Hello necromancers,

Exciting news! We've been hard at work on our next game, Grimshire, a cozy farmsim with a dark undertone. Tim and I grew up playing the old Harvest Moon games on SNES, Nintendo 64, Playstation 1 and Gamecube and really enjoyed them. It's always been a dream of mine to make a farming game.

Grimshire is a farmsim, with a pixel art style. The features and mechanics are inspired by the best parts of Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley while also expanding the farmsim genre by trying some new things. The world is filled with adorable animal characters, inspired by Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit, Secret of Nihm, Brian Jacques's Redwall book series, and Watership Down. We want to make a beautiful cozy world, but also have some grim and emotional elements in the story.

Grimshire is still in early development. We hope to launch in early access in 2025. If you enjoyed Bone's Cafe, please check it out. If it looks like something you would play, wishlist and follow on steam! Grimshire





Also, we just pushed a small bug fix to Bone's Cafe.
This bug was very frustrating to hunt down because it was not recreateable on our machines and it only occurred for some players. The bug caused only some players not to be able to make certain recipes such as mozzarella sticks, and cheese fries. Should be good now, let me know if you run into issues! Thanks darth_mera & glaciesmort for helping us track it down.

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/2689200/_/

+New special bidding options for some individual characters:

• Dr. Howard can now be commanded to alter your student records to benefit your Academia score.
  
• Ying can now be commanded to use the school paper to provide you a better chance of shrugging off extra suspicion.
  
• Detective Lawson can now be commanded to use police resources to provide an even greater chance of removing extra suspicion.

+Added a new ambient track to the house

+Added a new ambient track that will play in most buildings at night

*Assigning a “Special” bidding command now costs time

*Penis Enlargement Pill Changes

• Multiple penis enlargement pills can now be ordered at once. All will be picked up in a single package.
  
• If the mail room becomes unavailable due to certain events, packages will instead be sent to your doorstep for a 50% upcharge. Unlike picking up a package from the mail room, picking up a package from your doorstep can be done at any point in the day and will not cost any time.

*Some ambient tracks will now play in more places

*The inventory screen will now keep track of the number of penis enlargement pills owned

*The format for male characters will now better scale to window size

*The daily schedule will now scale better to window size

*Peached Pink is now closed at night

*Peached Pink has been added to the schedule

*SHiMMER app format improvements

*Minor performance improvements at the Peached Pink

*Highlighted some more variant text that may otherwise go unnoticed

*Detective Lawson's oral scene no longer allows you to leave before the scene completes

*Restored the text that appears when visitng Essex Red after hours

*Fixed issue with inventory format that prevented it from closing

*Fixed bug that prevented Priya from doing bidding

*Updated Patron credits

Fix --> Game gets stuck, if Qb doesn't throw the football
Fix --> Certain cases players path request was running infinitely
Fix --> AI HC toggle became not interactable, if it was saved unchecked
Update --> Defensive players in zone cover -path attack target, -sit attack closest

Hey everyone, this is Benji from the Gun Jumpers team! On behalf of everyone on the team, thank you so much for your support since the release of the game. It was far greater than we ever could have anticipated. This is a post I wanted to write about our team, and Version 1.1: The Corrosion Update coming to DRACOMATON!

We formed our team in college for our capstone course and named ourselves the Gun Jumpers. We formed our group before the class even began, because we all shared a similar goal of wanting to make the best game we possibly could. During the course, we had about six months to create a game, and our game ended up becoming DRACOMATON. We were super ambitious in our goals because we all are incredibly passionate about the work we do. Truly, my teammates are some of the most inspiring people I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. We poured ourselves into making the game, and it ended up becoming something that we felt we would be proud to release commercially. So after our class ended, we spent an extra month during the summer of 2023 preparing for the Steam release. For myself and everyone else on the team, DRACOMATON is a game that we feel deep pride in creating, and seeing so many people play and enjoy the game has been one of the most fulfilling experiences we’ve ever had.

So truly, thank you so much for playing.

Even though we’re all in different stages of our life now, having graduated from college, in December of 2023, we came back together to do a jam for an update. Not everyone could participate, because we all have different obligations we need to attend to, but for those of us who could, we put our all into it. I made a new form called V-Synth form, which is inspired by different Vocal Synths and Vocaloids, and my good friend Tracie made a form called Scrapper form, which is a badass shotgun form. Both of us are artists, so doing all the programming and design work was hard as hell, but with the help of the designers and programmers on the team, we ended up being successful with the forms! Our amazing lead programmer Calex made a leaderboard system, so you’ll now be able to compete for the best completion times in the world and amongst your friends! Our enemy designer Sophie made six more enemies and more rooms to play in as well. I also animated all of those enemies, scrapper, and V-Synth form, AND made new animations for Reggie, aka Regulus, since we weren’t able to make his animations in the original scope of the game. It was a lot of hard work!!! But, I think it will have been worth it, since everyone who’s supported us so far, and new players alike will have a ton of new content to play with in DRACOMATON. Autumn, Annie, Nik, Andrew, and Ryan also did a great amount of work on the update to make some really awesome new content that you’ll be able to see in the Patch Notes below.

I can’t promise anything about the future of DRACOMATON, because we’re all just trying to figure out what we want to do after having graduated college. But, the jam we did for the update was a lot of fun, so if we end up making even more stuff for the game, we’ll be sure to let you know. In the meantime, I’d recommend checking our team member’s social media pages if you’d like to see more of our stuff!

Andrew Wei
https://sites.google.com/view/weiandrew/home

Annie Zhang
https://www.anxzhang-design.com/

Autumn Moulios
https://autumn-moulios.com/

Benji Chavez
https://twitter.com/AvianBen

Ben Paulsen
benjamin.games

Calex Raffield
https://calexraffield.com

Michael Lamore
https://twitter.com/michaellamore_
https://www.artstation.com/michaellamore

Niklas Thomas
https://www.niklasthomas.com/

Sophie Martin
https://twitter.com/h_mAAm_h
https://sophiemartportfolio.carrd.co/

Yiyang Lu
https://yiyanglu-website.com/


V-Synth: Debuff enemies and protect yourself with a circling shield.



- Melody Shot: Charm enemies with piercing bullets! Charmed enemies take more damage.

- Show Stopper: Explodes into smaller bullets. When you hit charmed enemies, create a shield of notes around you.

Scrapper: Get up close with enemies for devastating damage.



- Buck Shot: Shoot a 7-bullet spread. Attack enemies at close range for a <b>Critical Hit</b>!

- Hook Shot: Hook enemies, stunning them and bringing them closer for massive damage!

Hidden Forms:

Ǵ̷̨Ḻ̷̢̾̀͗Í̷̡̲T̷̥͊̓̔C̵͎͉̓͘Ḧ̶̤̜:̴̞͑̍͗ ̷͍͉͂̈́͝C̴̳͋̋Ȑ̶̗̄Ḯ̷̳̠͇̀̈́T̶̝̿Į̶̉̎̀Č̵̗̎Á̶̙̹̐͠L̷̫̰̈ ̷͖̓Ẻ̸̹͍̬͆̒R̶̛̬̞̲̓R̷͖̝͈̆͘O̵̟͂R̷͕̀̈́̐:̵̗͙͖̐̔ ̴̡̫͇̾̕Ũ̸͇͈̈n̶͇͚̫͠d̷̨̤̃̋͘e̶̘̗̍͒̚͜f̸̡͚̫̿̈̓ī̴̫̯n̴̺̬̽̑̚ę̵̼̾̍̈d̵̗͎̙́̇ ̵̖̀f̵̳̘̗̆͆ȯ̷̡̹͖r̸̬̪̼̾̓m̶͇͓̰̆̿ ̵̤͋̂̈́b̶͚̜̪̌̕e̸̹̔͘͜h̶̢̞̟͒ä̴̺̽̈́v̴͇̏͛i̴̛͕͋͝ớ̴̡̠͑r̵̺̪̄͑̇.̵̮̬͊͂̕



- Random Access Primary: Replicate the abilities of other Forms.

- Projectiles Not Responding: Due to rendering error you may see stationary duplicates of existing projectiles.

Normal Items:


Critaloo: Increase your Critical Chance by [5%] and your Critical Power by [10%].


Critical Bestie: When you crit, spawn a construct ally. The next construct takes 1 more crit, and so on.


Entourage: Spawn 5 construct allies when you enter a room.

Chaos Items:


Evasion Surge: Increase your Speed and Primary Attack Speed over time but reduce the base values. Resets on taking damage.


Chrono-Grav Rounds: Your projectiles last much longer, but also have a delay before moving.


Telefrag: Randomly teleport around rooms, creating explosions when you appear.

Hidden Items:


Platformer: Give [30%] Attack boost, [30%] Damage Reduction, [100%] Jump Height, and a Grapple Hook (SHIFT to use). Gravity now exists for you.


- 5 new room layouts added to the Sun-Dappled Factory (Area 1).


- 2 new room layouts added to the Snowy Surface (Area 2).



Phantom:


These feisty little guys are determined to hunt you down, but find it difficult to contain their rage. Watch out for their unpredictable movement, as they’ll bounce off walls or even other enemies!

Split Phantom:


The ancient cousin of the phantoms. These intimidating foes are much larger and will spawn their brethren when killed.

Frozen Sentry:


A highly aggressive variant of the common sentry. They’ll hunt you down by burrowing into the ground, popping out at short range with a devastating split shot. Quick reactions and careful movement are required to take them down safely.

Mortar:


Watch out below! These intimidating foes appear rarely, but will predict your movement at long range with pinpoint mortar strikes. Try moving unpredictably to knock their shots off course!

Burst Mortar:


A powerful variant of the mortar, who’s devastating shots leave lingering bullets in their wake.

Gunner:


A cold and calculating killer. These enemies fire a pair of quick moving plasma bullets, able to pass through walls as they lock onto your location. Highly dangerous when approached at range or with nearby foes, but weak when up close range or alone.

Tito:

???




The game now has a global leaderboard! You can access the global leaderboard using the terminal in the starting area. Compete for the fastest times by defeating Regulus and escaping the factory!


Update 1.1 brings various UI improvements to the game, including but not limited to: item select and mod evolution equip sound effects, resized text boxes for Steam Deck, and more!


Regulus has been refitted with new and improved sprites and animations (he's no longer just a recoloring of Antares). If you can survive the journey, take a look for yourself…


Feeling Protected: Reach 15 protective notes using V-Synth.

Survivor: Survive a boss fight with 5 or less HP.

Reflected Star: Reflect a Starburst Guard's exploding projectile.

Divided Allegiance: Spawn a friendly crawler.

Hyper Drive: Move 500% faster than base speed.

Training Weights: Have an 80% movement speed reduction.

Platform Mode: Reach the credits with the platformer item in your inventory.


Spider Form Rework:
- Secondary replaced with new ability Spider Bite.

Spiderbite is a high damage single target ability that does massive damage. Shoot it through webs to increase its damage.

Tennis Form Buffs:
- Tennis secondary attack speed 1.5 -> 1.4s.
- Secondary damage scaling speed 18 -> 27.
- Secondary reflect hitbox size increased.

Tennis form felt unrewarding to use even when properly juggling. Now it has some crazy potential as well as a QOL change with secondary speed and size.

Hunter Form Buffs:
- Hunter primary damage 0.3 -> 0.4.
- Hunter primary drain 1 -> 0.6.
- Hunter secondary drain 0.5 -> 0.4.
- Hunter secondary now procs critical hit items on dash reset (Bug Fix)

Hunter form felt unusable for most of the room due to its high battery costs, along with it falling off later on for anything other than a dash. Items now properly interacting will hopefully help it out a bit more late game.

Construct Form Nerfs:
- Construct Beam damage scaling 0.6 -> 0.5
- Construct Beam damage falloff reduced.
- Construct Buddies damage scaling 0.6 -> 0.5

This is to help lag in super late game, and prevent auto room clears from being as prevalent
Might need to look into Swarm Construct interactions being too limited by the cap.

Flame Status Nerfs:
Changed formula for burn damage, will be the same in the early game and weaker in the late game.

Vessel Form Nerfs:
- Vessel Secondary Attack Speed per enemy hit 0.2 -> 0.15
- Vessel Secondary Attack Speed max 0.7 -> 0.4
- Vessel Mod now has a 0.05s cooldown

Vessel form has a mainstay niche in being able to destroy bullets, but by giving it less efficiency hopefully it opens up the door to other interesting combos.

The mod changes are to help prevent lag in super late game, and prevent auto room clears from being as prevalent.

Magnet Form Nerfs:
- Magnet Primary Bullets increased damage scalar from 0.4 -> 0.6.
- Sticky Magnet’s explosion damage 2x -> 1.5x.
- Magnet explosion now procs mods less often.
- Magnet Secondary Damage Explosion size reduced to better match the visual.
- Unstable Magnets damage massively reduced.

Unstable Magnets was our most broken mod evolution and hopefully this has addressed insane damage stacking.


Detonation Spike - Explosions deal 25%->20% more damage and are 40% bigger.
This item is just bonkers with magnet form. Bigger explosions are funny, but I think the damage could be lowered a bit.

Haste Trigger - Upon switching to a Form with a 100% battery, gain 40%->35% Primary Attack Speed over 3s. This effect is on a 5s->10s cooldown.
I think this is for sure the best on form switch item, but it also currently has the lowest cooldown.

Hoard - Gain an extra 5% Damage per 50 Bolts currently owned. Caps at 75%.

Impact Converter - Decreased how much damage it adds by 20%.

Momentum Spinner - For every 1s a projectile is out, boost its Damage by 5%->20%.
This item has zero potential to do anything with most of the forms in the game, and then even for forms like tennis where it should be great, it barely does anything. Big numbers increase.

Recoil - Gain a Damage (2->1.5) and Knockback (25%) bonus on all abilities.
This increased the base damage from 10->12 which is just a straight up 20% damage increase on everything PLUS extra knockback. Knockback is funny, but less damage

Safety Plate - When below 30% health, gain 65%->50% Damage Reduction.
Getting a second health bar at no cost that was more efficient with heal pickups was too strong.

Safety Trigger - When you switch Forms, grant a 15% health shield for 5s->4s. This has a 10s cooldown.
With the shields lasting for half of the item's cooldown, it basically made it so that you can only actually take damage 50% of the time if you are frequently swapping forms. Don’t wanna nerf too bad tho!

Battery Overclock - Above 80% battery, you deal 50% more damage and your projectiles are faster. Your batteries drain 70%->60% faster.
This item is really good now.

Wyrmweave Wiring - Gain 35%->20% Primary and Secondary Attack Speed. You move 25%->20% slower.
Numbers were just a little too big, this should even out the item.

Twisted Circuits - Gain 25% Secondary Attack Speed and your batteries deplete 20% slower. Your Secondary activates automatically.
This helps the item remain usable and less instantly run ending.

Unstable Batteries - While above 70% battery, nearby enemies are set on fire. While below 20%->15% battery, you’re set on fire. (Increase damage scaling of fire dmg source from .35->.45)
This item had the scariest downside while simultaneously having the worst upside. Making the downside less scary and making the fire do more damage should help it.


Sentry:


- Will teleport closer to the player when out of attack range
- Max HP reduced
- Attack rate reduced
This enemy could often extend the length of combat encounters by forcing the player to hunt them down after they’d cleared the rest of the room. These changes help keep them as an active element, and reduce the tedium involved in killing them.

Pile:


- Reduced max HP of spawned crawlers
This helps address situations where the player has low damage output, and finds themselves unable to keep up with killing crawlers as they’re spawned.

Rapidfire Flapper:


- Reduced number of bullets spawned
This helps increase visual clarity, and provides more options for player movement.

Burst Guard:


- Reduced number of bullets spawned
- Max HP reduced
- Slow bullet size reduced
This helps increase visual clarity, provides more options for player movement, and reduces tedium involved in killing them.

Guard:


- Max HP reduced
- Slow bullet size reduced
This helps increase visual clarity and reduces tedium involved in killing them.

Super Chariot:


- Max HP reduced
- Bullet size reduced
This helps increase visual clarity and reduces tedium involved in killing them.

Super Crawler:


- Max HP reduced
This reduces the tedium involved in killing them.

Antares/Regulus


- Max HP reduced
- Attack rate reduced
- Damage reduction during phases two and three increased
This prevents the fight from dragging for too long, and gives the player more opportunities to be active in dealing damage during the boss fight.


- General VFX improvements.
- Reduced overall file size (from 1.5GB to 250MB!)
- Miscellaneous changes to room layouts/enemy placements.
- Enemy projectiles now always render above ally projectiles.
- Added a small cooldown to hit flash when attacking enemies - your eyes should hurt less!
- Reduced Conveyor Belt speeds in all room layouts.
- Controller cursor stops anchoring to the player when entering the death screen.
- Form evolution EXP requirements reduced from 7500 -> 5000.
- Max Health Pickups changed from +10% increase to current hp to a flat 20 HP increase.
- Explosive barrels have been added to various room layouts, dealing damage to allies and enemies when ignited.
- Made Dev Cheats easier to access: keep “wei” held down while the game is paused.
- Transition to tutorial level is much smoother, especially when booting the game with no save file
- Fixed a bug that resulted in Construct Form “Attack Order” laser dealing double damage when equipped with Tennis mod.
- Fixed a bug where enemies too close to the player would not be hit by player attacks.
- Fixed miscellaneous font/spelling errors + inconsistencies.
- Fixed form menu done button not working after the mod evolution menu pops up.
- Fixed form EXP counting overkill damage on enemies.

Thank you for all the support of At Night, it has definitely encouraged me to continue making games!

Unfortunately I don't plan on finishing the entire game, however I will make an small update fixing the bugs and changing various parts of it based on feedback.

However, I will absolutely continue making games as At Night has genuinely revealed a new passion within myself.

Sincerely, The Creaky Floorboard

Remember the last time we had a Lumi Plushie update? Well, how about another one?

This update celebrates the plushie's design reveal + campaign kickoff.
Before we talk about how you can buy the plushie, let's start with the patch notes:

• Added a giant Lumi Plushie outside one of the windows in the school's chapter. This plushie will simply stand there, judging you.

It took months to develop this update. Every single hour poured into it was worth it for you, the players (btw it's getting reverted once the campaign ends).

Over here: https://www.makeship.com/products/lumi-outcore-plushie.
(FOMO incoming) This is the full campaign, so once it ends there won't be any more chances to get one.
The campaign is over, so unfortunately it's impossible to get any more Lumi plushies for now. However, there's a very good chance Lumi will return in a new edition in early 2025. Just follow me on whatever social network you like, I'll be spamming everywhere once she returns.

The initial ref was designed by AlpacaCarlesi, who also drew Lumi in Outcore's header artwork + (SPOILER)Big Lumi boss sprites


I sent these as refs to Makeship and they started working on the prototype of Lumi. After about 2-3 weeks I received photos of the first iteration:


First of all: CLOWN NOSE! I was planning to surprise everyone and asked Makeship to give Lumi a detachable clown nose. But more on that later.

I was excited to see Lumi, a character I designed, as a real life plushie. But my thoughts of the first iteration were... that it needed more work.

V1 was too off-model which made it feel like it was not really Lumi. A bunch of minor issues also made her look a bit awkward, such as:

• A somewhat long distance between her eyes
  
• Eyes looked a bit dead
  
• That velcro in her nose that made it look like she had a Hitler mustache
  
• Rabbit teeth
  
• Her bangs were too round

Luckily, Makeship lets creator send change requests. After thinking about it for a couple of days, I sent them this:


I showed the initial design to alpaca + a couple of friends, got their feedback and combined it into the V2 ref above. One of the changes I asked them to do was to change Lumi's back hairstyle, as I felt it was too hidden when viewed from the front.

I also discussed the clown nose idea and decided to drop it, since Makeship couldn't implement it without using the hitler stash velcro.

A few weeks later, I got pictures of Lumi V2:




It was already MUCH better than V1. But I felt like there was still more work to be done. The things I disliked about V2 were:

• Her front bangs curled too much. It kinda made it look like a helm
  
• I wanted the eye highlight to have that orange/pinkish outline that Alpaca used in the ref she made
  
• Her eye color was better than V1, but the dark and lighter shades were too similar
  
• In V1 I asked Makeship to remove the teeth, but looking at the teethless mouth in V2 made me feel that it looked weird.
  
• I didn't like the new shape of the back hair

Lumi looked great in Alpaca's ref without teeth, but something about it didn't translate well into plushie form. I realized the teeth in V1 were too narrow, which made it look like rabbit teeth, so I asked them to give her wider teeth.

I also didn't like the new back hair shape because it was too short, which made it look like Lumi had a completely different haircut. When i designed V2's ref I made it longer, but didn't take into account that it could be shortened so she could properly sit. Being able to sit was important as it's a signature pose for Makeship plushies.
I ended up asking Makeship to revert the back hair to the same one in V1.

These were the change requests I sent:


Again, after a couple of weeks I received V3 pics:


This iteration was good.
I still wasn't sure if it was better to have teeth or not, and thought it could still be better. I decided to not be a perfectionist and accepted that she can't look exactly like Alpaca's ref, so I approved it.

A couple days later I physically received V3's prototype via air mail. She's adorable!



I noticed a minor issue that bothered me. The shape of V3's back hair was not exactly the same as V1. It was a bit more rectangular:

It was a minor detail but it still bothered me. Lumi's hair as a prominent feature in her design and I wanted it to look like right.

The campaign's start date was fast approaching and I didn't know if Makeship would be willing to make changes. Luckily, they agreed to change her hair, so you're all getting V4, the better version of Lumi's plushie. Kinda funny but I'll be the only person in the world to hold a Lumi plushie with a slightly incorrect design.

Anyway we've talked enough about Lumi. Let's take a look at Jiji doing a poor job drinking water.

Fix --> Game gets stuck, if Qb doesn't throw the football
Fix --> Certain cases players path request was running infinitely
Fix --> AI HC toggle became not interactable, if it was saved unchecked
Update --> Defensive players in zone cover -path attack target, -sit attack closest

• It's been tested once again. The navigation volumes were not corresponding with the enemy AI for whatever reason.
  
• This has been addressed (permanently it looks like!)

Thanks for your patience!

Hello Snow Plowers!❄️❄️❄️
Thank you very much for your interest and for so many downloads of the first patch!

You really motivated me to work! ːsteamhappyː
In order not to disappoint you, I have prepareda small fixin which you can finally mute those unloved vehicle sounds! I promise that in the full game they will be refined to 1000%, but for now... just turn it down :) 🔕

I also moved it to the main menu and separated the ability to disable popups from the game mode. Now, no matter what form of game you choose, whether you want extreme hard work, 💪🏻💪🏻💪🏻 or just for fun 🥳🥳🥳 you can do it regardless during the game turn popups on and off! I know some people will like it... ːsteamhappyː

I also developed a new method of exiting vehicles, everything should now work as it should.
Remember that if you can't get out of the vehicle or get lost somewhere, you can always call roadside assistance or look at the map [key "J"]. Both of these options will take you to the nearest road!

Once again, thank you very much for your comments, suggestions and help! ❄️❄️❄️
Together we will make a really GREAT game! 💪🏻

Arthur
Snow Plowing Simulator Lead Programmer