HellO valued employees,

The first major content update for Hell of an Office is here bringing the game to 0.2.0!

Introducing our newest office decor: the Corporate Glacier and Employment Risk Cliffs. These hardy plants may reflect the treacherous terrain of corporate culture, but they'll make sure your climb up the corporate ladder is a stylish one! Let's add some style to that infernal 9-5 grind! 🔥🌿💼


The Necktie Negligences Features Overview...

Corporate Glacier 👔

• 10 new levels
  
• New Necktie-Hook mechanic
  
• Freezing environment
  
• New Stapler Skin

Employment Risk Cliffs 🍩

• 10 new levels
  
• New Traps mechanic (pencils, donuts, axes, wheels, hammer, lasers)
  
• Perilous environment
  
• New Stapler Skin

Elevator Scene Upgrade 🚪

• Improved overall elevator scene
  
• New SFXs
  
• New Elevator Theme
  
• Added skip button

Additional Changes 🔧

• Added more sensitivity options for the mouse
  
• Added Level Restart shortcut pressing R in the score screen
  
• Leaderboards are now accessible from the pause menu as well
  
• Added leaderboards for each Hell
  
• Double Dash will be kept as a mechanic
  
• Added more tips, they are not random anymore
  
• Now it is possible to change the credits speed
  
• Added loading screens between menus
  
• Level 20 lava rise speed is slower now
  
• Level 04 lava rise speed is slower now
  
• New Arcade Stapler Skin
  
• Added new ambient sounds to each Hell

Bug Fixes 🐞

• Now in Level 01, the timer won’t start when climbing on top of the elevator
  
• Now in Level 22, the rising arc won’t block the path
  
• Fixed a decal in Level 15
  
• Pressing Shift won’t restart the level while in the Score Screen anymore
  
• Done a lot of text corrections
  
• Fixed bullet going through walls/collisions when shooting too close to them

Known Issues ⚠️

• Level 40 has a lower performance due to the nature of the level itself
  
• Steam Leaderboards have a limit on how many new high scores a player can upload in the same level under a certain amount of time. Being 10 new records under 10 minutes. There is no way of increasing/overcoming this limitation.
  
• Players can randomly respawn during the elevator scene.

Beyond the Infernal Cubicles Horizon

The Necktie Negligences is our first major content update for Hell of an Office, delivering more of what you know and love about HOAO with some hellishly cool improvements.

We're not done yet, folks! This is just the beginning. Stay tuned as we continue to expand the game content and develop even more diabolical levels. Don't forget to check out our Early Access Roadmap to see what devilish delights are in store for you in the future. 📈

Hell of an Office Social Links:

• Discord
  
• Twitter

Thank you, thank you, thank you! Your continued support of Hell of an Office means the world to us, even if it's just a drop in the boiling lake of lava. We're thrilled to bring you more of this chaotic, oppressive, and torturous office environment for you to endure. 🔥🔥🔥

Stay resilient,

43 Studios

For this blog we are going to tell you who exactly is behind DOOMBLADE:

Juha the Artist and Kim the Coder.


We will be breaking the blog into two parts, the second part of which will be released early next week!

For the first part, we will be focusing on Kim.

I’m the coder / lead designer of DOOMBLADE. I’ve been working with Juha the Artist for quite awhile now. I think our ten year anniversary of making games together is quite close, though I’m totally lost on the exact date. I hope Juha won’t be upset!

But to get back on track, in this blog post I’m supposed to write about myself, not anniversaries. My path in making games started in the nineties when I was in elementary school, but it sort of took a detour after that. When I was in first grade, my dad bought us the 8-bit Nintendo. I was immediately hooked. In third grade, we got a PC and my video game universe greatly expanded.



Soon enough, I was able to make my own video game! I got into programming with Microsoft QuickBASIC and made some text adventure games. I don’t remember many of them at this point, but one was called Mortal Wombat. In it, you played as a wombat challenging other animals to fights. It even had some “art” I did with Deluxe Paint II. So I guess technically it was a visual novel?

Anyway, making games and in particular coding was put on hold for a long time after that. I picked up a nasty on-and-off Magic: the Gathering addiction (that I still haven’t been able to break) right before middle school. After growing up with that and all sorts of video games, I ended up enrolling in university to study Computer Science. There I really learned how to code.

By the time I got my bachelor’s degree it finally hit me - I should try to make video games for a living. For all of my life before then, for some reason it never even entered my mind as an option. But now I was at a point where I knew how to code and all I did was play games, so it just felt obvious that I should try game development.



Luckily for me, there was a master’s degree program for game design in another nearby university. And even more luckily, I was able to get in. This is where I met Juha. It didn’t take long for us to start making games together. And, all of a sudden, we had set up a company and had even managed to release some games!

DOOMBLADE is by far our biggest and most ambitious project to date. In our earlier games, we had started experimenting with new mechanics of combat and movement in platformer games. DOOMBLADE is where all that experimentation culminates.



I’m really happy with the way we are changing the way you play a metroidvania with DOOMBLADE. I think this is what drives me most as a game developer - finding entirely new ways of playing, even if the game genre is quite established. I can’t wait to be able to share DOOMBLADE in its entirety with you! We have been making this game for so long and we are almost there!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/922050/DOOMBLADE/




DOOMBLADE

• DOOMBLADE Twitter
  
• Muro Studios Twitter
  
• Instagram

Iceberg Interactive

• Twitter
  
• Facebook
  
• YouTube
  
• Steam Publisher Page

Hello, hello! I've been quiet for a bit but a lot's been cooking behind the scenes. I realize that this blog post's subtitle might sound a bit scary, but please read until the very end for all the details!

This update brings you a feature that I've been wanting to put into the game for a very long time. I'd originally tried to get this in for the Early Access launch, but it proved too complex and I didn't get time to work on it again until now.

• This is a new sub-mode of the main game that you can enable/disable at any point by toggling a new button on the top-right corner of the screen. When turned on, the game enables a whole suite of options aimed at automating aspects of the simulation to turn things into a more passive, screensaver-like experience suitable for chilling out in front of, running on a second monitor, or even streaming.
  
  
  
  All of these options are adjustable, so you have a lot of control over the experience. You can run this mode to have the game mostly play itself, or you can choose to automate nothing except dog poop cleanup. It's up to you!
  
  
  
  The sub-feature I'm most excited about with this new mode is automatic breeding. Automation Options introduces a new breeding system where dogs will automatically lay fertilized eggs that hatch in the pen, letting entire dog lineages progress without ever having to enter Breeding Mode!

• Petting a cocoon to increase a dog's mutation rate should now have a vastly increased effect. I audited the system and discovered that it was not doing nearly as much as it should have been.

• Fixed a loading softlock that could occur in the event that your computer's system time got set backwards since the last time you played. This had to do with how the game would search for automated backup save files and would result in an infinite loop of trying to find the oldest file. This could have resulted in rare softlocks for users switching time zones, or during daylight savings switch-overs.
  
• Fixed an issue where tutorial prompts would not automatically update when switching the in-game language.
  
• Fixed an issue that resulted in the toybox "new item" notification icon not properly displaying/hiding itself when switching save files. This icon should now correctly show and hide itself to match the state of the current file you have open.

And with that, the big news...

The subtitle is true, this update marks the end of active Wobbledogs development and gameplay updates. I'll explain more in a second, but first I just want to say that this is not the end you might imagine! Not only will there still be a few more content packs being released to all of you for free in the future, but there are also a few more exciting things happening behind the scenes with announcements to come!

But it's true that feature work has ended. I've been working on Wobbledogs for a very long time. 7 years, in fact. It released on Early Access 2 years ago, and it's been fully released for over a year. It's been my full time job this entire time outside of a few short breaks and brief side gigs. There is of course more that I could add, but that would be the case even if I worked on this thing for the rest of my life. I'm proud of where the game is at. I love Wobbledogs and I'm beyond happy that I got the opportunity to bring it this far. There were many many points during development where I nearly quit, and where I wasn't sure things would ever come together, but I'm happy I was able to stick with it.

The community that's grown alongside this game has been so wonderful. Putting a cap on development is bittersweet for me because although I'm proud of where the game is at and excited to move onto new things, I also know that many of you will be disappointed. I don't like disappointing people, and it's hard for me to make this decision knowing that I will be. In the end, however, I also recognize that I'm very lucky. To have a community that cares this much is special. I know there are many of you who would excitedly wait for updates for as long as I kept putting them out, and that's not something to take for granted. Your enthusiasm is what's allowed this game to grow.

That said, my time on Wobbledogs is done. It's been great, but I was never going to be able to work on this forever. There are still more games I want to make, and with the support that Wobbledogs has received, I'm lucky enough to be able to keep on making them.

I'll be around for the next few weeks to keep an eye on things and fix any new bugs that might've popped up from this update, but after that it's time for me to relax a little and give myself a very very long vacation :')



Thank you all so much, and I hope you'll all look forward to whatever it is I end up making next!

Keep on wobbling.

-Tom

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1424330/wobbledogs

Hi everyone! In today's patch we've implemented several bug fixes including fixes to shift clicking buildings blocked by UI, Trench Extractor placement and crew relations tooltips.
Stay tuned for additional updates, and don't hesitate to share your feedback with us either here or on our Discord server.

• Fixes for Trench Extractor placement.
  
• Fix for Crew Relations bar tooltips.
  
• Shift click copy is now correctly blocked by UI elements.

• Clickable depleted Habitat alerts.

Hi all!


Help Elures navigate through the labyrinth of dreams and uncover the secret of extraneous memories.



Please feel free to let us know about any issues you encounter. We will be checking in on the Steam forums and Discord for any feedback and bug reports and will be working away at fixing any issues that come in.

https://discord.gg/6DGedftY

Artesign.

Hi everyone!

On Monday, April 3rd, we posted Update Patch 15, and that was our last scheduled monthly patch for Curse of the Deadwood!

We thank you all for the feedback you've given us along the way, and we hope that you are enjoying the game. We've put so much love and care into improving the game performance and details since we started the monthly patches, and we hope this made it more playable for everyone!

All this to say thank you for your support, and while this was our last scheduled patch, we'll always monitor feedback and come back to fix any major bugs that prevent gameplay! Have fun smashing Deadwood!

It's been a long time coming and I greatly appreciate everyone who maintained interest over the game's development time. I'm extremely proud of this game, I feel I achieved what I set out to in terms of game feel and mechanics. OTXO plays really tight!

The game's soundtrack is also available right now on Bandcamp: https://lateralis.bandcamp.com/album/otxo-original-soundtrack

Please enjoy the game. If you run into any bugs, feel free to use the Steam discussion boards, or hop into the Lateralis discord: https://discord.gg/YmEcGkG

Thank you!

Attention passengers!

We have another patch rolling into the station for Sweet Transit - Hotfix 15!

Here' are the details of this patch:

• Fixed a crash when deleting a production facility connected to a distribution center
  
• Fixed a crash when building roads under a bridge on water
  
• Fixed walkers spawning in and out bug
  
• Fixed a crash when loading with requirement signal selected
  
• Fixed a random crash with big settlements
  
• Fixed a crash when loading a game with corrupted rails
  
• Fixed a freeze with big settlements
  
• Fixed signals blocks being left reserved

• Improved multithreading performance with 100+ trains
  
• Decreased tools and books consumption
  
• Improved how people are being calculated

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1612770/Sweet_Transit/

Welcome adventurer to the newest update of our RPG game!
Are you ready to explore the mysteries of a dark and dangerous cave?

Deep in the heart of the swamps lies a hidden cave, unknown to most but rumored to be filled with treasure and danger. Only the bravest of souls dare to enter, for within its depths lurks unknown perils and untold riches.

The cave entrance is shrouded in darkness, but with a trusty torch in hand, you bravely enter the depths. The damp walls echo with the sound of your footsteps as you delve deeper into the unknown. Suddenly, you see a glint of light in the distance, and you know you are close to your goal.

As you approach the source of the light, you find yourself face-to-face with a mysterious figure. Is it a witch? Is it a sorceress? You can't quite make out her features in the dimly lit cavern, but she beckons you closer with a crooked finger.

With a chill running down your spine, you realize that you are not alone in this cave. You hear the skittering of many legs and a faint rustling sound. What could it be? You hesitate, but the witch urges you forward, promising you untold riches and powerful magic.

As you follow her deeper into the cave, you come across a massive web stretching across the cavern walls. It is the home of a giant spider, its eight eyes glowing in the darkness. You shudder with fear, but the witch seems unfazed, as if she has some kind of control over the beast.

You can't help but feel that you've stumbled upon something much larger than a simple cave. What secrets lie in this mysterious place? Will you uncover the witch's true intentions, and survive the deadly spider's attack? Only the bravest adventurers will dare to enter and find out.

Each season, as we introduce new content, we are also providing an updated Roadmap to ensure transparency on upcoming features. When making those adjustments, we are considering multiple factors including the community feedback.

Today's update reflects some of the feedback you've shared with us following the Year 8 Reveal Panel back at the Six Invitational 2023 last February.

Year 8 is bringing a lot of new features, so without further ado, let’s dive into the mid-season Roadmap update!

• Status: confirmed for Y8S2

Permanent Arcade is one of the most anticipated playlists, and we are happy to announce that thanks to all the hard work put into it, this feature will release in Season 2! You will soon be able to play several new game modes and enjoy the return of out-of-the-ordinary matches!

• Status: confirmed for Y8S2

You saw some rooms of the new Consulate map during the Year 8 Reveal Panel, but we can now confirm that the new reworked map will be released in Season 2. As one of Siege’s oldest maps, this major rework is not to be taken lightly; it required a complete rebuild from the ground up.

• Status: confirmed for Y8S2

As announced at the Six Invitational 2023, we are bringing even more training features to Siege this year than ever before. We are working on several new features and enhancements of the Shooting Range, and they are now confirmed to release with Season 2. Lock and load Operators, the updated Shooting Range will be one of the best ways to put your skills to the test!

• New target delivery: Y8S3

We shifted the target delivery of the rework of Operator Frost following the Community’s feedback and comments after the Year 8 Reveal Panel at the Six Invitational. A first test of these balancing changes will be playable on the Y8S2 LAB TS in June. We want to make sure we do not hinder our dear Canadian Operator's effectiveness in the field while we aim to bring more balance and gameplay opportunities with the update to her gadget.

• Earlier target delivery: Y8S2 instead of Y8S3

As we have shifted the target delivery of the Operator Frost Rework, we are aiming to release the new observation blocker gadget a full season earlier than announced at the Six Invitational. This new Intel Denial gadget will soon be in your hands!

• Target delivery: Y8S2 (Part I) and Y8S4 (Part II)

We are actively working on Operator Grim to improve his impact. In order for you to get your hands on this rework sooner, we have broken this update into two parts. The first update is set to be released in Season 2, and the next one in Season 4.


Stay tuned for the upcoming Year 8 Season 2 reveal and join the discussion on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, Discord, and Facebook.

Check out the public Roadmap for more information on the changes coming your way!