Jun 8, 2023

The Ascent - Missile Trajectory

Celebrate Ocean Day with Curve Games and WDC!

If you missed some great deals during our publisher sale, don’t worry, you can still take advantage of this fantastic sale and help Whale and Dolphin Conservation to protect these remarkable creatures from the many threats they face.

Add some terrific games to your collection, take advantage of this sale, save some money, and most importantly, save the Ocean 😊

WDC, Whale and Dolphin conservation is the leading global charity dedicated to the protection and conservation of whales and dolphins. Our expert-led teams in the UK, Europe, the Americas, and Australasia work across the whole spectrum of threats, from climate breakdown to accidental entanglements in fishing gear. We bring together, and work hand-in-hand with, businesses, philanthropists, scientists, NGOs, governments and grassroots communities to find solutions to the problems faced by whales and dolphins.

Our aim is to reverse the global decline in whale and dolphin populations by stopping cruelty from deliberate harms such as whaling and captivity, creating safe seas, free from the threat of pollution, collisions with vessels and accidental entanglement in fishing gear, and winning recognition of whales and dolphins as sentient, socially complex beings, and our allies in the fight against climate and nature breakdown.

Whales and dolphins are awe-inspiring. They are intelligent beings, vital for the health of the ocean and planet. Together we can help them recover and flourish, and they can help us reconnect with the wild, and repair the damage we have caused.

All the games in this sale will be generously donating a portion of their net profits to support our conservation work to help protect whales and dolphins across the globe. Whale and Dolphin Conservation is a UK registered charity, no. 1014705.

Follow us and be the first to know about our most recent news and giveaways: 

Curve Games Steam Group
Curve Games Twitter
Curve Games Official (discord.com)
Curve Games (@curvegames) • Instagram photos and videos
Curve Games official Website
Curve Games - YouTube

Jun 8, 2023

Celebrate Ocean Day!

Patch Quest - Missile Trajectory

Jun 8, 2023

Celebrate Ocean Day!

For The King - Missile Trajectory

Jun 8, 2023

WDC World Oceans Day Charity Sale 🐬

Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life - AurochJem

We are excited to announce that we are supporting WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation for World Oceans Day!

The WDC World Oceans Day Sale starts today and runs until 15th June, 10am PDT 2023, and you can save a fin-tastic 50% off Mars Horizon 1 and 90% off Dark Future: Blood Red States. We will also donate 20% of our net profits to WDC to support their conservation work.*

Mars Horizon 2: The Search for Life is also included in this event as an upcoming title, make sure you wishlist and follow!

Image credit: Christopher Swann

WDC, Whale and Dolphin conservation is the leading global charity dedicated to the protection and conservation of whales and dolphins.

Their expert-led teams in the UK, Europe, the Americas, and Australasia work across the whole spectrum of threats, from climate breakdown to accidental entanglements in fishing gear. They bring together, and work hand-in-hand with, businesses, philanthropists, scientists, NGOs, governments and grassroots communities to find solutions to the problems faced by whales and dolphins.

Their aim is to reverse the global decline in whale and dolphin populations by:

Stopping cruelty from deliberate harms such as whaling and captivity.
Creating safe seas, free from the threat of pollution, collisions with vessels and accidental entanglement in fishing gear.
Winning recognition of whales and dolphins as sentient, socially complex beings, and our allies in the fight against climate and nature breakdown.
Whales and dolphins are awe-inspiring. They are intelligent beings, vital for the health of the ocean and planet. They have suffered from terrible harm - deliberate and accidental - and their homes and populations are under threat. But it's not too late.
Together we can still help them recover and flourish and they can help us reconnect with the wild, and repair the damage we have caused.

If you want to read more about WDC, you can do so here: https://whales.org/

You can find many other amazing games in the sale here: {LINK REMOVED}

Thank you for joining us and for supporting WDC! 🐳

*20% of our net developer revenue from this sale will support WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation. Whale and Dolphin Conservation is a UK registered charity (no. 1014705)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2281620/Mars_Horizon_2_The_Search_for_Life

https://store.steampowered.com/app/765810/Mars_Horizon

https://store.steampowered.com/app/370870/Dark_Future_Blood_Red_States/

Jun 8, 2023

June 2023 Devlog

Underspace - Trainwiz

Summer’s upon us starchasers! Welcome to June, this feels like a big spacey month and I’m not quite sure why. Must be something in the wind and the cornfields.

We’ll be having a major announcement in the coming months. I’m not sure of the ETA on that, we’re working things out on our end, but when it comes in, you’ll be like “Yeah that’s a pretty major announcement”. No spoilers though. Not yet. In time, you’ll see.

Anyway, onto progress! As always, you can check out our demo and our Discord for the latest updates!

Testing and Fixes

The big focus this month was bugtesting and making sure things are playable to completion. This is different from the final polishing pass content gets, it’s about making sure that the baseline gameplay and scripting works. And hooo boy was the main campaign broken. Thankfully nothing that really required any programming work or internal engine changes, but after a LOT of effort I can confirm the main campaign is playable to completion!

It’s still got another pass of course, needing things like mid-mission saves, ambient NPCs, more cutscenes, better failure states, etc. In total though, if you were rushing through the game to ONLY do the main campaign, it’d take you about 11 hours in total. A good length, I feel.

Bosses are also getting a pass too. A few had some pretty serious bugs that needed rectification, a few others needed their health, attack, etc, just so every slightly adjusted.

I also am not a fan of beating something only to die from some errant stupidity while the thing is dying. Defeating bosses can also disable their ambient attacks as their thrash and scream and explode. You know, typical boss stuff.

This month will also be about focusing on more fixes, in this case it’s about going over sidequests and making sure those are all playable.

Highengine Improvements

Working off feedback from players regarding various things, and my own experiences, I made the hard decision and spent a weekend improving highengines (players of… other games might call these “cruise engines”). For starters, there’s now some improved animations when entering highengines, including a delay, effects, and better pullback and camera animations.

But moreover, players have been asking for an increased cruising speed. There’s a lot of issues with balance, timing, etc, that just increasing the base speed would bring. So instead, we added a SECOND level of highengines, wherein you activate a sort of powerful hyperdrive that causes you to move three times faster.

Using this has some downsides and is dangerous though! You can’t use it too close to large solar bodies (so stations, planets, etc) or asteroid fields. And hitting something at such a speed without the protection of a laneline can do serious damage to your ship. Still, engine tuning kits can be used to improve and reduce these penalties.

Our next demo will have this, and it’s perfect for cruising over long empty distances.

UI and Feedback

Feedback like feedback from the game, not player feedback. There’s elements in the game that, to an observant player, I’d like to be available in terms of visuals or audios. So, there were a lot of smaller UI changes done.

Starting off, after certain quests or events, some factions can become permanently friendly, or permanently hostile towards you. And this is now reflected in the UI.

You can also now see at a glance if you can craft an item recipe, and how much time is left on that item.

Scanning a legendary enemy will also now create a little icon next to it to indicate what kind of enemy it is, allowing you to plan your battles a little bit more tactically. We’ve also overhauled how legendary enemies spawn, separating out nonhostile NPCs and NPCs into their own spawning rules.

Equipment now has more in-depth descriptions as well. Heavy weapons will give you a full list of their abilities and damage, and chaff will display how effective it is against incoming ordnance.

Finally, you can access the bank menu from any cargo trader, which saves you having to locate a storage panel on a station.

Other Work

We’ve added way more musical stings to the game. Little jingles that play when you do an action. In addition to having music when you level up or complete a mission, there’s now tunes for defeating bosses, reaching the max level, completing a campaign mission, or killing a storm.

Loot! Who doesn’t like a big box of whatever? Space dungeons have lots of loot now, from components that can be crafted into unique weapons, to artifacts that can help with leveling up (or just be sold for tons of money).

Piggybacking off the aforementioned legendary spawns, I’ve also recoded how NPCs spawn, using a new rules system. This means you’ll get much greater variety in the NPCs you see in encounter zones, as well as avoid things like multiple police checkpoints spawning over one another.

I’ve also been optimizing various star systems to run better, with some places seeing almost 20 more FPS, even in heavy traffic areas. Lighting in customization hangars has also been improved.

We've added eye adaption as a graphics option, for those who want some additional clarity in their game.

Finally, ships! Some previously ships that were only able to be flown by NPCs can now be flown by players, such as this zombie mushroom freighter.

And some NPC only ships that had no textures now have them. Will they ever be flyable by players? Maybe one day. Maybe one day…

And that’s all for this month! Next month we hope to have a few more ship thruster effects to match that new hyperdrive! Check back then!

Jun 8, 2023

Hellsweeper VR Launch Date & Demo Announcement!

Hellsweeper VR - Brendyn YojimBev

Hey Hellsweepers!

As promised in our recent Devlog, the gates to Hell will be opening temporarily from the 19th June to 26th June 2023 for a public DEMO of HellsweeperVR during Steam Next Fest.

That’s not all -- Time to answer the most burning question of all: when is Hellsweeper VR going to be released?!

Hellsweeper VR will officially LAUNCH on 21 September 2023! You can also start pre-ordering Hellsweeper on Steam now and wishlist it on Meta Quest 2 and PS VR 2!

Your Feedback Matters to Us

We would like to thank everyone who generously shared their feedback during our 2021 Alpha Demo. Your suggestions have been instrumental in guiding our development efforts, allowing us to make significant strides in shaping the game since then.

As we inch closer to our launch date, your hands-on experience will help us fine tune what is needed to bring Hellsweeper VR to its peak! We can't wait for everyone to get in and start their Hellsweeping trial.

What will be in the Demo and what's the difference between this new demo and the Alpha demo back in 2021?

Let’s start with the coolest part -- the Hellhound! No longer will you traverse through Hell alone; your animal companion can now battle alongside you. He’s a good boy, so be sure to give him lots of pats!

The Hellsweeper VR Steamfest Demo also introduces a massive visual overhaul. Its core gameplay mechanic remains, allowing you wall-run, somersault and front flip while wielding your trusty sword, pistol or fire magic.

Although these skills are just but a small portion of what’s going to be in the full game upon launch, each of them comes with an expanded library of traits which will allow you to experiment with different styles of combat.

We introduced the Blessings and Traits system in our previous devlog. The Demo will include this, giving you boons and blessings that will assist you in your run. These blessings are random even in the demo, so you are encouraged to play it more than once! Get the most out of it :P

There will be tons of new features that you can toy with in the Demo! We won't reveal all of them, so let us know what you find when you hop in!

You can also now Pre-order Hellsweeper VR! If you do, you will receive exclusive in game items for your avatar to give them a more personalized look.

The Deluxe Edition not only has the mentioned pre-order bonuses. It also contains other goodies, such as an exclusive fur job for your Hellhound, a digital copy of The Art of Hellsweeper VR and the original soundtrack.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1341490/Hellsweeper_VR/

Want more Hellsweeper VR updates? We are active on Twitter, [url=https://discord.gg/G6GcrksRRd
]Discord[/url] and on the Steam Forums. We also have a Reddit where you can discuss and share your thoughts.

Crafted with Love,
The Mixed Realms Team