Hello Terrabeast townies!

We hope everyone has had a wonderful summer so far, and that you’re staying cool (in the northern hemisphere at least).

Our family has had the chance to spend a lot of time in the wilderness of Canada this summer. It has been an excellent change of scenery to inspire our work.

OddFauna has officially been upgraded from Unreal Engine 4 to UE5. I've been waiting for the right time to make the change, and now is as good as any. Upgrading to UE5 will allow me to continue to take advantage of Epic's awesome new features and is important to my long-term plans for OddFauna.

In the next update to OddFauna Alpha, I’m excited to introduce a new gameplay element: the Pollen System. As you traverse the world, you’ll be able to collect pollen. You’ll find pollen clustered in all kinds of interesting formations across the Terrabeast. We’ve been comparing pollen collection to collecting coins in Mario or rupees in Zelda. However, instead of it being a currency to buy items, pollen is a currency to grow the plants around you faster!

I’ve also been working on a really exciting development: Controller Support! Translating mouse and keyboard controls over to a control can be really tricky. It’s not a simple one-to-one conversion. The goal is to do the first pass of making the game feel great on gamepads and to get OddFauna ready to play on Steam Deck!

Along the same lines, the camera is being improved with several new features; auto rotation, auto-framing, camera shake and more.

Looking forward to sharing more in the near future! In the meantime, connect with us on the OddFauna Discord, Instagram, and TikTok.

Thanks so much, Cliff

towers were generating that only had a single enemy (thinks its a demon lair) - fixed

Hey, Mates!

Firstly, a big Aussie shoutout to all of our dedicated fans out there! We’re genuinely sorry for the radio silence over the past few months. We understand the anticipation around Truck World: Australia, and we appreciate your patience.

The journey of game development is long, winding, and sometimes takes unexpected detours, but we want to assure you that everything's good Down Under. We've been tirelessly working on Truck World: Australia, ensuring it stands out as a true-blue Aussie experience.

REGULAR UPDATES ON THE HORIZON

We've heard your feedback and we understand how important it is to keep our community in the loop. With that in mind, we're committing to regular game updates every two weeks! Whether it's tweaks to gameplay, new features, or just some behind-the-scenes peeks, we'll be touching base with you more frequently. So, stay tuned and keep those eyes peeled for updates from the outback!

STAY CONNECTED

That's the wrap for now! Don't forget to add Truck World: Australia to your wishlist and connect with us on our social channels to stay updated.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1327040/Truck_World_Australia/

Add to Wishlist Coming Soon Truck World: Australia

Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/G75f2uAfC

Cheers and see you on the Aussie roads, Mates! 🚛🇦🇺

• Performance improvements
  
• Slingshot and Music Box slightly rebalanced

Hi everyone!

It's been a long time since I posted any updates and I wanted to let everyone know how development of Demon's Mirror is coming along. Spoiler, it's coming along super well! We recently added the 3rd playable character and are now filling out their deck with some unique and interesting cards.

• 3 Playable characters
  
• 180 Cards
  
• 81 Unique buffs, debuffs, and powers
  
• 73 Relics
  
• 16 Scrolls
  
• 28 Events
  
• 23 Enemies
  
• 6 Elites
  
• 5 Bosses

Besides adding more cards we're currently updating the map tilesets, working on the soundtrack, exploring the art we want for the character select screen and intro story / "cinematic sequence", creating more relics, enemies, and more!

We're still a ways out from release so we're really happy with how much content we have in the game already. We will have plenty of time to playtest the game, balance the difficulty, and ensure it's fun.

Thanks for reading!

-Brad

Bonus:
This is the Scroll Trader from an event in the game. What do you think? Their back must be killing them! ːsteamhappyː

Hello! We are Nico Saraintaris and Fernando Martinez Ruppel, co-creators of LCB Game Studio from Argentina. As we have Mothmen 1966 and Varney Lake in the Visual Novel Fest sale we thought this would be a good time to share with you this insight into how we approach creating our games.

We have now released two games that belong in to a subgenre that we call Pixel Pulps, Mothmen 1966 and Varney Lake, with a third title, Bahhsen Knights, coming soon. So, what are Pixel Pulps?

PIXEL PULPS
Pixel Pulps are text adventure games in which we combine a type of narrative from the first half of the 20th century - the so-called 'Pulps', cheap paper magazines with large print runs that published stories in genres such as horror, crime, or science fiction - with home computer graphics and adventure game interface from the '80s.



THE PULPS
The relationship of our games with the Pulps is not only thematic (mothman, cryptids, vampires, and cults, among many other themes and characters), but also productive: our production cycles are short, we work quickly and steadily, seeking to release one game after another. This particular philosophy is behind a slogan that we use almost like a battle cry: "We are the Pulps of interactive fiction!"

But while our stories are as agile and fast-paced as the Pulps, they also feature multi-dimensional characters, something that many Pulp stories lacked, relying on almost one-dimensional representations with very obvious narrative functions.



Another difference is the use of the unexpected. The Pulps were often formulaic. A savvy reader could guess more or less where each author was going with their stories. In our case, we seek to surprise the players, and we strive to make each of our Pixel Pulps a completely unexpected experience.

THE PIXELS
As for the interactive adventures of the '80s, there are four very specific elements that we use to work on our games: the colour palette, the pixel art, the sound design and the choice-based input system.

One of the first aesthetic decisions that Fer made was to use a classic palette for retro gaming. Each of our games uses a subset of the 8 colours (and their brightness variations) from the ZX Spectrum colour palette, limiting colour choice even further per-game basis but developing a distinct identity that emphasises particular aspects of their respective stories: Mothmen 1966 is associated with green and Varney Lake with cyan.



What about pixel art? Fer's pixel art is not simply a tribute to the pixel art of the time, but a conscious reworking from our own present, where one can see his experience of over twenty-five years in the world of illustration, comics, and concept art.

The third element is the sound design. In our games, we make use of speaker sound - reminiscent of old-school ZX Spectrum games - as a key element in our process. This classic sound not only adds a touch of nostalgia, but it also serves practical purposes such as signalling in-game events and adding a unique audio texture to certain aspects of our Pixel Pulps.



The fourth element we want to highlight is the choice-based input system. This is another thing that we sought to work on from the beginning of the project, the idea of turning the entire interface between players and game modules into a system solely based on choices, that is, not only using choice selection for narrative sequences like any visual novel, but extending this concept and using this same input system for such dissimilar elements as solitaire card games, hopscotch with dice... and even a fishing game!

A SUBGENRE OF OUR OWN
In conclusion, we like to think that this particular alchemy that we call 'Pixel Pulps' results in a subgenre of which we are the only exponents, an idea that allows us to take some risks and do things in a way that only we can do them, and that if we fail, we will fail better than anyone, always aiming to fail even better next time!

We hope you enjoyed finding out a bit more about our games. If you'd like to find out even more, Mothmen 1966 and Varney Lake are both on sale until the 14th August and you can wishlist Bahnsen Knights too...

Cheers everyone!

Nico and Fer

Bug Fixes:

• Fix for old saved game files that were crashing during end turn processing.

Hello! We are Nico Saraintaris and Fernando Martinez Ruppel, co-creators of LCB Game Studio from Argentina. As we have Mothmen 1966 and Varney Lake in the Visual Novel Fest sale we thought this would be a good time to share with you this insight into how we approach creating our games.

We have now released two games that belong in to a subgenre that we call Pixel Pulps, Mothmen 1966 and Varney Lake, with a third title, Bahhsen Knights, coming soon. So, what are Pixel Pulps?

PIXEL PULPS
Pixel Pulps are text adventure games in which we combine a type of narrative from the first half of the 20th century - the so-called 'Pulps', cheap paper magazines with large print runs that published stories in genres such as horror, crime, or science fiction - with home computer graphics and adventure game interface from the '80s.



THE PULPS
The relationship of our games with the Pulps is not only thematic (mothman, cryptids, vampires, and cults, among many other themes and characters), but also productive: our production cycles are short, we work quickly and steadily, seeking to release one game after another. This particular philosophy is behind a slogan that we use almost like a battle cry: "We are the Pulps of interactive fiction!"

But while our stories are as agile and fast-paced as the Pulps, they also feature multi-dimensional characters, something that many Pulp stories lacked, relying on almost one-dimensional representations with very obvious narrative functions.



Another difference is the use of the unexpected. The Pulps were often formulaic. A savvy reader could guess more or less where each author was going with their stories. In our case, we seek to surprise the players, and we strive to make each of our Pixel Pulps a completely unexpected experience.

THE PIXELS
As for the interactive adventures of the '80s, there are four very specific elements that we use to work on our games: the colour palette, the pixel art, the sound design and the choice-based input system.

One of the first aesthetic decisions that Fer made was to use a classic palette for retro gaming. Each of our games uses a subset of the 8 colours (and their brightness variations) from the ZX Spectrum colour palette, limiting colour choice even further per-game basis but developing a distinct identity that emphasises particular aspects of their respective stories: Mothmen 1966 is associated with green and Varney Lake with cyan.



What about pixel art? Fer's pixel art is not simply a tribute to the pixel art of the time, but a conscious reworking from our own present, where one can see his experience of over twenty-five years in the world of illustration, comics, and concept art.

The third element is the sound design. In our games, we make use of speaker sound - reminiscent of old-school ZX Spectrum games - as a key element in our process. This classic sound not only adds a touch of nostalgia, but it also serves practical purposes such as signalling in-game events and adding a unique audio texture to certain aspects of our Pixel Pulps.



The fourth element we want to highlight is the choice-based input system. This is another thing that we sought to work on from the beginning of the project, the idea of turning the entire interface between players and game modules into a system solely based on choices, that is, not only using choice selection for narrative sequences like any visual novel, but extending this concept and using this same input system for such dissimilar elements as solitaire card games, hopscotch with dice... and even a fishing game!

A SUBGENRE OF OUR OWN
In conclusion, we like to think that this particular alchemy that we call 'Pixel Pulps' results in a subgenre of which we are the only exponents, an idea that allows us to take some risks and do things in a way that only we can do them, and that if we fail, we will fail better than anyone, always aiming to fail even better next time!

We hope you enjoyed finding out a bit more about our games. If you'd like to find out even more, Mothmen 1966 and Varney Lake are both on sale until the 14th August and you can wishlist Bahnsen Knights too...

Cheers everyone!

Nico and Fer

Another quick update, inspired by a talk I had with Dylan White (dev of Rift Wizard) a couple months ago, where he advised that it's good to add ways to use dragons

• enemies attributes raised slightly in general
  
• path of dust now causes enemies to scale exponentially based on floor #
  
• added Storm Lance, Mind Mace and Astra Blade (more items that convert physical damage into an element)
  
• Mubarizun now performs a small Hit on every attack if a weapon is equipped in the off hand
  
• added Azhdaha religion, blesses you with Drakeform

Cookie Clicker is officially 10 years old! 2 of which happened right here on Steam. Thank you so much for all your support and kind feedback over the years.
To celebrate, we're going 40% off this week! If you're reading this, you probably already own this game - but if your local culture involves some sort of summertime gift-giving holiday now is a great time to spread the cookie curse to your friends and family!
10 years is a long time to develop a game, but there's still so much more we want to add. Time is an arrow, so in the grand scheme of things we're only just getting started!
-Orteil