Greetings Lords & Ladies!

We have some important news to share with you about Foundation's next steps. The team is pleased to unveil an updated roadmap! 📅


2022 was a big year for Polymorph Games, but also one of transition.

First and foremost, we have worked on our biggest update so far, Foundation 1.9, that has added the remaining systems and bound all of them to shape the core experience we intended for Foundation. We also have included and expanded the monastery gameplay, with a revamped visual, representing our work on the final Art Direction (see: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/art/deep-dive-the-art-of-i-foundation-i-).



Another major feature that we were happy to deliver was the first iteration of the map generator, allowing you to have more maps to play with.

The second important change that happened last year was the expansion of our team, with the addition of team members filling important roles, such as an Art Director, a Lead 3D Artist, an Engine Programmer and a Narrative Designer. This is allowing us to work on multiple aspects of the game at the same time: improving our visuals, the game content, as well as the procedurally generated content like the map generator.




In the last couple of months, we’ve made the delicate and thorough exercise of reviewing and completing our game design. Every idea and planned feature has been discussed and questioned, and we aimed to leave no stones unturned. This process had us recenter on Foundation’s strengths, and the result is a better defined feature list.

Today we are pleased to share our updated roadmap – a glimpse of both our major and minor updates left to be released.


We are planning five major releases until Foundation’s end of Early Access.




The next Major Update we are working on is about adding Safety, a tool players can use to control the density of housing in specific zones. Safety is also something that will be used and extended by the Castle in the Kingdom progression path. This will also integrate the walls into the construction flow. We will provide more details soon.


We know you are eager to get your hands on this one, and we are already working on it. In addition to the new Castle monument, expect more gameplay options from overhauled military missions (including squads!), and more interaction with the new safety concept.


This update will round off the final Estate gameplay and its visual overhaul. It will focus on giving the tools to improve happiness and taxation capabilities.


As you may know, we are working to revamp our building and environment visuals: environment biomes, skyboxes, lighting, map edges.


This one will have all the completed game content, with the improved residential zoning, and tier 3 housing.

Along the way toward Foundation's full release, the team will continue to add minor features, to include new quality of life (QOL) changes as well as game content.

• Continuous Monument Experience Improvements
  
• Continuous Map Generator Improvements
  
• Continuous Quality of Life Improvements
  
• Continuous Accessibility Improvements
  
• Continuous Modding Improvements
  
• Continuous Balancing Improvements
  
• New Productions Buildings and Production Building Extensions
  
• Fertility
  
• Scalable Quests
  
• New Mandates
  
• New Information Layers
  
• Job XP Implementation
  
• Paved Roads

As mentioned earlier, the process of reviewing and completing our game design had us focus on Foundation’s strengths. But that also means that unfortunately, some features we have added to the roadmap during the Early Access won’t make it to the full release, as we realized that they will not add any significant fun to the game and will create more micromanagement than we wish to push on the player. We are thus shelving housing decay, aging and families, and graveyards from the roadmap. The disease feature and vehicles are also postponed, meaning they might become part of the game at some point, but not before the end of the early access. Steam Workshop Integration has also been dropped as we continue to focus on https://mod.io/g/foundation and its cross-platform modding capabilities.

We know some of you will be disappointed about this news, especially the aging and family, but the average village size in Foundation has a higher population count than first anticipated, and having a feature like this would have brought us on the path of survival, micromanagement and overcomplexity.

We have reasserted our inspirations - Pharaoh, The Settlers and Anno - all games that don’t feature aging and death, but are still unique in their own ways and most importantly, great city-building experiences. With that in mind, we are confident that we are on the right path with Foundation’s design plans.




As many of you may have realized, the Trello board was not being updated often. It has shown to be a lot of work to maintain, and it also creates a divergence with our internal planning tool. Hence why we are closing the Trello, and will instead share updates and progress on the roadmap on posts such as this one.

We are also closing our Mantis Public Bug reporter. We realized that the most efficient way to track bugs and get feedback is through Discord or right here on the Steam forums. It is also a better way to filter what is a bug and what is not, because the community usually provides help as well. So don’t hesitate to join our Discord server to share your bugs and feedback!


In 2023 we also want to give you access to experimental builds. Their goal will be to test new features and progression changes before they're applied to the live version of Foundation. This is a way for us to get important feedback from you, that will help us deliver polished updates. The first experimental build will be the next minor update that changes a lot of the early/mid game balancing.




As of now, we are currently working on multiple updates:

• 1.9.2 is about an improved budget breakdown and multiple Quality of Life improvements, like the ESC and right-click handling (Estimated Release Date: February 2023)
  
• Minor Update: We are preparing an experimental build that changes early progression in the game (In Progress, Experimental in March 2023)
  
  • Taxation will be moved to the Labor progression path
    
  • Tavern will become a need for the commoners
    
  • The early and mid game progression will be reviewed
    
  • Trade revenue will be more generous
• Minor Update: Plains terrain type (flatter) will be introduced in procedurally generated maps (In Progress, Estimated Release Date, March 2023)
  
• Major Update: Residential Core + Safety (Being prototyped, No ETA yet)
  
• Major Update: Castle (Kingdom Progression Path) (In Progress, No ETA yet)

Note that this planning is subject to change along the way.


In 2023, we are full speed ahead to deliver consistent and substantial updates that will keep improving the overall quality of the game.

We thank you for your continued support, we are lucky to have such a loving and dedicated community!

—The Polymorph Games team

Swing by The Pale Beyond page starting at 10am PST on launch day (February 24th) to catch the launch day stream with Thomas and Michael from Bellular Games. They will be streaming the first hour of gameplay and making some hard decisions to keep the crew and sled dogs alive.

We hope you enjoy the stream! As always, we invite you to swing by the Fellow Traveller Discord to chat all things The Pale Beyond!

PS: If you can't tune it live, we will keep it on loop for the weekend.

Greetings Wayfarers. This major update adds a lot of new content to the game. Purefire Path has become fully playable (encounter 12, encounter 13, encounter 14, encounter 15 have been added). There is a new literary piece (Plea to Aphia) and a new piece of music (Shrine of Gratitude). Good luck on your journey!

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the anniversary of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

A year ago, the cunning dictator Putin ordered the Ukraine invasion right after claiming he would not do so.
A year ago, the brave president Zelensky stayed in Kyiv asking for ammo, not a ride.

But, where were we?
One of the benefits of developing a game for a long time is, the game lives through history and we can always look back to see where we were one year ago.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1519140/view/3119310025773834317
Right! We, along with people all over the world, declaimed our support for Ukraine. We made our donations through Humble Bundles, Itch, Unity store, National Bank of Ukraine, U24, Red Cross, and many other websites we can find without hesitation for we know that is the right thing to do.

However, many others had their doubts. They didn't think Ukraine could make it. Some thought the war would be over within 3 days. Some even believed it would over within 1 hour and 22 minutes. But, here we are, 1 year later, Kyiv stands, Ukraine stands, and our continuous support for Ukraine stands! There shall be no more doubts about the inevitable victory of Ukraine all thanks to every Ukrainian and international defender on the ground, bravely fighting against the invaders.

Thus, this week's updates include quite a few war-inspired contents:
1, Drones
During this war, drones are playing critical roles. It may even be the first war in human history that ever fought like this. Thus, during this week's updates, drones have been added to the game as a new type of machine pet.

2, Stolen Washing Machines
So, what did the so-called "2nd strongest army in the world" do during this war in addition to committing all the genocide, atrocities, and terrorist attacks against civilians? Oh, well, they were infamous for their obsession with stealing washing machines. Maybe many of them don't even have one back at home, thus they want those precious washing machines so badly that they don't even hide such actions.

So, we can now find some of the stolen washing machines in the game. :)

3, A Russian Man Killed by a Camel in Siberia
The story may not directly relate to the war. However, it sounds like a metaphor. The guy thought he could bully a camel. Thus, he hit the camel in the face. Unfortunately, we all know that ended badly.

I wonder how many people are out there, who believe that they can do whatever they want just because they have the seemly strong fighting capability. Too bad for them, they actually have not.

4, Some Cartoon Dogs.

NAFO Expansion is non-negotiable. Thus, eventually, they got into the game. :D
Also, we now have direct links to a few websites where you can make donations to Ukraine in the game:


OK, let's stop here for now before this DD starts to be full of all kinds of memes.
Other content updates of this week, include:
1, More cards/mechanics to Tombstone
We got the Sewer Overgroth monster that will split into two slimes upon death.
We also got Succubus that can take control of a random enemy minion.


2, Potatoes That Can Be Planted
During the past weeks, we got some potato cooking recipes. Now, we got the seeds. You can start to plant your own potatoes for cooking or other purposes.

3, Enhanced "Befuddled Life & Dead Dream"
The drink can now be used on your customized characters other than your main character to reset their attribution points. In addition to that, it can also restore a small amount of sanity to whoever drinks it.

4, Cooking Oil Makes Enemies Vulnerable to Fire
Throw some cooking oil on certain enemies can allow you to light them up a bit easier later. This is science. :D

That's for this week. I hope we will not have another DD for another anniversary of this war. Instead, let there be the victory that we celebrate. Slava Ukraini!

Today's changelog:
############Content##############
[Furniture]New furniture: Obelisk (1x1 size. It's sold by Saad.)
[Gardening]Added potato seed.
[Commodity Market]Random Gardening Vendors now sell potato seeds.
[GPA]You can now exchange GPA coins for drones.

The Game Master has finally allowed you to Wishlist our upcoming game, Deceit 2.

Not sure what Deceit 2 is? Only the best new horror social deception game!

Nine strangers trapped, two of them hiding a monstrous secret. Outwit and outrun interdimensional demons while maintaining your sanity. Escape demands cooperation, but who can you trust?

The sequel to the original Deceit, Deceit 2 will be released in 2023, built in UE5 with exciting new gameplay and a huge range of new content to immerse yourself and find new ways to manipulate, deceive and expose your friends.

Wishlist Deceit 2 today, and you’ll be kept up to date on development and be notified when the game launches >> Wishlist Deceit 2 on Steam

Hey!

New Pixel Piracy Update is Up.

From now on, i will try to update the game every Friday.

Today's Update focuses on Monsters!

• Added Plankton, Shrimp, and Crap Golem Ship Tiles.
  
• Added Plankton Monster Encounter to the Ships and Islands.
  
• Added Shrimp Monster Encounter to the Ships and Islands.
  
• Added Crap Golem Monster Encounter to the Ships and Islands.
  
• Monster Selection at the start of the new Game now reflects the appearance chance of these encounters.
  
• Fixed Bug where some sounds were playing in 3D.
  
• Reverted some Balance changes from the last patch. Passive XP is now better, and when defeating Legendary Pirates, the difficulty rises by 50% and not 100%.
  
• Greater Fool Ticket Nerf.

Next Week I plan to some new town NPCs and sickness to the game. (Plague Modifier).

Stay tuned for more; I will try to update the game every week till Summer 2023.

Thanks!

Fixed chat de-sync issue.
Fixed movements not moving downwards or upward when sliding against a wall.
Fixed spawn sync issue after a player would die.
Fixed name tags being under the walls
Fixed chat movement bug where players would hit WASD and it would show up in chat and where players could still move when typing in chat.
Added exp gain text
Adjusted Skeleton king health.
Added weapon stat sync so different armors and weapons have their own stats instead of it just being based on the same number for an attack.

There is a lot going on with development so check the Discord if you are interested in being apart of the alpha testing. ːsteamthumbsupː

Fellow Bandits,

After here feedback from some of you we've delivered a couple of imporvements and tweaks to the demo including:

- new Papi the Chicken model
- improved opening animation
- improved control icons for gamepad
- improved navigation on trading screens when you use a gamepad
- hiding mouse coursor when playing with a gamepad
- gold visible on the main UI
- numerous small fixes

Thank you all for your feedback. It helps us a lot on working on Bandit Simulator.

If you have any additional ideas or remarks contact us on Discord: https://discord.gg/gbsXxc2q

See ya all!

Greetings from the Chimera team everyone! It has been some time since we announced Songs of Silence, and we’re blown away by the incredibly positive reception we’ve had from players worldwide. Thank you so much for supporting our game, sharing your feelings and thoughts, and following the development of Songs of Silence. We noticed there were many questions regarding the game itself, its lore, and some of the game mechanics.

We’d like to share a few essential points and answer some of the most frequent questions about Songs of Silence!


Songs of Silence is a turn-based strategy game with real-time auto-battles, offering an enthralling dedicated single-player campaign and a multiplayer mode with skirmish battles on procedurally generated maps for up to 6 players.

The game story is set in two distinctively beautiful fantasy worlds. These worlds are threatened by the spread of Silence, a world-devouring and seemingly unstoppable force. Multiple factions wage war over the remaining land, too engrossed in petty dispute to effectively act against their approaching doom.

As a player, you command a faction and conquer your rivals through military might, subterfuge, or arcane means. Choose your heroes, lead mighty armies, and manage precious resources to rebuild the ravaged land and defeat your rival kingdoms

Our game offers a unique blend of turn-based kingdom management, exploration, real-time battles, meticulous decision-making, and card-based gameplay.





We took inspiration from some of our all-time favorites:

- Ogre Battle, Kohan, and Warlords are good examples of focused strategic warfare
- Totally Accurate Battle Simulator and Kohan are examples of real-time battle simulations

Songs of Silence is not trying to remake those games directly. It will be its own distinct experience. How exactly? You’ll see when we release more material ːsteammockingː


Our original inspirations came from the Art Nouveau style, especially the character illustrations by the Czech artist Alphonse Mucha and others like Gustav Klimt.

For Songs of Silence we created our authentic art style emphasizing complex characters, sharp outlines, and eye-catching framing. Songs of Silence is a highly stylized strategy game, all units and locations boast stunning artworks meant to depict their stories and support our visual storytelling approach.




This is one of the key story heroes - Lorelai, a young queen ruling over the fallen High House of Ehrengard. We first encounter her in the game as she leads her surviving people through a war-torn world pursuing a new abode.
Behold her steadfast and loyal war bull: Our world is populated by several species of bull-like creatures, which are revered as sacred offspring of the mythical Primordial Urak.


Yes. The core gameplay revolves around exploring a map (we also offer procedurally generated maps), conquering locations to secure resources, and ultimately fighting for dominance against other factions.

Our design philosophy:
Players should be able to complete a full map in a few hours.

We want players to focus on strategic, high-level decisions. Songs of Silence game flow is designed to run swiftly, with turns proceeding quickly from the early game to the end and combat sequences that are thrilling but, at the same time, last over a minute or so.

We're striving to make sure the game is engaging and entertaining, rather than tedious and bogged down in calculations so that players can focus on significant choices and fully immerse themselves into the game. Our goal is to design a grand strategy game with a perfect combination of enjoyment, intricacy, and tremendous replay value.



Yes.

One of the modes is a fully voiced single-player campaign telling the story of our worlds and a few key heroes who live through the “Age of a Thousand Kings”.

We also offer randomized maps for up to 6 players (which can be enjoyed solo against the AI).

Our goal is to provide as much replayability as possible. Randomly generated maps are certainly part of the plan. Still, we are also offering a wide array of unlockables, including different factions, characters, maps, artifacts, and much more to keep you motivated. A few more map variants are in the works, but we can't divulge the details yet. We are keen to ensure that this game can be enjoyed long after its release.
Who knows what the future might bring?






The primary progression is based on heroes: They gain experience and can level up to gain access to new powers and bigger armies. Hero progression is carried over in the campaign.

Units can gain different "veteran status" ranks, but they don't progress in the same way that heroes do with added abilities. We don't want to put the player in a difficult spot if they suffer losses.

There’s a fully realized location prosperity system in place. Every location in the game has a level of prosperity that will alter its appearance on the map - it can expand or be reduced in size. It can even be destroyed, creating a haven for monsters. They can also be burned down entirely, providing fertile ground for monster nests, or fully restored - unless affected by the devouring Silence…







Our primary win condition is for you to seize control of the capitals belonging to everyone else on the map. If you lose your own, you have lost the game.

The campaign features several victory conditions, like evading your pursuers or obtaining powerful artifacts.

Achieving those victory conditions largely depends on the faction and heroes you are playing. Each has a distinct play style: While the Thousand Kingdoms are expansionist and defensive, relying on well-protected locations of high prosperity levels, the Crusade acts like a swarm of hungry locusts, leaving a wholly ravaged map in their wake.






We haven’t finished the game development and can’t really say now. Please follow us on Steam and Discord to stay up to date with news and important announcements.


This is something we haven’t decided on yet.




At the moment we don’t host any closed beta-testing sessions, but that might change in the future. Please join our Discord server and follow the news and announcements there.



If you go to Songs on Silence's official website https://songs-of-silence.com/ and scroll down until the end of the page, you’ll see a link to Press Kit. There you can find a press release, game screenshots, a trailer, and much more.
Also, subscribe to the Beta Access waiting list if you wish to receive a key later on.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2195410/Songs_Of_Silence/

Hope we answered some of your questions and cleared up any concerns you might have had about the project. If your question does not fall into any of the categories mentioned above, feel free to leave a comment under this article or start a new thread in the Discussions section or on the Discord server.

Thank you,
Chimera team

Updates:
- Increased killer's speed while being flashed.
- The Shadow can now jumpscare the survivor even in front of them.
- Visual window bug fixed where it clipped through the wall.
- Killer BOT increased smartness and chase capability.
- Fixed a bug that caused snow to affect the killer for too long.
- A basement Easter Egg was being occluded and can now be found!
- Voice Chat increased range and volume.
- Fixed Conjuring's room bed colliders and jumpscare.
- Turned down Xmas Presents volume (soon to be removed from game :c ).


Thank you all for reading :)
See you in the Darkness,
Dipsi