We are pleased to announce that the development of Goblin Takes No Argument is progressing smoothly. As planned, the game will launch as a beta version on August 1st. While some features, such as the story mode, will not be available during the beta phase, rest assured that our team is dedicated to delivering an exceptional gaming experience.

And we have some exciting news to share with you. Our team has been working tirelessly on Goblin Takes No Argument, and we can't wait to unveil some of the new features that await you.


One of the exciting additions to the game is the introduction of upgrade cards. These cards can be used on Towers to permanently enhance their stats. However, we advise caution as some of these upgrade cards may come with a curse. The specifics of these curses will be revealed at a later time, adding an extra layer of strategy and challenge to the game.


We would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our followers for their continued support. We hope you are having a fantastic summer, and we look forward to sharing more updates with you in the future. Until next time!

Hi everyone!

As noted in the future plans section of our previous update, this update was all about reworking both the Tomb and Forest zones to fall more in line with the changes made to mansion last week, and to generally improve them as much as possible.

Alongside the zone rework, we also implemented the feature to have right stick override auto-aim, as well as a unique enemy miniboss that only spawns to drop weapon evolution orbs when available.

Here is the full list of changes;


1.0.8571 June 20th, 2023
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the previous update there were a lot of buffs and fixes, and the addition of auto
aim shook things up a bit. We only had time to rebalance and rework the mansion zone
for the last update, so we weren't too happy with the state of the tomb and the forest.
This update has been focused on cleaning up and improving those other zones so they feel
more varied and fun.

As always, if you think things have gotten too much harder or too much easier since the
last update, please join us in the Steam discussion forums and have your say.

Itemized changes:-

• Reworked Tomb and Forest zones
  
• Auto Aim HUD indicator is always visible
  
• Right stick overrides auto aim
  
• Added a new dedicated enemy to drop evolutions
  
• Fix for 2 mansion spawners in one room
  
• Multiple fixes for enemy spawns in tomb and forest
  
• Fixed several shield bugs
  
• Fixed evolution boss respawning issue
  
• Various enemy tweaks and balancing adjustments
  
• Minor bug fixes and tweaks

This egg-like monstrosity will be doling out those precious evolutions


Over the past few weeks, we've done our very best to be responsive to community requests that hopefully improved both the core game, and a range of smaller QoL features. We do have plans to update the game more in the future, but as a tiny two person team, these will likely be spread out over a little more time moving forward.

Some of these updates include;

• "Cursed" Versions of the existing zones with both tougher enemies and heftier XP rewards
  
• "Time Flies" rush variants of the existing zones with a faster clock speed for quicker sessions
  
• New playable characters to unlock
  
• A permanent upgrade that allows the option to re-roll level up choices

As always, a massive thank you to everyone that's been playing and enjoying the game, and for offering all of your feedback in the community forums. We really do appreciate it.

Cheers, and have a great weekend!

The Retro Dreamer team

Hi everyone, and welcome to the latest update notes for Rival Stars Horse Racing: Desktop Edition!

In this update, we venture to the beautiful lush fields of Switzerland to prove your skills in Cross Country against the greats.


There are 6 new courses for you to tackle, each taking you through the breathtakingly rich fields of Switzerland. But that’s not all—just like the courses based at your ranch, each Switzerland course also has a Pro mode that you can unlock when you are ready to challenge your abilities even further.
Each course also offers different rewards. The harder the course, the better the rewards.





Get ready for an epic ride in the Cross Country Story Mode as we unveil 3 thrilling new chapters packed with 24 exciting missions. After honing your Cross Country skills with Kay's guidance at the ranch, it's time to answer the call of the big leagues. Brace yourself for an adventure in Switzerland like never before!

Prepare to encounter a fresh face on the scene—meet Khadijah, your new rival. With her infectious spirit, competitive nature, and captivating charisma, Khadijah is a force to be reckoned with. As an influential figure in both Cross Country and the realm of social media, she has earned her success through relentless dedication and innate talent.



Embark on the Cross Country Story Mode and put your abilities to the ultimate test as you strive to outshine Khadijah. Get ready for a chill yet exhilarating showdown like no other!



Scoring for Cross Country has undergone a balancing change. Going forward, any penalty points accrued by missing or having your horse refuse a jump will now add time to the end of your run.



Finally, we have made some changes to the way foaling stalls level up in-game. Previously, foaling stalls were levelled up individually. Now, all foaling stalls will be levelled up together, with all foaling stall levels being raised to meet the highest stall.


That's all for this update folks, Don’t forget to check out the community to keep up to date with the recent news, and competitions. Until next time, happy Racing/Riding everyone.



Major Features

• Three new chapters for Cross Country Story
  
• Six New Cross Country Tracks
  
• New story rival

Minor Features

• New Cross Country Leaderboards
  
• All Foal stalls level have been merged (if the stalls are not currently on the same level they all will match the highest one)

Fixes

• Fixed Steam Deck Keyboard not popping.
  
• Fixed the Horse Creator random button not modifying the horse's appearance
  
• Fixed an issue when selling a horse from pastures, causing the player not to get the correct amount of gold

Hi,
we invite you to participate in the Live stream of our game as part of the Steam Next Festival.
You can play the demo, post comments and leave us your feedback. This will allow us to make Bobby an even better game.

Don't forget to add Bobbie to your Wishlist:
Steam game link

If you would like to get to know our project in detail, and plans for its development or write us a message, please visit our Kickstarter page and FAQ:
Big Butt Bobby - Kickstarter

We also invite you to our Youtube, where we publish various funny (at least for us) videos maintained in the atmosphere of the game:
Our YouTube channel

Hello, Bravelanders!

There's a new event on the horizon - prepare to fight in two-on-two duels and win Genie.

This mysterious spirit is immune to fear and stun, he cannot be set on fire or poisoned, and when he dies he leaves behind a lamp that grants random magical effects. What's more, his special move, the Sabre Dance, reduces the target's defense for two rounds, creating an opening in enemy lines.

Don't pass up the opportunity to get your hands on Genie, enter the tournament! But remember, there's not much time left, because the event only lasts a few days.

It's been a while, hasn't it?

I've honestly been a bit stuck between competing desires. Until recently, I had never missed a monthly update. Some were a bit late, but even through the pandemic years, I did not miss any monthly updates. On the other hand, I really don't like to post bad updates and even more so, as mentioned earlier, I don't want to use this space as a personal blog. In the end, in order to post something, I'm afraid it will have to be a less than good update and also a bit of a blog.

On the other hand, if you're interested in playing something else I've made, there might be something of interest here.



In late March, my stepfather passed away. He left in his wake a bit of a mess, both physical (because he was a hoarder) and financial (because he had a lot of debts, some of which were at > 28% interest). Further, my mother is not in particularly good health and needs significant assistance in even routine tasks. I've been working to fix those messes, while also having many new responsibilities. I have not taken to this new reality very easily, if I'm being honest.

I have faith in this project. That remains unchanged. Lately though, in light of my new circumstances, it has been hard to justify doing "unpaid labor." As such, very little work has been done on DGR in the last few months. Things will change. However, every time I think I've nearly rounded the corner, I find new things that sap my time and energy. This time I am not going to make any specific predictions, instead only saying that I do plan to return to as close to full time on DGR as is possible, as soon as is possible.



I have been working on this game for over six years. I have been starting to have doubts about my ability to finish. Quite by chance, I found a post recruiting participants for a Narrative Design Jam. It's hosted on another site that, in addition to hosting jams, sells video game online. Valve, understandably, filters links to such sites. I don't blame them; were I operating something like Steam, I would not allow my partners to link to competitors either. There will be no links here, but I'm sure you can find it via my other social media.

Anyway, my efforts in May went to finishing something. I stripped down the DGR engine and made a narrative-focused game, Dreams of Gold. It didn't win the jam, but it was one of the nominees. I'm quite pleased with that result. More than that, I finished a game for the first time in a few years. Some people played it; indeed, you, too, could play it today if you wanted! It is a very different game though, and I would not be upset if you didn't.

I got some tangible benefits out of it also. I worked out a process (and wrote code to automate most of it) of producing pre-compiled builds, which is a lot nicer than shipping full source for everything. This will work more or less unchanged for DGR. I also got a few bug reports for the underlying engine. I have already applied these fixes to DGR.

Less pleasantly, there just wasn't an audience for the game. It's a weird art game, so that's to be expected. I wasn't quite expecting it to sink so hard, so soon though.



This has really inspired me to finish DGR. As niche as it is, there are levels. I admit, I was hoping something might happen with DoG, and maybe I might make a few other small games with micro budgets that may earn a tiny profit, so I could keep the lights on for a while via games. But no.



Now that I have found some ways to be at least a bit productive, I am going to get more done on DGR. Hopefully I can apply the lessons on finishing here as well. Also, as it's already the 20th, I'm not planning a post in early July, but instead resuming the regular cadence on the first Saturday in August.

Hey guys! As I said in the last post I finished 4 of the 16 maps that will make up the final game... These maps need to be tested and polished later, but still playable, just a little harder than normal...

Empire Chronicles (Version 0.9.601) - Major Update

• Alchemy and Cooking quality of life change, now one less click when crafting.
  
• Added busts for Drow Driders.
  
• New Arena Battle backgrounds!
  
• New Temple Battle backgrounds!

Hey everyone, it’s Jonathan “Mblackwell” again and I am back with Part 2 of our Game Design dev diary. This time we are going to talk about Ion Fury’s design rules, and as a special treat, we’ll also be talking about the expansion Aftershock, including how our goals changed from the first campaign, and some of the new things you’ll get to experience. If you haven't ready Part 1, you can do so here.

In Part 1 I talked about how different gameplay elements were made with rules for consistency, but no one wants to experience it without engaging environments that feel cohesive, learnable, and fun to explore. Designers also need some freedom in order to express their creativity. To make both ideas possible, levels had a framework for style, structure, scale and more.

Besides the overall theming, each area of a zone had to decide on a general color palette. The mapper could decide which color should be most prominent/a base, then use different contrasting and complimentary colors in important areas. The only exception to this was space around keycard doors being colored like the key they require. Keeping this basic color structure lets places be more distinct, and visually clear. Mappers were able to easily pick out colors in a scene that would subconsciously draw attention. These cues quickly create a mental map for players.



Lighting a scene requires some forethought: in BUILD it’s all done by splitting up sectors into the right shapes with more and more walls, shading each surface by hand! We kept it high contrast, which meant it was easier to make out the “critical path” and also kept down the number of wall splits the level designers would have to create.


(Left: Regular high contrast. Right: Smooth shadows that take up lots of walls and time.)

Bright lights draw the eye’s attention and players will move toward them, so bright points of light and highlights were used to signal where to go next. Background objects and details were kept dim by comparison.



Presenting the Ion Fury Door Bible! Yes, it’s true - they’ve got their own guide courtesy of Max. Doors were an important early decision, as they cause changes to the environment when opening and closing. Things might get stuck on them or between them. Inconsistent door designs create confusion and frustration for the player, and frequently in the Build Engine also cause death!

To paraphrase a bit, doors need to be lit if they’re usable, including lighting up important doors as they unlock. No fake/false doors except if absolutely necessary for a convincing environment. Those doors must be dimly shaded and have a “perma-locked sound effect” trigger added. A sound effect when moving is a must - the sound tells you when something has happened, including an enemy coming in the room!



Keycard doors should be seen before the matching key (otherwise - did you really need a key instead of a puzzle/switch?), and as mentioned above are required to have a nearby color match to the key that unlocked them.

If a door is activated by a switch or puzzle, the switch should be next to the door or connected to it visually; whether by cables, pipes, lights, or otherwise. This connects them logically and mentally for the player as well, helping them feel less lost. In the few exceptions distant doors could be opened by an unconnected switch when there is a security monitor nearby to see what changed.



We were less strict with consistent window appearances, but because we had both breakable and unbreakable glass, plus some glass that enemies couldn’t see through, we still had to establish a few rules. Darker or more opaque glass blocks enemy line-of-sight and doesn’t break when hit, while clear/thin looking glass is something flimsy that could be smashed to pieces.


It was important to maintain consistency in all of the levels. I worked closely with Max and others to decide on things as mundane as general door size (576-1536 Build units), average hallway width (1024-2048), and the size and placement of objects. Sometimes as simple as “all electrical sockets should be 2048 above the floor or counter”, or as complicated as “fire extinguisher explosions should always leave wall damage”. These kinds of decisions not only make the levels feel more coherent and connected, they also affect the believability of the game environments and the gameplay itself.

An example of this is that switches and buttons for normal progression were placed at “eye level”, the height of a centered view, so they could be easily pressed without having to do small up and down micro-actions. While already frustrating with mouse input, it’s even more awkward when you’re using a gamepad or keyboard-only controls (which the game also technically supports).

Rooms couldn’t be random collections of objects. A bar should have bottles and glasses, an office should have desks and chairs, and so on. This gives a sense of place, and the impression that it’s truly lived in and not just an empty shell. And even though they look cool as extra detailing decals, since we had breakable walls the designers had to be careful not to use large Wall Crack sprites and suggest to players that a wall can be destroyed.





And since this game featured movable props we encouraged their use in little easter eggs and secrets, particularly our old friend The Chair:



Chairs were an early physics test object and became a running gag. Eventually it was decided that level designers should have at least one “Chair Secret” in their zone, sometimes more than one!


Speaking of secrets! The usual rule of thumb was 5 per area, with some simple/obvious and a few more difficult. Though since secrets allowed a large element of freedom, the level designers had lots of fun and went nuts with them!

Ion Fury has 3 kinds of secrets:

• Unmarked/Easter Eggs. Sometimes these are things just off the beaten path, but they can also include fun extra hidden easter eggs that are hard to find or difficult to execute and don’t count toward your total percentage.
  
• Regular secrets. A Secret Stash! These are the five expected secrets, and can be of any style as long as enough normal experimentation would find it. Not everyone likes every type of secret, but every secret was tested with and without a hint guide to double check that it could be reasonably completed by someone really going for it! These are the only secrets that count toward your secret percentage.
  
• Mega Secrets. Extremely challenging secrets that every player might not find - only one allowed per zone!

By breaking things down this way we could give lots of freedom to the level design team, while also making sure players could find enough secrets during normal play to feel fun.


(Left: A secret item! Right: A Point Of No Return!)

It was also important to us not to have you locked out of backtracking to get 100%. Each area was marked with Points of No Return to warn you when you were about to pass the threshold to an area you can’t get back from, and to tell you how much progress you’ve made. As an extra visual cue a graffiti skull (the logo painted on GDF weapons) was always placed near the exits.


We had such a solid and balanced base from Ion Fury that for Aftershock we could be more playful. Players are expected to have already played the main campaign and so--

We thought c’mon, let’s get nuts.

The long story arc in Ion Fury’s main campaign often left the player stuck in underground areas. This time we wanted to focus on more varied environments with lots of outdoor locations. One important early decision to help with this was to go with a more theme heavy approach that makes each map something you can describe in a few words.

Here are some of the thematic elements from our “art gallery map”.


One longtime dream of Build mapping was to have sloped sprites in the engine.

This is now a reality.

It does this by clever re-use of existing sloping code in the engine to pull this off and in a way that does it very faithfully as per Build standards (quirks, jank and limitations but it looks cool!)
Level designers are now using that to build unique areas and objects, even custom physics props. Even simple visuals like lasers and bullet trails benefit from this technology.
They’ve also got a suite of new effects like being able to flood areas by setting the water level, bunch of new palettes to work with and loads of tweaks to the existing roster of effects.



                                       

The pacing of combat difficulty in Ion Fury helped ease you into encounters with each enemy, but for Aftershock, players know what’s up! So the pacing was sped up, with more challenging enemies from Ion Fury appearing much sooner. New and alternate enemies have their own attacks and movements for players to learn, and most of them have quicker reaction times than the original ones.



We also added a new, and harder, fifth difficulty mode. This mode makes encounters even more intense, and creates a new layer of strategy as undestroyed enemy corpses will come back to life! Using the right moves and making enemies gib into pieces from your attacks becomes even more critical. Skill 5 is something we will also be including in the vanilla game as a bonus!



New boss encounters were a must, with distinct and interesting battles. In Ion Fury “bosses” could be hordes or puzzle-like, in addition to the occasional “boss fight”. We weren’t able to have as many of those boss fights as we, or players, wanted so for Aftershock we made it a must. Expanding the game gave us the time to create memorable encounters so bosses took a big step up with some cool surprises.


Shelly has some really powerful attacks in Ion Fury, but most are balanced in some way to not be completely overpowering. However, since the bad guys up the ante in Aftershock, Shelly gets to respond in kind.

There are a few new instant Items, but we used the new pocket we introduced in Ion Fury 2.0 to introduce more PowerUps. Now Shelly can incinerate her enemies with flame traps, give every gun a spectacular boost with new attack modes, and slow things down to look cool while doing it. We also upgraded the regular arsenal! There’s some new ammo types for the Disperser, and also a new much fan-requested weapon that will really wreck Heskel’s day.




A key feature for Aftershock has been the bike. It’s something we’ve wanted since the early days of Ion Fury itself, and here we finally got to do it! It was one of the earliest things prototyped and done as a proof-of-concept for an expansion. It had to be fast, agile, weighty, and easy to handle with different inputs. It had to feel good to actually use, not the clunky mess people know from some other Build Engine games.

So we settled on a quad-copter hover bike with beefy armor and infinite rockets to pummel enemies with. Even some of the toughest dudes are no match for Shelly’s blistering power when she revs up that motor.

Keep Watching the Skiiiis…. Skies.

Of course this is just a taste of what you can expect from Aftershock. — What started as a simple map pack ended up adding a ton of new things to the game. Parts of Aftershock were already started soon after the release of 1.0, and parts of its development have already seen their way into the base game. Improved performance, minor game play tweaks such as the pocket inventory, and even some undocumented effects ;)

It’s been a long road and we’re really excited we can show everyone more of the expansion! There’s more reveals coming soon, so remember to follow us on social media to get the latest, and if you haven't done already, add Ion Fury: Aftershock to you Steam Wishlist! Thanks for reading and stay tuned!

I’ll see ya next time,
Jonathan “Mblackwell” Strander

I intend to resume development on God is a Cube, and to actually finish it.

The game is still "99% finished", with a lot of small things to make it better.
It's true that there is a lot of unattended business. Questions I did not want to ask myself and things I did not want to see. That's why I did not want to take the risk to open the project, or even to start making another game.

But I realized that my real life efforts to improve my life have paid of. My life is stable, I have a good job enough to start working again on a video game project without the risk of devoting again my whole life to it.

Besides, I became a C# expert, working on high performance software for top banking and oil companies. All the things that were drawing me back on God is a Cube now feel far much easier. Not that I became smarter, it's just that I clearly did not know how to work properly on a 50,000 lines of code project. Now that I have worked on code bases between 600,000 and 3,5 millions lines of code software, God is a Cube seems to be far much easier.

So I can work again on God is a Cube, as a hobby. I intend to spend 5 to 10 hours every week on it.

That's all for the main stuff! You can still read the rest of the news to get an idea what I am working on right now.

The last save of the original code dates from 2018-12-16.
In 2019, I spent a few months working on at least 2 variants:

• a Unity 2018 version
• a mix between God is a Cube and another project (Matrix), to use the voxel rendering

All those variants have been a mess, where I just copy pasted the whole source code into nother projects.
I am starting back from the last original save.

I started working on God is a Cube in December 2012, and set my choice on a Unity version from the time, Unity v4.0.1. I kept this version during all development, as any update can break something somewhere.
Tech stacks are fragile, especially video game tech stacks. I heard about studios who "freeze everything", they disable all softwares updates (even Windows updates) for up to 4 years.
Hopefully, as I am a cautious man, I kept an original of the setup software, along with an offline way to run it. Long story short, it took me only around 30 minutes to install my Unity version from 2012 and to launch the project.

What struck me the most on the title screen is the "alpha" on the title. Yes, the game is still on alpha, after all those years, despite being 99% finished.
There is also the copyright at the bottom. 2018, since the last time I updated the game. And 2012, when I started working on the game. More than 10 years ago.

It feels like I put a whole part of my life in a box, closed it, and did not dare to open it for half a decade.

On a more practical note, the game seems to be running fine. I can play a few levels. No warning, no problems.
I'm glad everything seems to be fine right from the box. The game was developped on a Windows XP from 2006, I was not sure it would work in 2023.
I'm glad that I did not trust any shady plugin and always tried to rely on the most basic version of any third party source. The fact the game was made to be as compatible as possible to Linux and Windows version certainly helped.

There are a lot of unecessary files in the project, usually textures, some of them over 20 Mb. In less than a minute, I found so many strange things, including prototypes, and even some 3D files I used for tests dating from 2000. I never removed anything, by fear it could be used somewhere, but it's worse than that.

Action:

• Find a way to know if resource files are used in a Unity project (from 2012)
• Deep clean all folders

I remember adding the complete source code of a SQLite implementation, around 75,000 lines of code. It helped a lot to have a better compatibility with non-Windows version. But now I'm telling myself that adding so much code is a bad idea, especially directly in a sub folder of the Unity project. Sadly, I did not have much of a choice, as Unity forces to put the C# code in the project itself, and there was no symbolic links on Windows XP to put all that in another folder.

Action:

• Identify third party code
• Separate third party code from the rest

What about the online part of the game? At the end of each level, there is a comparison with all the players scores. In case the server no longer works, there is a copy of the scores in the game's files, but it was not updated for years.
Hopefully, I blocked then removed the forum, as it was running on the same database than the game, and could be filled by spam bots until the whole database is full and locked.

Action:

• check if the online scores still work
• check if the server still records player solutions
• check how complete is the offline copy, compared to the online version

The game executables are automatically created thanks to several scripts. I remember writing them in Ruby. I did not really work with Ruby since 2009. I made some scripts, though. I also made a new version of my localization software for RPG Maker called DreaMaker, to make it work on Windows 10 (in 2021), but I wrote as few Ruby as possible.
I could rewrite those scripts in C# script (thanks to Polyglot Notebooks), but I think the ruby version should be fine.

Action:

• check the Ruby pipeline scripts

I was very proud to support Linux (and Mac). But I am not a Linux user, so I was not even able to test the game on a Linux configuration. I still think the Linux community is a good fit for the game, as there are a lot

Action:

• check the amount of Linux and Mac version sold, for all life time and during recent years
• see if other programming games are making a Linux version

The site still has a lot of info about the crowdfunding, and offers to buy the game thanks to an Humble plugin. My accountant told me there was no sales on Humble for a year, so I should disable all of that.

Action:

• make a new, simple web page
• remove the Humble plugin to buy the game

I promised several (simple) things to early buyers of God is a Cube, such as adding their names in the credits or in the game. I'm glad my job as a crowdunfing expert made me avoid any kind of physical reward.

Action:

• work on an online form for the different backer tiers

I am getting an email every month from Valve telling me there is not enough money from sales for them to send me something. I have no idea if the game is still selling units.

Action:

• check the last years sales stats of the game

There was around 7,000 wishlists. Though, I remember numbers were getting smaller.

Action:

• check the evolution of the number of wishlists

The game has only around 10 reviews, with only 50% positive. I think the game could reach 70% positive reviews.

Action:

• work on the Steam page to have a better description of the content of the game
• ask for advice about how to describe the game

There is a lot of concerns, even non-programming ones. A few years ago, it was terrifying for me. But now, I see it as an escaping from all those serious real life concerns I have, when I work everyday on code far much bigger than my old video game.
Adressing real life issues with code, by making software for a living, has changed my perception of what is important or what should make feel afraid. I learn so many ways to solve problems on the long term, the pain is now to realize I did not know all of this when I was working on God is a Cube, and I was doing things the hard way.

I think part of my soul is in this game, and I need to reclaim it by finishing this development. It should also be a veery good exercize, to see how much I have improved since I quit the video game industry.