Jan 25, 2024

Terraformers: New Frontiers DLC out now!

Terraformers - Hylda

Dear Terraformers,

The time has finally come. Our first DLC, New Frontiers, is now available! 🚀

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2646850/Terraformers_New_Frontiers/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/38195/Terraformers_Deluxe_Edition/

Features

Expeditions - Decide which celestial bodies should be explored by your astronauts.
Settle - Establish outposts in up to 8 different locations across the solar system and develop them into large settlements that can send resources and unique technologies back to Mars.
Trade - Identify system-wide resource shortages and export these for extra benefit.
Events - Decide the fate of these new locations with 8 new events.
Leaders - Lead your Martian society in different ways with 3 new leaders.
Projects - Focus on interplanetary development with 5 new space projects, 2 new city buildings, 3 regional building and a technology.
Scenario - Take on the challenge of a new longer scenario.
Music - Accomplish all of this while listening to a new music track.

We hope you will enjoy this DLC! If you do, please consider leaving a positive review as it helps us a lot! ♥

If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to join our Discord server. We look forward to seeing you there! 👩‍🚀

FULL PATCH NOTES - Base Game

[expand type=details]

Bugs & improvements

Fixed an exploit that allowed duplicating buildings by relocating a building and using the shortcut to switch between cities before placing it.
Fixed WASD or arrow keys not working to rotate the planet when “keyboard navigation” is unchecked in the settings. This is useful to play with keyboard and mouse at the same time
Fixed "end turn" and "revert" shortcut actions prompts not showing when holding ctrl/cmd if keyboard navigation is off
Allowed confirming the found city popup by pressing return even when keyboard navigation is off
Fixed a bug in how some cards are rejected with certain game conditions (this resulted in less robots being proposed if the ocean was not high enough)
Fixed a bug in how cards are tracked to be offered in the background (too many were added, flooding certain “decks”).
Fixed a bug where the max hand size could change for 1 turn due to a skill
Fixed a bug where the repair cost of a damaged regional building would be wrongly displayed in planet view
Fixed an exploit with the Tourism leader specialization
Fixed a bug where randomly generated leaders would have a wrong skill
Improved verification and warnings in case potential “lose” action
Added that gamepad can cycle zooms in both directions now (using right stick/left stick clicks)
Fixed that asteroids should not appear in the tutorial
Fixed the food Monitoring Office bonus
Fixed Open Science Database tech bonus (could start in the negative)
Fixed how the Gene Vault bonus was rounded
Fixed that adjacency bonus from university was also worked during relocation
Fixed that Mars Enthusiasm would trigger when relocating a city
Fixed that the wrong difficulty icon for a challenge would be displayed in game
Fixed hand ordering
Fixed a gameplay data loading bug (float parsing)
Fixed that 2 identical modifiers could appear in the challenge mode
Fixed a bug where the map generation could fail and still continue with launching the game (apparent in the last 2023 challenge in particular)
Improved map generation logic so will be faster
Fixed a bug where resource locations could still appear on city locations in challenges where they shouldn’t
Major performance optimization in many parts of the game
Fixed multiple tooltip typos
Fixed multiple small bugs with some bonus displays

Balance changes:

Ocean projects now get proposed earlier if you have progressed towards oceans.

Projects:

Changed cost Local Culture Center from 12 water and 12 power to 11 water and 11 power.
Let the Smelter and Thermal Updraft Tower be proposed a little later.
Reduced cost of Urban Planning Center from 12 science to 11 science.
Reduced cost of Coffeeshop from 9 nitrates to 8 nitrates.
Reduced the cost of Exhaust Processor from 12 power to 11 power.
Reduced the cost of Igloos from 30 food and 3 water to 30 food and 2 water.
Reduced the cost of Botany and Forestry Center from 20 nitrates and 5 water to 15 nitrates and 5 water.
Reduced the cost of the Mohole from 20 power and 30 titanium to 20 power and 25 titanium.
Changed the cost of Heliostat Powerplant from 12 silicates and 12 science to 10 silicates and 15 science.
Reduced the cost of the Agricultural Complex (Rich soil upgrade) from 26 to 24 water.
Reduced the cost of the Touring Company from 13 power to 10 power.
Reduced the cost of Courthouse from 10 food and 4 titanium to 10 food and 3 titanium.
Reduced the cost of Automated Robotic Workforce from 3 science to 2 science.
Reduced the cost of the Food Monitoring Office from 7 science to 6 science.
Increased the support per turn from Self-driving Taxis from 16 to 18.
Reduced the cost of the Shipwright from 5 power and 5 tritium to 4 power and 4 tritium.
Reduced the cost of Marslink from 9 science and 10 silicates to 9 science and 9 silicates.
Increased the cost of the Spaceport from 11 power and 15 tritium to 12 power and 15 tritium.
Increased the cost of the Landing Pad from 3 titanium to 4 titanium.
Increased the cost of the Orbital Ring from 22 tritium to 23 tritium.

Technologies:

Increased the effect of advanced city planning: Cities can now have 6 more maximum buildings instead of 3.
Decreased the effect of Space flight conditions: it now only provides +1 support per turn per new trade route instead of 2. Decreased its cost from 20 science to 10 science.

Lifeforms:

Increased the oxygen and atmosphere produced by the Boreal Rainforest from 1 to 2. Reduced its prestige from 18 to 12. Reduced its local support provided from 8 to 6.
Increased spread duration of Cyanophyta from 12 to 14 turns.
Increased spread duration of Methanogenium from 11 to 13 turns.
Increased spread duration of Deinococcus from 8 to 9 turns.
Increased spread duration of Radiodurans from 8 to 9 turns.
Increased spread duration of Plankton from 13 to 15 turns.
Reduced local support provided by Tundra forest from 5 to 4.
Reduced local support provided by Alpine Pine forest from 5 to 4.
Reduced local support provided by Mediterranean shrubs forest from 5 to 4.
Reduced local support provided by Temperate forest from 8 to 6.
Reduced local support provided by Temperate rainforest from 8 to 6. Reduced its prestige from 32 to 30.
Reduced local support provided by Palm trees from 12 to 10. Reduced its prestige from 32 to 30.
Increased the spread duration of Arctic Hares from 5 to 6 turns. Increased their local support production from 3 to 4.

Landmark upgrades:

Reduced the cost of the Viewpoint Tower landmark upgrade from 3 titanium to 2 titanium.
Reduced the cost of the Spa landmark upgrade from 6 water to 4 water.

Leaders:

Jan van Dijk’s Linked Nitrogen Factory now also produces 1 atmosphere per turn (besides the 1 atmosphere per adjacent linked nitrogen factory).
Jan van Dijk’s Power Breathing Center now also produces 1 support per turn.
Yolanda Madiba’s specialization now provides a 50% discount to landmark upgrades that provide support or comfort of living (instead of 25%).
Léna Kertész’ Local Art Gallery now also provides 2 support per turn per location that the city owns that provides support or comfort of living.
Léna Kertesz’ Cultural Festivals skill now costs 5 water and generates 75 support instead of costing 10 water and generating 110 support.
Hope O’Malley’s Cultural Festivals skill now costs 10 water and generates 125 support instead of costing 20 water and generating 170 support.
Henry Carnegie’s Mine Venting skill now generates -30 support per mined resource instead of -25.
Aishe Jäger’s specialization now provides a 50% discount to animal spreaders instead of a 40% discount.
Tariq Fayed’s Police station now provides 3 support per turn instead of 1 comfort of living.
Pekai Ayad’s Inter-Class Dialog Center now provides 1 comfort of living and 1 support to adjacent populations instead of a flat 3 support per turn.
Beatrix Barbier’s Radiation Treatment Center now only costs 1 science instead of 2.
Mustafa Orbay’s specialization now only requires 10 projects to be trashed instead of 15.
Jorge Dromedo’s specialization now gives a 10% discount to regional projects instead of 15%.
Jorge Dromedo’s Modular Apartments now provide 5 support if there’s at least 1 other Modular Apartments adjacent instead of 3 support.
Tsvetan Ivanov’s Marllywood Studio now provides 1 more support per turn per landmark upgrade that provides comfort of living or support.

Starting situations:

Growth: Increased nitrates from 22 to 25.
Expansive: reduced titanium from 20 to 15. Reduced tritium from 12 to 10.
Utopian: reduced titanium from 15 to 5.
Terraforming: reduced water from 18 to 17.

Overall difficulty:

Lowered the expectation rise frequency by a tiny bit to accommodate for the balance changes above.

[/expand]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2646850/Terraformers_New_Frontiers/

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/38195/Terraformers_Deluxe_Edition/

-Asteroid Lab & Goblinz Publishing

Jan 25, 2024

The Village Post, Jan 25 - 2024 Retrospective + Future Teaser!

Moonstone Island - Animat3dM3

I am usually so good at knowing what newsletter number we are on, but it's been a while since the last newsletter, and over the Christmas break, I forgot how to count, so... Welcome back! How's it going? How was your Christmas/New Year/non-denominational winter holidays? Or summer holidays, if you're in the Southern Hemisphere? You know, I've actually never been south of the equator. Maybe I should make that my new year's resolution!

Our break was great, and we're already working on some COOL STUFF FOR SOON TIMES. Can't tell you about it yet, but maybe I'll give a little hint: I had to write a lot of new stuff! It's the first time I've done a significant amount of non-item-description writing since the game released!!!!! How exciting.
New Year, New Meeeee!!

I wanted to do a little retrospective of 2023, because I saw other games studios doing it, and it looked cool. So! Let's go! 2023 retrospective!!!

Sandy and Kate (the lead dev and the writer, AKA me) met for the first time at GDC, and we got to show off the game as part of The Mix
I wrote about 100,000 words of dialogue and we sent it to localisation ON TIME 😎
We had a demo in the Steam Next Fest
We announced our release date
We ran multiple closed betas to make the game really really good
We released Moonstone Island on September 20th (how has it only been 4 months what)
We got Steam Deck Verified ✅
We announced the Switch version (coming Spring 2024!) at Nintendo's Indie World in December
We released three DLC packs (Decor, Halloween, and Winter)
We did 12 big patches that added tons of content, too
We hit 50k Twitter followers which honestly feels less cool now that Twitter is in the toilet but STILL
Our Discord hit 4,000 members
We met all of youuuuuuu

I can't believe we got so much great fan art in the last few weeks! I honestly expected it to get real quiet on the fan art front, but no! There's so much!!!

Okay, admittedly, this first one is not technically fan art. It's commissioned emotes, made by Briggyea for Eylime's Twitch and Discord, themed around YOURS TRULY. Look how cute these are! There's a chad Fishbo, a sus Ribbite, and a "This Is Fine" Bonfire! Amazing work, 10/10.

And you know what else we love to see? People's OC Spirit designs! Seriously, it's probably the cutest fan art we get to see, and we wish we could make them all real! This lil guy is by TenaciousTurnip, and he's an ice Spirit that lives in a stocking. I want to eat him.

*contented purr* Meow.
(Mr Morris had a great break, thank you for asking. But now, it's back to CEO duties for this sleepy kitty.)

And that's all for this week! Welcome back, and happy 2024!

– Kate, Community Manager and Writer of Many Secret New Words

Jan 25, 2024

Deliver Us the Moon Gets a Steam Daily Deal

Deliver Us The Moon - Steve

Deliver Us The Moon also published by Wired Productions is featured on a Daily Deal by Steam. Check out the details below:

Are you ready for an adventure like no other? If so, then you won’t want to miss the Steam daily deal on Deliver Us The Moon, one of the best sci-fi games of of all time. A game that will take you to the moon and beyond, where you will face dangers, mysteries, and choices that will shape your destiny. It will make you think, feel, and wonder about the fate of humanity and our planet.

Deliver Us the Moon has a massive 72% discount as part of the Steam Daily Deal. This discount is running until February the 1st.

To honour this amazing sci-fi classic, We are also discounting the Physical Collector's Edition and Double LP soundtrack by 20% over on Amazon and the Wired Store.

Collector’s Edition includes:

A Deluxe Edition copy of the game on PS4. Includes PS5 free upgrade.
The Award-Winning Original Soundtrack on 12” Double Vinyl
Exclusive and limited Moonman ‘The Blackout’ Comic Book
A stellar hardback Deliver Us The Moon Artbook
Detailed real-life Moon Map Poster
ASE-shaped USB containing exclusive developer bonus content and more
Space-tastic game Art Prints
Numbered Certificate of Authenticity
Mind-bending Lenticular Sleeve
Authentic WSA Patch to become part of the team
A bonus Deliver Us the Moon Steam key

Buy it from Amazon DE, Amazon UK and the Wired Store.

Watch an unboxing here:

Deliver Us The Moon | Double Vinyl Official Soundtrack.

2xLP Orange Vinyl.
Gatefold sleeve with UV spot finish.
Music by Sander van Zanten.
Album Art by Takeoff studios.
Published by Wired Productions.

Buy it from Amazon DE, Amazon UK and the Wired Store

Listen to it here.

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and play Deliver Us The Moon now before it’s too late! You won’t regret it! This is a game is out of this world!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/428660/Deliver_Us_The_Moon/

Jan 25, 2024

Upcoming changes to Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces

Alien Swarm: Reactive Drop - Ben Lubar

Starting in Season 20 (February 2024), Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces is gaining two new sources of points. Additionally, we are updating the score multipliers of nearly every mission and many challenges.

What's Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces?

Heroes of the Interstellar Armed Forces (HoIAF) is a monthly competition to complete as many difficult missions as possible on participating servers (marked with an 🏅 icon in the lobby list).

You earn more points for harder missions, difficulty settings, and challenges, and for marines in your squad surviving to the end if hardcore friendly fire is enabled. At the end of the month, everyone who participated receives a medal, with special medals going to the players in the top 20 and top 100.

You can display medals on your Steam profile the same way you would display any other item in your inventory, as well as equip up to 3 medals on your Commander Profile in-game. Medals are also available from many other sources. Check out the guides on the Steam Community Hub to find out more!

Scoring Multiplier Updates

109 of the 133 rated missions and 28 of the 76 rated challenges have received scoring changes.

In most cases, the difference between challenge score multipliers has been reduced and the difference between mission score multipliers has increased.

The full list of modifier changes is available on the Reactive Drop developer website.

Personal Best Scores

Starting in Season 20 (February 2024), your personal best score for each mission will earn you bonus points towards your season score. Your 5 best scores contribute the most, with each group of 5 scores afterwards contributing half as much.

The point bonuses are generous. For example, if your best single mission score is 500 points, you'll gain nearly one hundred thousand points towards your season score. If you manage to beat your score by 100 points (600 total), you'll gain an additional nearly forty thousand points.

If you want to stay ahead in future seasons, you'll need to hone your skills at a multitude of missions, and super-high scores in endless missions are now worth far more than the points they give directly.

Mission Bounties

It's not just the high-scorers who are getting a bonus this season! A few times per day, the Interstellar Armed Forces will provide bounties for completing specific missions. You can find these in the notifications area on the main menu, and the missions with bounties you haven't claimed are also marked in the mission chooser while you're connected to a participating server.

Bounties grant points for the successful completion of a mission regardless of difficulty settings or challenges. That means that if you were previously getting a measly 1 point per mission on Easy, you can now earn hundreds or thousands of points a few times per day.

Bounties are created every 8 hours and last for 24 hours. Each set of bounties is either a campaign of 3 to 9 missions or 5 to 6 assorted missions. Bounties do not span multiple seasons, so there is a period at the start of a season with fewer than 3 active sets of bounties and bounties at the end of a season are shorter than 24 hours. Each bounty mission can be completed independently. If you don't want to see information about bounties on the main menu, you can disable the notifications using the button at the bottom of the notifications list.

Jan 25, 2024

Deliver Us the Moon Gets a Steam Daily Deal

Those Who Remain - kamil

To honour this amazing sci-fi classic, We are also discounting the Physical Collector's Edition and Double LP soundtrack by 20% over on Amazon and the Wired Store.

Collector’s Edition includes:

A Deluxe Edition copy of the game on PS4. Includes PS5 free upgrade.
The Award-Winning Original Soundtrack on 12” Double Vinyl
Exclusive and limited Moonman ‘The Blackout’ Comic Book
A stellar hardback Deliver Us The Moon Artbook
Detailed real-life Moon Map Poster
ASE-shaped USB containing exclusive developer bonus content and more
Space-tastic game Art Prints
Numbered Certificate of Authenticity
Mind-bending Lenticular Sleeve
Authentic WSA Patch to become part of the team
A bonus Deliver Us the Moon Steam key

Buy it from Amazon DE, Amazon UK and the Wired Store.

Watch an unboxing here:

Deliver Us The Moon | Double Vinyl Official Soundtrack.

2xLP Orange Vinyl.
Gatefold sleeve with UV spot finish.
Music by Sander van Zanten.
Album Art by Takeoff studios.
Published by Wired Productions.

Buy it from Amazon DE, Amazon UK and the Wired Store

Listen to it here.

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and buy Deliver Us The Moon now before it’s too late! You won’t regret it! This is a game is out of this world!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/428660/Deliver_Us_The_Moon/