This past weekend we hosted a BIGMOON BASH in Beastieball, where coaches could challenge one another in fierce contests of sport! In light of the recent balance patch, we opened this Bash up to every Beastie and team out there to see how things are shaping up!

But first: here are the coaches who achieved the highest Bash Scores in this event!

1. Satoros (The Diamond Ducks) | Bash Score: 3208
   
2. Bolimar (The Crimson Waves) | Bash Score: 3088
   
3. Kesephim (The Dazzling Lovers) | Bash Score: 2992
   
4. AshleyETA (The Musical Girls) | Bash Score: 2904
   
5. Rosery (The Roaring Knights) | Bash Score: 2896
   
6. MochaTeehee (The Hello Fishes) | Bash Score: 2796
   
7. Kyyg (The Wacky Worms) | Bash Score: 2760
   
8. • Ket (The Lonesome Lovers) | Bash Score: 2744
     
   • Arc Tech (The Arcane Machines) | Bash Score: 2744
9. N/A
   
10. Vega (The Dancing Dragons) | Bash Score: 2740

Honorable Mention: Kim (The Happy Hearts) | Bash Score: 2820
(We initially reported kim among the top Bash Scores but we later realized she hadn't actually played enough matches to certify the score.)

NOTE: During the first few hours of the event, Mac and PC players were mistakenly treated as though they were on different balance patches, preventing them from matching up. Everyone was still able to play, but this did have an effect on the available pool of opponents and likely had an effect on early Bash Score calculations. We apologize for this tech issue!

Thanks primarily to the efforts of kim, we've got mini-interviews with some of these top-ranking players here:

You can read more interviews like this in kim's official sheet!

I also want to acknowledge that there are tons of amazing players in our community, including many who have made huge contributions to the game's competitive exploration but don't happen to appear in the top Bash Scores. If you're enjoying the game and want to meet friendly like-minded players, our official Discord is always humming with Beastieball chatter and fan tournaments!

As has become tradition, we've collected a ton of data on Beastie usage during this event and we're happy to share that data with you for further investigation!

I'm sure players will have their own discourse about the stats from this Bash, but here are my own thoughts on what we're seeing.

• This is the first Bash where Bandicraft was legal but not the most-used Beastie! That crown was taken by Hopra, a different starter Beastie.
  • I think this moment represents a major inflection point in the developing meta of Beastieball. Beasties' relative popularity with casual players has always been a major driving force in what gets used, and that's what we've seen reflected in usage with Bandicraft being the most popular Beastie both casually and competitively. But we're seeing more and more players start to optimize their team building, and that means usage is shifting more towards the Beasties that provide greater utility.
  • Bandicraft might have incredible offensive passing utility with Captain, but with a diverse array of support and offensive capabilities, Hopra is easy to fit onto any team whether they're gearing more for an offensive or defensive playstyle.
• Illugus, Surgus and Bongus still dominate the usage near the very top and still in that precise order.
  • Illugus has been through some finicky tweaks to their moveset and trait balance as we try to get them in line with other offensive tools. It's nice to see that despite their setbacks, players are still using Illugus and finding success with them.
  • We hope the recent changes have made Illugus more fun to play against, too!
• Rally-focused teams are still popular. Roughly 7 or the top 10 Beasties all like to play in Rally. Despite the recent addition of Demolish, a powerful Body-type play which clears field effects, we're not seeing Body-focused Beasties make a meaningful dent in Rally's control of the meta.
  • We'll definitely be thinking about how much we need to intervene with balance chnages here VS. giving the community space to find answers for Rally with the tools already in the game.
• If we turn our eyes to the bottom of the usage list, there's a few regular suspects, but Platypulse is a surprise last-place contender!
  • Platypulse has amazing utility to shutting down mind-style offense, but players may be overlooking it due to Rally being prevalent in usage right now.
  • However, if Platypulse isn't seeing use, that just means mind-type offense has a greater opportunity to shine without its scariest counter to stop it...
• Broadly, we're seeing the meta continue to diversify. There were (almost)* no fully-grown Beasties with 1% or less usage, which is pretty exceptional when there are so many different Beasties to choose from.
  • It's exciting to see players exploring all the possibilities offered by so many different Beasties. I'm sure there are tons of scary combos still waiting to be discovered out there and keep our balance team** up all night!

*Sorry Grazada.
**(Damian and I)
Many high-ranking players have felt anecdotally like it's more difficult to play from the side that gets the first serve in a match. During this Bash we put some extra analytics towards measuring this dis/advantage! Here are the results from 2,300 matches played.

• Winrate when NOT serving: 52.2%
  
• Winrate when NOT serving (for players in the top 50% Bash Score range): 53.5%

So: The anecdotes are true! The player who gets the first serve is playing with a very minor disadvantage right now. We'll continue to collect data on this over a larger sample size to see whether this holds true. With a disadvantage so small, and which disproportionately impacts high-ranked games rather than casual players, it may be hard to find a balance adjustment that makes these odds even more fair, but we'll be thinking about it. In looking for stats to compare these numbers with, we found that these numbers are very comparable to what was observed in Hearthstone for the player who goes first. It's a smaller advantage than you typically see in Chess.

For now, if you're worried about the serve disadvantage, you should factor it into your team building; having a strong serve option that can disrupt your opponent's first turn should be a very important part of any strong team. Bolimar said as much eloquently in their mini-interview above; and notably, even with their jaw-dropping 3088 Bash Score, they happened to be the serving player in the vast majority of their matches, so there's provable ways to put that advice into practice and see results!

I'm grateful every day that this gets to be my job. I love seeing the competitive game grow and change in the hands of players! We'll keep working hard on balance changes and other things. Stay tuned!

Whispers from the Server Depths
The RailGod has evolved and her powers have expanded. Upon inspection, we have found new settings to fine-tune her performance.
Server Options have made their way to the game. By manipulating these options, the Conductor may use their RailGod's power to manipulate the laws of Hysterra. For now, only one option exists, to control Satiety Depletion Time. From a mere 10 minutes for the truly brave to 25 minutes for those too faint-hearted to endure longer.
Though called server options, this is available for both Single Player and Multiplayer.

Recovering More of Humanity's Languages - Polish
After successfully establishing a connection to Türkiye and Korea, the maintainers of the Endless Railways set their sights on Poland. There, creatures known as Shantak, allied with the Outer God Nyarlathotep, were actively oppressing humanity, giving the RailGod an excellent opportunity to test her new abilities.
With the ferocity of the Hussars of old and the power of the RailGod behind them, the remaining Polish people the Shantak were defeated. Throughout the campaign, the RailGod mastered the Polish language and spread understanding of the language to all of her stations across the globe.

Sprint’s Tenuous Grip
The Sprint - a new power recently granted by the RailGod - now carries a deeper weight. The impact of sole on earth strikes harder and the effects are more pronounced, letting the sprinting Conductor know that they are running on firm grounds.

A New State of Mind
As a connoisseur of food, the RailGod understands the necessity of knowing - without any doubt - when one is hungry. Therefore, she has gifted a new ability to her Conductors. Those who have not been fed enough will see a Starving mark upon them if their Satiety drops to 0.
Should the Conductor attempt to move with haste, the burden of hunger will become a cruel weight, symbolized not only by the icon but by the cruel text above their head.

The Forgotten Key
And finally, in the depths of the train, the Train Management Menu (J) has been made more visible. Use this option to utilize the powers of the RailGod to teleport you between carriages!

The Bounty Deepens
As news of the RailGod and her conductors spreads throughout Hysterra, hope slowly grows in the hearts of humanity. As such, you shall be paid twice the reward for all Side Quests from now on.

Carriages Reweighed
Madness has been found to infect those who set the prices of the RailGod carriages. 3x3 carriages were priced too cheaply, making the 3x5 carriages pointless. Therefore, the price of the 3x3 carriages has been increased.

• We have introduced "Server Options" for Multiplayer and Singleplayer.
  
• This is only accessible via the Menu when in-game.
  
• In Multiplayer mode, only the Host may modify these options.
  
• For one, only 1 option exists: to change the Satiety Depletion Rate
  Minimum 10 minutes (from 100 to 0)
  Maximum 25 minutes (from 100 to 0)
  
• Added Polish translation to the game.
  
• Improved the visual effects when sprinting
  
• New Feature: Status Icons.
  These are icons that appear under specific circumstances.
  The first status is "Starving".
  This appears when the Satiety drops to 0.
  If the player tries to sprint with Satiety at 0, the additional text "STARVING" will display above the player.
  Made the Train Management Menu hotkey (default: J) more visible.
  
• If no savegame exists, the game will use the Steam client's current language as the game language.
  
• Side Quests now give you double the rewards.
  
• The price of the 3x3 Carriages has increased.
  
• If no save game exists, the game will use the player’s Steam language as the game’s language.

Hurry up and buy a sweet animation!
Attention! It is necessary to buy a “banquette”
(Shop -> Furniture -> Sex)

Update Version 0.1.11

- Fixed an issue where potions sometimes wouldn't collider with the player to be picked up or kicked forward.
- Ranger arrows and mage fireballs have more mass and shoot with more force.
- Fix pink edges on text from transparency bleed-through. Hurray!
- Started on a UI cleanup/slight overhaul. The UI slider can cause some hard-to-read text while the UI is being reworked. I'd recommend avoiding the UI scale slider for now, or at least setting it to default.
- Fix a problem with item sale price calculation at the shop.
- Lightning bolt will be automatically re-selected to be cast if there's enough power to do so. Cancel by right-clicking anywhere.
- Start on a window position handler to help multiple monitor situations.

🔥 Hurry up to buy at a bargain price!

v0.8.5b Changes: - Will be live when Steam finishes processing it!

• Fixed high density blueprint filter not showing any buildings (for residential. No other included blueprints are available for other building types)
  
• Fixed red X boxes outputting after deleting zone/property
  
• Fixed auto-grow zones sometimes failing to grow
  
• Fixed auto-grow zones sometimes outputting a building outside the zone (or the zone moving)
  
• Improved indoor pathing code efficiency
  
• Stopped varying brightness of sidewalk tiles

Save and blueprints files are not broken

Updated Birb Game so that all the menus are now fully navigable with just a controller (or just a keyboard or just a mouse).

Biggest visible change is the new lobby code input, instead of a text field there are now individual number selectors.


Added option to dive with a middle mouse button, so that players are able to play with just a mouse.

In case of any bugs or feedback, let me know on the steam community forums, or on Bluesky, or Twitter

- Fixed Critical bug at the end of Birstall zone related with keys.

Our full launch is a little less than 3 weeks away! (Monday, June 2nd, at 9am Eastern Standard Time.)

Last week we shared a bit about our studio and how to stay in the loop on future projects (e.g. our Just-the-Big-News mailing list we've only sent four emails to in five years). This week we want to share some of our plans for post-launch content for Cyber Knights!


Full launch is a huge milestone; a complete game, ready for everyone to play, with enough content to already offer hundreds of hours of replayability. And because this is a Trese Brothers game, there's a lot more to come.

Our last game, Star Traders: Frontiers, has received more than 270 updates of free post-launch content & support in the 7 years since it exited Early Access. The pace has slowed as Cyber Knights became our focus, but we continue to add content as we're able.

We dream big, but we're a small studio so we have to be smart about scoping. Especially as great ideas from players pour in during EA, we have to evaluate where to draw the line between needed improvements that will make the core game better (e.g. individual unit extraction, lots more movement alerts and HUD icons), nice-to-haves that will make good post-launch additions (e.g. mod support, weapon visual customization), and firmly out-of-scope ideas beyond our resources or design intent (e.g. multiplayer, destructible environments).

We love our games, and as long as they have enough active players and it's financially viable to do so, we continue to update them. As always from us, new content is made available to all existing playthroughs, and updates will never invalidate a save game.

Like Star Traders, if Cyber Knights is as successful as we hope it will be we'll continue to add content of all types (classes, missions, cosmetics, safehouse, contacts, etc.) for years to come. Later after launch we'll release an official roadmap to outline what we can commit to, but for now I can share a few exciting highlights...


Character classes add a ton of variety to any tactical RPG, especially with multiclassing like ours. By launch Cyber Knights will have 54 possible multiclass combinations! We plan to add more class options after launch, and one of the most exciting types are companion unit classes.

These classes will require a specialized cybernetic implant that gives them advanced control and coordination capabilities with different types of companion units you can acquire and take on missions. The Drone Pilot will manage a swarm of drones with varying capabilities, the Hunder can direct a pack of cybernetically-augmented warhunds, and the Assassin synchronizes their tactics with a lethally-enhanced big cat as stealthy and deadly as they are.


These classes will be significant free expansions, each with a corresponding safehouse room, recruitment storylines, variety of talents, and new mechanics for their companion units.


As gamers, we love modding, and it's always been our dream to enable modding capabilities for our games. It takes a lot of work to provide the necessary hooks, safeguards, and tools to enable this, but early in Cyber Knights' conception we decided this would be the game we'd make that leap for.

Reaching full launch is a critical first step; with game systems finalized and some initial groundwork already laid by our development process, we'll soon be able to start building the framework to enable modding for many components of Cyber Knights' gameplay. This will not be an early addition, but when it comes it will come with full Steam Workshop support and - hopefully - a nice starting set of mods from an advance crew of modders interested in trying our tools early.

If you're a modder yourself and would be interested in that, let us know.


One of the things we're most proud of for Cyber Knights is the new "Casting Director" story engine we built. As you play, the Casting Director chooses from a pool of available storylines, each of which has a number of "roles" it can dynamically fill with squad members and contacts from your specific playthrough, based on background tags and traits they've developed as a result of how you've played.

This works hand-in-hand with the proc-gen mission system, which develops your characters and contacts through victories, failures, wounds, power plays, trait mutation, and more. Together, it makes it possible for each playthrough to feel dynamic and personalized - and the more content it has to go off of, the better it works.

We're still deciding on a reasonable scope to commit to for our first post-launch roadmap, but there's no doubt that further expanding story and mission content will keep your fun going in Cyber Knights for a long, long time.


Originally slated to be done before launch, this is a feature we cut from the launch scope as it just wasn't feeling core enough to the game or in-demand enough to make it worth extending the launch timeline for. But, it is a cool feature for a cyberpunk mercenaries RPG so we do plan to loop back to implementing this, letting you visually customize and personalize your weapons in addition to the wide range of already-implemented weapon mods with in-game effects.


Also shifted from the original roadmap, we'll later add the ability for your mercs to drag bodies to different locations. We already have so many ways for your squad members to deal with bodies (and the ramifications of them being spotted) via talents and items. Moving bodies comes with its own tradeoffs, and in playtesting it wasn't feeling like a clearly superior or integral feature. When it's added, it will nicely round out your options for this aspect of the game, but it feels more supplemental than core, and we've shifted it to post-launch to make room for higher priorities.


Cyber Knights launches with support for PC, Mac, Linux, and Steam Deck already under its belt, and fully rebindable controller support! After our first wave of post-launch content, we'll be starting work on mobile ports of the game for our dedicated fans on Android and iOS who enjoy having in-depth RPGs they can play on the go.

Console ports are definitely on our radar. Much depends on how well the game's release goes on Steam, though. If it performs as well as we hope, we have developer accounts created through Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo and would be thrilled to have our first console release further down the road.


Work on French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish translations continues; it is an intense and nuanced process! We'll have a more detailed post on where we stand with translation availability closer to launch, but regardless we would like to continue to expand the number of languages we translate to over time, depending on which regions we see the most wishlists coming from.

If you're bilingual and would like to get an early look & give us feedback on translations when they're available in your language, please let us know.

Hope you've enjoyed this preview of what's to come. We'll release an official post-launch roadmap later down the line, but we are always happy to hear ideas and answer questions in Discord.

The more Cyber Knights succeeds, the more resources we'll have to keep growing it, so please spread the word on reddit (we're always thrilled to see Cyber Knights mentioned in r/GamingSuggestions), to content creators on YouTube or Twitch (let them know a squad-based strategy RPG you're hyped for is launching June 2nd), and in any gaming Discords you're part of.

We don't have that AAA publisher money to fund CGI short-film trailers or buy $250,000 showcase spots, 😅 so we hope you'll help us win the best way any game can: word of mouth.

Thanks for your support!

Valliant Knights and Ladies,

The wait is finally over! The official trailer for Legends of the Round Table is here, and the free playable demo is now live!



https://store.steampowered.com/app/3013400/?utm_source=News&utm_medium=Steam&utm_campaign=DemoLaunch

We'd LOVE to know what you think of the demo - please join us on our Discord server (http://roundtablegame.com/discord) and share your thoughts with us!

Please remember to wishlist the game (or demo - same thing!) it helps us tremendously. If you have a friend or a community that would love Legends of the Round Table, consider sending them a link to the free demo!

In Legends of the Round Table, you’ll take charge of King Arthur’s knights and shape the kingdom's fate through legendary quests filled with mystery, danger, and, of course, romance! These aren’t just any adventures, as they are drawn from real Arthurian tales and adapted to bring the folklore to life like never before. Inspired by Thomas Malory, Chrétien de Troyes and other medieval sources, every detail is crafted with care, from hand-painted art in the style of illuminated manuscripts to a soundtrack performed on real medieval instruments. It’s a rich blend of deep RPG storytelling, chivalric combat and love for the setting, and we can’t wait for you to experience it!