Hi dear friends,

I am happy to announce that Melody of Seasons is ready for Early Access! I have created an Early Access trailer for the game which you can watch right now on the main store page!

I'm not sure on the exact release date just yet but probably within a couple weeks! So keep an eye out for an announcement in the next couple of days.

On another note, I've published a new demo build which cuts the allowed playtime down to 7 in-game days. I want the demo to exist so that people can get a feel for if they will enjoy the full game or not which I think 7 days is plenty for that. I don't want people playing the demo for too long and having to restart if they decide to get the full game!

Now about Early Access. I am releasing into Early Access because I feel the game could use some work in a few key areas. I still need to tweak the balancing quite a bit. Believe it or not I've not really played my game into the late-game stages because I am changing things so frequently and it would take a long time to manually play into the late-game. I have been relying on cheat codes to test everything out so I don't have a good idea of how the game feels to play through. That's where I hope to gather feedback and respond to players. Is the game too easy or too hard? What parts are annoying, etc.

Another area I will be working on is key-binding and controller support. I will have to transition to Unity's new input system for this which I have been working on but I don't have any experience with this so it will take some time. I've already started but there are a lot of menus and workflows in the game so to test everything out I anticipate it will take some time and I don't want to delay the game any more. I want my game to be playable with controllers as well as on the Steam Deck and it will be, but I want to make sure it's all working well.

Beyond that, the story could use some work. And the portraits as well. I want to get some nice portraits but it is quite expensive. I want to see how the release goes first.

In short, I want everyone to be happy who purchases my game. It has always been a dream of mine to release a game on Steam and I'm so close to making it happen now. When I watch the trailer I get emotional because I can see all the work I've put into this game over the years and I can't believe that I've come this far. I'm sure there will be many bugs and issues but I'm just going to do my best. I'm crossing a line where I'll be collecting money from people so I take that very seriously and hope I can live up to the expectations.

Take care and I'll see you in the next update shortly.

Hey Doods,

We've released an update for Disgaea 7: Vows of the Virtueless to address some issues with performance.

• Improved the rendering process to address performance issues.
  
• Fixed DLC menu on title screen and Special Content Shop not opening the item shop.

We've also provided a couple previous versions under the Beta branch functionality on Steam.

Please continue to discuss issues you may have in our Troubleshooting forum.

Thank you for all of the feedback so far.

Welcome to the survival world of "HOLD YOUR BREATH"!

Hello, dear friends and survival game enthusiasts!

🌪 We're embarking on a thrilling journey into a world teetering on the brink of ecological catastrophe, where every breath could be your last, and every decision is a matter of survival.

🎮 In this demo version, we invite you to immerse yourself in the game's atmosphere, get acquainted with the core mechanics, and of course, experience the spirit of adventure and survival in a world where every action you take matters.



💡What Awaits You in "HOLD YOUR BREATH"?

- Explore a vast open world, filled with dangers, mysteries, and challenges.
- Battle for every breath of clean air, devising strategies to extract, purify, and conserve oxygen.
- Craft weapons and armor to protect yourself from threats like wild animals and bandits.
- Adapt to a changing, harsh world where the rules shift as swiftly as the weather.
- Interact with other survivors, uncovering new narrative branches and unraveling the apocalypse's mysteries.




Join Us at "Next Fest"!
We await you on October 14th at 11:00 AM PDT / 10:00 AM PST!

Dive into the world of "HOLD YOUR BREATH", explore, survive, and remember: every breath is precious...

#HoldYourBreathGame #NextFest #Steam #IndieGame #SurvivalGame

It's the 1 year anniversary of the Slug Disco vlog! In this episode, Mike talks about the Empires of the Undergrowth map contest results, progress on tier 5, achievements, roadmaps, and more.

The brutally difficult Hungry Spider will be returning, by the way, on October 25th.

As is usually the case, this is also a general Slug Disco vlog with mentions of the rest of our publishing charges - if you'd like to skip these and go directly to the EotU good stuff, skip to time code 2.29.



EDIT: A bit of bad news re: the Hungry Spider livestream, but hopefully a good compromise too:

Mike was due to do the 'One Chip Challenge' if he fails the Hungry Spider level live on stream at the weekend. However, after looking into the challenge we have decided that he should not do it. We apologise to anyone looking forward to his reaction.

Although the chip is a food and adheres to food standards, we do not want to encourage anyone else to participate in the activity and as such will not be doing it.

So, as and alternative (and because John has ruined Mike's fun), John will eat a scoop full of mixed preserved insects - a mix of buffalo worms, meal worms, crickets and locusts - each time Mike defeats an uber creature. Bigger insects the further Mike gets into the level.

• Added back one of the old boom box songs which is now a full song instead of a loop. (The remaining ones will return soon too!)
  
• Added VOIP icon back when speaking.
  
• Increased overall audio volume across the board.
  
• Improved tent narrator voice, lowering pitch and slower read speed.
  
• Improved boom box, will now shuffle to a new song when one has finished.
  
• Fixed missing toilet lid sounds.
  
• Fixed some UI fonts not being set properly.
  
• Fixed death screen flicker when getting neck snapped.
  
• Fixed scenarios where the ghost may be jittery during attack animations.
  
• Fixed camera jerk during neck snap.
  
• Fixed voice chat volume slider not working.
  
• Fixed dialogue volume slider not saving.
  
• Fixed story generator pronoun grammar.
  
• Fixed some nicknamed ghost being more unforgiving than intended. Only the insane can now hunt as an additional random event. All other ghost can only hunt when angry, or as a small chance in the haunted room.
  
• Ghost should hunt less overall.

• You can now change and reroll your gear
  
• After researching Basic Combat you now unlock the crafting recipe for Mystical Focus, a object that lets you change your equipment
  
• At the Mystical Focus you can:
  
  • Upgrade a Rare to an Epic item
    
  • Upgrade an Epic to Mythic item
    
  • Randomize the Spell on an item
    
  • Randomize the Mythic Effect on an item
    
  • Randomize which Stats appear on an item
    
  • Randomize power of the Stats on an item
• Place your equipment and some magic essence in the Mystical Focus' inventory and choose one of the options
  
• Along with this we've added magical essences to the game
  
• You get magical essences by salvaging your gear
  
• The inventory's 'destroy item' changes to 'salvage item' when holding equipment. Salvaging destroys your item and gives you back magical essence based on the rarity of the item
  
• These essences are:
  
  • Common Salvage - from Common items
    
  • Rare Essence - from Rare items
    
  • Epic Shadow - from Epic items
    
  • Mythic Soul - from Mythic items
• When altering an item, if it fails for any reason (ie wrong rarity, no item, etc.), you get your item and/or essences back
  
• Make sure to pick up all equipment since every magical essence is useful. Common Salvage for instance is required to reroll an items power

• We've reworked the spell system to make it more dynamic, and to allow more spells
  
• Elemental Power system has been deprecated and no longer rolls on gear
  
• Now rare and higher gear comes with a Spell affix
  
• This gives you the spell shown on the gear when you equip it
  
• Each spell has a specific slot on your combat bar: 1,2,3,4, left click, right click
  
• You can only have one spell for each slot. Equipping an item with a different spell for the same slot will use that new spell instead
  
• Spells are independent of the items rarity and level, although their damage still scales with your characters stats
  
• We have added 7 new Spells with this update:
  
  • Tornado - Summon a tornado that moves around randomly and damage enemies - Slot 1
    
  • Buff - Buff your character, increasing your damage and armor temporarily - Slot 2
    
  • Barrier - Surround yourself with a magical barrier that greatly increases your armor for a short time - Slot 2
    
  • Slam - Slam the ground around you dealing damage and stunning enemies - Slot 3
    
  • Lightning Rain - Continuously strike random areas around you with lightning - Slot 4
    
  • Fireball - Shoot a ball of fire where you are aiming - Slot Left Click
    
  • Magic Blast - Blast the area in front of you with wild magic - Slot Right Click
• The Spells from Elemental Power are now added into the equipment spell pool, and have the same slots as they did before
  
• Try to find/alter your items to get a spell in each slot to form a complete build

• We've added 5 new crops to Ficterra
  
  • Potatoes - Common
    
  • Onions - Epic
    
  • Peanuts - Mythic
    
  • Lettuce - Common
    
  • Strawberries - Rare
• We've also converted Wheat, Cotton, and Mulberries over to the new crop system
  
• Cotton and Wheat still maintain their unique look
  
• Biomes now generate with the new crop versions, but terrain generated before this update will still have the old versions
  
• Seeds now combine in your inventory if they are the same type
  
• You can now scroll between individual types of seeds in the toolbar
  
• Crops now show an effect when harvested, instead of just disappearing
  
• Seed icon on bags of seed now changes with the type of seed you are using
  
• You can now see the remaining time left on crops until you can harvest them, in the inspector at the top of the screen
  
• Hovering over a crop now changed the icon to a hand if you can harvest it and changes it to an wait hand if you can't

• Added New Custom Map - Mountainbound - A land with many biomes surrounded by mountains. Start in the pleasant cherry steps biome and explore the different areas through the gaps in the mountains

• We've reworked how lighting works for Deferred Rendering - Low
  
• Previously this still took a decent performance hit, and didn't offer much visually
  
• Now we've implemented a completely new system (separate from Medium and High) to provide fast performance and still have decent visual quality
  
• This is now the default setting for lighting, since it has the best performance and decent visuals. You can change this in the settings menu if you want better visuals

• Moved the health bar to the left side of the screen instead of the center. It was constantly getting in the way of stuff
  
• Changed the blur shader used in several UI elements for better performance
  
• Reduced the size of the Quest Log
  
• Reduced the size of the hotkeys reminders on the top left of the screen
  
• Added a Quest Log (L) hotkey reminder to the bar in the top left

• Added a new Mythic ring: Essence Extractor. This gives you a 25% chance to generate an extra rare essence when salvaging a rare item
  
• Increased player's starting inventory space from 60 to 70. This makes it more manageable in the start of the game when you have no chests to store things in
  
• Added a 'Night Time' music track to several biomes whose daytime music was a little off for the night
  
• Reworked the toolbar internally to allow for better scrolling and to handle complicated items with better
  
• Pumpkins and jack o'lanterns have a new material, so they aren't weirdly dark
  
• Changed the spawn rate of wheat, cotton, and mulberries in changing them over to the new crop system. The are still around the same spawn rate
  
• Lava now glows with hdr color
  
• A Bloom effect has been added to the game to help lava glow and add a softer feel to the environment
  
• Changed the controls for Crate. Right clicking an empty crate puts the current item in it, while right clicking a non-empty crate takes your stuff out. The old controls were weird, and you could only do things 1 at a time, which made it tedious
  
• Crafting Recipes with no output now show a description of the recipe instead of nothing (specifically done for new Mystical Focus recipes)

• Fixed an issue with crops not saving frequently enough for crops that take a long time to grow
  
• Equipment tooltip no longer says Dreary Feet when no mythic effect is present on an item
  
• Monsters are now correctly getting stunned from effects
  
• The 'You spawned here' marker is now correctly transparent for new worlds
  
• Respawn points now have physical form in the universe again
  
• Wooden elevators, planks and various other wood bases items, now look like wood again
  
• Increased the volume of the music for the Cherry Forest biome; it was unusually low
  
• The Jar of POW no longer looks insane
  
• Flame ring's fire has also regained its sanity
  
• Monster health bars now show when a monster has died correctly
  
• Crafting materials in the crafting screen should now appear all on one line instead of getting stuck in the button below

- Updated the project to Unity version 2022.3. We were on version 2019 which is no longer updated by Unity.

- Added Reroll Modules device so you can spend 4 energy to randomly replace all equipped modules. Modules with multiple stacks are replaced with multiple random modules.

- Added Device Code module that lets you buy devices at the shop. Stack count sets the quantity you can buy, so now you have more opportunities to stack a device and improve its power.

- Weapons Locker Key module now stacks. The stack count is used to increase the weapon damage (random rolled stat on purchase).

- Stack count is now maintained when a device is dropped and picked up again within a stage.

- Added Inertia toggle so player ship movement will stop dead instead of drifting when there is no input.

- Added Shot Volume slider for controlling the player shot sound volume (as a percentage of the SFX master volume).

- Added an early access info note to the main menu screen.

Hello Fellow Varistas,

Please be aware there's an issue going on right now with Varista when using other XR runtimes. Currently the Steam one is working (the most widely available one for Varista right now)
If your hands are looking a little weird when you load up the game try the following:

Step 1) With or without your headset on you can open steam VR (if you do it from your desktop a little window will open)
Step 2) Go to the settings page
Step 3) Click on OpenXR and then Set SteamVR as openXR runtime

This will allow you to play open xr games on your steam device (including varista)

You will be able to switch this anytime back to your respective runtime device on their local homepage/settings

I am sorry for any inconvenience! And I am presently working on a fix.

Regards,

The PomDev Team

Hello! Today small hot fix :)

• Fixed: issue introduced recently that missions with computers inside local networks were very unlikely to generate.
  With current fix, it will gradually increase chance for computers with local networks as you keep completing more missions.

Expect more balancing changes in upcoming updates:) I want to make sure experience is smooth and difficulty is balanced properly, and the challenge can be expected in late game.

-improved most terrain textures
-added facial & spine gore
-design changes in most GoreDolls
-improved MMCG menu
-advanced control settings : keybinds
-improved voice chat, and player names in multiplayer
-more defined blood pools
-adrenaline boosts attack and reload speed
-improved graphics
-fixed bugs