Hello Steam community!

Straight out of Gym Leader Ed's MONSTER TAMING DIRECT 2025! We're happy to showcase our latest trailer for Voidling Bound! Let's dive... into the Splicing Station!🧬

Explore the depth of the splicing system that allows you to utilize your gene collection and craft your perfect Voidling. Then, meet Gwigoon, a mischievous master of self-replication that wields its clones in combat for devastating effects.

|| The new features revealed today are not part of our demo. Expect them for the full release. ||

We're super excited to hear what you think of the trailer!

Thank you all and please leave a comment!

-Hatchery Games

=============================

About Monster Taming Direct 2025:

Monster Taming Direct is a yearly online event celebrating the Monster Taming genre. Featuring games about capturing, training, and battling with creatures. Hosted on the Gym Leader Ed Youtube channel, it brings together more then 40 studios to showcase exclusive new trailers, dev logs, and announcements.

Little backstory.

Initially, Blessed Burden started as a heavily stylized retro PSX-like game. In the course of development, we came to the conclusion that the pixelated look did not provide enough value to the player, so we put that idea on the bookshelf to focus on what truly matters: levels, gameplay, gamefeel, story, and beautiful brutalistic architecture.

And now, after game release and 4 updates, we decided to spend some time and pay homage to the initial game vision. These filters are optional and disabled by default.

There are 3 levels of pixellation effect:

And 2 levels of color precision effect:

You can mix and match these effects, so you can find the best fit for your taste.
Retro effects are located at the bottom of the general settings tab.

A feature for gamers who like speed and competition. A built-in timer that shows real time spent in the game and time spent actually running on levels.
Rush timer is located under the additional settings tab.
When feature is enabled, just enter the first stage (Gateway) and timer will start and show up in the top-left corner. It stops when you complete the last (Heart) stage.

There is now a setting to control the damage effect strength. Damage effect feature was expanded in the recent update and now includes not only fall damage but also damage from deadly traps.

Damage effect is purely visual feedback of the situation when the player was on the edge of death. If this effect bothers you, then you can make it subtle or disable it completely.

Thanks for playing!

Don't forget to leave a review on Steam, it really makes a difference.

Have a good one <3

Although ZERO PROTOCOL is a small game, you’ve always been able to finish it with different outcomes. Now there’s one more possible outcome!

Now, after completing the game, you will see the ending’s title along with its brief description.

There’s no need to replay the game from the very beginning to unlock new endings — you can now start from any level you’ve already finished.

However, due to the specifics of the save system, this option becomes available only after starting a new game. If you’ve already begun a playthrough, levels will only be saved starting from your current save point onward. For example, if before the update you were at the "GREENHOUSES" level, then that’s the earliest level (or any that follow) from which you’ll be able to replay in the future.

Many players complained that it was too difficult to hit enemies with weapons. Hopefully, this small change will improve the situation.

It’s now possible to assign numpad keys in the control settings, as well as function keys such as Del, PgDn, PgUp, etc.

I’ve changed the placement of some enemies. Now there are fewer spiders ambushing you from corners. At the same time, some levels have received additional enemies.

Many players felt there were too many medkits, batteries, and so on. Based on your feedback, their number has been slightly reduced.

This includes typos in the text, incorrect item spawns, and other minor issues.

Many experienced players wanted to see a different password there — and now they’ve got it!

Attention! To avoid bugs and critical errors, I recommend starting a new game. However, if you’ve already progressed far enough, it’s better to restart current level.

The day has finally come! The AFK Shift is finally open to new observers!

The full game includes a new set of streams to monitor - an old house with a sinister past, currently occupied by streamers - and some uninvited guests.

Also included is a full level editor and tooling to help build your own spoopy streams for others to experience - either through streaming with the Twitch integration, or by sharing the files directly.

Check the pinned forum message for future plans and roadmap!

Watch the trailer now and see how War Mechanic has evolved.

Don’t forget to wishlist on Steam and stay tuned.

Join the War Mechanic community

DISCORD

We’re back with a big update, and the free demo has been upgraded too —

This time, we really want to hear your voice:

👉 After playing, share your favorite card combo or strategy

👉 Tell us what could be improved — don’t hold back!

👉 If you enjoy the game, don’t forget to add to your WISHLIST，get the discount info in time!

Your feedback is our greatest motivation to keep going.

Thank you for staying with us, and welcome to all new players — let’s grow together with Cat Guardian!

We've had a lot of bugs popping up in different shapes and sizes, but some are clearly worse than others. Here is a full list of the bugs that appear to have been resolved and which ones I'm trying to fix right now. I'll also share some insights about them and the measures I'm taking to fix them. Thanks everyone for reporting and sticking with us! Soon we'll have an in-game report button :)

• Pop-up menus become giant (this is a small one)

• Duplication bug

  • (there were 2 variations of this, I forgot to patch the 2nd. These are pretty easy to fix, they're literally just a typo somewhere that I missed while rewriting some of the code in an attempt to fix other bugs)

• Tiny islands spawning on the left

  • (these are fragments from the background in the main menu that didn't get removed properly. Should be fixed now)

• Particle Limiter

  • This one was very necessary, some builds become very laggy because they instantiate a lot of particles. I now set a hard-cap on how many trigger particles can exist at a given time (this excludes projectiles and fire particles). From testing with a Root nature-town build I noticed that it can easily spike into the hunders, maybe even thousand. Right now I set an arbitrary cap of 200, but I want to give players this option in the setting soon so faster/slower computers can dial it to whatever they want.

• Crashing when loading or saving a game

  • Sadly this became more common over time, when looking at a bunch of logs (thank you everyone in Discord) I could spot a pattern. Right now I took extra preventive measures AND write extra info to the logs in case this would happen again. When it notices your save can't be opened, it'll abort, throw an error code in the log and remove the existing file, this should result in a new game getting started and saved (without penalty). The saving is now atomic, it first writes to a temporary file and then renames it to the original. This should prevent your save from corrupting if something goes wrong or crashes during the saving process.

• Crashing on launch / massive lag

  • I was able to fix this issue for most people in the latest few patches, the issue usually stems from incompatible/outdated drivers, or computers with less memory. Compatibility mode is working like a charm and the new sprite compression is helping out lots of GPUs. There is still a lot I want to change and optimize, but the worst seems to have been addressed.

• Random board vanishes and units/enchantments crashes

  • Since my latest patch I've not seen any reports of boards or units vanishing. This was an ongoing issue that was very hard to pinpoint and fix. Turns out the game just tried to interact with an unit or enchantment, but it can't and returns a "null" value. This cascades and makes everything stop working. So I spent hours trying to recreate this and looking at logs/code, and without getting too technical, I was able to find places where the unit resources could get distorted into "encoded objects" and reworked them. Let's hope it's gone once and for all!

• Random end-game board injections

  • Many people would suddenly have a full island of units, not knowing where they came from. This started happening since I made the dynamic main menu screen, with the little islands in the background. Somehow their builds kept leaking into the actual game you're starting. After trying to fix it many times, I also think this is finally fully gone since last patch. I have not seen any reports yet, so I'm happy :)

Since the beginning of Dying Light, our goal has been to create the most immersive zombie apocalypse. Through our work on the series, we’ve learned that achieving this requires mastering three key areas: visuals, sound design, and gameplay mechanics. Let’s explore immersion and horror in Dying Light: The Beast!

Nights, Now Even Scarier Visual details and the advanced graphical engine make exploration a real treat during the day, but for a game like Dying Light what counts most is how atmospheric the night is. After all, this is where our “open world meets survival horror” formula shines best: using in-game systems to create challenges and frights for players. 

Our goal for Dying Light: The Beast was to create a tense, terrifying night experience with a heavy, nerve-wrecking tension that could rival the legendary after-hours moments of the first Dying Light. 

We assembled a dedicated strike team of programmers, game designers, and level designers, iterating weekly, and continuing their work throughout the game’s entire production. Some weeks were focused on Volatile behavior, others on spawning rules and chase mechanics. The result is a night system that will, hopefully, feel unpredictable and frightening, resulting in an experience you will remember for a long time.

We have pulled a lot of levers to achieve the horror and scary feeling we wanted for the night. We made them darker in general, but what we also discovered is that the Castor Woods setting helped us a lot conveying the atmosphere we were looking for and adding different shades to it. After all, it is a different experience when you wander around the forest of the Nature Reserve (super dark!) compared to trying to sneak past Volatiles inside the city (where burning barrels create a different vibe). 

Another important decision was to refocus the night experience strictly on Volatiles, our apex predators - and this has driven all of the choices we have taken along the way. We redesigned how Volatiles move, both alone and in coordinated packs, so they could hunt players more effectively across all areas of the map. We iterated on our spawning technology to make you feel their presence, no matter where they are. On top of that, we also had to tweak the experience with our vehicle in mind, as well as account for the diversity of the map, which features many different areas, from narrow streets to open fields. 

So, the nights were made darker, the flashlight gained a more physical feel with visible inertia, and the Volatiles became smarter. But we heard from you that it still might not be enough. That’s why, in the final weeks of production, we formed a strike team of AI and gameplay programmers, supported by our Tech & Art teams, to make nights even more terrifying. We’ve been incorporating feedback gathered during gamescom and from the reactions to influencers playing our build. You want more of that nail-biting night terror? We have more!

Here’s just a short list of some of elements we have worked on in these last few weeks leading to the release:

• Significant improvements in locomotion of Volatiles increasing effectiveness of chases

• Tighter path finding algorithms reducing unnecessary path selections

• Improved run loop animation

• Additional jump grabs and jump attacks

• Reduced synchronicity of animations (e.g. UV reaction), adding more variety to Volatile encounters

• Volatile senses - making it easier for them to notice the player and react to his behaviors (e.g. flashlight flashing)

• Conditions for retreat behaviors, making them fight till the last drop of blood in a bigger number of cases

• More realistic logic of spawners

• Conditions of Volatiles jumping on a car from the front and from the back

• Physics of Volatile jumps

On top of that, we've also worked on the visuals of Volatiles making them more bloody and increasing the number of their variants, making each one of them scarier and more unique.

Immersive Sounds Another element that adds to the scariness of the night is the sound design. Because we want you to feel like you’re “truly there”, our main focus was the ambiance of the night - we made it subtle so you can hear the footsteps of the Volatiles and the Infected well and locate them precisely among your surroundings, being able to understand their distance just from hearing alone. But once you’re spotted, everything changes - first, you hear the characteristic scary sound, and then music kicks in, full of tension and highlighted by Kyle’s breathing heavily.

But when you finally manage to escape the chase and find a Safe Zone that will offer you shelter until the sun rises, you can also discover another side of Castor Woods. What’s scary during the night can actually look and sound beautiful during the day.

Each biome - from the town, through the swamp, to the dense forest - has its own unique, highly detailed soundscape. In the city, you hear cracking windows and antennas; in the forest, snapping branches; in the swamps, the splash of water and other subtle natural sounds.

Reverb and the contrast in sounds between indoor and outdoor environments plays a huge role in Dying Light: The Beast. Inside, sound is almost muted, creating silence and tension - perfect for jump scares! Outside, the soundscape is dense and almost claustrophobic, amplifying the sense of danger.

When it comes to sounds of gameplay, weapons in Dying Light: The Beast feel heavier and more brutal than in previous games in the series. Every shot or strike has weight and impact, and you can also hear it in your headphones or speakers - from cracking bones to splattering blood. The variety in combat sounds enhances the sense of satisfaction and the raw brutality of action, making it very realistic.

The sound of the zombies has also been reworked. Biters and Virals now sound more human - aggressively human - so players sense that they are facing infected people, not monsters. Their growls, shrieks, and movements carry a raw, almost desperate intensity, emphasizing the horror of their transformation. This makes encounters feel more tense and immersive, as you can almost hear the struggle between the human and Infected within them. Yet, achieving that level of quality is a tremendous amount of work - can you imagine that our game uses more than 9000 soundbites for zombie screams and shrieks?

The Handcrafted World of Castor Woods Finally, visuals bring the world of Dying Light: The Beast to life. We wanted to create a game that feels rich, dense, and varied, inviting players to explore every corner. How did we achieve that? By focusing on the details and background stories for all locations. 

Castor Woods is packed with hidden secrets and surprises. You can wander past souvenir shops with magnets still hanging on the displays, visit abandoned restaurants where menus are still readable and walls are decorated with pictures of dumplings taken from one of Concept Artist’s private archives. Even the city’s coat of arms and some of the logos of local businesses are designed to be consistent with each other, and they all feature beavers. Why beavers? Castor Woods Valley has always been home to a large beaver population, so the beaver became both the symbol of the region and the mascot of its nature reserve, so you’ll meet them throughout the area.

Artists even imagined a summer festival planned for Castor Woods in 2022 - but it never took place because of the zombie pandemic. Still, you can find its traces: promotional posters, abandoned decorations, and even lineups of artists who were supposed to perform. We know that there are players that appreciate that level of detail in world building. 

In areas like the farmlands or the villa district, every house has its own unique garden with subtle clues about the people who once lived there. Our artists did extensive research on plants and flowers to ensure the overgrown gardens look natural and believable. They carefully selected species that could survive without human care while still remaining lush and beautiful. And when you explore the Castor Woods Nature Reserve, don’t forget to read the information boards designed by our team to give you the feeling of walking through a real reserve.

One of the most picturesque parts of the reserve is the monastery, set on the hill in the heart of this beautiful location. Once inhabited by monks, it’s a place you can check their rooms, browse through the small shop where they sold handmade goods, or wander in the gardens they once tended to with care. It’s a truly stunning place with a rich history.

But that’s definitely not all! We can’t wait for you to explore the map yourselves, discovering all of the little details. And if that’s not enough, well, we’ve hidden over 100 collectibles and countless easter eggs across the world. Ready for the challenge? See you in Castor Woods on September 19!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3008130/Dying_Light_The_Beast/

Since the beginning of Dying Light, our goal has been to create the most immersive zombie apocalypse. Through our work on the series, we’ve learned that achieving this requires mastering three key areas: visuals, sound design, and gameplay mechanics. Let’s explore immersion and horror in Dying Light: The Beast!

Nights, Now Even Scarier Visual details and the advanced graphical engine make exploration a real treat during the day, but for a game like Dying Light what counts most is how atmospheric the night is. After all, this is where our “open world meets survival horror” formula shines best: using in-game systems to create challenges and frights for players. 

Our goal for Dying Light: The Beast was to create a tense, terrifying night experience with a heavy, nerve-wrecking tension that could rival the legendary after-hours moments of the first Dying Light. 

We assembled a dedicated strike team of programmers, game designers, and level designers, iterating weekly, and continuing their work throughout the game’s entire production. Some weeks were focused on Volatile behavior, others on spawning rules and chase mechanics. The result is a night system that will, hopefully, feel unpredictable and frightening, resulting in an experience you will remember for a long time.

We have pulled a lot of levers to achieve the horror and scary feeling we wanted for the night. We made them darker in general, but what we also discovered is that the Castor Woods setting helped us a lot conveying the atmosphere we were looking for and adding different shades to it. After all, it is a different experience when you wander around the forest of the Nature Reserve (super dark!) compared to trying to sneak past Volatiles inside the city (where burning barrels create a different vibe). 

Another important decision was to refocus the night experience strictly on Volatiles, our apex predators - and this has driven all of the choices we have taken along the way. We redesigned how Volatiles move, both alone and in coordinated packs, so they could hunt players more effectively across all areas of the map. We iterated on our spawning technology to make you feel their presence, no matter where they are. On top of that, we also had to tweak the experience with our vehicle in mind, as well as account for the diversity of the map, which features many different areas, from narrow streets to open fields. 

So, the nights were made darker, the flashlight gained a more physical feel with visible inertia, and the Volatiles became smarter. But we heard from you that it still might not be enough. That’s why, in the final weeks of production, we formed a strike team of AI and gameplay programmers, supported by our Tech & Art teams, to make nights even more terrifying. We’ve been incorporating feedback gathered during gamescom and from the reactions to influencers playing our build. You want more of that nail-biting night terror? We have more!

Here’s just a short list of some of elements we have worked on in these last few weeks leading to the release:

• Significant improvements in locomotion of Volatiles increasing effectiveness of chases

• Tighter path finding algorithms reducing unnecessary path selections

• Improved run loop animation

• Additional jump grabs and jump attacks

• Reduced synchronicity of animations (e.g. UV reaction), adding more variety to Volatile encounters

• Volatile senses - making it easier for them to notice the player and react to his behaviors (e.g. flashlight flashing)

• Conditions for retreat behaviors, making them fight till the last drop of blood in a bigger number of cases

• More realistic logic of spawners

• Conditions of Volatiles jumping on a car from the front and from the back

• Physics of Volatile jumps

On top of that, we've also worked on the visuals of Volatiles making them more bloody and increasing the number of their variants, making each one of them scarier and more unique.

Immersive Sounds Another element that adds to the scariness of the night is the sound design. Because we want you to feel like you’re “truly there”, our main focus was the ambiance of the night - we made it subtle so you can hear the footsteps of the Volatiles and the Infected well and locate them precisely among your surroundings, being able to understand their distance just from hearing alone. But once you’re spotted, everything changes - first, you hear the characteristic scary sound, and then music kicks in, full of tension and highlighted by Kyle’s breathing heavily.

But when you finally manage to escape the chase and find a Safe Zone that will offer you shelter until the sun rises, you can also discover another side of Castor Woods. What’s scary during the night can actually look and sound beautiful during the day.

Each biome - from the town, through the swamp, to the dense forest - has its own unique, highly detailed soundscape. In the city, you hear cracking windows and antennas; in the forest, snapping branches; in the swamps, the splash of water and other subtle natural sounds.

Reverb and the contrast in sounds between indoor and outdoor environments plays a huge role in Dying Light: The Beast. Inside, sound is almost muted, creating silence and tension - perfect for jump scares! Outside, the soundscape is dense and almost claustrophobic, amplifying the sense of danger.

When it comes to sounds of gameplay, weapons in Dying Light: The Beast feel heavier and more brutal than in previous games in the series. Every shot or strike has weight and impact, and you can also hear it in your headphones or speakers - from cracking bones to splattering blood. The variety in combat sounds enhances the sense of satisfaction and the raw brutality of action, making it very realistic.

The sound of the zombies has also been reworked. Biters and Virals now sound more human - aggressively human - so players sense that they are facing infected people, not monsters. Their growls, shrieks, and movements carry a raw, almost desperate intensity, emphasizing the horror of their transformation. This makes encounters feel more tense and immersive, as you can almost hear the struggle between the human and Infected within them. Yet, achieving that level of quality is a tremendous amount of work - can you imagine that our game uses more than 9000 soundbites for zombie screams and shrieks?

The Handcrafted World of Castor Woods Finally, visuals bring the world of Dying Light: The Beast to life. We wanted to create a game that feels rich, dense, and varied, inviting players to explore every corner. How did we achieve that? By focusing on the details and background stories for all locations. 

Castor Woods is packed with hidden secrets and surprises. You can wander past souvenir shops with magnets still hanging on the displays, visit abandoned restaurants where menus are still readable and walls are decorated with pictures of dumplings taken from one of Concept Artist’s private archives. Even the city’s coat of arms and some of the logos of local businesses are designed to be consistent with each other, and they all feature beavers. Why beavers? Castor Woods Valley has always been home to a large beaver population, so the beaver became both the symbol of the region and the mascot of its nature reserve, so you’ll meet them throughout the area.

Artists even imagined a summer festival planned for Castor Woods in 2022 - but it never took place because of the zombie pandemic. Still, you can find its traces: promotional posters, abandoned decorations, and even lineups of artists who were supposed to perform. We know that there are players that appreciate that level of detail in world building. 

In areas like the farmlands or the villa district, every house has its own unique garden with subtle clues about the people who once lived there. Our artists did extensive research on plants and flowers to ensure the overgrown gardens look natural and believable. They carefully selected species that could survive without human care while still remaining lush and beautiful. And when you explore the Castor Woods Nature Reserve, don’t forget to read the information boards designed by our team to give you the feeling of walking through a real reserve.

One of the most picturesque parts of the reserve is the monastery, set on the hill in the heart of this beautiful location. Once inhabited by monks, it’s a place you can check their rooms, browse through the small shop where they sold handmade goods, or wander in the gardens they once tended to with care. It’s a truly stunning place with a rich history.

But that’s definitely not all! We can’t wait for you to explore the map yourselves, discovering all of the little details. And if that’s not enough, well, we’ve hidden over 100 collectibles and countless easter eggs across the world. Ready for the challenge? See you in Castor Woods on September 19!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3008130/Dying_Light_The_Beast/