Chains on Sand launches in 7 days — New Trailer!

Contenders, we’re one week from release.
A new trailer is here—showing arena carnage, crowd judgment, and brutal finishers.

What’s in the game

• Procedurally generated opponents with varied behaviors

• Many builds: allocate stats, skills, and traits

• Tactical combat with facing/flanking, crippling injuries, and dismemberment

• Maneuvers, stances, hit locations, and status effects (stunned, bleeding, poisoned)

• Crowd Judgment: spare or execute—popularity has consequences

• Dozens of weapons & shields, quality tiers, and durability

• Throwables, consumables, and poisons

• Magic schools: Body, Heal, Protection, Elemental

• Special opponents with unique loot; face the killers of your past characters

• Steam Leaderboard to compare your deeds worldwide

Launch details

• Release: in 7 days

• Price: $9.99 with a 10% launch discount

If you like brutal, turn-based arena tactics, Wishlist/Follow to get the launch ping and discount.

⚔️ See you on the sand.
— ThVaz

Localization improvements

Have you heard? The NPCs have more voice options now! It's hard to miss when Elysia's British accent seems to hit hard with many players. ❤️‍🔥

Curious why you can choose between Legacy and Advanced text-to-speech? Read on to learn how our team yandere'd their way into this one—the emotional journey's end result is characters that are more dynamic, emotive, and dare we say alive?

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Originally, we used Azure's Speech Services  for our demo builds — it was stable and fast to set up for a demo project. But Azure came with some limitations. We wanted our girls to sound consistent across languages, yet few of Azure's voices could handle that well. Plus, Azure's TTS costs always ate up a big chunk of our budget. 💸 We're always on the hunt for ways to reduce cost without sacrificing quality.

At the same time, other TTS services like ElevenLabs and MiniMax came out, offering more advanced options, including different emotional tones. After many months of testing, we chose MiniMax, which supports multiple languages, delivers more expressive voices, and is significantly more cost-friendly.

We first rolled it out in the Steam China region, then in Russian and German, and finally implemented it across all languages for the global version this September.

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MiniMax isn't the only service we tested. Our team compared multiple providers on price, stability, scalability, and technical support. Here's how they stack up for our case:

• Azure: Pricey

• ElevenLabs: Widely used and good quality, but the most expensive.

• OpenAI: Also pricey, with no available technical support.

• Inworld: ❌ Not fitting for our use case.

• MiniMax: Cost-effective, with voice output that can reflect different emotions, plus excellent technical support from their customer service team.

Here are some samples comparing familiar voices with our test ones. We use one of Eddie's iconic CUTscene lines—let us know which of these voices truly speak to you!

We're also careful not to rely on smaller or short-term projects. Voice consistency matters — you don’t want to wake up one day and hear Eddie with a completely different voice, never able to change back. That's why we still keep both Legacy and Enhanced voice models in our game, so players who prefer the older voices can stick with them.

Scalability is another key factor. We currently support six languages, including English, Chinese, and Japanese, and we want to expand further. We're surveying our global community to decide which language to add next, so it's important to have a service that can reliably cover most of our needs.

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Switching pipelines is never easy:

One major challenge was picking tones that sound natural across all languages, then testing them through various game scenarios. The tone needs to match the original, since players are already familiar with how each girl should sound — it's part of their identity.

We also changed our audio format  — a technical adjustment that doesn't impact gameplay  — moving from .wav (our early demo's quick-prototyping choice) to .mp3, which is lighter in size. This was partly because the .wav files from MiniMax didn't fully fit our previous project's structure.

These details may stay behind the curtain, but they're what make sure you hear the right voice, with the right emotion, at exactly the right moment. 🎧

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We're still experimenting — balancing cost, stability, and immersion. The goal stays the same: voices that feel alive, connect with our characters, and make your time with them unforgettable. ✨

Based on the AI2U community's vocal feedback, fans are split between Eddie's original sweet voice and her new "anime dub" one. Meanwhile, Elysia's new British voice has enchanted many longtime and returning players, while Estelle's Legacy voice is preferred by her dedicated engineers.

Are you a fan of the Enhanced voices or a Legacy TTS enjoyer? We'd love to know if you like the new options or if you're committed to the NPCs' original voices (Eddie approves either way 💖🔪)

Update 1.10.5.0 is here, bringing visual improvements and major upgrades to The Forge!

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The Forsaken map has received several visual improvements, making it feel like a true ancient castle — darker, more detailed, and atmospheric.
Explore eerie halls and feel the weight of the cursed fortress like never before.

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The Forge has been upgraded to offer more freedom and cross-map progression:

• It can now create weapons you’ve unlocked on any map.

• You’ll have access to all unlocked weapons, plus map-exclusive ones.

• Every secret weapon you unlock will be instantly available in The Forge, across all maps (including the Hub).

🔥 The Forge is now the true core of your weapon progression — giving you full control over your arsenal anywhere you play.

• The New Halloween Skins are now Free to purchase. Due to it being a bug on day 1 of the update I decided to keep it this way and allow everyone to benefit from it. Thanks everyone who has played and provided feedback to help me continue making Sketchy’s great!

• Hunts now ends if one player is killed.

• Ouija board now only shows the planchette when placed down signifying it can now be spoken too.

• The Oujia Board now says: “place down to communicate” when held

• Reduced the chance of getting interactions in non-ghost rooms.

• The Daily info for “Aggressive” has been reworked.

• The Ghost now starts the hunt from a random room rather than always dead center of the house.

• Mr. Y strength that makes him transparent has been made more opaque and colored red to help make him a bit more visible during hunts.

• Replaced 1 of Georgie’s strength that was not working and was implemented incorrectly with a new strength involving the balloon ghost event.

• Adjust lighting on low and medium settings at the Hollow Manor Map.

• Friendly fire now prevents damage taken from Big Daddy, Pocket Rocket, and Super Nova explosions.

• Adding/Removing items to cart in the Weapons Shop now updates your current credits at the top right, turning red with a negative sign if your total exceeds the amount you have.

• Increased cosmic coins gained via T1 contracts from 100 to 125.

• Increased cosmic coins gained via T2 contracts from 450 to 525.

• Fixed an issue where players outside the house could be targeted at the start of a hunt.

• Fixed an issue where Mr. Y could target a player outside the house mid-hunt when attempting to pursue a different player.

• Fixed an issue where the Entity could target swap within seconds just after recently swapping targets.

• Fixed an issue where Georgie could kill a player in a happy place if they entered the closet before Georgie began pursuit.

• Fixed an issue where lighting based on video settings was not being updated when arriving to the new Map.

• Fixed an issue causing some cursed crucifixes from being able to be picked up.

• Fixed an issue where objects interacted with in Level 3 buildings would cause an egg to spawn rather than when the door opens.

• Fixed an issue allowing players to burn the Mandrake at the fireplace without actually needing to have a Mandrake equipped.

• Fixed an issue where Miss Nibbles was spawning multiple times after being collected.

• Fixed a basement spawn location for Miss Nibbles where she wasn’t spawn correctly.

• Fixed an issue with basement stair collision that would cause players shrunk during Georgie’s hunt to get stuck.

• Fixed an issue where placing an EMF down wasn’t properly calculating distance to an EMF signal causing the EMF to potentially not pick up a reading when placed.

• Fixed an issue where the new Skin would clip into the camera while run forward when shrunk.

• Fixed holding animation issues of whacker weapons.

• Fixed an issue where Miss Nibbles doesn’t count when looted to ship.

• Fixed an issue where Cat Treats doesn’t count when looted to ship.

• Fixed an issue where Crucifix doesn’t count when looted to ship.

• Fixed an issue where Pianos were not triggering as an interactable for fingerprints.

• Fixed an issue where the piano sound could be heard everywhere on the map when stepped on by Moro.

• Fixed an issue allowing the jetpack to be used on Hollow Manor.

• Fixed an issue where sometimes credits could get dropped on death in the investigation house.

• Fixed an issue where some AI got stuck in level 2 areas at Hollow Manor graveyard.

• Fixed an issue prevented Level 2 teleporter gen from installing at Hollow Manor Level 2.

• Fixed an issue where the Super Nova Rifle was held incorrectly by the new Halloween Skins.

• Fixed an issue where people that jump into the box cannot get out.

• Fixed an issue where Pew Pew would detect active Boomboxes NOT held by players causing him become stuck in an infinite rocket firing loop until killed or the boombox was picked up.

• Fixed an issue where clients joining into sessions sometimes cant move their character around after selecting a file.

• Fixed an issue where if the solo revive times out and sends the player back to the orbit, the option to revive would remain on the screen.

As the autumn night sky grows darker, flight work must go on…

This Halloween season, cargo demand in North America is up by 25%. You can also catch a treat in the form of a 20% fuel discount.

Don’t miss this chance to boost profits this spooky season!

\[ GAMEPLAY ]

• Adding Retakes as official game mode supporting Defusal Group Alpha and Defusal Group Delta maps on official matchmaking servers.

• Fixed Molotov and Smoke interaction logic in cases when multiple smokes are active in the map.

\[ MAPS ]

• Updated Golden to the latest version from Steam Community Workshop (Update Notes)

• Updated Palacio to the latest version from Steam Community Workshop (Update Notes)

• Updated Rooftop to the latest version from Steam Community Workshop (Update Notes)

Inferno

• Adjustments to top of Quad and under Balcony to improve visibility.

• Various optimizations.

\[ CONTRACTS ]

• Extended functionality of the "Trade Up Contract" to allow exchanging 5 items of Covert quality as follows:

  • 5 StatTrak™ Covert items can be exchanged for one StatTrak™ Knife from a collection of one of the items provided

  • 5 regular Covert items can be exchanged for one regular Knife item or one regular Gloves item from a collection of one of the items provided

\[ MISC ]

• Performance optimizations when the game is in the main menu and item inspect UI

• Fixed inventory item icons sometimes rendering in blurry state or not rendering

• Fixed several server-only sound events to not start multiple times

• Stability improvements

The bomb has been planted and you're running out of time. It's the return of retakes!

In this classic game mode, each round drops you in to a fast-paced 4v3 after-plant scenario. Select your loadout card each round, check the map to coordinate with your teammates, and use your resources wisely to defuse (or defend) the planted bomb.

The clock is ticking, what are you waiting for? Jump into a retakes server now!

Oh man back from the wedding, Mr Don Julio made an appearance so give me like two days to recover!

Ontop of that I have located a couple bugs that i thought i hunted down. Little bastards keep kicking I keep Shooting.

OH here is a picture of me! Blake Jones is my name And shitty games it what i Slay!

This is a minor update to start the Zhia Lian Celebration. Zhia is waiting impatiently for you to log in so that she can communicate with you.

This update also has bugfixes including some important stability improvements. Finally, it includes a bunch of nerfs because we want to get all the nerfs out of the way before launching new systems in Statehelm (Very Soon (TM)). Even more finally, it includes a revision to monster looting rules.

Most named "boss" monsters have a 3 hour "loot timer", meaning that if you kill the monster again within 3 hours, you get much lower-quality loot. In this update we're expanding the timer to also change how loot permissions work.

Attacks by a player that has already looted the monster recently no longer "group-lock" the monster to that player's hunting group. (Other players in the hunting group can still lock the monster by attacking, provided they haven't looted it recently.)

In cases where the monster dies without any group locking it, the old behavior was that the person who did the most damage gets first dibs on loot. That's still the rule, but with the extra caveat that players who have already looted the monster recently are never chosen over players who haven't.

The intent of this rule is to reduce friction in places where multiple groups are hunting the same boss monster. It's still "first come first served" for groups who haven't killed it yet, but hopefully this will prevent the same group from needlessly re-tagging the boss. This change also makes it safe for players to stick around and help later groups kill the boss without danger of screwing up looting permissions.

• More fixes for audio panel related to in-game voice chat features
  
• graphical performance improvements mainly to help users with low-end graphics cards
  
• Reinstall the out-of-bounds barrier in Serbule
  
• Adjust sunlight brightness in multiple areas
  
• Fix bug preventing the following augment from dropping: "Look At My Hammer causes your next ability to deal double direct damage"
  
• Fix "Word of Power: Elemental Immunity"
  
• Reduce visual clutter of trees in Kur Mountains
  
• Fix bug causing item rafflers to permanently affect your deployed count when they disappear before being configured
  
• Pulse of Life no longer deals damage to the target
  
• bugfix: loot generation: Sword skill is now compatible with Druid skill
  
• Upgrade Unity version to fix a Unity exploit
  
• A new "bad network" icon is displayed in the effect bar when your connection to the server is poor enough to impact gameplay. The intent is to give players more info about what's going on when weird things are happening. This in turn can help us understand reported issues
  
• fix issues with pet follow logic, especially when their master is flying or standing in inaccessible locations
  
• Portal Summoning Device - Nightmare Caves now drops you at the true beginning of the Nightmare Caves
  
• Beginners Buttermilk and Black Soup are now stackable to 5 (previously 1)

We've nerfed some systems and treasure effects that are too problematic to work around. Nerfs are always cases where we the devs messed up we couldn't find a fix aside from nerfing. I apologize for these mistakes and the impact they'll have on you. The bright side is that the nerfs below are all the planned nerfs prior to the game leaving Early Access.

In the past couple of years of development, we've settled onto a pattern of only nerfing things after observing their impact on the game for a long time -- at least six months. This has the upside of showing us that most things we initially want to nerf don't really need nerfing. But the downside is that when we do end up nerfing things, they've been in the game a long time and are commonly used.

Going forward the plan is to have six-month "Nerf Updates". These biannual updates will include any necessary nerfs. These updates will also be when we make major changes to combat skills, ones that require players to revise their characters. The hope is that by bundling big changes into these semi-annual updates we can provide more predictability and less FUD.

When a treasure effect says that it buffs an attribute while a particular skill is active, that previously just meant that the skill was one of your two active combat skills. In this update, "active" also means "usable":

• Warden gear requires you to be in an animal form
  
• animal-form combat skill gear requires you to be in that specific animal form
  
• gear for a weapon skill requires you to be wielding that weapon
  
• gear for Priest and Necromancy check that there aren't any disallowed items equipped

• Psychology treasure effect: (Hands, Feet) - "Mock deals +125% damage, taunts +500, and hits all targets within 20 meters, but reuse timer is +1.5 seconds" => "Mock hits all enemies within 20 meters and taunts +1000, but damage is halved and reuse timer is +1.5 seconds"
  
• This effect was previously available on Hands and Feet; it is now only available on Hands. Feet-slot items that have this effect have become Legacy items. You can use Transmutation to remove this effect and un-Legacy-ify the item. Alternatively you can visit the Legacy Item Helper golem in Serbule for a random replacement item.
  
• New psychology power: (Feet): "Bonus Taunt to All Attacks +2180 while Psychology skill active"

We realize this is a major change for some players and apologize for the annoyance of having to revise your character. To facilitate this, Psychology transmutation is set to be cheaper this month.

• Crossbow treasure effect: (MainHand, OffHand, Ring): "Crossbow Ability Reuse Time -12 seconds" => "Crossbow Ability Reuse Time -5.75 seconds and Damage +240"

• if a player uses Elmetaph's newbie quest to teleport to a spot deep inside the dungeon, their bind point is now at the entrance to that dungeon. (This mostly affects spots deep inside Errruka's Cave.)

We're also going to refactor the potency of Foretold/Mastercrafted specific boost recipes. This change was planned for this update, but we've postponed it because we found a way to implement it that is less obtrusive and annoying -- we'll be able to just alter the items in-place. This will happen in the next update.

We're working furiously on a bunch of big updates that will arrive in the coming weeks, including a major character-art revision. Next week we'll have a way for you to help us test those changes before they go live. Stay tuned for more info, and happy Halloween.