Hi everybody, we're happy to bring you the next Early Access content update of Silence of the Siren!
This version brings new maps, content and various fixes and improvements.
In the meantime, the team is also working on the "next big thing", the map and campaign editor and the first version of random map generator. Enjoy the update and stay tuned! :)

Content

• Iron Mole Mode as a new difficulty setting that only allows one save per map and replaces enemy hazard rating by a rough estimate of actual unit counts
  
• 10 new items
  
• 2 new skirmish maps: Multiverse Madness and Doom of Eden
  
• New neutral units: Molvarks, slightly familiar mole beasts and Trifids that spawn their seedlings
  
• New campaign level select screen

Features and improvements

• Added the option to retry battle from victory and loss dialogs, disabled retry battle from pause menu and from end battle dialogs during tutorial
  
• Units in unit list in combat get highlighed when targeted by an attack or an ability
  
• Friendly units on the map get highlighted in blue instead of orange, handshake cursor on friendly neutral armies
  
• Overall UI polish (layouts, backgrounds, unnecessary scrolling, one-frame glitches, smooth fade-in of dark background behind base panels, exploration map building tooltips)
  
• Improved buying abilities panel in the Academy
  
• Improved the different crosshair combat cursors
  
• Added a few missing UI sounds to different buttons
  
• Implemented switching to lower resolution energy field mesh and less dense energy field particles with the low quality terrain option
  
• Added difficulty info to the load dialog
  
• Added custom combat log message for bloodlust giving an extra move
  
• Vortex mines end moves
  
• Worm's 'buried' status effect can be dispelled
  
• Added a few new status effect icons
  
• Added missing info about status effects to a few unit ability descriptions, added more info about unit types affected, improved orbital bombardment description and changed empty base text to be more clear about no garrisoned units; changed vanquishers to cause shock instead of bleeding
  
• Re-enabled the "player lost" message when AI kills itself during its turn
  
• Updated credits

Fixes

• Fixed controllers with stick drift causing the ingame camera to move
  
• Fixed skipping turn in battle could be sometimes activated during Custodian's end of turn ability, causing the next unit to skip its turn
  
• Fixed traveling between bases via gateways was skipping the teaching of abilities from the destination academy
  
• Fixed using resource beacon from the commander card in base would exit the base but keep the commandercard there open
  
• Fixed special academy panels would stay active after switching to another base
  
• Fixed buying and selling items at a base wasn't refreshing the state of the item buttons and army upgrade buttons
  Fixed lost war machines are not shown in the combat results
  
• Fixed commanders marked as dead when losing at the Warrior Monk Temple
  
• Fixed small random armies with only one unit in each stack would end up with zero units on easy difficulty
  
• Fixed a long pause between Bountyhuntress' casting special ability and teleporting
  
• Fixed a few issues with long texts in the layout of the right panel: AI turn, player name, end of turn button
  
• Fixed data fragments and data fragment chests were allowed to be used by max level commanders (level 30 or map-specific max level)
  
• Fixed commander auto-garrisoning at the end of turn would override active commander at the start of next turn
  
• Fixed shield war machines get a turn when the commander has a war hawk skill
  
• Fixed a rare campaign blocker: keys held by enemies who died against player's bases or guarded mines got lost
  
• Fixed equipped deep scanner causing discovered objects to rebuild their graphics with every commander move
  
• Fixed overlapping paths and tracks from the scout skill would glitch out
  
• Fixed camera not centered on active commander at the start of the turn (this got broken by another fix in the update)
  
• Fixed base statistics texts wrapping in German
  
• Fixed wrong resistances of 50-Cals and Crowd Suppressors
  
• Fixed a rare case of insane AI enemy army growth related to the radiant discount building you can build at UNSS bases
  
• Fixed resources gained from a scripted event at the end of combat wouldn't get correctly added to the numbers displayed in the top panel

Our first Speedrun Event has officially wrapped up, and we were blown away by the talent and precision on display. Thank you to everyone who participated and helped bring the event to life.

🏆 1st Place: Wolfye with an impressive 2:28.4
🥈 2nd Place: Andro Sphinx clocking in at 3:28.2

Huge congratulations to both of you for those incredible runs. Your skill and style truly embodied the spirit of Bullet Noir.

Wolfye: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVQWFIZ7xrE
Andro Sphinx: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLYy0KX76Tchttps://youtu.be/QLYy0KX76Tc

Big thanks to everyone who took part, submitted clips, or just cheered others on. This community continues to impress, and we can’t wait to run more events in the future.

Winners will be contacted shortly to receive their prizes.

Stay sharp, and stay tuned.

In the mean time if you want to practice for the next one, Bullet Noir Demo is out now!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/3204960/Bullet_Noir/

Here are the April 24 Patch Notes.

System
A tab has been added to view items by tier in the Board and Chipset.
A full selection function has been added to item enhancement and selling.

Balance
Some melee enemies have slightly reduced their attack power.

Update announcement:
1. Added dynamic fountain effect of [Fountain] decorative building
2. Added dynamic effects of [Residential Building], [Farm], [Lumberyard], [Quarry], [Iron Mine], [Blacksmith Shop]
3. Optimized the display of relic summons
4. Added seed synthesis formula
5. Added [Leisure Afternoon] building formula
6. Added interactive building - Leisure Afternoon (you can specify land heroes to interact with this building)
7. Fixed the abnormal state of artillery fire during siege
8. Added universal gift code: tm-777, remember to use it after updating the client
----------------------
Recently, we have received many letters from lords, saying that they are not in the same time zone as many players in the alliance, or their online time is inconsistent, and they often miss the siege rewards. In this regard, the official operation team attaches great importance to it and actively improves it. Therefore, starting from next week, the Alliance Giant Catapult gameplay will be launched. It will be built by the alliance and settled by alliance members (after settlement, it will provide damage value bonus for the giant catapult). After the alliance administrator declares war on the city, the giant catapult will automatically attack the city within the range. The settled alliance members will also be counted as participating in the war and can receive rewards (if the time does not match the subsequent players, they only need to send one team to settle in the giant catapult in advance)

The 6th aspect of the Pale Gods — chaos from the frozen wasteland.
The new set is incorporated directly into the existing game, with some adjustments to make all six sets fit harmoniously.
Two new mechanisms are introduced in the new set:

A frozen card does not get discarded at the end of the turn. The freeze effect lasts until the card is played. This allows for great future turn planning or ensuring you can dodge an attack when you really need to.

Resonance activates additional effects on cards if you meet the Stagger threshold. Even if you are STAGGERED, these effects activate, rewarding risky play.

• 35 new BOREAL cards
  
• 5 new DIVINE cards
  
• 1 new special card (generated by a Curio and a Divine card)

• 4 new enemies for the Boreal set — they try to stagger you and always freeze your ANATHEMAS
  
• 2 new bosses: 1 for Act 1, and 1 for Act 2

• 2 new player characters have been added:
  
• Ronin, with a unique twist on how to engage the enemies
  
• Jonah, the ghost of the frozen wastes

Requirements for unlocking have been reduced for some characters.
NOTE: If a character should have been unlocked but isn’t, start a game and just lose :)

• 4 new curios have been added

• New Tome: Frozen Doom — This expensive tome makes a card ALWAYS freeze any time you draw it. A very powerful effect.
  
• Tome Reroll: The Librarian allows you to regenerate the current tomes by paying a price. The price increases by 50 for the duration of the run. Use it wisely.

• There are now 6 available colors, but to complete a grudge, you only need to hunt 5 out of 6. This was done to avoid increasing the requirements to fulfill a grudge.
  
• This is a small buff for the player, as it's now slightly easier to fulfill grudges and skip the one color you really don’t care about.
  
• Grudge card reward is now +30 rarity (was +20).

• On average, you will have more options more often per step on the path. This was done to balance the total availability of each color.

• Additional events have been added related to the Boreal set
  
• Improved rewards for all event options that force you to suffer an ANATHEMA. Risk/reward.

• FIXED: When using Lantern Surge (or when some enemies change phase), some enemy effects with the keyword "On player start position" would not properly update the UI, failing to alert the player they were about to be hit. No more trickery!
  

• The Devourer: Base damage is now 4 (was 3)
  
• Omen of Desolation: Now also lets you move 1 (so you CAN discard your entire hand and maybe not get bonked)
  
• Veinseeker: Damage increased to 20 (was 15)
  
• Essence Siphon: On-hit requirement removed — now ALWAYS gives +1 Arcane when played. Magical!
  
• Fractured Mind: Card rarity is affected by Arcane. If you have at least 1 Arcane, there is a chance to generate a Divine card (yes, even itself — why not). Additionally, you must EXILE a card after one is added (no more junk).
  
• Grand Scheme: REWORKED. The old version no longer made sense with FREEZE in the game. Now it lets you draw cards at the start of your turn equal to the number you had at the end of your last turn. A very good deck-cycling card now.

Hello! I am Nick, the solo developer (and artist...) of this game. There is no publisher, no machine behind all this, just me (and some very helpful beta testers!)

Thank you for playing my game!

I put a lot into it, trying to create a good unique deckbuilding game with a new take on the lovecraftian / cosmic horror themes.

I hope you enjoy all the new cards, and create some amazing decks. Feel free to reach out about anything, easiest way is through the game discord (linked in Steam and in game)

Have fun, go break the game!

Knights and mercs, the major milestone FACE - you guessed it ːsteamhappyː - brings the full role for your team's Face online with a unique class talent tree and new corresponding actions you can take directly from the safehouse.


Cyber Knights is a game about building your rep and connections to get access to richer but riskier opportunities, navigating competing demands from your squad, faction power players, and long-term goals while you keep walking further along the knife-edge of pursuing big scores and keeping your squad able to handle it. Now the Face can give you more control over how you pursue that path. For example, Co-Conspirator will let you get missions from specific Contacts you want to work with while Dealmaker will let you strengthen ties with specific faction types to increase both your and your Contacts rewards for completing heists.


Your Face is a master of the underworld, deploying talents to manipulate the strategic layer of the game. Their place is at the Safehouse, and unlike other character classes in the game, they never join in missions or enter into combat - they hang back, play a mission overwatch role, and work the shadows. Using Care and Feeding, your Face can reroll options you don't like from your mercenaries' Limit Breaks and using Puppetmaster your Face can push a Contact with an Influence Limit Break to upgrade all of their services in a single go.


You can view all of your Face's actionable talents below the main timeline in the Safehouse HUD, making it easy to know when your powerful abilities are about to recharge again.

Representing the duality of a Knight-and-Face, which every team needs to survive, your Face gains Experience in lock step with their Knight. When your Knight gains XP, your Face gains the same XP, so you'll find that you have a high-level Face if your team is pro.

The Face also has their own unique set of attributes: Cunning, Persuasion, Handling. These attributes can be boosted through small nodes on the Face's talent tree or through Hype Limit Breaks; each boosts the success levels of several talents within their tree.


There is more to come! We've launched the Face tree with 16 ready-to-play Talents; 3 more are locked for now, to be released soon. And we're only ~5 weeks away from Cyber Knights' full launch (June 2nd!) which will add an all-new Origin Story option to the start of the game with a new Face starting character.

Come join us in the official Trese Brothers discord to discuss build strategies for the Face, stay in the loop on launch fun, and more!

- Added new Face class tree with 16 talents to manipulate the underworld, safehouse and team
- Bring all new focus to advancing and catering to the Contacts you want to focus on
- Either enhance or remove the need for some Safehouse rooms with Face talents
- Fixed broken stairs in Slumroad Junction mission map
- Hidden incorrect "Blueprint Output Count" appearing on some Item Blueprints but doing nothing

- A small update to the AI bots that fixes some behavior bugs.

P.S. Why am I spending so much time working on bots instead of adding new features to the game? Since the player count is still relatively low, I want the bots to act as filler in the game world, and I want their behavior to closely mimic that of real players. Over time, as the number of online players grows, I’ll reduce the number of bots in the game - or remove them entirely, leaving them as an optional feature.

P.P.S. I’m now starting work on the experience and in-game currency system, which will allow players to upgrade different weapon branches and unlock new guns and upgrades. This will include a weapon progression tree and an in-game shop. As a reference, I’ll be using the system from World of Tanks for now.

Small fix for autoselling animals
Fix for achievement for Asia
Showing difficulty on scenarios

Hello, dear retailers!

First off, I hope you’ve had a lovely Easter break, if you celebrate, and that you’re having a great week so far.

I’ve got another live update for you today for both the Alpha & Demo versions of the build! To keep you in the loop, King of Retail 2 will be going into Early Access on the 22nd of May (remember to wishlist if you haven’t already!), and so I place a lot of my focus into getting everything ready for that date.

Let's break down what's new in 0.0.7.1 and what you can expect in-game

• Improved Character texture optimizations.
  
• Improved Article texture optimizations
  
• Articles now have different processing times to improve performance. (For example, clothes take longer to add to a display compared to groceries.)

• You can now see your store’s area of influence as a ring when in the City view.
  
• You can also see the potential influence ring of any selected building.
  
• The Delivery unit menu shows type, capacity, and product counts.
  
• Storage units now show their capacity for Articles.
  
• Adjusted profile photos for characters.
  
• Readjusted the opacity of hair and beards.
  
• The current day is now highlighted on the Employee Schedule when in the store.
  
• Staff will now always go inside when arriving at work.
  
• Optimized AI task calculations for display and delivery units.
  
• On load game start, the values of actual storage versus expected storage are checked to ensure that they match.

• Reduced the Skill and Greed influence on wage requests.
  
• Reduced the base store influence area.
  
• Increased each population’s contribution to customer spawning speeds.
  
• Store influence area is increased when your store’s lot size increases.
  
• Reworked customer flow. Different segments now have different shopping hours, spreading the sales more throughout the day.
  
• Audacious hair colors are now a bit less frequent.
  
• Customers now prepare to finish shopping 20 minutes prior to closing time, which was previously 40 minutes.
  
• Adjusted customer shopping patience, making them more need-dependent, rather than tiredness-dependent.
  
• Adjusted the staff idle move / check for work ratio.
  
• Adjusted the size definitions of many articles.
  
• Increased the capacity of storage shelves.
  
• Increased the capacity of delivery units.
  
• Increased the amount and variety of articles customers take when shopping.
  
• Customers now split out to registers based on queue size and distance; previously, it was only distance.
  
• Adjusted cash register speeds, making purchases run faster.

• Beards now properly attach to staff members’ faces.
  
• You can no longer end the day at the HQ before it is fully set up.
  
• The Standby slider is now set to 0 when inactive.
  
• Selected Speed buttons turn grey to show they’ve been selected.
  
• Vacating a rented property no longer gives you money.
  
• Fixed a bug where the snapping grid remained when cancelling the placement of a display.
  
• Fixed a bug when moving interactable objects could cause the player to lose the ability to interact.
  
• The grid is now visible while moving objects.
  
• The City store pin no longer blocks the camera.
  
• Copying a decoration no longer opens an empty menu.
  
• You can no longer move when assigning a store from a rental property.
  
• Long messages should now stay within the border of the player message box.
  
• Delivery units didn't previously take product sizes into account, but they now do.
  
• Tweaked the Article selector’s button to display the correct color again.
  
• Storage units now only show appropriate products.
  
• Hair has been graciously returned to women.
  
• Characters now match the height shown in their photos.
  
• Staff will refill almost full displays.
  
• HQ floors will now properly save and load.
  
• The medium HQ office can no longer be placed inside other rooms.
  
• Added missing article images.
  
• You can no longer edit employee schedules in the store.
  
• Removed collision when opening a terminal drawer.
  
• The Presentation skill will now have an influence on refill speed.
  
• The Unpacking skill will now have an influence on unpack speed.
  
• Customers leaving without paying will now return their articles to be delivered the day after.
  
• Customers' ages fit their demographic more appropriately.
  
• Wages and bonuses are deducted properly.
  
• Some inventory items could emit light just because they felt like it, which has been fixed.
  
• Skills are now impactful at the cash register.
  
• Fixed weird animations when customers would take articles.

• Added additional vegetable visuals.
  
• Added additional cleaning category visuals.
  
• Added additional decorations.
  
• Changed the building options UI.
  
• Improved character shaders overall.

Lots of tweaks, plenty of balancing, and a bunch of bug squashing, too.

I also wanted to take the time to extend my sincere thanks to the alpha players of King of Retail 2, who have reported bugs, provided their game saves for analysis, and helped me hunt down and destroy a nasty bug that found its way into earlier versions of this patch. Your feedback and overall assistance with this has been extremely valuable so, again, thank you!

Please let me know how you’re feeling about this update by either leaving your feedback on the Steam Community tab, or better still, hopping into the King of Retail Discord and sharing your thoughts there.

King of Retail 2 enters Early Access on May 22nd, and I can’t wait for you to dive in.

Take care, and have a great sale!

Dear players,

As promised, The Sumerian Game 2.0 is finally here! With this update, you’ll find so many new features that The Sumerian Game on Steam will feel like an entirely new experience.

There are new game modes (lesser-known, yet still important versions and iterations of the original game), new achievements, fewer bugs, and a more responsive interface that should feel more comfortable than the previous version.

But that’s not all!

Among all the new content, you’ll also discover a completely new game – another “missing in action” title, thought to be lost for years. It’s The Sierra Leone Game, a lesser-known and less influential game compared to The Sumerian Game, but nonetheless significant. It is the first game in history to feature a multimedia introduction (with slides and audio), player tooltips, and even a tutorial complete with a final quiz and a chance for promotion. Until now, almost nothing was known about this game – but it has now been restored and brought back to life.



We hope that all the effort we’ve put into creating this version has been worthwhile, and that the opportunity to explore and compare all these different versions of The Sumerian Game, while witnessing the evolution of its original concept into something more modern, will both entertain you and spark your interest.

As always, if you’d like to support this project – which is Free to Play – we invite you to purchase the Supporter Pack and share the game with friends and others who might enjoy it. Your support helps us continue this work of research and restoration. If you like to read the book, you can get it from my official site http://www.andreacontato.com and Amazon and get also The Sumerian Game in big box limited edition, for C64, Apple II and PC.



Thank you so much, and enjoy the game!

Changelog:

There are now 10 game modes, compared to 5 in the previous version. The selection menu allows players to immediately view the relationship between the various versions and then personally experience the differences and the evolution of the original concept through its numerous iterations. Here are the details:

Sum9rx: already present in The Sumerian Game 1.0, this is a reconstruction of the version created in parallel by IBM at the Mohansic Laboratory (now the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights). It is a simplified and rudimentary version of the gameplay that later became famous thanks to Hamurabi. The reconstruction was possible through some fragments of game output listings and Richard Wing’s notes. It is only 50% faithful, as assumptions had to be made about mechanics not described by Wing. Available only to those who purchase the Supporter Pack.

Suilxr: already present in The Sumerian Game 1.0, this is the reconstruction of the most well-known version of the game, created by Mabel Addis at BOCES in Yorktown Heights in 1965 and improved over the following two years. It is 95% faithful, as nearly all necessary information was recovered from archives, output listings, and Wing's notes. Available to everyone in the Free to Play version.

Suilxr advanced: already present in The Sumerian Game 1.0, this is the complete version of Suilxr with player questions and slides. It is only 75% faithful to the original version because some texts (the questions) and the slide mechanic have been lost. The reconstruction is based on assumptions about how and when the slides would be loaded from the projector, and on questions recreated in the style of the only two surviving examples. Available only with the purchase of the Supporter Pack.

King of Sumeria '68: This is the first major new feature of The Sumerian Game 2.0, based on FOCAL source code found by researcher Kate Willaert. It is the oldest version of the game by Douglas Dyment (later known as Hamurabi in subsequent versions). This lesser-known version has more text and the famous phrase "I beg to report," directly taken from Addis’s Sumerian Game. It wasn’t yet a real game, as it had no end and couldn't be lost. The simulation continued until the player decided to close the program. Interestingly, it had a procedure for loading custom initial parameters, a feature later abandoned or evolved in subsequent versions as a "load game" function. Available to everyone in F2P.

Hamurabi (Becker): Not present in Sumerian Game 1.0. This is a transitional version – created in early 1969 – between King of Sumeria '68 (the early version) and Hamurabi in BASIC. The random generation system on PDP-8 and Focal-68 didn’t work well, always returning the same value sequences. A student from Lexington High School, the same school as Jim Storer of Lunar Lander, modified the FOCAL code of King of Sumeria '68 to make it more "playable." Thanks to his work, other students could play it, including Storer himself, who later wrote Lunar Lander and The Pollution Game, inspired by Hamurabi. Available to everyone in F2P.

King of Sumeria '70 (DEC): This version was present in Sumerian Game 1.0. It is the most well-known version of Dyment’s game, stripped down to its core, with most of the text removed but with the possibility of "losing" the game. Available to everyone in F2P.

The Pollution Game: Another new feature not present in Sumerian Game 1.0. This is Storer’s game inspired by Hamurabi. It's a key development because all subsequent versions of Hamurabi, despite returning to the classic setting – The Pollution Game is set on a dystopian communist island where the player, as a dictator, must manage the economy, plantations, coups, mining companies, and pollution – internalized the mechanics invented by Storer. Moreover, the student, unknowingly, created a game with a strong narrative component, like Mabel Addis’s original. Available to everyone in F2P.

Sumer (French): A new addition to Sumerian Game 2.0, available to all. It’s one of the many parallel versions of Hamurabi (FOCAL), but the oldest developed in Europe. Interestingly, it uses archaic French and curses at the player when mistakes are made.

Hamurabi (BASIC): already present in Sumerian Game 1.0, this is the version programmed by David Ahl and popularized through 101 BASIC Computer Games. Available to everyone in F2P.



The most important new feature is the inclusion of The Sierra Leone Game, rebuilt from scratch. This is the second of three simulation games created through the joint BOCES and IBM project (the first, of course, being The Sumerian Game, the last was The Free Enterprise Game). Although less influential than The Sumerian Game, as it wasn’t ported to other languages nor featured in publications like 101 BASIC Computer Games or DEC newsletters, The Sierra Leone Game is very important because it was the second example of gamification and the first game to include an introduction, tutorial, and a sort of tooltip. In the initial phases, students embarked on a virtual journey (with text printed by the computer, slides, and prerecorded audio) through Sierra Leone, with a detailed explanation of the duties of UN officials and the ability to explore topics by typing keywords. After the introduction, the player took a knowledge test, and if passed, could immediately receive a field promotion. The game then proceeded through three phases, each with increasing difficulty, involving managing an onion plantation, trading rice in general markets, running a diamond sales office, and finally, heading a Ministry of Economic Development. Based on Wing's notes and a small portion of recovered texts, this version includes the introduction, tutorial, keyword system, tests, and the three sections of phase one (onion plantation). This version is only available to Supporter Pack purchasers.