Wow, it’s been a year. Just last July, our team huddled together to see community posts, read reviews, and watch creator videos about the launch of OXENFREE II: Lost Signals. It was the most extraordinary launch in our studio’s history. We’re so grateful for the support of players around the globe for returning to the coast of Camena.

To say thank you, we’re celebrating all month long because it’s way more fun to celebrate your game’s birth month than just a single day, right?


Our minds were blown last month when our sound designer, Chris Purse, very casually shared a 3D environment he’d recreated from the game. Chris clearly is a multi-talented artist that we’re lucky to have on our team. So, our community team instantly knew we had to squad up with Chris to share his work for OXENFREE II’s anniversary. You can download 4K wallpapers of Chris’s interpretation of Harden Tower and see it come to life in our “Missed Connections” story on our studio social media channels.


To celebrate our game’s anniversary, we’re digging deep into the archive of stories that didn’t quite make it into OXENFREE II and featuring a special one on our social channels. Join us over the next few days on Instagram and Twitter to meet Tanner and Danny. Together, the OXENFREE community will forever decide their fate, voting for how their story will come to an end. Will Riley and Jacob fix their missed connection? It’s up to you.


We teamed up with iam8bit to release OXENFREE II’s soundtrack on vinyl (by the way, it’s not too late to get your copy here) and now we’re hosting an AMA with our composer, scntfc, in r/OXENFREE on Reddit. Join us on July 24th, 2024 from 9 AM PST to 11:30 PST where he’ll answer questions about making the record, crafting OXENFREE I & II’s soundtrack, and much more.


Back in 2016, our team was honored to take home the IGF award for Excellence in Visual Art with OXENFREE. This year, we’re including our entire game collection for a 60% discount during IGF celebration days. Check out all of the games for sale on Steam and pick up the Night School Complete Collection right here.


Because of your passion for both OXENFREE we were able to make OXENFREE II. Seeing the community’s lasting enthusiasm for Night School’s games is what fuels us as we work on the next thing at our studio. We can’t wait to share it with you. See you around at Seafood Sammy’s… if you can look past the health code violations. If not, we’ll catch you on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, or maybe even YouTube! 

Hello there!

I'm excited to announce that The Curse of Grimsey Island has several updates and a completely free additional case!


The Lost District, Louisiana

June 6, 2066, a group of notable individuals have disappeared. Among them, Beth Bell, a former physicist and whistleblower. The only witness, Rhett "Wolf" Allen, an Army veteran, was found in a state of distress. Take to the swamps of Bayou Sauvage and uncover what happened.





Piece together the events of Beth's disappearance on a Timeline. You'll uncover both Beth's and Rhett's actions.



To access this case in the full game, select it on the Notebook in the Main Menu screen. Note that this new case has links to the main case and reinforces the main plot.


In addition to the new case, the original game has some updates as well:

• The Time of Day functionality happens automatically when interacting with Biotraces and Audio Fragments. You'll no longer be able to change the time as it could sometimes make things confusing.
  
• The Time of Day button can now be remapped.
  
• All underwater creatures no longer blink out. They can be seen for longer periods now.
  
• Several pictures and phone data were updated to fully link Missing in Bayou Sauvage and The Curse of Grimsey Island.
  
• Fixed some textures so things look better.
  
• Added more Hints in some places.
  
• Fixed Transporting to retain LAWD's original rotation.
  
• Added more achievements.
  
• Fixed an issue with the post processing kicking in too late when starting the game.
  
• Fixed an issue where the internal Nanodeck office was sometimes not visible.
  
• Updated the splash screen to show both the underwater and swamp locations.
  
• Updated Smartphone Drawing to open up in a proper pop-up.
  
• Fixed Smartphone Photos not rendering over the Dossier information.

Hope you enjoy and thanks for playing and for the support!

Larry

We've been working on more updates and fixes based on the feedback we gathered. This update should address another batch of crashes that were frequently happening during blueprint placement and assigning agent orders.

• Fixed issue where dynamic GOAP actions would lead to a crash if the previous target entity was destroyed
  
• Fixed issue where invalid terrain resources during mining would lead to a crash (Thanks AbductedbyPixel, Reikni, Euklid!)
  
• Fixed agents consuming and deconsuming an incorrect interaction index when planning mining on terrain with multiple mining interactions
  
• Added priority modifier for agent's which already have a plan they are working on to avoid them constantly leaving their jobs (EX: Mining, Felling, Gathering)
  
• Fixed trees that had their chop order cleared still having the purple outline
  
• Disabled the legacy landing pad in the def files
  
• Fixed Workstation Detail View not displaying current agent
  
• Fixed agents not leaving the work animation state after crafting
  
• Fixed issue where agent carried item ids were not being properly reset when dropping their stacks
  
  
• Fixed race conditions in HPA Build System (Caused most building placement crashes)
  
• Disabled the raycast target on a number of worldspace UI elements
  
  
• Patched turrets and units getting stuck attacked incapacitated units. Will be fully fixed after healing implementation (Thanks Fort_Alpha, AbductedbyPixel and Anonymous!)
  
• Added functionality to place non-pioneer enemies into the world as enemies instead of agents (Thanks JudeACE!)
  
• Added placeholder SFX to small and large turret

• Conveyors crash when dragging across an existing chain and forming a T-Junction in sandbox mode (the default mode in the playtest)
  
• Conveyor blueprints potentially crash when placing another conveyor that updates it during its construction phase
  
• The player root blueprint can get stuck and no amount of messing around will unstick it
  
• Agents don't always consume an interaction even if one is available
  
• Various non-1080p scaling issues

Again, thanks a bunch to everyone playing and giving feedback. It's been extremely valuable to us and helped us to focus our attention directly on where it needed the most love!

Enjoy the weekend everyone and we will see you all soon with more updates!

PS: If you haven't yet, you can still join the playtest by joining our Discord server and filling out a form in the pinned message in our #playtest channel!

Enjoy this labor of love from two developers for completely free! Take your time climbing the mountain alone or with friends! Or try your hand at speed running to the top! More updates are coming soon. Don't forget to join our Discord!

Hey there,

We’re excited to share our plans for Steam Deck support with you!

The game runs seamlessly on Linux and SteamOS, but we’re still working on full controller support. While you can currently play using the touchpad, we understand it’s not the most convenient option, though it does work perfectly fine.

Achieving full controller support is a complex task, but we’re committed to having it ready by the full release.

If you encounter any issues, please don’t hesitate to submit a report.

Thank you!

Hello everyone!

I hope you’re all doing well. This month has been packed with updates and improvements to Zefyr, and I’m excited to share them with you. Here’s what I’ve been working on:



Now there are Steam Achievements for the prologue, the demo, and the full game. I’ve built and deployed the prologue version on Steam, and updated the demo with the latest fixes. I’ve also written a Steam post stating the Deck Compatibility.


Check it out here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2320250/Zefyr_Prologue/

In case you don’t know, the prologue is a free version of a game. In my case, it’s the exact same thing as the demo but it reaches a different audience on Steam. If you want to help me, the best way is to play the (free) prologue on the release day and leave a review! This helps a lot for the visibility of my game.



I’ve mainly polished the 3rd chapter:

• Villa Level: I’ve added details to the kitchen, bathroom, and more cushions and furniture. There’s also a cute cat roaming around now!
  
• Green Island: added towers, rocks, stone walls, and hidden rewards.
  
• Mines: Designed a specific font for text and used it on screens and panels. I’ve also added buckets, picks, and wires to enrich the environment.
  
• Robot Factory: Enhanced with stencils, screens, wires, and improved ambiance to give it a more industrial feel.
  
• Aeolia Island: more flowers to make the world vibrant and colorful, better stone placement, more vegetation.

A few screens:







To balance gameplay, eating 3 chocolates now grants 1 additional heart. This allows to place more rewards in levels without overpowering the player. Plus it gives a good feeling of progression.



I’ve been wanting to redesign the link UI for a while now, (some people have been asking for it). So here it is:

• UI Overhaul: There’s now a new, more intuitive tab-based navigation.
  
• Status: Added a new status page that shows the game main items to unlock.
  
• Help: Improved the help section for better player guidance.
  
• Animals: Added detailed descriptions for all animals in the game.
  
• Maps: I’ve also updated the rendering of maps, with shaders and outlines to ensure visual consistency and readability. It took quite some time to fix all the rendering bugs due to projection maths for the clip planes.
  
• Avatars: The flute avatar has been tweaked to distinguish it from the bo staff, and avatars for certain bosses have been updated.

Here’s how it look like:




I’ve developed a new mesh generator tool to speed up the creation of vegetation. This tool allows me to generate detailed and varied plant life much faster, enhancing the level design processing significantly (from 20 mn to 10 s on some levels). Plus it’s lighter on memory so it doesn’t crash anymore on super dense levels. What a breeze!



Lots of bug fixes, among which:

• Resolved issues with instantiating two map cameras
  
• Fixed lots of glitched click and select functions
  
• Optimized the UI for better performance and resolved button overlap issues
  
• Tested the UI from 5:4 screen ratio to 21:9 to ensure compatibility across different screen sizes
  
• Level Design: made numerous small fixes to improve overall level design

That’s all for this month! Thank you for your continued support and patience. Stay tuned for more updates, and take care!

Peace!

We have decided to write this article to clarify any doubts that have arisen regarding the development of Knight of Exile. First and foremost, we want to assure you that the game is STILL in active development and has NOT been canceled at all.

Why the delay? Well, it turns out we had to change the game engine from Unity to Godot. Yes, we know it was a drastic decision, but necessary to enhance the overall gaming experience. This change required us to rebuild the entire game from scratch. And although it has taken us time, we must say that it has truly been worth it.

The exciting news is that with this reconstruction, we have far surpassed the version we had in Unity. We have taken this opportunity to polish and improve the game systems, enhance the animations, and add more content to the game.

We understand that this entire process may have raised questions and concerns, but we want you to know that we are fully committed to Knight of Exile and are working hard to bring you the best possible experience.

Thank you all for your patience and continuous support! We will keep you informed about any important news.


To know more about the development of the game you can follow us on:

Twitter / X
Instagram
Threads
GameJolt

UI Update
I've completely switched the current server-side rendered UI to client-side rendered. This change will reduce server load, result in smaller response sizes, and make the UI feel much snappier! This was a very large project, and I appreciate any bug reports or feedback on missing accessibility options you might find.

Auction House
The auction house now supports buy and sell orders. Players can create sell orders to list items for sale, and buyers can create buy orders to purchase items. If a buy order matches a sell order of equal or greater value, the auction house will automatically complete the transaction, sending Gacha Coins to the seller and the items to the buyer. A fee will be applied for selling items on the auction house.

New Equipment Forge System

• Mines will now drop various types of embers, replacing the blacksmith that was available every 10 levels. Take them to the blacksmith in town to forge your equipment.
  
• Players can choose which embers to forge onto their equipment and can extract them to experiment with different combinations.
  
• The cost of forging embers will increase with each forge of the same type, using Gacha Coins.
  
• Higher rarity embers will have a higher forging cost.
  
• When extracting an ember, players will receive both the ember and a 99.9% refund of the Gacha Coins spent on forging.
  
• Refinement will now increase the attributes of strength, intelligence, speed, and vitality by 2% per refinement level. For example, equipment refined to +100 will triple the attributes from embers and forge bonuses.
  
• You can now apply multiple Orbs of Tempering and Whetstones at the blacksmith in town.

Auto Battle Mode
This highly requested feature has been added to the browser version of Gacha Pets. While not everyone favors auto battles, I believe it's a necessary addition given that other similar games offer this mode. I'm currently investing how I might add an auto battle mode to Alexa.

Alexa Commands Update
Almost all of the commands on Alexa have been reworked. All of the commands that you've been using should still work, but they should hopefully work better now. If I missed any commands that you've previously used, please let us know!

Misc. Changes

• Purchasing gacha eggs and ancient amber on Alexa will now grant Supporter Tokens. You can use these tokens to visit the Supporter Shop and see what's available to supporters.
  
• Daycare battles are now once a minute rather than 10 battles every 10 minutes.
  
• The activity log now allows you to type commands into it. The commands that you can type are the same as what you can say to Alexa. While working on the UI update, a lot of the UI was completely broken and I made a chat interface to navigate the game. I ended up really liking it and made it a part of the game!
  
• Skill mastery has been nerfed. It has gone from 10 times damage at level 10 to 2 times damage at level 10. We're hoping that this change and some of the new embers coming with Update 8 will allow people to stack defenses and be able to take a few hits...

Update 8 is Coming Soon!
Update 8 will introduce two new locations in town: the Tavern and the University. The Tavern will serve as a quest hub, featuring 200 quests at launch, with more to be added in future updates. The University will offer courses that trainers can take to gain various bonuses, such as increased equipment refining chances, increased Gacha Coins, increased crop yields, and more!

I hope these changes enhance your gameplay experience and allow for more flexibility and enjoyment in forging and equipment management. Thank you for your continued support and feedback! If you're wanting to receive game updates via email, make sure to sign up to our newsletter. I'll be sending out a gift with the Update 8 newsletter! Also, please be sure to check out our new Terms of Use page!

Thanks for playing Gacha Pets!
- Matt

Knock, knock, travelers!

Another week has passed by virtually unnoticed, and here we are with the latest development news. Meanwhile, there are 4 weeks left until the release. Let’s start!

There's nothing better than a convenient interface, so we strive to make ours just that. To make its font and general appearance more pleasant, there will be a new card layout in the glossary. It will depend on your screen resolution and adjust accordingly. We believe this new arrangement will be much more convenient.



While we're in Mortis' library, it's worth mentioning another small change in the book of the heroes, specifically in the events section. Events encountered by the heroes along the way will now be displayed in a logical order according to biomes, starting from the Frontier and ending with the Northern Gate. Previously, they could appear in a random order, which wasn't very nice. Perfectionists will definitely understand us :)



Do you hear that buzz? It seems there's a beehive nearby. Will you risk it and take a chance to get some delicious, healthy honey, or would you rather not risk the righteous wrath of its creators?



Be extremely careful, the bees can be very ruthless in their attempts to defend their home!



The Northern Gate has been severely affected by demonic influence. Fleeing from evil, many people left their homes without looking back and abandoned these places. The heroes may encounter many empty houses along the way.



If you stop by one of the abandoned taverns, you can either find something interesting or leave empty-handed. Our animators have added more character to this event and made it move.



Philly and Killy are two huge and formidable dwarves who keep half of the Frontier in fear. But, despite their brutal appearance, each of them is capable of mourning a brother who has fallen in battle. Now we can finally hear how they lament this loss (in their characteristic terse and stern dwarven manner, of course). Is that sad? Absolutely. However, this is life—it's either you or them.



During the balance adjustment process, we had to change quite a few things. But speaking of specifics, the Trap card, known to you as a Skill, has now moved to Attacks and has been slightly transformed in appearance.



Greetings! This is Andrew aka Innrey, the founder of RedBoon. The closer we get to D-Day, the more I think about our project as a whole. Today, I want to talk about what we consider to be the heart and soul of KOTCL—our game philosophy. When we first started creating the game, it was important for us not to just create entertainment, but to try to give players an experience that would truly influence and inspire them.

First and foremost, KOTCL is a story. A very long story, as you may have noticed, that explores important themes, which are in my opinion: friendship, betrayal, hope, sacrifice, and morality. I believe that games, like any form of creativity, can be not only a means of escape from reality, but also a powerful tool for conveying both emotions and important ideas. The characters, storylines, dialogues, interactions, and decisions in our game were all created with the aim of evoking real feelings, experiences, and reflections in you.

Secondly, our philosophy is to create a unique and engaging game-play experience. We tried to incorporate familiar mechanics and make them not only interesting, but somewhat unusual as well, all while maintaining the game's accessibility for everyone. It’s extremely important to make you want to explore the game’s world, delve into its secrets, solve its mysteries, and overcome various challenges. This was a big experiment, one that big studios are often afraid to undertake. But we have nothing to lose, so we took the risk. We hope the risk was justified and that you will enjoy our storytelling style.

The aesthetics of the game are also very important to us. It was crucial for us to create a world that looks and sounds unique. A lot of effort was put into creating a beautiful visual style as well as soundtracks that would immerse you in the world of Midian from the very first minute.

But most importantly, our philosophy is based on respect for you, our players. We have listened and continue to listen to feedback, read reviews and suggestions at every stage of development. We really want to make the game to meet your expectations and possibly even exceed them. Your opinion and support are incredibly important to us—you know that, and we hope it truly shows.

There is very little time left until the release, and I’m eagerly looking forward to the moment when we can share the result of all these years of development with you. I want to believe that KOTCL will truly resonate with your hearts, judging by the feedback and reviews we are receiving from you now, this seems to be not far from the truth.

I never tire of expressing my gratitude to our community for staying with us and continuing to support us. You are our inspiration, our pillar of strength, our life-giving productivity buff:)


On this lyrical note, we conclude this issue of the developer diaries. See you in exactly one week, friends!

Attention all Heirs!

Today's update was mostly centered around the unification of the camera system between the dropship and the city gameplay.

This comes with a variety of polishing side effects, such as cleaning up situations where the camera could cut through the ship, or snap unexpectedly from old locations. The camera has also been set up to allow a few degrees of rotation when using a controller with the controller thumbsticks. This isn't intended to be a gameplay tool, but more for those a bit more curious about the environment, and to emphasize that the d-pad is required for gameplay.

[ CONTROLS ]
- Camera can be slightly directed with controller thumbsticks
- Enable mouse usage in settings menu in the city
- Improved mouse interaction with situation table cities hovering
- Can no longer issue Recall commands at the end of the round

[ HUD AND MENUS ]
- Prevent camera snapping between menus and locations of the dropship
- Added small menu closing animations between areas of the dropship
- Adjustments to camera pathing between dropship locations
- Removed camera rotation from Situation Table when highlighting cities
- Show and hide generator prompts only when not locked down

[ TUTORIALS ]
- Slightly bigger surge wave in City Tutorial 1
- Fix Generator Overload time dilation during City Tutorial 1

[ MISC ]
- Potential fix for in-world Codex menus being out of view at some resolutions
- Can no longer surrender the city before the Heir has reached the city