Dear animal-freakshow-lovers,

The whole team is really pumped by the recent launch of The Crackpet Show, and we would like to thank you for your amazing support, tons of feedback, and reports allowing us to make the best show for everyone.

It’s time for the first post-launch update with 8 new character skins, Mr. Parrot getting ready for Christmas, and some perk adjustments for Endless. Let’s jump straight into all the hot stuff!





If you’ve tried our brand new Endless Mode, you’ve probably seen that a different set of perks is often needed to get through the ten waves of our biggest rooms yet in The Crackpet Show.

That’s why we decided to boost the range of Damage Boost, Rapid Fire, and Stone Skin auras and also increased the duration of Adrenaline Shot - which will make those perks much more handy in this mode.





It’s now an annual tradition that our beloved host, Mr. Parrot has dressed in his ugly Christmas sweater. His gifts are as deadly as ever, though!


We have critical fixes for the most common bugs you’ve reported since launch, including Gold Fish being interactive even after upgrading everything in the game, fixes for bullets staying on screen, and auto revives doubling all acquired perks in Endless Mode.

We continue to monitor all your reports, so expect the rest of the fixes to come in the next patch in early January.

As always, to check out everything that changes, take a loot at the changelog:

• 8 character skins to unlock (1 per character)

• Damage Boost Aura perk radius increased in Endless Mode
  
• Rapid Fire Aura perk radius increased in Endless Mode
  
• Stone Skin Aura perk radius increased in Endless Mode
  
• Adrenaline Shot perk duration increased in Endless Mode
  
• Limited max number of spawned enemies for Cockroach the Builder, Lionstein and Host Parrot bosses

• Fixed issue where Auto-revive doubles some perks effects
  
• Fixed sponsors' stand graphics in the Endless Mode lobby
  
• Fixed issue where some bullets may stick in place
  
• Fixed being able to interact with Golden Fish in the lobby when there are no upgrades

• Improved performance of various boss battles
  
• Skin selection arrows appear faster
  
• Christmas sweater for Mr. Parrot on the stage selection screen

Don’t forget to grab The Crackpet Show with the 20% off launch discount if you haven’t already!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1390700/The_Crackpet_Show/



Just in case you're just as cracked as we are, terminally online and not knowing what to do with yourself… We may be busy little bees, but you should follow these pages:
Our Facebook with news for you to check - https://www.facebook.com/vixagames
Our Twitter with jokes, gags and rofltastic memes - twitter.com/Vixa_Games
Our Instagram with hilarious highlights - https://www.instagram.com/vixa_games/
Our "hello fellow kids" Tik-Toks - https://www.tiktok.com/@vixa__games

It's been two weeks and you know what it means, a new update is here and it is a big one! As you may have guessed by the title and the preview and the tease and... He is finally here, the Undertaker has come to oppose you as the final boss of every run so without further a do, let me introduce him.

---

The Undertaker was once a powerful and respected necromancer, renowned for his skill in harnessing the dark arts. But as he delved deeper into the forbidden corners of magic, he became consumed by an all-consuming desire for power. He began to see the value of life as nothing more than a means to an end, and he began to use his magic to control the spirits of those around him.

One of the first victims of the Undertaker's corruption was his beloved dog, whom he brought back to life using dark magic after the animal grew old and died. This act of desperation only served to further fuel The Undertaker's descent into darkness, and he soon found himself using his magic to control the spirits of his underlings, binding them to his will and bending them to his every whim.

As his power grew, so did his ambition, and The Undertaker began to set his sights on becoming the boss of the underworld in Greenhill. He knew that to achieve this goal, he would have to eliminate any rivals standing in his way, and so he began to plot and schemed to take out anyone who stood in his path.

Over the years, the Undertaker worked tirelessly to build up his power base in Greenhill's criminal underworld, using his dark magic and cunning to attract and recruit the most dangerous and ruthless criminals in the land. With the help of his controlled spirits, he was able to secure his position as the undisputed boss of the underworld in Greenhill.

Now, the Undertaker rules over his criminal empire with an iron fist, using his right hand man, Crazy Denzel, and his controlled spirits to enforce his will. Despite his fearsome reputation, The Undertaker is constantly haunted by the memory of his once-loyal dog, whose undead form now serves as a constant reminder of the terrible price he has paid for his ambition.

---

We know you have been waiting for the Undertaker to finally show and we wanted to thank all of you for your continued support and enthousiam, we hope it lives up to the hype.

The Undertaker's arrival comes with quite a few change to the way a run in Bounty of One works. Where previously runs were composed of 2 acts (pre-Rex, Brutus and Cupcake and pre-CrazyDenzel), a run will now have 3 parts. Moreover, the enemy types are now gonna be distributed in a different way within those 3 acts. The Goblins, Mages and Golems types will be limited to the first hald of the run whereas the Batmen, Orcs and Ilithids (that were introduced in the halloween update) will populate the second half. Having more acts also means that you will collect more chest before the end of a run and that each will last longer. As you may remember, we had posted a poll regarding your opinion on how long you thought a run should last, well despite a small majority of you wanting for the game to last for 24 minutes (not counting the boss battles), we decided to make them last for 20. Indeed, after testing the 24 minutes length, the game felt way slower and didn't keep that hectic rythm we all like. It will remain like this for now but we are always open to your feedbacks on that matter.

Finally, as usual, we've worked on patching small issues and balancing the game. Anyway, that is all for today, you can check the full list of changes hereafter.

Enjoy!

---

• The Undertaker: The final boss of every run is here!

• Player no longer shoots when the boss shows up

• ROB3RT - Gain an automatic turret, it fires 2x faster than you but cuts your attack speed by 3 -> Gain an automatic turret, it fires 1.3x faster than you but cuts your attack speed by 2
  
• ROB3RT - Difficulty level : 1 -> 2
  
• Batmen - Speed Bonus modifier max : 0.8 -> 0.5
  
• Bounty Rush mode - "Level impacts game advancement" modificator level max set to 36
  
• Intimidating reward - Slow efficiency 50% -> 35%
  
• Guided shot - If the target of the first pierce is killed before the guided reaches it, it doesn't change direction anymore

• Fixed an issue with Natoko's animation only doing 1 out of 2 different slashes
  
• Fixed some issues with translation
  
• Nigel : when taking Steam Tech turret, the turret's projectile will not inherit Nigel's projectile rotation
  
• Fixed chest indicator icon showing up for half a second on chest spawn
  
• Fixed taking damage from enemies' area effect when it does not hit (rare)

• Updated arabic language to include new objects
  
• Coins bag now hold 200xp instead of 100xp
  
• Fixed indicator icon showing up during a frame when chest appear
  
• Players no longer shoot when sheriffs are coming

2022 is almost behind us. It’s been a very busy year for us, and we are looking forward to taking a short break from the office and clearing our heads a little bit to put our future plans in motion. The support that we’ve been receiving from you has been simply incredible. Thousands of players visit Galatea 37 daily. Our inboxes are filled with messages of support, feedback, and questions about co-op (wink, wink). Today we’re taking a look back at what we’ve managed to get done in 2022, the lessons we learned from those events, and what we aim to make happen in 2023. Read on!

Let’s start with a short summary of the major milestones, as well as some statistics that characterized the course of The Riftbreaker’s development in the year 2022.


An artistic depiction of void crunching the numbers and mashing all these stats together. 2022, colorized.

• We released 7 major updates for the game in the past 12 months:
  
  
  • The Lunar New Year Update, which introduced Temporal Anti-Aliasing, added the statistics screen, and a lot of bug fixes. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/4977042432578909854
    
  • The Riftbreaker World Editor Suite Update - gave you access to all the internal tools that we used to create the game, plus a couple of additional ones that made modding a bit easier and accessible. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3100170362348856752
    
  • World Expansion I and Metal Terror DLC - a huge free update and a brand new part of the Story Campaign taking place in a new biome. The update included a new survival map and dozens of technologies, weapons, and enemy species never seen before. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3367020691428249994
    
  • A major optimization update aimed at better use of your system’s RAM and improving The Riftbreaker’s working relationship with very high-core-count CPUs. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3308478967661599934
    
  • Introduction of Intel XeSS: https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3293844715131761794
    
  • Steam Workshop implementation, integrated modding support, and addition of AMD FidelityFX FSR 2.1 and SSSR. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3441341498983126653
    
  • Expanding the modding support to Mod.io and reworking the late-game survival waves on high difficulties. https://steamcommunity.com/games/780310/announcements/detail/3638375952811679288
• We released 46 updates on Steam. 7 of them were major updates, 21 were experimental updates, and 18 were either smaller patches or hotfixes. A major update for The Riftbreaker sees 3 preceding experimental updates on average.
  
• We released a total of 136 updates for the game across all versions on all platforms. That’s one patch for some version of the game every 2.68 days!
  
• For every update, we need to perform several manual and automated save tests: loading, saving, and reloading 132 save samples. The automated process takes 3:09 hours on average. We ran save tests a total of 295 times this year. They took 55,755 minutes to complete. You can watch The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Director’s Cut 77 times during that time.
  
• On the 1st of January 2022, The Riftbreaker repository revision number was 26911. We end the year on revision 34397. That’s 7.486 changes we’ve made to the game over the course of the year. That’s 20.5 changes a day. An average member of EXOR contributed 499 times.
  
• We had to expand our server storage by over 24 TB this year alone.
  
• Void streamed 68 times for you while you watched him for 6610 hours, or 275 days. That’s about how long it takes for a baby to come into this world!
  
• We published 81 news articles on Steam, amassing 26.489.858 impressions (times they showed up when you were browsing Steam). That’s 327.035 views per news article. Naturally, a very small percentage of that converts to reads, but let’s imagine that every time we publish a news item, the entire population of Orlando, Florida, looks at the thumbnail. Weird. They have so many nicer things to look at over there.
  
• The population of Riftbreakers has grown by another 350.000, bringing up the total to slightly over 1.000.000 players across all platforms, with more than 90.000 braving the Metal Terror.

That’s quite a lot, isn’t it? Naturally, with loads of tasks to complete, there are plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. Miscommunications, lapses of concentration, or pre-existing biases will inevitably lead to mistakes. However, it is important to learn from those and take steps not to repeat those errors in the future. Here is a short summary of some of the things that we learned while working on The Riftbreaker through 2022.



Lesson 1: Clearly communicate your intentions to the players, especially in case of changing existing mechanics. Being assertive and confident about your decisions is one thing. Making sure that others understand there is no ill will behind your actions is another.

We spent the early months of 2022 patching the game up and introducing various tweaks and balancing changes. Some changes were overwhelmingly popular and appreciated, for example, making the acid rain/hailstorm events local instead of global. Unfortunately, others were not - look no further than changing the yields from cultivators. In the early days, it was entirely possible to just ignore the economy aspect of the game as long as you had an array of cultivators and collectors working 24/7. While we still stand by our decision to reduce their output, we could have communicated our intentions behind this change much better, which we did a week later. Still, we should have given you the full picture up-front and will do so in case of major changes in the future..



Lesson 2: It’s okay to give yourself a bit more time. Plans work great on paper, but as life evolves from day to day, plans need to evolve as well. We underestimated the time needed to playtest and polish the Metal Terror World Expansion. We learned that extracting the ‘fun factor’ can take a lot of time.

At the beginning of the year, as we moved from one patch to another, the production of Metal Terror was going full-steam ahead behind the scenes. We originally planned to release the expansion on May 30th. We had everything lined up: the trailer, press release, we arranged for some content creators to play the game and make videos… We encountered a problem though - we needed more time. The expansion was almost ready. All the assets were there, the voiceovers and videos were already recorded, and all the missions worked as they should.

Unfortunately, it was lacking a couple of finishing touches and details that would bring Metal Terror to the standard that we aim towards. We didn’t want to disappoint you with something half-baked, so we made the difficult decision to postpone the release until July. Your response was amazing - we received hundreds of messages telling us that you were happy to wait a little longer if it meant the game would be more fun. It was heartwarming and motivating for the entire team. The extra time you’ve given us allowed us to reach the goal and deliver a sizeable expansion that ties in nicely into the entire story of The Riftbreaker.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1945600/The_Riftbreaker_Metal_Terror/



Lesson 3: Don’t be afraid to share your work with the world ahead of release. Sure, keeping a game’s story a secret is a no-brainer, but everything else should be fair game. It allows you to get feedback early, introduce changes, and get everyone excited for what’s coming.

Staying on the topic of Metal Terror, our approach to sharing information about it was much different than during the development of the main game itself. We purposefully decided not to release any articles about the upcoming creatures, technologies, and storyline because we didn’t want to spoil things for you. In our fear of not letting you know too much, we missed an important opportunity to gather feedback and make improvements on what we’ve done. Holding everything in secret hampered our ability to gather feedback early. This resulted in a too optimistic approach to announcing release dates and a lot of resulting stress. This is why we will be sharing a lot more info with you leading up to the release of the second world expansion and its story-based part - Into the Dark.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2108630/The_Riftbreaker_Into_The_Dark/
Wishlist now!



Lesson 4: Minimize the effort that you require from players when giving you feedback.

This leads us nicely to another thing that happened last year: the introduction of our feedback board at riftbreaker.featureupvote.com. For a very long time, we have been collecting feedback and suggestions from across all our media channels. We knew that some issues came up more often than others and made a point to include them in our development schedule. However, what we didn’t take into account was the fact that we only collected feedback from those players who devoted time and energy to actually type out a message to us.

Only after setting up the suggestion board did we realize what your opinions on the requested features are. We learned that single-player content is just as important as multiplayer. We also realized that not that many of you would like us to prioritize PVP modes. That gave us a lot of information to work with. Feature Upvote doesn’t require setting up any accounts, logging in, or writing essays on things you would like to see changed. Any user can just come to the board, click ‘upvote’ on things they like and move on. The ease of use and accessibility have given us great, actionable feedback we could start implementing right away.



Lesson 5: Don’t be afraid to share information, even about the most difficult of topics. Our ‘Co-Op when?’ article was one of the most popular blog entries in EXOR history. Almost 60.000 of you gave it a read. Hundreds have left comments appreciating the explanation and asking for more.

The overarching theme of 2022 and the number one most requested feature has always been clear - CO-OP WHEN?! We’ve known since the beginning that implementing multiplayer mode for the game was going to be very tough, and it was going to take at least a year. It turned out to be longer than that, and with the Q4 2022 release becoming more and more unlikely with each day, we decided to tell you everything about it in a lengthy, detailed article. It explained the network architecture we chose for the multiplayer module, listed the things that we had already reworked, and pointed out the plans for future reworks and optimizations. That leads to a very important conclusion - take the time to share what’s going on behind the scenes. People will appreciate it!

Enough about the past. Let’s talk about the future of The Riftbreaker.

A lot of good things are coming in 2023, starting with the second world expansion and its story-based campaign part - Into the Dark. The story will follow Ashley and Mr. Riggs into a network of caverns and tunnels beneath the surface of Galatea 37. The new expansion will open up a new biome, along with its unique fauna and flora, and give you access to tons of new technologies and gameplay mechanics. And as we promised - we’re not going to be secretive about it. Be on the lookout for articles featuring the new content!


We absolutely love how this piece of artwork turned out. Full res version this way.

We won’t slow down with regular updates, either. Our plans to expand the endgame of the Campaign Mode are big and won’t happen overnight. You can expect plenty of updates featuring new mechanics, reworks of existing ones (looking at you, mods!), as well as updates to the game’s balance. We can’t wait to see the final results!

We are also continuing our efforts on the multiplayer front. As soon as we have a working version that would allow two players to have a go at one of the survival maps together, we want to make it available as a closed beta. We will use that as a base for further development of the co-op mode that will allow you to enjoy all the content available in The Riftbreaker together with your friends. Those are, naturally, not the only things we have in store for you in the coming year. We plan to add even more content and technical innovations. We also want to involve you in the process of development in more ways.


Mr. Riggs wants to get involved, too!

Speaking of involving our community - a huge thank you for your positive response to the brutal survival challenge we issued a couple of days ago! We received many entries, and the first three people who successfully completed the challenge were:

• mic - Acid Brutal
  
• eandersson - Magma Brutal
  
• Zazou38 - Desert Brutal

Mr. Riggs plushies go your way! We also have an honorary mention - Harkonnen28, who was actually the first one to send in the video. Still, he was going to receive a plushie, either way, thanks to his contributions to the community.


Cracking presents means something different on Galatea 37.

We leave you with the Winter Holiday seasonal event active. The jungle biome of Galatea 37 is covered in snow, landmines turned into gift boxes, sentinel towers became snowmen, and the lamps in your base resemble gas lights. If you don’t see that in your game just yet, make sure to enable the ‘seasonal events’ option in the gameplay section of the options menu. If you prefer the classic look of The Riftbreaker, you can turn that option off, too. We don’t mind. You can even switch between the two modes on the fly. Go wild. We’re not going to tell you how to live your life.



Most of the EXOR Studios team will be back in the office in the second week of January. At that point you can expect the return of regular streams at www.twitch.tv/exorstudios, new articles about the upcoming content, as well as game updates. For now, though, we would like to wish you a great winter holiday. Spend some time with your loved ones, eat some good food and have a break from everything. You earned it.

Happy holidays!
EXOR Studios

Changelog:

• Added a sound menu with adjustable volumes.
  
• Minor adjustments:
  
  • Game saves after completing a scenario, to avoid losing progression in case the autosave on exit fails.
    
  • Planes won't backtrack anymore after landing at London City, because planes can use a taxiway in real life.
    
  • For custom airports, the wake turbulence minima can be adjusted. See the 'wake' property in the [airspace] section of example.txt.
• Bug fix for departures that did not request further climb even when they were flying at a too low altitude.

1.夜之塔DLC更新！人物在黑化之后进入夜之塔，迎来新的挑战。
平衡性还在测试中，游戏平衡性可能还需调整，目前个角色难度约等于极难20-50
2.各难度钻石获得调整，低难度增加获得，高难度减少获得；增加首通钻石奖励（已通关可以直接领取）

Hello dear adventurers of the Wilderness,

After 3 months of waiting, we are back and we have great things for you.

/!\ This Update does not ensure compatibility with save files from the previous version. Therefore, you will not be able to run existing savefiles /!\

• Added chapter 5 : new quests, new monsters but also new fights and items.
  
• Addition of creatures specific to the Shade
  
• Added dynamic weather effects according to the events
  
• Added an optional tutorial
  
• Added loading screens illustrating the current chapter
  
• Added the Village: the game now starts in the Village where you have to choose the adventurers who will form the first group and select (or not!) the Spirits who will accompany them

• Complete rewriting of the scenario
  
• Removal of reinforcement mechanics
  
• When a choice yieldscontains two possible outcomes, these outcomes always represent a success on the one hand and a failure on the other. The actual outcome is determined by a 50/50 random draw between these two possibilities
  
• The sequence of events and battles within a chapter has been changed

• The influence system has been removed. You are now free to choose your reactions (or almost...)
  
• Vazzards can now have a Spirit
  
• Spirits provide bonuses and one resurrection but prohibit risky choices (i.e. those with a random outcome)
  
• When a Vazzard dies, it becomes a Spirit that can accompany the next adventurers. The bonuses that the Spirit confers depend on the level and build of the dead character.

• Removed the Game Over when the Shade catches up with you. Instead, a tough fight against the Shade's creatures is triggered.
  
• If you win, you regain a 10-day lead over the Shade.
  
• In case of defeat, you return to the village to compose a new group of adventurers.

Removal of the "Sacrifice" Passive

• Choices with variable outcomes are indicated as risky and are represented by a coin toss animation

• The Shade threat progress bar is replaced by a chapter progress bar

• Added animations for critical hits
  
• Added new animations depending on the weapon equipped as well as several animation variations for each weapon.

• Improved interface to better see and understand the impact of the four possible campfire decisions

• The inventory interface has been redesigned for a better overall usability
  
• Added comparison between equipped items and those in the inventory

• Improved iconography of statistics for a better understanding

• The game is now saved at the end of each event or victory in battle

• Added a user setting to speed up the overall game
  
• Added a user setting to speed up the game only when it's the AI's turn in combat
  
• Traps are highlighted when they are on the currently highlighted path.
  
• Ability to change language during the game
  
  
• AI: NPCs avoid traps set by their allies as much as possible

• The campfire and its different actions
  
• The level up interface
  
• The critical hits

- The Wild Wits Games Team

• Fixed a graphical issue in the Amstrad CPC version. Saved games in that version will unfortunately be invalidated.

Welcome to this year's last content update! It might not look too gorgeous in terms of new stuff and such, but we have made a lot of little tweaks to make your never-ending work at Learning Factory significantly more comfortable!

But first, may we fancy you with this brand new trailer of ours:

• New visuals for Manipulators
  
• New Upgrade: increases the operating speed for regular Manipulators
  
• Cacti now grow faster and provide High Quality Catnip Juice
  
• Gameplay Options section added in the Settings
  
• In-game wiki shows the speed of plants' regrowing under perfect conditions (suggested by Евгений Ры́марев)
  
• Added an option to prevent items to fall off Transporters when they reach the end of a line (suggested by Евгений Ры́марев)
  
• Added an option to remove items from the Backpack (suggested by Евгений Ры́марев) - hover mouse pointer over the item and press 'Backspace' or 'Delete' (by default)
  
• Added an option for quick Blueprint creation (press 'Ctrl+Q' with your mouse pointed over target building)
  
• Added an option for mass selecting and deleting Blueprints (press and hold 'Ctrl', and drag your mouse over target Blueprints)
  
• Added an option to setup outputs for outputs of Splitters and Manipulators
  
• Buildings placed over the Blueprints include the settings selected for those Blueprints
  
• Added an option to toggle notifications from Data Storages on and off (suggested by aCDRph3rr3t_Is_RunningAmok)
  
• Added an option to set the zooming distance limit
  
• Added an option to mute the game when its window is inactive
  
• Improved Pause indicator
  
• Added an option to hide big warning when Blueprint mode or Pause are turned on
  
• 2 new achivements
  
• Interface fixes
  
• Bug fixes
  
• Optimization

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1150090/Learning_Factory

And don't forget to follow Learning Factory on Steam to get the news about new updates as soon as they're out there



Going to Early Access is but the first step to glory (and eternal cat happiness). Wanna be part of what happens next? Head to this blog post and learn how to help make the game even more awesome!

Learning Factory needs your help! Record a 10 or more minutes of you playing the game, share a video using any way you see fit, write your name into Learning Factory credits and get a promo cat! Make history here

The beginning of winter means a new update! Do you want to know what is new in version 1.5?

We have added some new visual upgrades to SCP Strategy!


NIGHT inspired by SCP-3899


WINTER inspired by SCP-251


VOLCANO inspired by SCP-1699

You can select any of them in the pause menu.
*in the interests of optimization, this feature is not available on low graphics settings

• added 30new SCPs ( We have 430 now! )
  
• added 3 new unique alternative looks of the globe
  
• added new special events with new decisions to take

You can also join our discord.

Bugfix: In rare instances, it would become impossible to save the game after jumping to a new star system.