We're back with some amazing EpicDesk creator collabs for giant mousepads!














To order check out their website as each of these deskpad campaigns have different end dates and shipping dates! They are ALL limited editions. Once they end they are gone forever!




Coming Late July FancyOrb is bringing you Rust Global Warfare 2!

You won't want to miss this! There will be Twitch drops and all your favorite creators involved.



If you're a creator and you want to be involved with this event join the FancyOrb Discord for updates and how to sign up!




Charitable Rust isn't until October, however, if you are a skin artist and would like to be involved with designing charity items for the Item store or Twitch Drops - pay attention over the next few weeks!



Skin contest is slated to take place for the entire month of July!

1. Use #CR2024 as official contest tag in Steam workshop.
   
2. No re-uploading old or previously submitted skins.
   
3. Do not steal or use any copyrighted or otherwise trademarked content.
   
4. Must be 100% original work (can work with others if all are listed on workshop page).
   
5. Must follow all basic workshop submission rules and standards.
   
6. If using the charity’s logo, it cannot be used on any weapon skins. Only Charitable Rust logo may be used on weapon skins.
   
7. Submissions must be high quality and Hi-Res, normals properly done/baked.
   
8. Cannot contain offensive or sexual content.
   
9. Limit of 5 skin submissions per creator.
   
10. Skins must be submitted by midnight (23:59) PST July 31, 2024.

More info, rules, regulations, and branding assets can be found here: https://www.charitablerust.com/skins




Hedge, Monstera, daVinci, and a few others from the Art community made this googley-eyed glory shrine of our savior Helkus Maximus.





It's probably best if we don't ask too many questions.




I'm just going to leave this here...






If you made something cool or saw something cool, reach out! Tag me on X or u/ErrnieGerrn Reddit.

Cover image by Furthi

[h5]Hello Runners!

It’s been some time since our last update and a lot has happened. Let's take a moment to review the news.

Let’s go![/h5]



[h5]Based on our latest estimations, we adjusted some of our date ranges. The most relevant points are:

• New playtests happening around September.
  
• The demo releasing between October and November.
  
• The Early Access launch happening in Q1 2025, after February’s Steam Next Fest.

1️⃣ Playtest Round: UI Redesign (Sep)*
2️⃣ Playtest Round: Map Exploration (Sep)*
3️⃣ Demo Launch (Oct-Nov)
4️⃣ Steam Next Fest (Feb 2025)
5️⃣ Early Access Release (Feb-Mar 2025)
6️⃣ 2nd Character Release: The Maker (TBD)[/h5]

Events 1 & 2 may occur simultaneously or separately; this is yet to be determined.



[h5]This year’s Latin American Games Showcase was part of the Summer Game Fest’s official schedule. It was the biggest edition to date, co-broadcasted, and covered by all the main gaming media outlets.

We premiered our latest trailer during the show with a 2-minute deep-dive segment. This brought the game a ton of attention, and we saw a fantastic boost in our wishlist count, which injected us with renewed energy!

You can see the segment below 👇[/h5]





[h5]As part of our work for the new trailer, we also decided to update our main game art. We believe the new image aligns better with how the game will look in its new iteration once we release the UI redesign update. Considering the full game will have 5 distinct characters, we decided to create a yet-undefined character for the main art instead of tying it to Ursa, our first character.

Below you can see part of the process of creating the new capsule, done by our extremely talented artist Joi.[/h5]







[h5]We are very proud to show you the new designs for the Combat and Decks screens! Let’s compare them and go over some details about the team's decisions.[/h5]




*The new image is missing the background + enemy, don’t worry, they will be there.

[h5]
We dropped the “helmet” effect. It wasn’t adding that much to the immersion we were looking for and was generating visual artifacts, motion-illness, readability, and resolution issues. We decided to re-focus on our early ideas of retro-futuristic interfaces, brightness saturation, and grain filters.


We decided to go a lot more minimalistic regarding health and VIM bars. We also ditched the status effects icons in exchange for abbreviated and color-coded words to add to the “terminal/console” style.




We noticed that we were not giving enough spotlight to one of our most unique mechanics, the VIM and Commands system. By making it look so similar to the Integrity bar and putting the commands as small icons, they usually got overlooked.

Now, the VIM is a central piece of the UI (quite literally!), and the Commands now have a unique design with different states and animations depending on the context.




From dragging and dropping issues to the fact that it didn’t quite feel “hackery” enough, we decided to change the card fan to a straight display of the Runner’s hand of cards. We believe the new look aligns better with the overall linework of the UI and the responsiveness has been improved considerably.




We received a lot of feedback asking for a way to keep track of what happened during the enemy’s turn, a “Battle Log” of sorts. Well, we had that in the plans for quite some time, and now we believe we nailed the way to make it work.

We created a “Terminal” that will not only let you know what happened and show a historical log of actions but also contextual information about many other things happening during combat. It also allows us to trigger immersive and flavorful text fragments to add to the overall experience.

You will be able to trigger actions and discover Easter eggs and secrets directly by prompting the terminal. On top of all that, it also looks sleek and retro AF!




We made changes to how we show the enemy’s intention during your turn. Now, you’ll see a step-by-step breakdown of what the enemy will do during its turn.[/h5]








[h5]
The console is your best friend in The Grid, and as such, it will try to show you as much useful information as it can. Keeping that in mind, we added a new widget to the deck view that lets you quickly check the distribution of card types within the deck. This is essential when planning the turn sequencing and trying to foresee upcoming draws.



It also shows information about keywords on the currently selected/hovered card.




We made big improvements to how selecting and highlighting cards in the different deck views work. We also reworked how tooltips are shown on screens where the side widget is not used.

[/h5]



The redesign also covers the map screens, which we will be revealing soon in a separate post. What we can spoil for now is that it will not be a hexagonal grid!

Mechanically it will work as described in our previous article.



[h5]As a studio, we are proud to implement user research and playtest methodologies to support decisions that can make our games their best possible versions.

Many of the decisions detailed above come from watching and surveying players, and we want to thank all of you who participated from the bottom of our hearts.

Knowing that there are people out there playing and devoting time to expressing their opinions about our game is a feeling that we can’t even describe, and it means the world to us!

During these tests, we received more than 300 survey replies from over 3000 unique players; we interviewed and reviewed recorded playthroughs of dozens of people, and more than 100 new members joined our Discord to chat with us live and share their thoughts.

It’s our commitment to keep working this way and to make you all part of this journey of creating the best game possible.

All these new things we mentioned in this update will be up for you all to test soon ;)[/h5]



[h5]In case you don’t know, every week, we release a new piece of lore about the universe where the game takes place.

It’s one of the many ways in which we show the passion we’re putting into this project and how we envision something much bigger than just a game.

We already have 20 entries you can read on our website, split between The Runners, The Corporations, and Into The Grid’s Short Stories.

Go give them a look; we think you will love them![/h5]



[h5]This covers pretty much everything that’s going on (at least what we can show!) behind the scenes.

As always, don’t forget to join our Discord to chat live with the team and other fellow Runners!



See you in The Grid!

[/h5]

Fixed the issue with the initial game load

Updated the Jet Ski driving, now it will not kick you out without any reason and driving is much better.

Now you can also drive a rescue car. In the next update I will upload the possibility to have sex in the car with the multiplayer partner.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3274481114

New:

• World 9 Area 1 to 3 (splitting this in 3 updates, one for each feature evolution). There isn't any Achievement or Pet but in 9-3 there is a new bonus on Equipment.
  
• Multiplayer Test will be ran to test again the server charge and Season reward, everyone get 5.000 Soul when it is over to test that it is working properly.

Greeting Dear Farmers,

Feel free to join the Multiplayer test for free reward. It also allow us to see if everything work properly and the server is strong enough now. The test start on 2nd July at 4PM UTC.

Hello, unfortunately I've been sick the past two weeks so the update is being delayed to the 27th.
Sorry for the delay. ːsteamsadː

Expect two new bosses for the castle floor, so you don't just fight the Duke of Hate!
Also quite a few new relics were added in the little time I wasn't sick.
There'll be lots more when the update comes! I hope you look forward to it ːsteamhappyː

Update Log
https://www.hardworkerstudio.com/santhaiUpdate

Strategy games always brings back childhood memories. Do you remember your first encounter with strategy games? Share your experience below for a chance to win a  game key of Pennon and Battle!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2915660/_/

Event Rewards:
Pennon and Battle Steam game key, a total of 8 copies (more keys if participation is high).

Event Rules:
Simply share your first experience with strategy games (over 40 words) below for a chance to win a game key!

Event Duration: Pacific Time June 23, 2024, to July 21, 2024.
Reward Announcement Time: Pacific Time July 22, 2024, to July 23, 2024.
Reward Claim Time: Pacific Time July 22, 2024, to August 6, 2024.

Notes:
1. Rewards will be drawn randomly among valid participants, and the winner list will be announced uniformly. The official account will contact winners via private message/reply.
2. We will adjust the number of prizes based on actual participation.
3. Discussions are allowed in the sharing post, but content must be legal, compliant, and not violate public order or infringe on others' rights.
4. You can participate in our sharing activity on multiple platforms, but the same content will only have one chance to win. Duplicate content on other platforms will not win again.
5. Please pay attention to your platform notifications during the reward claim period. If a winner does not provide information within the claim period and fails to claim the reward, it will be considered a waiver, and the prize will not be reissued.
6. The final interpretation right of this event belongs to the Pennon and Battle official.

Congratulations! There are our winners!

• zakblood
  
• kz231
  
• LIGHTING NIGHT
  
• 空
  
• dogfacedboy
  
• 野比大雄
  
• JNOUTI
  
• cicy

How to claim: We will reply to the winner in the Steam. The winners need to provide their email to us between July 22 to August 6, 2024,  Pacific Time, and we will send the activation key of "Pennon and Battle" via email.

Learn more:
Pennon and Battle official website：https://pb.luckycalf.com/
Facebook：https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61559585273902

X：https://twitter.com/Pennon_Battle

Discord：https://discord.gg/mBCbquM34D

Youtube：https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfufH0dBn6P7Vj1p86QdTSQ

A small patch to get momentum going again after a long break:

Added new trials:

Limited Spellbook - similar to RW1
Improviser - similar to RW1
Pyromancer - only fire spells
Electromancer - only lightning spells
Necromancer - only dark spells
Phytomancer - only nature spells
Manamancer - only arcane spells
Holymancer - only holy spells
Ferromancer - only metallic spells
Hemomancer - only blood spells
Menagerist - every level is an Exotic Pet level
Oner - max spellbook size of 1 but that 1 spell is free
Mutant Masher - extra variants in each level
Giant Slayer - extra 3x3s in all levels past the 4th
Ogre Mage - cant buy skills and all levels are Ruby Heart levels.

Added random run mode (generates a random trial)

• Fixed Customers ordering 5 items
  
• Fixed the Most Popular Item being empty on the Finance panel
  
• Fixed the manager assign panel showing all the time