Oct 21, 2023

Village Monsters - Josh Bossie

Hello Villagers!

You'll likely notice that I missed last week. But can you guess why? I don't think you can, because it is one of the most unlikeliest, most stupid, and most cursed thing to happen.

Yeah. My entire house got COVID... again. Again! It hadn't even been a full month yet! Is that even possible? Well, I suppose it literally is given that it happened.

Well, as much as I hate to do this, I am forced to once again make the hard decision to...

...announce a release date!!

Did I get you? That's right, baby! No more delays, no more tales of woe, no more excuses.

I am beyond thrilled to announce that the oft-discussed but much delayed v1.1 finally has a release date: Monday, October 30th!

So yes, COVID sucks, but this time around I was able to huddle in my blanket and mug of TheraFlu and just cranked through my todo list day by day. It was like one of those perks from Fallout where your stats increase if you're sick with radiation poisoning.

Now the Big Board sitting around 90% complete, so I'm giving myself a 10(ish) day buffer to finish that last 10% and test the hell out of it. No launch disasters this time!

I didn't want to announce anything until I was absolutely, positively confident. And, well, I am confident. Finally.

Look for a trailer next weekend and a weeklong sale to celebrate. I'm planning on one last weekly update prior to the 30th to outline what additions and changes you can expect.

And I'll try my best not to go for the COVID hat trick. But no promises.

Oct 21, 2023

50 Stars: Game Feature Survey

50 Stars - Lander

Greetings Changemaker,

Step into the realm of political prowess and become an integral part of the development journey for 50 Stars! Your voice matters, and we invite you to contribute your visionary ideas to shape the very fabric of this groundbreaking political game.

Over the next ten days, immerse yourself in our survey designed to capture the pulse of the community. Your feedback will guide us in crafting an unparalleled gaming experience for 50 Stars upon its grand release. From game mechanics to plot twists, we want to know it all.

What features do you yearn for in 50 Stars? What should take precedence and what should be the grand finale? Lay bare your ingenious legislation ideas, and let your imagination run wild!

As we embark on this transformative journey, envision yourself not just as a player, but as a changemaker weaving the destiny of 50 Stars. Join us in this collaborative odyssey, where ColdLand Games and the community synergize to create a political gaming masterpiece.

Your ideas matter. Let's shape the future of 50 Stars together.

Take the survey: https://forms.gle/s9CGRLvoSnTK8hdD8

Warm regards,
ColdLand Games

Oct 21, 2023

Update Notes for Oct 21, 2023

Cycle Idle RPG Playtest - Leafcutter

Fixes:
- The purchase button in the store can no longer be clicked when an item is not selected.
- Text in the log will now start with the scrollbar at the top.
- Reagent drop chance will now display correctly.
- The vermin stone drop rate is no longer 100%, but 10% as it was intended.
- Offline and Predict correctly activate Sporegon's on death ability
- Added description for Fecundity.
- Abilities have had their icons aligned in the selection menu.
- Empty ability slots in the bestiary are no longer an eye-gouging bright white.
- Predict and offline progress now implement minimum respawn time.
- You can no longer equip class perks.

Balance / Reworks:
- Bestial knowledge is now unlocked by entering the second zone. Knowledge gain is always active, with 0.5 knowledge per kill being the baseline. Bestial Knowledge increases this value.
- The scaling for several passive abilities, including bestial knowledge, have had their scaling tweaked. Class Lvl now affects them more.
- Talent TP costs now scale independently. Scaling has been adjusted.
- Class abilities are now permanently unlocked if you have reached the designated class level, but an underleveled penalty is applied when below their unlock level. Certain abilities that have utility outside of their effectiveness will have increased mana cost when underleveled. Class Perks will still require you to reach their level to take effect. I was already tracking your highest class level, so this should apply retroactively! :)

New Features:
- Logging out in the safe zone will cause you log back in at the last zone you visited.
- The travel indicator now shows distance traveled necessary to reach a monster.
- Added quit game button in main menu.
- Added travel button in the Bestiary.
- Added immunities and travel distance in Bestiary.
- Added the Misc tab in Stats, which shows knowledge gain.
- There is now an "enter code" button in the menu, where you can enter the code "920672" for some Eternal Essence!
- The game window will now start as windowed by default and can be resized.
- Backup saves will be created on the first autosave of each play session. If your game crashes, I'd recommend saving the backup files "Backup[1-3].save" somewhere else, then trying to change their name to "Autosave.save" to reload them. This is a quick solution to alleviate the risk of crashes while I try to work through a more deliberate system.

Oct 21, 2023

Completely Reformed - Warnament Dev Update #10

Warnament - ElJorro

To read all Warnament's dev logs, subscribe to our official newsletter

The Most Important Things About Warnament

When's the release? We're aiming to go into Early Access by the beginning of 2024

What happens now? You can play Warnament's closed beta for as much as $0.99. It is updated bi-monthly, and includes map editor & multiplayer mode, along with the access to the devs’ eyes & ears

And what if I don't? There's also a free demo here on Steam. It doesn't have all the features but also gets regular updates, including some new content:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1201700/Warnament/

With that aside, let's finally talk about what's new in Warnament!

Oh, what's this video all about? It's just another update on Warnament YouTube channel, which you're totally welcome to subscribe to! There's a new video every week, so come by to find yourself in the thick of the development process!

If you're not a video watching type, here's a short summary! We've got an interesting update for the scenario editor: it now allows you to create custom reforms! A ‘reform’ in Warnament is an event when a country evolves like a pokémon, and becomes something completely different. Like that time France became the French Empire or when some folks established the United States of Europe. Well, now you can create these events on your own!

You can create up to 6 reform for each country, which is convenient because there're 6 political regimes in the game, and you can create an option for one of each.

The latter is completely optional though. For example, on these screenshots you can see the Benelux Federation, which can be formed under any political regime. It does, however, have other condition: to be able to call oneself Benelux Federation, one must control the land of BElgium, NEtherlands, and LUXembourg simulatneously. Because otherwise it would be awkward.

And check out our new interface! The main game screen was completely reformed, which was totally worth it, because you, the players, will be spending 90% of your game time here!

The game looks more consistent now, which shows in (seemingly) small details, too: we have created a special palette for the game map, to avoid random/weird color combinations:

Getting to gameplay changes, bots can now issue ultimatums to you, demanding to stop aggression towards a country or to decrease the amount of your troops, if bots consider it too big.

If you do not comply within a certain number of turns, get ready for war:

Warnament is a rather easy to learn kind of game in the given genre, but now we leave no chance to not understand its rules: there's now a tutorial campaign that activates upon first launch of the game.

You will have some fun suppressing communist uprisings in Weimar Germany, returning control over the land temporarily known as the Free State of Bottleneck - and learning how to recruit troops, control your armies, and produce artillery on the way!

Up Next

Now that the new palette is ready, we need to introduce it to the existing maps. Existing reforms must be implemented into the new system, and new reforms will be added as well. The plan is to make it so every country has multiple reforms to choose from, which will hopefully increase replayability.

We will also keep improving scenario and the map editors in the upcoming week. User-generated content is the fuel of Warnament, and we're so very grateful to our awesome community maps and scenario creators for the awesome job the are doing to entertain fellow players! By the way, if you're not on our Discord server yet, you're welcome to join at any time.

See you in a month, with more exciting Warnament-related news!