---

Today, our messengers bring you not one, but two great news regarding your flourishing empire. The first one will certainly be of interest to new rulers who have not yet tried their hand at leading an ancient city, while the second one will for sure please all those who already know the hardships of ruling.

Let's start with the first one, shall we?

---

From this very moment until August 8 you can start your amazing ancient adventure with a -4️⃣0️⃣% discount. This is a perfect occasion to sit on the throne of your own settlement, which over time will evolve into a huge metropolis. See for yourself how satisfying, enjoyable and challenging it is to exercise such great power!

Spread the word among your fellow rulers and be sure to let them know that -40% discount has just kicked off. The ancient world offers a place for anyone eager to lead their own city!

---

On the occasion of the Daily Deal, we also decided to make happy those who already own their copy of Builders of Greece. And what makes you happier than a nice surprise? 😁

Based on your feedback and suggestions, as well as our own observations, we managed to implement several important features that we know you've been waiting for. Those of you who remember our Content RoadMap will surely notice that some of them coincide with the changes we planned for the "Great People" Milestone.



That being said, you can treat today's Patch as a prelude to this significant phase 🤓 Of course, the "Great People" Milestone will still receive previously planned extensions such as iconic figures of the ancient world, new events, new economic panel and new maps.

Ok, with that behind us, let's cut to the chase!

---

• Added an option to relocate existing buildings
• Improvements to the decoration system:
- decorations now affect the happiness of your citizens
- decorations can now be placed freely and are not affected by the building grid system
• New Sandbox map
• Resolving a number of bugs and issues reported by the community
• Number of QoL changes:
- improvements to the warehouse and storage system
- locating buildings placed in the city via right-clicking them in the building panel




We can't wait to see your renovated, rearranged and beautifully decorated cities! 😍 We hope that the changes introduced will make the gameplay even more fun and engaging. As always, we await your feedback on our Discord server and Social Media channels.





Ok, Builders, we wish you a great day and many, many awesome adventures in the Early Access version of the game 🖐️ May the Gods favor you!

---

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1273100/Builders_of_Greece/

---

[h4]Viking Frontiers[/h4]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1304430/Viking_Frontiers/

[h4]Crown of Greed[/h4]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1697870/Crown_of_Greed/

[h4]Gimle: The Broken Prophecy[/h4]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1765920/Gimle_The_Broken_Prophecy/

Hey Everyone,

It’s long been a dream of mine to start a game studio, and thanks to the positivity, kindness, and encouragement I received since the release of Ex Vitro, I decided to go ahead and do it! The company is called Evolver Dynamics, and I hope it lets me bring better games to you faster.

I set up a company page on Steam right here.

I thought I would use this update to explain what my philosophy is behind the new company and what I hope to achieve with it.

Ever since I was a kid, dating all the way back to the NES era, I’ve been dreaming of making games. I’ve always played lots of different genres, but obviously the Metroidvania genre - and Super Metroid in particular - was the genre that really stuck with me. To this day, I'm still not sure if there's game quite like Super Metroid: the atmosphere, the mystery, the freedom, and the fact that the world felt alive. I truly felt like an intruder into a world that would continue on after I left it (ignore the game's ending, however!).

Trying to recapture some of those feelings is part of what inspired Ex Vitro, but some of the journal entries in the game hint at my other interests too: symbiosis, ecology, and evolution (and what happens when these things go ‘wrong’ or become 'unnatural'). I feel that there’s a cool opportunity to bring some really fascinating biological concepts from the natural world into games. And not just as narrative hooks, but also potentially as game mechanics too.

I think games are amazing tools for teaching people about concepts that are otherwise inaccessible or difficult to understand. While I don’t necessarily want to become a strictly educational game developer, I feel like it’s possible to strike a balance between something that’s fun to play and something that’s generally interesting to learn about at the same time. I’m really inspired by games that immerse you in a world and let you learn by osmosis, or that can spark a new interest in a subject. As an example, I've absorbed and become really interested in Greek mythology thanks to games like Hades and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

Along those lines, while I'm continuing to work on Ex Vitro's next update, I’m also currently in the process of bringing one of my casual arcade games to Steam. I think it can serve as a sort of proof of concept for what I envision the company doing, despite being quite different in style and genre than Ex Vitro. It's called 'Mycocosm', and that game's storefront will be online in the next few days.

I don’t imagine there’s much overlap between fans of sci-fi Metroidvanias and casual arcade plant simulators, but if you’re interested in checking it out or helping me make it better, I'll be opening it up for beta testing soon!

Anyways, thanks for reading and to everyone who played Ex Vitro!
Alex

Greetings Cerim, we appreciate your patience as it’s been a while since our last official communication. We’ve been heads down on Wicked, but that means we’re even more excited today to talk to you about development so far and what’s new with our first content update!

When we released Wicked into Early Access, the entire team prioritized bug fixing and other hotfixes for the first month; standard stuff for newly released games. Taking stock of how that first month of hotfixes and patches went, we feel we accomplished quite a bit — Controller Remapping, DLSS/FSR Upscaling, 32:9 support, improvements to game systems like Durability and Inventory, localization fixes/improvements and much more. Since that initial rapid-fire deployment, we’ve been entering a new phase of development internally.

So in that time, we felt it was the right time to switch from focusing on important, but smaller-scale updates to a style of development where we focus on larger, more game-changing content updates.

This has manifested itself in our first content update for Wicked called “The Crucible.”



The Crucible update features a revamped and expanded Cerim Crucible, a new enemy faction known as The Gloam, a new vendor NPC, a new upgrade system, and much more.

So, let's jump in!

---

At the start of our Early Access, the Cerim Crucible was just a glimmer of what we envisioned for it in the long run. Just one of our visions for the Crucible is one that condenses the core gameplay experience of No Rest for the Wicked into a repeatable roguelite dungeon - but with a Moon Studios twist, of course!

So with this update, we’ve more than tripled the number of randomized chambers within the Crucible, introduced a whole new art theme, added a brand new vendor, and introduced an entirely new gameplay system called Echoes.

One of the biggest features that we always envisioned for the Cerim Crucible but weren’t able to ship at launch is this Echoes. Echoes allow you to customize every run with a huge variety of buffs and effects, creating a staggering amount of possibilities as it allows you to create a build on top of your build. Thanks to Echoes and the randomization of them, no two runs in the Crucible will ever be alike.



All enemies inside the Crucible now drop glowing orbs called Traces, which can be used to activate Echoes at any time. The more enemies you kill, the more you can bolster your run with unique effects and conditions.

The Crucible is a dark and dangerous place - but deep underground, there is someone who can help us. An ancient being, called The Seneschal.



What we mean to it, and who it once was, is a mystery. But it feeds on Gloamseed, which gets dropped throughout the Crucible. The more we progress through the Crucible, the more Gloamseed we can feed to the Seneschal - who will do things for us like sell Fallen Embers, refined resources, Exalt our weapons, and unlock new features within the Crucible in the future.

The Gloam are a brand new group of enemies that can be found inside the Crucible - and in later Updates they will also appear in the overworld as well.

The Gloam are lost souls who became infected by the Pestilence within the deep, dank caves throughout Sacra. Some got lost, trapped underground, or buried alive – but all of them ended up glowing with a kind of corrupt bioluminescence, similar to the algae and fungi that bloom within those same caves.



We're excited for you to discover the behaviors of this new unique enemy faction!

In addition, the Cerim Crucible now opens much sooner in your adventure; it can be entered by activating the “Spoken & Unspoken” quest with Elsa, as soon as the player has arrived in Sacrament and completed the first campaign quest.

Because of this, some of you may find that your quest progression for “Spoken & Unspoken” has reset with this Update - never fear, this is intentional! We want everyone to be able to experience the new flow of the Crucible organically, including important tutorials; and the easiest way to do this was to start the quest over from the beginning. But don’t worry; your gear, character, and other quest progression should all remain unchanged.

Even with all of this new content, we’re still not finished with the Cerim Crucible! In subsequent updates, we plan to make new statues available to unlock in the Atrium, which will lead to more unique challenges, and even some brand new bosses. We’re actively working on this additional content even as we release this first Crucible update.



Outside the dark adventures of the Crucible, we added several new features and content to the Isle of Sacra.

The Seneschal allows Cerim to boost their items in an entirely new way - by upgrading them to the status of Exalted. This is a permanent change that raises stats and improves Enchantments.

Therefore, Cerim who challenge themselves in the trials of the Crucible will earn the chance to gain these rewards that can carry over into the rest of the game - making their items more powerful than ever before.


Although most of this Update is focused on the Cerim Crucible, there were a few places where we just couldn’t help ourselves. So we’ve also extended some regions of the overworld, like the Black Trench and the Nameless Pass, so there’s even more secrets and surprises for players to seek out and explore in those areas.


Combat has also been enhanced with punchier kill effects. Watch enemies explode from fireballs, shatter from an attack after being frozen in ice and smashed to pieces with heavy weapons!


We’ve also added stray animals. You can pet them when the opportunity arises! It makes us happy and we think you will like it too!

There’s even more improvements that we just don’t have time to get into! So here’s a small lightning round of what to expect:

• CPU performance improvements
  
• Smoother area transitions
  
• Cinematics polish
  
• Memory optimization
  
• Hundreds of fixes and improvements!

Last, but certainly not least…No Rest for the Wicked is now Steam Deck Verified!

---

As always, our team is hard at work on awesome new content and features. We’re eager to share more details on our Early Access Road Map soon so stay tuned for that!

We can't wait to hear back from you. We are always listening and working meticulously on shaping Wicked to be the best it can be.

– Moon Studios

You can unlock Ideology by building Big Ben (Unlocked by Capitalism). Big Ben also provides +2 Science From Busy Workers.

• Yuri Gagarin: Cold War age promotion great person
  
• Stephen Hawking: Information age wildcard great person
  
• Zaha Hadid: +6 Builder Capacity Multiplier
  
• Peter Higgs: +5 Science From Busy Workers
  
• Maryam Mirzakhani: +4 Science From Idle Workers
  
• Gabriel García Márquez: +6 Happiness

There are some breaking changes regarding Livestock Farm - it is split into two buildings: Poultry Farm which only produces meat and Dairy Farm which only produces milk. To help with this transition, existing livestock farms will continue to work but can no longer be built. Dido still provides boost to Livestock Farm in 0.14 but will be removed in 0.15.

• Add "Poultry Farm": 2x Wheat -> 2 Meat
  
• Add "Dairy Farm": 2x Wheat -> 2 Milk
  
• Add "Poetry School": 2x Paper + 1x Alcohol -> 2 x Poem
  
• Deprecate "Livestock Farm": existing livestock farms will continue to work but you cannot build new livestock farms
  
• Dido now boosts Dairy Farm and Poultry Farm
  
• New great person Homer: +1 Production and Storage Multiplier for Stable and Poetry School (Classical Age)

• Large Hadron Collider: All Information Age great people get +2 level for this run. This wonder can be upgraded and each additional upgrade provides +1 level to all Information Age great people for this run (Unlocked by Virtual Reality)

• Clone Factory will no longer sustain itself - it is required to transport resources from a building that produces the resource to be cloned (e.g. If you want to clone Super Computers, the clone factory can only use Super Computers directly transported from Super Computer Labs. Super Computers stored in Warehouse/Caranvansary/Clone Factory cannot be used)
  
• Transports to buildings that produce workers no longer require workers. This will help with worker domino collapse issue
  
• When upgrading wonders (Internation Space Station, Marina Bay Sands, Palm Jumeirah, Alderson Disk, Dyson Sphere, Matrioshka's Brain, Luxor Temple Chogha Zanbil), the builder capacity will increase linearly with the level
  
• Matrioshka's Brain: each additional upgrade provides +1 Production Multiplier for buildings that produce Science
  
• Geography research will increase the explorer's range to 2; Steam Engine research will increase the explorer's range to 3; Aviation will increase explorer's range to 4
  
• Peacekeeper is unlocked by Financial Arbitrage (instead of Virtual Reality)
  
• When an Information Age wonder is being upgraded, it will continue to provide boost

• Fix a bug where Future achievement is not correctly awarded

With the release of 0.14.0, the 0.15.0 development cycle has started, follow the draft patch notes here: https://github.com/fishpondstudio/CivIdle/issues/304

- added 90% sideways camera rotation (Q/E, RStick)
- added a shadow under the pogo-stick for better landing orientation
- change of control from RB to RT for Xbox gamepad
- slight reduction of leg colliders
- option to display controls directly in the game
- adjusted camera angle in some levels
- a bunch of minor adjustments

- 2nd lvl - complete redesign
- 3rd lvl - minor reorganization of the level
- 4th lvl - added decals
- 5th lvl - crane increased in width by 20%
- 10th lvl - escalator slowed by 28%
- 12th lvl - bridge increased by 50%, reduced sliding of the bridge
- 15th lvl - stars reach 0.2m high
- 16th lvl - added new jumping platforms

Hey Guild Leaders!
Since I've been working on it for a long while now, I wanted to share a quick overview of the progress for the upcoming big update:



Including many new enemies, loot and oddities
A lot is already complete - just need a few more oddities, improved crocodiles and a handful more loot.



With two initial factions (Nobles and Commoners), faction stores with food items, loot, etc. faction classes and faction enemies
Faction stores, loot and classes are implemented - I'm working on faction enemies following you underground too.






With unique abilities and speech
Complete. I'm currently in the process of playtesting and refining them further.




Complete!



Mostly complete


Overall - most of the update content is complete. I do have a handful of things to wrap up, add and playtest though.


That's all for this progress overview! Thank you for checking out this news post, I'm determined to push through the last few bits of work to have the mega-update ready!
Hope to share even more exciting news next time (:

-David

Today's devblog looks at an important part of the upcoming WolfQuest Saga* -- how your pups will disperse when they grow up. This gets complicated, so I'll take it one piece at a time.



As the years go by, your pups grow up and, sooner or later, they will disperse, heading out on their own to find or form a pack. Pups can start dispersing as yearlings, but two is the most common age for it, particularly in the fall and early winter. So somewhere between 15 months of age and 3-4 years of age, your pups are almost certain to leave your pack and seek their way in the world. Since your pups are, of course, known to you, they'll appear on the Known Wolves panel, so you can keep an eye on them and if they find a mate and form a pack, or join an existing pack, or leave the game map in search of greener fields elsewhere.

However, not every dispersal is successful. Sometimes a wolf will return to its natal pack for awhile before trying again. It'll be nice to have them back with the family pack for awhile.

The game has always let you "grow up" any of your surviving pups to make them playable adult wolves. We wanted to keep this option in the expanded context of the Saga. Essentially it's the same, except that pups must now survive to age one before they become playable in the Family Tree. (If we had fully designed and built the entire game before releasing it, we probably would have made pups playable only after they've dispersed in the game -- but now that's too restrictive and likely frustrating, since it can take several game-years for a pup to disperse, and some may not survive that long.)

Somewhat related: The unlockable coats work the same way as before -- if a pup has an unlockable coat, it's unlocked when you finish the Loaf at Rendezvous Site quest. You don't have to keep them alive until they're a year old to unlock the coat.

This is where it gets complicated. When a pup disperses, we thought it would be fun to switch over and play as that pup within the same game universe, with that continuity of location, rival packs, territories etc. So when one of your pups disperses, you are notified about that event, with the option to switch roles and play as that dispersed pup (either immediately or later). If you choose to switch, the game splits off with you as that young wolf in the Find a Mate quest (since that pup has already learned to hunt in the Young Hunters quest). As a freshly-dispersed wolf, your natal or birth pack will tolerate you for awhile, so you can sleep in their territory safely while you search for a mate. (Thoug unlike NPC dispersals, as a player-wolf you can't rejoin your natal pack). But once you find a mate, your old pack becomes a rival pack, with no holds barred! (There is some evidence in Yellowstone that related wolves in rival packs are less hostile to each other, but we concluded that it wasn't feasible to incorporate that into the game.)

When you switch to play as the dispersal, the game world is carried over, exactly as it was. But of course, as the days and months go by, it will gradually change. So, if you later load the game with your original wolf (the parent of the dispersal), those two versions of that game universe won't be kept in sync, as you the player and all the NPC wolves make decisions about their lives, their packs, their territories. So yes indeed, the multiverse coming to WolfQuest, with branching universes and multiple realities. Perhaps a bit weird, but we decided on this design so the game can support a range of role-playing and storytelling preferences.

To keep things from getting too confusing, each wolf (whether created by the player, or a grown pup) has one identity. This is not that odd, except that pups become playable in the Family Tree before they disperse in the game. So if you start a new game with a grown pup via the Family Tree, but then later go back to the original game save when they're still a yearling and play through that so they eventually disperse, you'll have to make a choice. To switch over and play as that dispersed pup in that same game universe, you'll have to override the that wolf's save file (resetting its age to whatever age this dispersing pup is). You can't have two versions of that pup, just like you can't have two versions of any of your wolves.

So, as I said, it's complicated! But it's all working well in our playtesting so far. And the Saga in general is really shaping up. We still have to finish a few more features, and of course do much more playtesting and bugfixing, but we are excited to get the Saga into everyone's hands, later this year.

* The upcoming WolfQuest Saga is "the rest of the game," where your pups grow up as you have a new litter each year. Time will continue progressing through the years until you die. We expect to release it later this year (but we have not set a release date).

It is our pleasure to announce a new narrative roleplay adventure from the minds behind The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante!

The Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian is a narrative roleplaying game that casts the player as the heir to the Blessed Arknian Empire, who must carve out a destiny for his nation. The world is grim, and the gods are eager to punish anyone who breaks their commandments. People live preordained lives, their fates sealed the moment they are born. It is up to the player to decide what kind of leader they will be: uphold the established order, or build a new kind of future.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2936290/The_Life_and_Suffering_of_Prince_Jerian/

You, Prince Jerian of House Tempest, must embark on a lifelong journey. It starts in your childhood, blissfully ignorant of your destiny, and continues into maturity as you take up a role you have been primed for since birth: emperor. As crown prince, you must not only understand your country and its culture, but also make many difficult choices that affect the fragile balance of powers in the Empire, and inside yourself. If you go where political circumstance and family obligations guide you, you risk losing yourself in the chaos. Can you keep yourself whole, or will you shatter?

Check out the trailer, which will give you some first impressions about the upcoming game!



In addition, to celebrate the official announcement of the game, we are releasing a special video address from the development team at Schisma Games, in which they will pull back the veil of mystery shrouding the contents of their upcoming title. Come watch!



The game is currently in development. Wishlist The Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian now and subscribe to our newsletter to never miss an update!



Join our bustling Discord community, the best place to make the wait for the new game a bit more enjoyable. Any questions you have, you can ask there. Discuss the game world with like-minded players, share your ideas and suggestions, and be among the first to hear any news about the game!

Release day!!!

I will be around in discord and keeping an eye on the Steam forums for any bugs and feedback. I hope you all enjoy the game!

Also going to begin working on a 1.1 content patch after all the release bugs are squashed!

• Added support for playing with a mouse.
• Added a brief controls onboarding questionnaire to help set up new players with a default control layout that fits their playstyle.
• Changed the default keyboard controls based on player feedback. Note that this may mess up your existing keyboard binds and profiles. Please ensure they are correct and re-save any profiles. for the inconvenience!

• Redesigned loadout menus to be less overwhelming.
• Altered UI to be easier to navigate with mouse.
• Secondary menu selection (used to change color palettes) is now bound to [e]/grab instead of [j]/jump.
• To reduce new player confusion, Enter (in addition to Space) can now be used to select menu items. Control now acts as a "start" button for keyboard users.
• Replaced various floating UI prompts with new menu items to reduce clutter.

• When tap jump is on it is now possible to perform upward light and strong attacks out of jump squat.
• Added a 2-frame leniency window for directional light and strong attacks in cases where the direction is pressed after the attack input.
• It is now possible to wall jump with tap jump.
• Tap-jumped air jumps are now delayed by 3 frames to allow players to perform upward aerial attacks without jumping.

These changes should make tap jump much more usable. It should now be much easier to perform upward light, strong, aerial, and special (gadget) attacks without accidentally jumping.

• Tweaked tutorial to better accommodate tap jump users.

• Fixed bug where game would crash when joining a quickplay match directly from watching a replay.
• Fixed bug where progress could not be made in the Directional Influence tutorial.

I'm aware of a bug that sometimes causes replays of online matches to desync. Still looking into this.

Note that several other minor patches were released over the past couple weeks. I don't typically post patch notes for those here as Steam announcements as I don't want to spam people who are following this game, but anything major I'll make sure to post here and you can read the full patch notes in-game!