Time for more character introductions!

If you follow me on social media, I’ve been a bit quiet on updates, but that really means I’m VERY busy and productive on the game itself! Things are going really well and I’m really happy with how the full game is shaping up.

Now, onto the character introductions - Ami and BEEP0!

Ami is a hamster that aspires to be the world’s first flying hamster! She loves tinkering with projects and her experiments. However, they don’t ALWAYS go according to plan…

I fell in love with Ami as soon as I saw all her expressions!



You can see the full video of Ami’s expressions here!

BEEP0 is a cute robot trying to understand the world! They love photography and documenting all the new things that they are experiencing!

BEEP0’s facial expressions are some of the most unique of the residents. I love how different each one is (♡ ‿ ♡)



You can see the full video of BEEP0’s expressions here!

There will be a total of 12 residents available:



That means two more that are still to be announced! Stay tuned on socials:

Twitter
Instagram
TikTok

Make sure to wishlist Love, Ghostie if you haven’t yet! It helps us out a ton!

Eyu
ːsteammockingː
ːsteammockingː

Only one day left :D

Hey lovelies! I've received lots of questions about the state of development and wanted to address them in a full post.

As of right now, the development is essentially on hold due to a number of factors. I developed severe chronic medical problems since the game was first launched, and now work a much more demanding job that makes it hard to find any time or willpower to work on Reborn in Sin.

I know it's disappointing, but I really appreciate everyone's patience and continued interest. The game is NOT cancelled. My publisher has committed to helping me get everything finished, but we have other projects that must be finished and shipped first. When the release date of those other games approaches (likely in mid-2024), work on Reborn in Sin should start up again.

Thanks for your understanding, and bye for now! 💕

Come join us on the official Age of Empires forums and complete our challenges to earn more information about the upcoming The Sultans Ascend expansion for Age of Empires IV!

You woke up in a cavern, deep under the overworld. You don't know who, nor where you are. The only thing you know for sure, you died. How did you passed away? You don't know either. As a specter, you can walk freely, even dash in those deep caves.

Now with your ghostly abilities, you can go faster and farther than before, in a blink. Allowing you to cross streams, small chasms etc.



But one danger remains.

Direct sunlight, or bright lights can arm, or kill you if you stay enough in direct contact. But something changed in you, you can now control, possess, the living.

Those small creatures will give you a chance to leave those caves, and maybe discover what caused your death?

Evenor is a place of many sights and sounds. One location, like the Deep of Bal Mol, will engulf you with eerie and melodic music that feels like it’s drumming beneath you. While something tranquil, like the beautiful sounds of Skylight, will remind you that this bastion of hope is your home in Wayfinder.

Wayfinder’s unique sound is scored by Gareth Coker, acclaimed composer of incredible titles like Ori and the Blind Forest, ARK, Halo Infinite, and Ruined King: A League of Legends Story.



“Scoring Wayfinder and bringing the world of Evenor to life alongside the Gloom has led to a really fun and interesting exploration into both my organic and synthetic musical writing, thanks to the freedom Airship Syndicate have given me on my third collaboration with them. I'm looking forward to watching and learning from players' experiences in Early Access and refining the soundtrack all the way through to the full release and beyond. In the meantime, I hope people enjoy Volume 1 of the soundtrack, which gives a good taste of everything that is to come and quality that players can expect. Thanks for listening!"
- Gareth

Listen to the full soundtrack now on YouTube.

You can also find the soundtrack on other music services here.

This week's highlights are meant to catch you up on the Console Update, CoH1 coming to Nintendo Switch, and the CoH2 1V1 Mirror Tournament, as well as some awesome community content our players have shared with us.



Console Update
On September 5th, we released the most recent Console Edition update which aligns with the 1.1.6 PC update (Brass Leopard).

It features a new map, gameplay tweaks, balance adjustments, and several bug fixes.



Company of Heroes 1 on Nintendo Switch
Our friends at Feral Interactive are bringing CoH1 to the Nintendo Switch. Delivering the World War II RTS classic and both its acclaimed expansions in one battle-hardened bundle. Prepare for deployment this autumn! Watch the trailer here.



Amazon Prime Gaming Drop 6
The Night Fighters BRITISH FORCES GRANT Bundle is available now until October 11th. This exclusive package includes special skins for the Grant tank, CWT Truck, and Foot Guards.






CoH2 1v1 Mirror Tournament
THE BIG ORANGE ONE Discord Server is hosting a CoH2 1v1 MIRROR TOURNAMENT in which players will be pitched against opponents of the same faction.

This unusual style of tourney is guaranteed to give us some exciting and unpredictable matches. The finals will be casted by no other than AE!

Save the date! Sept 16-17 @ 4PM UTC



Meta Plays RTS Tournament
Olvadi and Currahee are teaming up with Meta Plays RTS to host their first-ever CoH3 1v1 tournament. Take part and sign up on discord before Sept 22nd. The tournament will be streamed on Sept 23 & 24 at 1.30 PM GMT.





Some cool sets of screengrabs by cpl.chen









You can submit your content for consideration by using the hashtag #CoHCommunity on our social channels or by sharing screenshots, links and videos on our Discord or Forums.

That's it for this week!

Play CoH3
Official Forums
Steam
Technical Support
Bug Reporting
YouTube
Twitch
Discord
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram

Polluto, the Living Oil Slick and one of Dr. Killemoff's most notorious creations, has returned once more in all his menacingly gooey, oily glory!


In the original Toxic Crusaders cartoon, Polluto made a few appearances--debuting in the first episode of the 13-episode season.


Polluto also appeared in the NES Toxic Crusaders game! Here's a screenshot of him facing off against Toxie from that title.


When the current Toxic Crusaders game began development, we enlisted the help of artist Bryce Collins, who created the first pieces of concept art for Polluto!


And here we have our first rendition of Polluto's in-game sprite! You can see how we planned to scale him relative to Toxie and the other Crusaders.


When we heard of the Polluto action figure getting released--first as a prototype, then as an actual figure--we just had to incorporate some of its elements into a more refined in-game sprite. We added some color and teeth to the big 'ol monster based on his figure!


Afterwards, we settled on what would become Polluto's current design in the game--one that combined elements from his original look in the cartoon, his past appearance on the NES, and his recently released action figure.


Now that we've shown off how we designed Polluto, we'll be going into detail next time about all of his attacks as seen in the demo! Stay tuned for more!

Wishlist Toxic Crusaders and play the free demo available NOW!

Knock-knock, travelers!

Another eventful workweek has flown by! In today's diary, we'll interview the head of our art department; tell you about the process of animating characters, and reveal some developments for your Steam accounts. Rest assured we have plenty of interesting content for you!


As you know, true magic happens behind the doors of our art department – our artists work tirelessly to make our game a visual delight for you, dear players. Today, we’ve prepared an interview with the person in charge of our team of artists. Enjoy the read!

How did you become an artist in game development? Were you inspired to choose this path by some childhood games, or were there other reasons?

I've been drawing since childhood and quite early on, I realized that I would connect my future work with drawing, design, and creativity in general. I couldn't see myself in any other professions. I also started getting into games at a young age, and I guess the combination of these factors led me into game development. I'm relatively new to the game development industry, and you could say I'm a budding little art lead who's working very hard.

What is your work process like?

It all starts with the project brief. We’re given tasks, usually by the game designers, and then I distribute these tasks among the artists. If needed, we clarify the brief, conduct research, and search for references; I also might provide some comments on the topic. Then the artists create rough sketches, we approve ideas and discuss them, and then they move on to the final drawings. If necessary, we cut them for subsequent animation. Of course, this is all accompanied by feedback and revisions. Something like that.

What was the most challenging task you’ve encountered while working on Knock? What task was easy and enjoyable to work on?

UI, it's very intimidating, very. Although I wouldn't say that there were extremely difficult tasks, they were more unusual, perhaps initially daunting because of their briefs, or their monotonous nature, for example making character images for videos. Drawing content for social media was easy and fun. For example, drawing comically long snouts for wolves for a YouTube short or a Christmas bow with bells for the game icon with a coffin, ha-ha-ha.

What do you like most about working on Knock?
I simply enjoy feeling like part of the team, taking on various tasks, and then watching how what I've done becomes a part of the project.

Name your three favorite games.

The Last of Us, Uncharted 4, Portal 2. I love games with a good storyline and charismatic characters.

And finally, what would you like to say to the players personally?

Eat well, get at least 7 hours of sleep, go out for some fresh air regularly, and play Knock!


And now, let's get back to the summary of this week’s work, starting with animations.

Our animators put their hearts into breathing life into every character and creature in our game (and they do it exceptionally well!). Take a look at this hefty guy living in the swamp; he's always ready to engage in battle with you and drown you... in not the freshest of breath, so we recommend being cautious.



And also, a new character has appeared in our game! It's a tiny midge, but unfortunately (primarily for the midge itself), its role in our game is far from significant.



Even the main heroes of the story couldn’t overlook this wee little insect!



In our previous posts, we shared images of the mysterious priestess who appears in one of our unique events. Today, we have great news – thanks to the efforts of our animators, we present you brand new animations of this enigmatic lady.





While we're experimenting with animation, loud war horn sounds are echoing in the Frontier... Recently, we asked you on our social media which dwarf animation you liked the most. Your responses were very quick, which made us very happy!

We listened to your comments, tweaked and improved the animation, and here it is the final version!



Thank you very much for participating in the survey; you’re genuinely helping us make our game better.


But that's not all! Our artists have also been busy creating unique backgrounds, frames, and avatars for your Steam profiles. Each element is designed to be stylish and attractive, so that your profile looks fantastic! And now, we're ready to show you some of them.



https://postimages.org/ru/

That wraps up this week! We continue to work diligently in order to be fully prepared for the release of KOTCL. We’re fixing, repairing, and adding new features and content again and again, striving for perfection! We'd be delighted if you dropped by our Discord for a cup of tea! There, we share the latest news, discuss our current progress, and more.

Wishing you a great weekend! See you in the next diary

In a few weeks, we're aiming to release Version 0.2.0! Included in it is Endless Survival, the Meta Tech Tree, new Quickplay & Co-op Maps, a boatload of balance changes, and of course, QoL updates and bug fixes.

And right now, you can try it out early! Version 0.2.0.preview is available this weekend! To do so:

• Right-click Axon TD: Uprising in your library
  
• Select Properties
  
• Go to the Betas tab
  
• In the Private Betas textbox, enter ReachTheEndless
  
• Click Check Code
  
• Click Opt into: endless

This beta will remain open until Monday, September 18th, @ 3pm CST. This won't include any of the new maps, but it will include everything else.

Below is an overview of the changes and features in this version. Check it out below!

---

Survival is going Endless! Instead of ending on Wave 30, it will now go on... forever! Starting from Wave 31 onwards, the waves will get even longer, and the Axons will get increasingly tougher! This is somewhat exponential.

While you are intended to be able to hit the 40s and 50s, eventually, even with the Meta Tech Tree, you're intended to die somewhere around Wave 60 to 70.

Though, if you do get further than that, then congratulations! Speaking of that new Tech Tree...

You know that useless Meta Progression Tree that reduces your Score Multiplier? We've thrown it out the window and replaced it with something way better and more thought out:

Icons are a bit placeholder, but it should communicate the point!

As seen above, you have two choices at any given junction, and you get to select one of them at a time. You get points to unlock Meta Techs after each Survival run. By the time you unlock everything, you'll have a max of 18 Upgrades out of a total of 33 Possible Upgrades. Oh, and these don't ruin your Score Multiplier.

Some of these increase your starting resources. Some affect your Lives. Some buff the damage of your Towers, with some caveats. Some give you benefits when you inevitably leak. There's a ton of possibilities. Choose what fits your playstyle!

---

We also have new maps incoming as well! This includes 3 Quickplay Maps & 3 Co-op Maps! All of these maps will include more waves than the existing maps, offering a longer gameplay experience.

There's some pretty wild maps coming...

---

The idea behind the Path Multiplier is to reward you for making a long maze. That's fine, but also, it's cranked way too high. Going foward, it'll have diminishing returns, so instead of hitting upwards of a x10 Multiplier, you're getting more like x1.5, and upwards of x2 at the absolute cap.

The Speed Multiplier is also higher than intended. While you should be rewarded for clearing out the wave quickly and efficiently, it shouldn't be as much as x2. We've dialed down the cap to x1.25, and it decays at a slower rate, giving more leeway time to clear the wave with a max multiplier. This should let slower killing builds have a chance at getting a decent score still.

Up next, we're getting rid of the Lives Multiplier for a few reasons:

• If you make a mistake, it penalizes you for the whole game.
  
• It gives Life Recovery, or worse yet, anything that gives you lives over the cap too much value.

In its place, you'll get a Perfection Bonus. Should you clear the wave without losing any lives, you'll gain a score bonus equal to 10% of the score you got that wave.

There's also Difficulty Options, which are as follows:

• Easy: 150 Lives. 80% HP. Score Multiplier x0.5
  
• Normal: 100 Lives. 100% HP. Score Multiplier x1
  
• Hard: 100 Lives. 120% HP. Score Mutliplier x1.5

Extending off this, Easy will become available for the Campaign, and Hard will become available in all other modes.

How long of a maze can you make on this map?

---

When it comes to individual effects, like Slows and Damage Amps, having just one of each is pretty good, but nothing more than that. But when you start stacking these effects, they start getting out of control. For Slows, it's not as big of a problem, because so many effects in the game counter Slows. Which, in of itself, might be considered a problem, but we'll revisit that in a later version.

Damage Amps & Damage Buffs, however, if stacked, can result in upwards of a x3 Damage Multiplier, possibly higher. So to fix that, we're adjusting them to be Additive instead of Multiplicative. For example, if you had 20%, 25%, and 30% Damage Amps...

• Before: 1.2 * 1.25 * 1.3 = 1.95 = 95% Damage Amp
  
• After: 1 + 0.2 + 0.25 + 0.3 = 1.75 = 75% Damage Amp

With them stacking additively, we can safely buff weaker ones without them stacking together so dangerously.

---

Mines will no longer have limited charges! This means, especially in longer waves, they'll no longer fizzle out well before everything else. Any Upgrade or Tech that previously increased charges will instead buff something else.

A lot of towers have received buffs, like Pulseray, Blast Cannon, & Sniper. Numerous bad, boring, or redundant Upgrades & Tower Techs have been adjusted or replaced outright.

On the flipside, many outliers have been dialed back, like Plasma Vent U2's Damage Amp, which was mistakenly way higher than intended.

Overall, there are more buffs than nerfs, and build variety should be improved.

The early game was already at a fair balance, and we don't want to make that easier. In order to maintain relative early game balance, we're also buffing the HP of most early game Axons, including Scout, Sentinel, Juggernaut, Berserker, and a few more.

A few Axons in particular are receiving nerfs, namely Colossus, and the cursed Hoverjet. It will be moving considerably slower when jumping over Towers.

Lastly, several underwhelming Overloads (like Boost Range) and Techs (like Tower Initial Bonus Damage and Attack Rate on Leak) are receiving buffs. This should help reduce the chance of frustratingly bad choices when they appear as choices in-game.

For the record, that wave number and those resources are no longer possible to reach.

---

Since this update includes more than we initially anticipated, it will take a little longer to actually release. Instead of releasing late this month, it should instead release within the first two weeks of October. Overall, it's roughly a two to three week delay from what was originally planned.

If you want to see patch notes of every change so far, we have a Changelog available on our Discord). We'll post full patch notes to here on Steam when Version 0.2.0 releases officially and things are finalized.

---

First up, Replays on the Quick Play & Co-op Leaderboards will not display correctly. This is due to the large number of balance and mechanics changes between the main and beta versions. Survival Leaderboards will temporarily make use of new leaderboards.

Next up, we have a list of issues we're aware of. We're working on fixing them, but in the meantime, the game is still fully playable. Here they are:

• We're aware that unlocking Starting Towers/Overloads in Survival "costs 0 Points". This is temporary; later, we'll remove the need to unlock them at all.
  
• Sniper's range indicator is incorrect.
  
• Pressing "Space" no longer starts the next wave.
  
• Gravity Generator U1 does not consistently EMP targets within range.
  
• The Meta Tech "Life Insurance" also prevent you from dying to a Boss when leaked above 50 life.
  
• The "Marked Tile" tech can result in a Null Reference Exception, and is currently disabled from Survival.
  
• "No Adjacent Tower" bonus damage tech also applies to Mines and Traps.
  
• In replays, once you've closed down the "Active Techs" menu, it won't come back. This can be fixed by jumping to a different wave.
  
• In replays, spawned Obstacles often appear in the wrong tile, leading to towers seemingly being placed on top of Obstacles, or the path being erroneously blocked.
  
• In replays, Credits and Power will sometimes display negative values.
  
• Hiding the UI does not hide the Damage Graphs or Paths.
  
• Replicants (Replicator spawns) still give 1 score. Spawned units should no longer give score.
  
• If you Hide the UI when the level is completed, it cannot be turned back on.
  
• n the off chance you reach and beat Wave 120 in Endless Survival, the game will break. This is a temporary limitation that we'll be addressing by release.
  
• Command Link can connect to a Blocker.

Sadly, this does absolutely nothing.