Hello everyone,

Thank you for your patience—it’s time for the end-of-November monthly update!

This update includes:
Experience balancing:
The experience gained from all enemies has been adjusted. Players will now receive less experience, allowing for a more balanced levelling process. This ensures enemies remain a challenge and aren’t too easy to defeat. Balancing experience gain took the most time during testing, as it required careful adjustments and extensive playthroughs to ensure character progression feels natural and enemies remain appropriately matched to the player's level. This is an ongoing process, so further refinements and testing will continue.

New equipment added:
Several new items have been introduced, including Golden Guard Gloves, Golden Guard Greaves, Scaled Fists, Padded Armour Set, Scaled Pants, and the incomplete Desolation of Glory Set. These and other items (some of which I can’t recall at the moment—sorry!) can now be found in shops, dropped randomly, or earned as quest rewards.

Shops stock:
Shops can now stock the newly added items. Additionally, if certain stores don’t sell some items, they can now buy them from the player character.

Quest bug fixes:
Fixed quest completion issues in the "Long Road to Wynter" area between Chapters 2 and 3.

New enemy class for elves:
A new enemy class has been created for elves. This should make them more balanced, particularly for those who choose the aggressive path.

Plans for December:
Expect another update in the first week of December, which will likely include:

More weapons and rewards.
Additional side quests.
An updated demo, potentially featuring a festive surprise!

After the early December update, I’ll be taking a break for the holidays to spend time with my family and recharge. There won’t be an end-of-month Christmas update. I plan to return refreshed in January to start work on Chapter 3, followed by Chapter 4 in February. Polishing and testing will then take place as I work towards reaching version 1.0.

Thank you so much for your continued support, for purchasing the game, and for being part of this journey. I truly appreciate it.

See you in the next update!

Silviu

🎁 Head into the 3D world in search of Mrs Claus (the Christmas Domina). She is said to be giving away festive currency called ‘snowflakes’. Is this true?



🎅🏻 Have you noticed that Alex the animator has changed slightly?

I try to procedurally generate some activities. For instance:

• The character losing their soccer ball: The ball can end up on any rooftop, and the character will be nearby (and outdoors).
  
• Stranded animals needing help: They can appear anywhere along the coast, close to the water (but not directly in it).
  
• Sunbathing characters: They follow the same logic, appearing in various random spots.

The locations aren’t predefined, adding replayability, organic behavior, and opportunities for funny situations. (Who hasn’t gone sunbathing near a construction site with a screwdriver in hand? 👀)

The patch todays main feature is a new gamemode called skirmish, this plays out much more like a standard turned based strategy game level where there are a set amount of enemies in a room and you have to kill them all to get out. These levels can currently spawn on most any planet or ship that generates and should be relatively easy to find though they are a bit rarer than the normal exploration missions types.



These levels can spawn quite barren as well as with a variety of cover and enemies, it is fairly random how difficult they are though I haven't found it to be unfair in my own testing. Very happy to hear feedback about difficulty though.



I wont include any of the new bosses screenshots or how to find the boss as I like to have some mystery waiting for players to discover, but its a low/mid tier boss that should be relatively easy to accidentally bump into on a playthrough.

Various mostly MP related bugs were fixed in this patch as well, there is still a bug I'm looking to hotfix where if you click single player before hosting a multiplayer match you wont be able to launch a MP game until you restart the game. This will be fixed by tomorrow or Sunday at the latest.

As for the future, I intend to have a patch out either late Dec or early Jan with another new tileset out as its been awhile since the snow level and some more variety is always nice. Right now Im intending to be an Ophioc focused map with a 3 new ophioc units that only (for now at least) spawn specifically on the new tileset. Once that is out I plan to spend about month on a wave defense mode in order to help people farm ore faster, I know this was promised earlier but I seem to keep putting it on the back burner.

Once again thank you all for playing, report any bugs either on discord or in the steam discussion section. If I dont respond fast enough feel free to DM/ping me on discord. (which you can find a link to the discord in game)

• Adds the autofill functionality to blocking players, adding friends, and inviting new coven members
  
• Players can now log out during the intro tutorial
  
• Username entry will now automatically check if valid

• Shard store now uses proper thumbnails for Shard Pack purchasing
  
• Settings button now shows ping and language
  
• Button prompts no longer overlap
  
• Button prompts never show cancel button
  
• Button prompts show sorted in a specific order
  
• Position of the progress bar is fixed
  
• Fixed scroll wheel functionality on categories
  
• Fixed issue of not being able to press no in NUX wardrobe finish
  
• Coven members list will no longer duplicate members when another coven member logs in

GT Racing 1980 - Gameplay Livestreaming Now!

In Seeker: Quest, every character you encounter in the wild could join your team—or stand in your way. Each Seeker is fully playable, with their own unique abilities, attributes, and quirks. Building your team isn’t just strategy—it’s about creating a squad that feels just right for your adventure.

• Pick Your Team: Start your journey by choosing three Seekers to form your team.
• Seamless Seeker Switching: Press W mid-battle to pause the game and select the best Seeker for the situation. Take your time—strategize, plan, and jump back into the action when you’re ready.
• Abilities That Matter: Each Seeker has attributes, a passive ability (coming in Big Update #1), and a unique Active ability to turn the tide of battle.

It’s a cozy mix of action and strategy that lets you play at your own pace while still keeping things exciting!




At the start of Seeker: Quest, you’ll choose a hero and their paired Seeker to kick off your journey. Think Pokémon, but without the professor—the first Seeker comes with your chosen Hero.

• Hero: Draven, Seeker: Batterim
  Batterim is your tank, taking hits and dealing them right back with his Sylvan Orb, a circling bullet storm. He’s a bit of a know-it-all, but you’ll appreciate his reliability.
• Hero: Nama’Ghal, Seeker: Grub
  Grub might be slimy and smelly, but his Poison Trail leaves a cloud of damage for enemies. He’s not big on personality—think full-grown vegetable levels of charm—but he’s undeniably effective.
• Hero: Azrael, Seeker: Shaola
  Shaola’s calm and spiritual nature belies his strength. His Spiritual Ground ability heals allies and damages enemies, making him a quiet but powerful force in battle.

Batterim, Grub, and Shaola are just the beginning. As you explore Naturia, you’ll encounter even more Seekers to add to your roster, including:

• Isegon: A frost guardian who chills enemies to the bone.
• Flox: Fast and fiery with an explosive personality.
• Kabook: A bomb-like Seeker that delivers high-risk, high-reward damage.
• And maybe even... the legendary Leerking?!

Each new Seeker adds to the cozy-yet-chaotic fun of building your ultimate team.

Are you prepared to meet unforgettable characters, build your dream squad, and immerse yourself in a world of strategy, adventure, and charm? Jump in, get cozy, and show Naturia what Seekers are made of!

🎉 Add Seeker: Quest to your Steam Wishlist and be the first to know about updates!

🫂 Join our cozy community on Discord to share your thoughts, find friends, and stay up-to-date!

-Input deadzone for flips added. Fight me

We’re very happy to bring you another polish update to Broken Roads, including increased font size when using the Large Font setting (especially handy on Steam Deck), improved companion reactions depending on player choices, removing some of the ‘teleporting’ moments that some players found rail-roady, TONS of combat, weapon and consumable balancing, plus a couple of spoilery bits and pieces we won’t mention here.

We have racked up hundreds of pages of feedback, notes, suggestions and draft material for improving Broken Roads, and now is the time to implement. We’ve been focusing on improvements that don’t require translations for now, with a lot of focus on improving the weapons and consumables (in terms of AP required, damage, range, reload time, and dollar value).

We’ve also worked on removing some of the moments in the game that used to instantly transport the player to the next location or to complete a quest objective. This approach involves a lot of testing as many things can go wrong, so it’s slow work, but there’s more of this to come.

We’ve also identified some specific quest, journal and objective issues that can still be made considerably clearer for players (we’ll be focusing on Lake Deborah, Merredin and Southern Cross for the next patch).



Broken Roads is now officially classified as Playable on Steam Deck, with the feedback that some of the text and controller glyphs were still too small even with the Large Font option enabled. We’ve addressed all of the points requested by Valve and are resubmitting for full Steam Deck Verified status along with this patch going live.

More polish and bug fixes, but also the bulk of the work to expand on and improve pretty much every area of the game. We’re doing all of this in English only at first, and will be releasing these updates on the English-Only branch. There’s a new feature in Steam that allows players to seamlessly switch branches without any technical knowhow, and that’s what we’re focusing the next update on.

Without having to get the text translated or put through localisation QA, the turnaround will be much faster. We’re also no longer limited by word count restrictions and can flesh out all of the dialogues we couldn’t at launch, and have the freedom to completely rewrite entire characters, conversations and quests to make the game as good as it possibly can be.

Once this is done, we’ll get to work on localisation and translation and of course patching consoles to get to the same point.

Thanks again for your patience and to everyone who continues to support us as we press on with making Broken Roads the best it can be.



WARNING: SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PATCH NOTES:

• - Increased various font sizes and controller glyphs for Steam Deck. These can be accessed by all users when the Large Font checkbox in the settings menu is ticked.
  
• - Increased the size of some tutorial images for better readability on portable devices.
  
• - Reworked all companion reactions in the Merredin convoy banter to make them considerably less likely to respond unfavourably towards the player.
  
• - When leaving Merredin interiors, the game no longer teleports the player character back to the convoy area for convoy events. These now only occur when returning to Merredin from the overworld map, except for two specific story cases.
  
• - Gated certain rude or tactless player options behind low Charisma checks.
  
• - Fixed a bug where characters could incur attacks of opportunity when getting closer to their targets.
  
• - Adjusted the contents of Col’s shop (Hunters and Collectors) and various Vendor inventories in Merredin.
  
• Adjusted the prices of many consumables in the game.
  
• Adjusted HP recovery and secondary benefits of various consumables.
  
• Adjusted the prices of almost every weapon.
  
• It now costs less AP to switch to secondary weapon than to reload for all weapons except Pistols.
  
• Changed Blasers and SR98s (as well as the upgraded versions) to require 2AP to reload.
  
• Changed min and max damage for numerous weapons, including Spiked Clubs, SR98 upgrades, and Hunting Rifle upgrades.
  
• Changed the Min, Max and Optimal ranges between weapon types to further distinguish between them and require differing strategies.
  
• Reduced the damage of the SR98 +3 to be more in line with other max upgraded weapons.
  
• Reworked Revolvers to now have a small Knockdown chance, a larger optimal range and a wider damage range than Pistols.
  
• Revolvers now require 2AP to reload.
  
• Pistols are now the only ranged weapons that require 1AP to reload.
  
• Shotguns have from 10% Knockdown chance to 30% Knockdown chance depending on the upgrade.
  
• Spears are now optimal between 1 and 2 units away from the target.
  
• Mad’s Bat and Makeshift Axe have a range from 0 to 1.5 units and are always optimal when in range.
  
• All other melee weapons require being 0 to 1 units away from the target and are optimal in this range.
  
• All Cleavers now inflict bleeding.
  
• Hammers have from 10% Knockdown chance to 50% Knockdown chance depending on the upgrade.
  
• Spiked Clubs have 5% Knockdown chance to 30% Knockdown chance depending on the upgrade.
  
• Many small tweaks to difficulty of various combat throughout the game based upon where the average player level and party composition would be at that point.
  
• Small adjustments to enemy combatants' equipment and loot throughout the game.
  
• Changed a few animations for some of Merredin’s residents and NPCs.
  
• SPOILER: Priss no longer kidnaps the player if they talk to Scott Measure a second time. This can still be triggered by antagonising Angela Smith after the first meeting with Priss.
  
• SPOILER: Fixed a bug what was incorrectly determining Angela Smith’s reactions to the player when they threaten or antagonise her prior to the pub debate.
  
• SPOILER: Removed a dialogue break when talking to Mick after Priss first threatens the player.
  
• SPOILER: Reworked companion calculations in the final dialogue in Kalgoorlie to decrease their likelihood of abandoning the player character.

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/1403440/Broken_Roads/

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That's all for today, ‘ol cobber! Follow Broken Roads to stay updated and don't forget, your choices are the key.

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- Craig Ritchie,
Game Director - The Drop Bear Bytes team

Nominations are now live for the 2024 Steam Awards. If you enjoyed playing Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game at all, please consider nominating us for:

- Game of the Year (yes, this is a long shot)
- Best Game on Steam Deck
- Outstanding Visual Style
- Outstanding Story-Rich Game

The full awards list can be found here.




Alongside the nominations we are also participating in the Steam Autumn Sale! You can get Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game at 20% off for a limited time!




Once again, thank you so much for checking out Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game, we hope to hear from many of you as you continue to make progress in the game!

Cricket: Jae's Really Peculiar Game is available on Steam, Nintendo Switch, and the Sony Playstation 5 (and regional pricing for other areas) right now! Join Jae and his friends on an unforgettable journey to the moon to try and fix the past!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1381520/

Got any questions for us? Feel free to join our Discord, or just leave a question in the comments!

- Jimmy
Studio Kumiho