Sep 15, 2023

Junk Survivor - Neojac

Our theme for the competition is base building. Base building is an art form, and we invite you to showcase your most impressive and imaginative fortresses, settlements, and hideaways in Junk Survivor.

How to participate:

Send us a screenshot of your own unique building!
Post your screenshot into the discord forum post linked here: Junk Survivor Discord or post them on Steam Screenshots community with the caption: "Screenfest 001 - Base Building Competition".

Competition rules:

Screenshots must be from Junk Survivor.
Screenshots must be built and taken by yourself.
Entries containing offensive or inappropriate content will be disqualified.

Judging criteria:
Our developers will be judging your screenshots on the following criteria:

Visual impact: how visually stunning is your screenshot?
Composition: is the screenshot well-framed and aesthetically pleasing?
Creativity: does the screenshot showcase a unique style of building?
Building: You can show the outside of the building or your interior design.

Important Dates:

Submission period: 22 September 2023 to 24 September 2023
Winners announcement: 27 September 2023

Get ready to share your crazy creativity to our community of survivors. Do you have what it takes to create the ultimate screenshot? May the best screenshots win!

Prizes:
The top 3 winners will receive a steam key to our next survival game to be released this month called Athos. Set on a planet called Athos, you start off by building a formidable base to protect yourself from the wild and unpredictable environment, and master the art of taming mighty dinosaurs to be your loyal companions. This game is set to release this month - for more information, check out the steam page:

Athos Steam Page

Sep 15, 2023

🎉 Fellowship Demo Now Available! 🎉

Fellowship - mele

Hello, Fellowship adventurers!

We're thrilled to announce that the Fellowship Demo is now available for download! This is a significant and emotional milestone for us at Elraim Studio, and we're excited to share it with you all.

Demo Availability
The demo is available starting today and will continue to be accessible until and during Steam NextFest, which runs from October 9th to October 16th. This is your chance to dive into the unique world of Eldrida and experience what makes Fellowship so special.

Steam NextFest
While the focus today is on our demo release, we're also excited to announce that Fellowship will be part of the upcoming Steam NextFest. Mark your calendars and join us there for more Fellowship action!

We Want Your Feedback!
We've poured our hearts into Fellowship, and while we have much more to work on, your feedback is crucial for us. Please share your thoughts, suggestions, and experiences on the Steam community discussion boards.

Get Involved
Join our Discord: Be part of our community and get the latest updates.
Follow us on Twitter: Stay up-to-date with all things Fellowship.
Steam Discussions: Take part in shaping the future of Fellowship by joining the discussions here on Steam.
For more information on how to play Fellowship, check out our comprehensive guide here.

Thank You!
Your support means the world to us, and we can't wait to hear what you think of the Fellowship demo.

Happy adventuring, and see you in Eldrida!

Sep 15, 2023

Our New Free Game - Starship Murder

Soulblight - abraksil

Hey, everybody! Kuba from My Next Games here.

Ufffff…. It took me longer than I anticipated but I finally got our new game out into the world! It’s called Tales From The Arcade: Starship Murder and it’s an experimental murder mystery roguelite in which the killer changes every time you play. You can now get it for free via Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2541360/Tales_From_The_Arcade_Starship_Murder/

or if you prefer web browser visit Newgrounds:

With this little announcement out of the way, let’s move on to this month’s update. Today I thought I would tell you the story of Starship Murder’s development. I decided to do so not only to show you the process behind a curtain but also as a record of how this thing came to be.

As I mentioned in a previous update, it all started with Hank: Straightjacket - a tiny little adventure game we made at the end of last year. We came out of that side project with high spirit. It was a lot of fun to quickly create something small that everyone can enjoy. As soon as Hank: Straightjacket was released, in our spare time, we started brainstorming ideas for another little game we could make. After a month we took a vote to decide which one we’re gonna pursue.

The vote landed on the picture above. The concept was simple: you click different points of the space station to repair it. After a few more discussions we added in the murder mystery angle. Expecting the people to follow a real time dialog while they keep an eye on the station sounded risky. It could have ended up overwhelming a player. We decided to go with it anyway :P. After all, we were making a tiny free indie game. The goal was to create something unique and learn from the experience.

With all that out of the way it was time for a dummy screenshot. It’s a method I use to better visualize the game to everyone on the team. As my art skills are pretty limited (I’m a programmer) what I usually do is mash tougher whatever I can find on the internet until it resembles what I’m trying to convey :D This is also where we moved away from the idea of the space station in favor of a starship. The journey that is implied with a spacecraft was a natural way of telling the player when the game would end and at the same time it maintained the atmosphere of isolation we were trying to invoke.

Then, finally came the day when we started the development. Initially we set ourselves a two week deadline for finishing the project. We started working and… we failed :(. This is how the game looked at that point.

There were two main problems that we were facing. First, was that the game didn’t feel like you were playing as an AI (It was more like: you're just a human looking at a couple of panels) Second, was that the location window which was de facto the main view of the game was too small and cramped up. Even though we passed the deadline we decided to continue with the development.

With every day passing I started to become more and more angry with myself and the project. It was supposed to be done quickly and now who knows how much time it will take us to solve the problems we encounter. It also didn't help that at this point all of our personal lives suddenly became much less stable (housing situation, costs of living you know the staff). We needed to finish this thing ASAP!

The soundtrack came through on the last day. Witek(Artis) introduced me to his brother - Rafał. He has been making music for years and besides the tracks he released on the internet he also had hundreds of unpublished ones. He sent me this album - Vintage Dust - that's been sitting in his drawer for a while. I unzipped the package, added the tracks to my playlist and launched the game to see if what I’ve received fits the mood. A few moments later I knew we had hit the jackpot.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2573120/Tales_From_The_Arcade_Starship_Murder_Soundtrack/

The game was almost finished. There were still issues of balance and dialogues though. Unfortunately we needed to stop - our lives became too erratic to continue… I hated everything about Starship Murder at that point…

Two months later things started to stabilize again. I don’t like to leave things unfinished so I reached out to Matthew(Writer) to resume our efforts on the game. We sat down and spent another week working on it. He was writing and I was tweaking the overall pacing. As I was going through the game I realized that the break we took refreshed my perspective. This thing wasn’t even close to being that bad as I remembered it to be…

Fast forward to today, I’m actually quite happy with how Starship Murder came out at the end.

Cya Around,

Kuba

P.S Overall, if you sum up all the time we spend on development it would be around 6 weeks.

Sep 15, 2023

Update 32: Balanced difficulty

CARNAGE OFFERING Tower Defense - nova.army.fr

-Balanced difficulty
-Optimized enemy waves on the last 5 levels
-Enemy movement speed, hit points and damage
-Some normal mode paths have been moved on some levels
-Turret balancing
-Rate of fire, damage, range and resource cost
-The "Fusion Mortar" turret has a higher rate of fire on mark 4 and 5 of the 2nd version.
-Balanced distribution of all resource gains on certain levels
-Hero movement and navigation improved on some levels
-Some collision bugs corrected
-Optimization of graphic resources on some levels

The final launch of CARNAGE OFFERING TD is just around the corner, and more than 32 updates have already been made to the game since its early access release. But we're not immune to errors and oversights, so don't hesitate to leave a review on Steam with your personal recommendations.
With your support, we'll be able to improve the game, and DLC could be released with new environments, a new atmosphere and unusual turrets.
Thank you all and enjoy the game;)