BOO! Got scared? Don’t be, it’s just the Steam Scream Fest is her 🎃 During the event, you can get Darkestville Castle with a 30% discount.

The offer is available until November 3th. Don’t miss your chance to embark on a journey through a dark fairy tale, explore mysterious ancient ruins with Tania, and uncover the secrets of her origins and fate + maybe dive into our spookiest indie titles, from Remedium, Unusual Findings, BattleJuice Alchemist to Demon Skin (and more lurking in the dark 👻).

I am in the middle of updating the game to improve the performance by switching the render and things like that but I have a post mortem as I was thinking on how I could do better and that I should probably try a completely different approach the next time around.

• Feel like it was good learning experience despite being what most people would call a flop

• I did have some ideas for an extra level but now I think it's best to skip that and to move on

It's not the genre that I picked or anything like that it's simply my own fault for what I came up with.

I have to really rethink about what I did. I spent about 10 months working on this project and I feel like it's a improvement from the first game. I'm starting to question if the way I think I'm making a "good" game isn't really that good. I need to study more games and to really figure out what people actually like playing.

I also have to reconsider if people like playing games with minibosses and bosses in the format and style that I made them where it's a level with both of them in one level. Because that took a lot of time to make the levels themselves.

The main things that took time were making the various enemies, minibosses and bosses. And the hazard as well though those didn't take up that much time. It was a lot of work making sure that every enemy has a unique attack and that I have some like minibosses that will do an attack the boss will do variation of that attack but it's still different. I decided not to move the actual arena that much around though or anything and to keep it contained which seemed fine I wasn't really limited by what I could do within a set room.

There is also the basic dialogue and then going through and translating the game in 16 total languages. But that's not really that important.

• Maybe 7 levels is too many and if i just made it smaller game that was free it would have been better

• Rethink about how I am spending time

○ If I should have skipped translating

○ If dialogue was needed

• Rethink if game is priced too high

Overall more motivated than ever to try harder and to do better on my next project. I believe I can make something that more people would like to play but right now I'm still unsure.

BOO! Got scared? Don’t be, it’s just the Steam Scream Fest is her 🎃 During the event, you can get Tetragon with a 75% discount.

The offer is available until November 3th. Don’t miss your chance to embark on a journey through a dark fairy tale, explore mysterious ancient ruins with Tania, and uncover the secrets of her origins and fate + maybe dive into our spookiest indie titles, from Remedium, Unusual Findings, BattleJuice Alchemist to Demon Skin (and more lurking in the dark 👻).

🕯️ The spirit of Halloween is drifting through the dreamland...

Are you ready for a feast of candy, ghosts, and creativity? 🍬👻

Join our three special challenges and show your imagination and festive magic! 🖤

Edit, draw, or remix anything from Dark Fairy Tale — as long as it’s spooky and festive!

🎁 Prize: $20 Steam Gift Card (1 winner)

Share a screenshot featuring the Halloween ghosts,

or show your candy collection (at least 5 candies) in your inventory!

🎁 Prize: Game + DLC (2 winners)

🎁 Prize: 1 game key (1 winner)

🔗 Full details and submission channels (Discord)

You’ll find all event information and submission guidelines there.

📌 Submission Notes:

• Entries for Challenge 1 & 2 must include the hashtag:
  👉 #DarkFairyTaleDreamlandSurvivors

• You can also post entries in our Discord #🎨artists-corner — we’ll count them too!

• No AI-generated artworks are allowed.

• Multiple submissions are welcome!

• Submissions after the deadline will not be counted — don’t wait till the last minute!

🕒 Event Period: Now – November 5th
📢 Winners will be announced a week after the event ends.

Show your creativity and Halloween spirit — and good luck! 🎃✨

Resource Systems (Both Factions)

Iron Core (Depots) and Shadow Market now generate resources progressively over time:

* When built, they start producing +4 $ per second

* After 2 minutes, income increases to +5 $ per second

* After another 2 minutes, it increases to +6 $ per second

* When upgraded, production increases further:

* Starts at +8 $ per second

* After 2 minutes, increases to +9 $ per second

* After another 2 minutes, reaches +10 $ per second, where it remains fixed

Super Weapons Systems (Both Factions)

Destruction Wave – Damage increased

Tactical Nuclear Strike – Damage increased

Interface & Tutorial

Added an in-game “How to Play” text on the tutorial UI to inform players that the first mission is optional and serves as a tutorial notice, not a main challenge mission.

Iron Hands Faction – Building & Unit Balance Update

Buildings & Towers

Headquarters - HP increased

Red Eye Tower – Cost reduced, build time reduced, damage reduced

Defender Tower – Build time improved

Ray of Justice Tower – HP reduced, price reduced, build time reduced, damage reduced

Infantry

Rocket Puncher – HP growth increased, move speed reduced, damage reduced

Commander Akil – HP increased, price reduced, move speed reduced, damage reduced

Reptile – HP growth increased, move speed reduced, damage reduced

Guardian Trooper – HP growth increased, move speed reduced, damage vs infantry/buildings/vehicles reduced, splash damage reduced

Vehicles & Aircraft

Wind Blade – HP growth increased, move speed reduced, damage reduced

Inferno Artillery – HP greatly increased, price increased, speed reduced, all damage increased, reload time increased, explosion effect upgraded

Iron Collector – HP increased, speed reduced

Phantom Chopper – HP increased, speed reduced, attack range reduced, damage reduced

Iron Fly – HP increased, ground speed reduced, upgraded air speed reduced, damage reduced

Nightmare Gunship – HP increased, speed reduced, damage reduced

Black Bird – HP increased, speed reduced, damage reduced

Hurricane Tank – HP increased, speed reduced, damage reduced

Titan Tank – HP upgraded, speed reduced, damage reduced

Spear Transport – HP upgraded, speed reduced, damage reduced

GRA Faction – Building & Unit Balance Update

Buildings & Towers

Command Center - HP increased

Bunker – Cost reduced

Gatling System – Price reduced, damage reduced

Tube Defense – Build time reduced

Infantry

Beast – HP increased, speed reduced, air damage increased

Boomhand – HP growth increased, speed reduced, damage reduced, splash damage reduced

General Razel – HP growth increased, speed reduced, damage vs buildings and vehicles reduced, upgraded effectiveness vs infantry

Steel Breaker – HP growth increased, speed reduced, damage reduced

Vehicles & Aircraft

Khanjar D. Truck – Now buildable directly from Garage (no longer requires Upgrade Center); HP reduced, price and build time reduced, speed reduced, damage reduced

Elephant – HP increased, price increased, build time increased, speed reduced

Flying Rhino – HP increased, speed reduced, damage reduced, splash damage reduced

Shark Collector – HP increased, speed reduced

Hunter Jeep – HP increased, speed reduced, attack range increased, damage reduced

Mantis – Now requires Upgrade Center to unlock; HP increased, speed reduced, damage vs vehicles and buildings reduced

Suicide Wasp – HP increased, speed reduced

All Rounder – HP increased, speed reduced, damage reduced

Volcano – HP increased, speed reduced, damage reduced, splash damage reduced

Fixed
- Winnders in races not registering
- Error here career earnings were not shown in some inbox messages
- Removed some faulty indexes
- Custom tabs can be removed again
- Small error in notification panel, making game a bit more stable
- Race names in right click context menu
- Signals check if there is already a signal, reducing errors
- Removing duplicate signals for the trade table
- Some signals in top bar
- Top bar a bit less "flashy", but the values still flash a bit

• 'Ante Chamber' : a little expansion based on BALATRO

• Featuring 4 characters, 4 weapons with their respective evolution, a new stage, and a remix of the Balatro main theme

• Survarots: a new game mechanic, also available in the base game, to alter character stats and abilities

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3929770

This is a list of gameplay changes compared to a standard local co-op run:

• Batch level up - Depending on the player count you will only see level up after all players have leveled up. So on 4 players the level up screen will only show every 4 levels.

• DLC - You will only be able to use DLC online if every player owns that DLC. We're retro-fitting Online into an originally single player game written in JS by a solo dev, so there are a lot of technical issues we have to move around or worry about later, one of which is the way that DLC expansions are handled.

• Free Roam - In online you are not restricted to the same screen, you can all freely move around the stage independently. (Note: You will be pulled into a boss room if any player walks into it)

• Spectator mode - When you die in multiplayer you can use the mouse to jump to players who are still alive. You also respawn where they are if you are spectating them.

• Achievements - You will have the choice at the end of the run to carry over any achievements earned in that run back into your own save file.

• Speed up - Disabled in online.

• Pause menu - To help flow, when you pause, you do not pause for everyone else, you just get a small window of invincibility

• A gamba themed stage: Westwoods

• A labyrinth themed stage: Mazerella

• A new relic that lets you play Party Mode (play with up to 4 characters at the same time)

• 2 new playable characters

• 2 new weapons with their respective evolutions

• 1 new Character Morph

• 1 new PowerUp

• 3 new Darkanas

• Survarot game mechanic

What are Survarots?
Survarots are a new form of power creep that is currently usable by the character Secretino and all the Ante Chamber characters. They are vaguely similar to Arcana cards, but are themed after characters from Vampire Survivors and provide different types of bonuses.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3210350/
An expansion for the Vampire Survivors: Ode to Castlevania Expansion! Our Castlevania Collab DLC is getting even bigger, at no price change, and you'll be able to find all this new stuff after the update:

• 16 new secret characters

• 3 new weapons + evos

• 13 new weapon unions

• 1 new adventure

• 12 new music tracks

- To unlock the content of Ante Chamber: find the special merchant in Moongolow and buy the Joker Disk for 50k gold coins. Proceed with the chain of unlocks that starts in the new stage, Ante Chamber.

- To unlock the new content of Ode to Castlevania: the conditions to unlock the new characters will appear in the SECRETS menu after you have 'completed' the main UNLOCKS of the dlc.

A quick reminder that the new wiki for Vampire Survivors is available at http://vampire.survivors.wiki and already contains a lot of information about patch 1.14!
Completely free of advertisement, banners, and all that sort of crap that gets in the way; just information, a user friendly website, and it's also fully functional on mobile.
Once again a huge thank you to all of our Wiki helpers on Discord our partners Weird Gloop for putting this wiki together, for their support, and for their guidance!

- Steam : everything available today
- PlayStation: everything available today
- Nintendo Switch: everything available on October 31st
- Xbox: everything available on October 31st
- Mobile: new content available today, online arriving in November

Thanks for all your support when we announced our official board game back in August! We're pleased to say the Kickstarter is now live so you can pledge and be the first to play when it launches.

PlayStation Cross-Save:
we're waiting for a potential policy change from PS; we'll get cross-save as soon as there is a policy we're happy to agree to. We don't know their timelines of course, but our account managers at PS are keeping us updated and are already helping anyway they can!

Online Cross-Play:
it won't be available at launch due to the additional bureaucracy needed to make it work. We'll try to add it in a future patch.
Cross-Play with PS will also be subject to the same policy as Cross-Save, so it might eventually be delayed further than other platforms.

Online on the free mobile versions:
it will be available after purchasing at least 1 DLC

Online on Apple+:
we're trying to add it, but there's a lot of bureaucracy involved, so we can't say for sure if or when it will be available

Playing Online with random players:
there are no plans to have lists of public rooms or anything similar; due to how chaotic the game can become, the risk of continuously encountering griefers is really high (not to mention that a lot of requests for public room came from people who explicitly said they wanted to have fun at the expense of other players, while the spirit of online co-op is to play together)

Playing Online with Expansions:
currently all players in a room have to own a DLC to be able to play contents of that DLC online.
We're aiming to change this so that only one player needs the DLC, but since that involves a lot of technical work we had to postpone this to a future patch.

For our next patch, that will most likely arrive in Q1 next year, we'll be focusing on QOL improvements to better manage the avalanche of available content and the late-game on-screen chaos, performance improvements for less powerful platforms, save slots (finally), and of course a bit more content. We'll try to reach the end of the Chaos Roadmap by the end of 2026 🤞

Before the next patch though, we have another TWO, SPECIAL, cards to reveal!

Hope to see you in a couple of weeks on our Discord or socials to see what hides behind card #6 ːdireyesː

BOO! Got scared? Don’t be, it’s just the Steam Scream Fest is her 🎃 During the event, you can get Unusual Findings with a 66% discount.

The offer is available until November 3th. Don’t miss your chance to embark on a journey through a dark fairy tale, explore mysterious ancient ruins with Tania, and uncover the secrets of her origins and fate + maybe dive into our spookiest indie titles, from Remedium, Unusual Findings, BattleJuice Alchemist to Demon Skin (and more lurking in the dark 👻).

We’re excited to bring you more about Aphelion, our upcoming cinematic sci-fi action-adventure game. The new trailer, which was unveiled at the ID@Xbox Showcase, reveals Ariane’s fellow astronaut Thomas as the second playable character, and you get a glimpse of the game's stealth sequences, the never-before-seen alien antagonist, new environments, and the in-game spacesuit patch designed in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA).

Watch the trailer now:

Ariane and Thomas have different playstyles and experiences throughout their search for one another after the crash of their ship. Ariane’s gameplay is highly physical; she explores and traverses Persephone, which proves to be much more hostile than anticipated. Thomas is injured from the crash but relies on his ingenuity and observation skills to piece together his surroundings. As both characters explore and investigate, they will uncover secrets and clues as to the planet’s strange conditions and what caused the crash of their ship.

What starts out as a mission compromised from the beginning becomes a deeper journey into the unknown. You must avoid confrontations with this hostile entity by hiding and sneaking in tense, thrilling stealth sequences. Its existence adds more questions to answer for Ariane and Thomas: what is this creature, where did it come from, and why is it stalking us?

As is tradition in spaceflight, each mission has a symbolic patch representing it. Our fictional Hope-01 mission patch – designed by Aphelion’s Artistic Director Arnaud Barbier in collaboration with ESA – bridges the history of space exploration with the speculative future that this story explores. Keep an eye out for a dedicated article on the patch and its design choices!

For nearly twenty-five years, Ice-Pick Lodge has explored what makes games a transformative medium. From the beginning, we chose video games as a means, not a market. We wanted to reach human emotions that no other form could touch. Had theater or cinema been able to move the soul as deeply and precisely as games do, we might have founded a film company or theater troupe instead. However, it was games that proved to be the most intimate form of communication between creators and their audience.

Over the years, this pursuit has shaped our identity. Each of our projects has been an attempt to see how far a game can go in reflecting the inner worlds of its players.

Our next project takes us into unprecedented territory. For the first time in our history, we’re stepping into someone else’s universe. It’s our pleasure to announce that we are making Darkwood 2. We will be working within the world created by Acid Wizard Studio, a team whose work we deeply respect.

Set years later after the events of the first game, this is an unusual and exciting opportunity for us to interpret the vision of other masters through our creative process and see what new life emerges from that dialogue. Darkwood 2 will bring new lands and waters to explore, new creatures to fear, and new reasons to pray for the morning light.

Check out the announcement trailer:


We’re also thrilled that this collaboration is happening with Hooded Horse, an indie publisher whose expertise, understanding, and genuine love for video games are unmatched. We have great respect for the team that recognized the potential of projects such as Empires of the Undergrowth, 9 Kings, and Against the Storm and guided them to incredible success. There is definitely a signature style here. Together, we will work in consultation with the Acid Wizard team to ensure that Darkwood 2 is a memorable successor to the original game.

What comes next is as much a mystery to us as it is to you—and that’s exactly why it’s worth doing! We’re excited to have you join us for this journey, wherever it may take us.