The cave biome is here!! You may have already spotted the exit from the Buggburg Meadows. The entrance can be found...wait, no spoilers! But maybe check somewhere hot and dusty. ;)

Along with the cave, you'll find three new bugs in your codex. AND you can upgrade your Insectarium two more times!! There's lots of new space for displaying your bugs!

Also to note, we are in the process of optimizing things for our Nintendo Switch port, and there's still work to be done. You might notice some pauses when moving between scenes. We will send out another patch as soon as we smooth that out. :)

Enjoy the new content, and thank you so much for playing!

-Chera

Hello, Captains of Fortune!

I'm near the end of development on Career Mode, but it will still take several days to be released.
Obviously, it will come out not without bugs and imbalances; in fact, it is one of the reasons why I preferred to release MOTK in Early Access. However, I am sure that with your help, I can optimize everything as best as possible!

To accommodate those who have not yet purchased MOTK, I would like to say that once the update containing the Career mode is released, the game will increase its value, and its cost will reach 9.99 dollars/euros.
After that, once out of Early Access, MOTK will take its definitive value, which should be at least 12.99 dollars/euros.

Career mode should give much more longevity to the title, in addition to the fact that the most potent weapons in the game will only be usable there, not in Quick Runs.

As you can see, those who chose to trust me by purchasing the game in its initial state received in exchange the purchase of the game at half the final price.
Many games now have their price at EA almost identical to the full release, but I don't find it fair.

If you have any ideas that you would like to see in the game, please write to me, and I will try to include them, commitments permitting.

Hoping to have done what you enjoyed, we will see each other again when the EA 4.0 update is released.


FACE THE HORDE, GRAB THE LOOT, CROSS THE PORTAL.

Hello Awesome People!

The free Steamboat Willie Mickey avatar is here!

Do a silly dance, send a positive message, or invite him to a thoughtful multiplayer avatar roundtable on your vTuber blog hosted with Animaze Rooms so you can talk about the latest Disney entertainment releases.

Whether driven by an actor or an AI brain, by simple webcam face tracking or full body motion capture VMC input, he'll be a great addition, just make sure that, for his visual comfort, you seat him on a cartoon black and white chair.

Look him up by name in the avatar browser (Animaze 2023 DLC, or Animaze live service, Windows PC).
For extra convenience, he also comes with a style-appropriate background in the backgrounds browser.





Before you rush to our Discord to ask for a color version of him with dynamic lighting, please keep in mind that he is meant to stay black and white, to be in line with the Steamboat Willie aesthetic.

This avatar is made available for free, and published from the U.S. where Steamboat Willie Mickey is in the public domain. However, depending on where you are in the world and which local copyright laws apply to you, you might want to do further homework on any legal usage limits.

Cheers, and happy steaming!
The Holotech Team.

Adjustment of voice balance at sanity 0
Minor bug fixes
Fixed some localization issues.

This is an implementation to move to in-app purchases.
As of March 1st, it will be basically free, and you will be able to remove the watermark with an in-app purchase.

Apparently it would seem that running the animated attacking title while doing the initialising in the background may help towards giving an amateur feel to the game. Running it like that did give some stuttering to the animation under certain circumstances, running it in serial would have alleviated it to some extent.
It was there for 2 reasons:
- to mask the background setup
- to emphasise the idea of the game bombarding you with words, e.g. that you were being "attacked" by them.
On the second point, nobody seems to have associated the "attack" part of the name in the way I'd meant for it to be taken.
Therefore, as it has not appeared to address either of the reasons that it existed, I have decided to remove the titles from the game. On starting the game it will now go straight to the help (if still enabled in the settings) or the main menu.

Fixed an issue where an error would occur if you did not obtain mines early in normal mode.

I will soon fix and update any issues that cause the game to freeze on certain devices.

I apologize for any inconvenience.

February saw the final releases of the 1.11 beta series, and the start of internal experimentation and development for 1.12. I originally intended for 1.11 to also feature pax generation changes, but the scope of the changes became too big to just be a "plus one more thing" feature during a beta period, so it has now been reassigned as the major feature of 1.12.

Work on the new pax generation system has begun, with many experiments done in February, to put some ideas to the test and see which ones are practical and which ones are not. The guiding principle is to try to model natural demand for pax trips, and then adapt the designs to the reality of a real time game. Solutions have been found for some the challenges of adapting this idea to the game, but a lot of work still remains to be done.

https://carloscarrasco.com/nimby-rails-february-2024/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2943460/Master_of_Pieces__Jigsaw_Puzzle_DLC__Whispers_of_Nature/

Ahoy mateys!

The last month or so has been a whirlwind of activity, with the sails raised full so we could hit our latest target deadlines. Overall, things are looking great and we’re getting so much closer to truly opening up the ship for a full inspection. You can read more about those tentative plans in the mini news post from earlier this month.

Now, that brings us to the first item from that list, so without further ado here is my interview with Jen Vaughn, Captain and senior game designer on Orphan Age:

For those who may not know you, when thinking of the narrative/gameplay plans for the project, what was it that drew you to wanting to work on Orphan Age?

Honestly, I saw it as a challenge. A simulation game where the player also cares about the characters, aside from popular SIMs games where you create a vanity character that is you. RPGs and visual novel games, those narratives are crafted to make you fall in love with (or hate!) certain characters and I saw this genre as a new challenge for me.

Plus, so much media about dystopian times follows the major political or military or future important characters; focusing on the ‘every person’ affected by a crumbling society and how they live their life is much more interesting. If perhaps a bit too germane, as we watch in real time many of the world’s leaders and billionaires buy remote homes in climate crisis-’resistant’ locations.



While not uncommon in most genres of games, kids aren’t seen as often as the main characters in a survival sim game. What advantages or disadvantages do you feel there are in utilizing them as both the heroes and narrative focus in our story?

In Orphan Age, the kids grew up without a lot of resources and the idea of ‘’fun’’ is new to them. Narratively and in game play they must relearn how to be kids, in addition to keeping up with their chores that keep them alive. This is one of the strongest points of the game, to help the kids reclaim a moment of pure, unabashed joy.

Kids are fantastic as heroes because their goals and wishes are not always logical and can change at the drop of a hat. They are also challenging - I would never say it’s a disadvantage! - because they might not have the same skill levels as an adult but we fudge it a bit with it being the future and these kids grew up hard. Also, if there are no adults in the game to compare skill sets to, who is to say we are wrong?

Forged by the fire, sharpened by society - we were all kids once and the melancholy flavor of the game is a real connection point for those of us, myself included, who experienced fractured or lost childhoods.

What can you tell everyone about our band of intrepid orphans? You know, without major spoilers…

These kids are cute as shit. That’s all I can say.

Heh, but really the original character designs Laura Bisson made helped maintain the cuteness factor even through art direction changes. Maureen was the only character in the game when I first joined the team in 2022 so it was a joy to collaborate with Laura on the rest of the characters (hopefully they will all be in the game eventually).

The kids are spunky, full of heart but not untouched by trauma. Each orphan will have their personal quest where the player can explore more of the world’s lore and the character’s personality all with a uniquely terrifying backdrop. The player can choose to help all the kids fulfill their (somewhat reasonable) dreams, help just one or two, or plow forward with only the group quest.



In the world of Orphan Age, what trials do these kids have to go through?

These kids are going through all of the trials essentially. From struggling to find food and water, to maintaining their mental health. As any simulation player knows, the basics of living are how you keep pushing the game forward but it’s using characters’ special traits that can unfold more narrative highs and lows.

Since the kids are technically wanted for [REDACTED AT THIS TIME], they can only go out at night which presents its own type of trial. As animals, we’re all ‘scared of the dark’ in some aspect because we believe we’re masters of our own stories, the pilots of these bone and flesh mechs called bodies. So we’re working to capture some of that fear when the kids go out to explore by night.

What do you hope players get out of taking on the roles of our Orphans?

First and foremost, I hope they have a damn good time. But almost tied with that, I want to instill hope and the need to be a part of the change in the real world in the players.

Some people have given into the idea of a world collapse, that it’s easier to see themselves living out a Mad Max-style future than be a part of the change. It’s a way to absolve their own guilt and inaction. And please don’t think me ill-informed, of course, I know most of the pollution is made by major corporations. But there is collective action and there is individual action that can help.

In parts of the Global South and many countries with indigenous populations, they’re already making small gains against climate change by adapting and also having lifestyles less intertwined with single-use plastics and food waste. So this optimism and flexibility can be applied to supposed first-world nations and their economies of over-abundance.

Not to even mention the political leaders who create laws while not keeping in touch with what the average person goes through. Rent is too high, food costs too much - I’m not saying playing Orphan Age will create a wave of people crying “Eat the Rich’’ but it is definitely sewn into the fabric of the game.

There’s also the hope - this may sound silly but it’s a big goal - that by playing Orphan Age will help spark compassion in the players they might not have had before. And not the kind of compassion that ends at the main menu when they exit the game. Unfortunately, we’re living in a world with multiple wars and ongoing exterminations of people, the Congo, Ukraine, Palestine/Gaza to name a few. While a war is not the background of the game, we cannot create and develop within a void, so we’re obviously working on a plan for some charity streams and some other real-world work.

No game made with children as the heroes in dark times will be without flaws, it’s impossible to get something with such a delicate matter 100% right but we hope we’re able to inspire courage in those who felt nothing before. For players to enjoy the story of Orphan Age but prevent it from happening for future generations.

And that covers this month’s updates. No “Around the Studio” this time, as we’ve spent most of February fairly head down on hitting our latest milestone goal. In fact, as I finish writing this the rest of the team is deep into our build week as we prepare to send our latest milestone build onto our publisher.

With that, I bid you all adieu until next month! We’ll be back with another interview, and if my schedule allows for it, a second news post sharing a high-level look at our game systems for Orphan Age—no promises on both, but I really want to get both out in March. If there’s any topics you’d like to see discussed in a future news post, please let me know in the comments or join our Discord and chat with us about it there!