mobs.
Fixed an issue that made Helvan the Navigator in Monarch's Bluffs unbeatable.
Fixed an issue that caused players to get stuck at weird angles when opening the inventory while going prone.

BRIMSTONE SANDS

Tomash and Ghazi now have additional dialogue to inform players they need to complete the "A Selfless Nature" quest to access the Brimstone Sands Main Story.
Updated the quest requirements for “A Selfless Nature” to ensure players are not blocked for the “Blessings of the Earth” quest.
Removed the ability to place Camps around the “Brimstone Under Siege” quest location.
Reduced the amount of Iron Hide received when Skinning Valley Lizards.
Fixed an issue with “Demon’s Cauldron” that caused players to get teleported back from the Crystal.
Fixed an issue that caused the damage barrier around Brimstone Sands to continue after death.
Fixed an issue that caused the Brimstone Sands Outpost Trading Post to not link to Storage.

QUESTS

Fixed an issue that made Faction rank up quests unavailable.
Fixed an issue that prevented players from completing the Overseer Zane encounter.
The “Hope Manifest”, “Executioner”, “Tracking the Huntress”, “Falmea's Wrath”, and “Keen Temper” quests now immediately register as complete when players craft the specified weapons.
Fixed an issue that caused the Heartforge Guardian to not spawn in the "Trial of the Heartforge" quest.
Re-enabled the “Roar of the Manticore” quest.
Re-enabled “The Queen's Brood” quest.

EXPEDITIONS

Dynasty Shipyard: Raised Keg health to make defend objectives less difficult to pass in high level mutations.

COMBAT/AI

NOTABLE FIXES

Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the player to be unable to attack after Harvesting until they performed the same Gathering action or relogged.
Fixed an issue where certain abilities could be performed without triggering their cooldowns.
Fixed an issue that sometimes caused Young Scorplings to fall through the world.

PERKS

Fixed an issue that caused Runeglass Gem perks to prevent Life Staff perks from working.
Added a speculative fix for Runeglass Taunt Gems not working properly with Berserk, Riposte, and Defender's Resolve AOE taunts. We will continue to monitor the forums to see if players are still encountering this issue after the update.

GAME MODES

PVP ARENAS

Fixed an issue that caused some players to incorrectly receive a leaver penalty when exiting 3v3 Arenas.

WAR/INVASIONS

Fixed an issue that caused Wars and Invasions to sometimes fail to reschedule properly after a server crash.

ECONOMY/PROGRESSION

GEAR/ITEMS

Added Infused Gypsum Greatsword Cast.
Re-enabled Legendary Greatsword "Rough Edge" recipe. To better match similar crafted Greatswords, it is now Bind on Pickup instead of Bind on Equip.
Re-enabled Legendary Greatsword "Craftsman's Passion" recipe. Its final perk is now Angry Earth Bane.
Fixed an issue that caused Brimstone Elite Named enemies to not drop Obsidian Gypsum.

REWARDS/LOOT

Apophis' Treasure Trove is now a reward in the “A God Awakens” quest. Apophis no longer gives Weapon Mastery or experience on kill.
Desert Rose Prismabloom now always grants 1 or 2 Cyan Pigments and 1 or 2 Green Pigments. Players also have a chance to receive 1 or 2 Red Pigments.

TRADE SKILLS

CRAFTING

Detonate Heartgem recipes no longer require Sapphire and instead require more Sulfur.
Nightveil Gear Score 600 patterns no longer require a Trade Skill level of 150.
Fixed an issue that made Nightveil patterns Bind on Pickup instead of Bind on Equip.

GATHERING

Reduced the quantity of Sulfur Chunks received from mining Sulfurwig.
Reduced the amount of Skinning experience gained from Young Scorplings and Armadillos.

UX/UI

NOTABLE FIXES

Fixed an issue that caused the same item to show up multiple times in the Outpost Rush Caches reward screen.
Fixed an issue that prevented latent characters from rejoining their original world if they were at the character limit for that world. Latent characters can now return to their original worlds even if those worlds are locked.

SOCIAL

Updated the Faction user interface. It now direct players to the Faction Initiation Quests to unlock Faction Switching.

IN-GAME STORE

Fixed an issue that caused the item purchase confirmation to not appear.

QOL

Fixed an issue that caused notifications to appear more than once on the Landing Screen.

Thanks for your support! We’ll see you in Aeternum.

Nov 1, 2022

FREE UPDATE! Remastered art added to Prince of Suburbia - Part 1

Prince of Suburbia - Part 1 - TheOmega

Prince of Suburbia - Part 1 (FREE DEMO - V0.55) has been updated with new sprites and some remastered animations and illustrations for FREE on all platforms where it is currently available, including here on Steam.

This is just the start! Gradually, we will be remastering ALL of the original art in Prince of Suburbia - Part 1 via FREE updates on all platforms where Prince of Suburbia is available. So, keep an eye out for more announcements like this in the future!

All remastered art is accessible through the Gallery feature for players who have already accessed the original scenes. Players DO NOT have to replay scenes they've already unlocked to see the remastered art. In addition to new sprites throughout the game, look for updated scenes in the Gallery with Naomi, Sarah, and Heather.

Join our Discord server to receive more announcements for Prince of Suburbia, including new content and updates to the existing game!

Nov 1, 2022

Co OPERATION - Who wants to play the demo?!

BFF or Die - julesm88

The demo of Co OPERATION: MultiTurn will be playable in the next few days!! Eeep! 😲

Join our Discord to be part of the first live playtest of the demo!

This is the game Shaz (co-creator of BFF or Die) has been making with his new games studio Mind Feast Games.

There’s too much loneliness in the world and we want to bring people together with this game 🫂 It’s multiplayer in a similar way to Jackbox and uses your phone as the controller 📲 to make it more accessible. Only one person needs to have the game installed and they can then stream it to others who’ll get a room code.

Think Jackbox BUT crossed with Overcooked and with little sprinkle of turn-based strategy too. Co OPERATION is a game where the fun comes from collaborating and winning together 🤜🏾🤛🏻

Also…

⚒️ Modding! Yes, you can also mod the game! You wanna put cats everywhere? You can! Joe and Rupert have added Lua code that you can change. Also, we use the same level editing system that you will (if you make levels).

So, what can you expect from the playtest? 👀

🤸 Amazing animations. Josh has been adding carry and bump animations to all the characters.

Tamira the athlete bumping into something - notice how her expression changes too!

Juggler Ethan with his wobbly nose!

We want the patients to look sick but not too sick, so Josh animated one of them like this ⬇️

Patient Grace with her intermittent cough 🗣️

Having the 2D animated players in a level really makes the game come alive, they are so nice and bouncy 🦘

Players waiting for their actions 🤸

✨ Incredible UI. How are you going to know when a patient is nearly a goner? Joe’s added some handy hearts to show you.

Hearts will go down after each turn - can you figure out how to cure each patient before they go down to zero ❤️?

Patients are usually super happy once they’ve been cured! Here’s patient Ed Banger rocking-out after being cured by the team! 🤘

🗺️ Lovely levels. Shaz has been pulling everything together to create 9 levels for 2, 3 and 4 players.

How Level 6 is looking in 4 player mode

Like the look of all this and want to be one of the first to play the demo? Join our Discord*!

(*We also have regular events on our Discord! Live games, chats with other indies, longer drop in, drop out games and creative events such as design-a-poster for the in-game world!)

See you soon,
Shaz, Julia and the MFG team

Nov 1, 2022

First Look

Near Sol - Well Tide

Hi all!
Space strategy game Near Sol is coming to early access.
The main highlights in the game will be the socio-economic life on the planets and the ship designer.
Planets can have multiple provinces. Cities are located in the provinces. People live in cities. Typically, this is a small business.

For the appearance of other types of citizens, it is required to build factories or other buildings.

The name of the first city in the province is the same as the name of the province. It's like an agglomeration or small towns, you can't build factories here, but you can build roads or infrastructure, it's like an empty space between cities.

The second city is the provincial capital. Here it will be possible to build government buildings, as well as capital types of citizens and characters of the province will live there.

The remaining squares are convenient places for building cities or rich deposits. Here it will be possible to build factories, space shipyards, barracks, fortresses, scientific institutes and universities. I also think that investors will be able to build mines and large agricultural complexes there.

Building a city on the Moon or on Mars would cost a lot of capital, and would be sort of like Habitat in Stellaris. But people can organize small settlements themselves. And at the poles there will be some bonuses for living and building cities.

This icon indicates the level of the city.

The game has such cities as Rio de Janeiro, Barcelona and Trump City. This is due to the fact that I'm thinking of adding resources such as seaside vacations, eco-tourism and casinos. I also want to add Engineering (engineering calculations), construction, and building materials. And what kind of resources would you like in a space strategy?

When creating the game, I came across such an interesting fact that the Jupiter's largest moons is larger than Mercury and this is reflected in the game. On large moons, it will be possible to build 8 towns and on small ones 6.

The next build is expected on December 1st. I will add Economic Spheres (Common Market) and Nationalities as it is interesting to trace the migrations of the inhabitants. It will be possible to build not only factories but also other buildings.

Your opinion about goods, buildings and types of citizens in the game is very interesting.

Nov 1, 2022

Happy Halloween and MAC demo is LIVE

SKALD: Against the Black Priory - fee-ona

Hey everyone and happy spooky season! I for one love this time of year and I couldn’t help myself from sharing some love with the Skald community!

—News—

Halloween Update for Demo

There’s now a new area to the demo for you to explore. It even has a creepy little Halloween-encounter in it! And I promise: It’s still very much Skald-themed.

Download and play the new Halloween-demo here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069160

We’ll be expanding this area quite a bit further in the time to come as we try out and test “new” features (more on this below) so keep checking in.

Mac demo is finally live on Steam

This is criminally overdue, but it’s finally here: The Skald Mac demo! To all my awesome Mac fans, I’m so sorry for the wait and hope this makes it up to you!

Once again, check out the demo here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1069160

—Development—

Some “New” Features

The new area that we’ve added to the demo will be used as a little sandbox for us to add in all the secondary mechanics that need to be (re)implemented. For now we’ve added in trading and leveling up, and next on the list is the character builder and camping mechanics.

New Biomes

Quite a bit of dev-time the last few weeks have gone into redrawing tilesets for some of the biomes that feature in the new demo content.

Caves are a staple of any self-respecting CRPG:

… and this part of the game features a lot of costal areas so costal cliffs and shore lines are a must as well:

I’ve done some work on making the submersion into water look all nice like but the GIF above has too low FPS to do it justice. You’ll just have to see it yourself in the demo.

Next Weeks

We’re spending the next three weeks fixing bugs and reacting to feedback as well as increasing the size of the current build to be as big (or bigger) than the prologue.

Some of this might be featured in the demo (though we might keep it shorter than the old prologue) and all of the content will of course be available to testers.

Still waiting for your tester’s key? It’s coming once I get Halloween out of the way.

—In Closing—

Keep playing the game and as always feel free to reach out to me at any time. Note however: The last weeks have been insanely busy and I’m behind on all my social media. I 100% indend to catch up though so please just be patient with me.

To stay posted, be sure to follow the Skald Twitter and Discord and wishlist on Steam if you haven’t already!

Love you all,

AL