Scream Fest is live! 🔥
From 10:00 on Oct 28 to 10:00 on Nov 4, The Scourge is 15% off—one of the year’s unmissable sale events.

The “The Scourge – Bad Parenting” bundle is also ready if you want the full experience.

Thank you so much for your support. Please stay tuned for the game’s Final version—we’re working hard to make it the best it can be! 💙👾

Hello everyone,

Pladidus Santoso here — Writer and Co-Narrative Designer for 1998: The Toll Keeper Story.

This time, I’d like to talk about how GameChanger Studio adapted one of Indonesia’s darkest chapters in history and turned it into the foundation of a fictional story that still remains grounded in reality.

This situation is, of course, vastly different from the development of the previous three My Lovely series entries, all of which were rooted in fantasy. For fantasy stories like those, the narrative is entirely under the control of the creative writers, with little need for heavy consideration. They can channel their creative energy as intensely as possible to build a story they find compelling.

However, things are different with 1998: The Toll Keeper Story. While the story we built is still fictional, what happened in Janapa during that year was clearly inspired by our own understanding and experiences of what happened in our home country — Indonesia. Alongside the sociopolitical changes fought for by students at the time came tragic events involving serious issues such as sexual violence, ethnic-based violence, looting, and murder.

This vastly different context required GameChanger to think carefully and consider many things before crafting the story of Dewi, Heru, and Sinta — characters who live through this period of chaos.

Striving to Be Sensitive

From the beginning, both Riris (Game Director/Narrative Designer) and I shared one key principle: to approach this theme with deep sensitivity.

Sensitivity is built upon understanding — understanding that countless people were directly affected as victims of this tragedy, losing not only property and lives but also fragments of their humanity. Understanding that the pain, grief, and loss they endured until nowadays, cannot be trivialized or portrayed without deep consideration and empathy — especially in an interactive digital medium like a video game.

It became a unique challenge for GameChanger Studio to navigate this harsh reality as elegantly and carefully as possible. On one hand, this suffering needed to be depicted and told — as a dark part of history — as truthfully as we could manage, because it deserves to be acknowledged. On the other hand, it had to be executed gracefully to ensure it would not come across as being trivialized when presented in a game. What you’ll see in the final version of 1998: The Toll Keeper Story is the best possible interpretation we could deliver in adapting this tragedy.

Through the vast number of written and video materials we used as references — to inject a sense of historical accuracy about the moments leading up to the fall of the authoritarian regime — GameChanger also stood by another important understanding: we do not possess certain knowledge about what happened “behind the scenes” (means political negotiation) during the student movements and the shift of power. Therefore, it was rational for us to avoid “touching” areas we couldn’t verify. Otherwise, the story could easily slip into conspiracy territory — something that would be counterproductive to the narrative we wanted to tell. Thanks to this creative decision, most of what you see and read about Dewi’s story is rooted in what happened on the surface — in things we could confirm and understand.

Ultimately, we constantly reminded ourselves that 1998: The Toll Keeper Story is, at its core, a work of fiction — with Indonesia’s dark history serving merely as inspiration. There were multiple discussions about how accurately we wanted to represent historical events, but we ultimately chose the creative freedom to shape our own timeline and events — ones that would best serve Dewi’s story and the “world” behind it.

International Relevance

Indonesia may be the fourth most populous country in the world, but not everyone around the globe knows or understands what Indonesia is. It’s even undeniable that our top tourist destination — Bali — is more widely recognized than Indonesia itself.

Because of that, offering a story centered on the 1998 monetary crisis and the struggles of ordinary people might not immediately appeal to international gamers. The game could lose its emotional relevance for players outside Indonesia.

GameChanger was fully aware of this. Honestly, there wasn’t much we could do to completely address it, because our main priority was to tell the story of Dewi, Heru, and Sinta the way we wanted to. However, that doesn’t mean we didn’t make small efforts to help 1998: The Toll Keeper Story feel more “international.” One small adjustment we made? Instead of focusing on rice — the staple food of Indonesians — our discussions about rising food prices centered on eggs, a more universally relatable item.

We were also motivated by an undeniable fact that lies beyond our control: that in 2025, stories of young people fighting — even risking their lives — to build a cleaner, fairer government remain timeless. These stories keep resurfacing whenever dissatisfaction, corruption, madness for power, and loss of empathy emerge. In this sense, there could be no better timing for 1998: The Toll Keeper Story to tell the story it wants to tell.

It's been a couple of weeks since the launch, and after the general fixes of the first week, the first planned update is here. With this update we aim to lay the groundwork for future updates and game modes.

Gameplay

-The range of the rifle, mini gattling gun, and mini cannon laser have been adjusted, increasing their range by 13%.
-The rifle can quickly switch between ammo types while firing. (It's no longer necessary to stow the rifle to change ammo types and fire.)
-Added new icon when the player runs out of ammo.
-Moving combat drones now stop and attack enemies in their path.
-Combat drones that don't have a barricade to retreat to will now fight to the bitter end, holding their ground against enemies.
-The drones' general sensor has been adjusted to prevent them from leaving the power grid and stopping working.
-Changes have been made to the tutorial to make it easier to understand the initial level.
-The action menu now closes automatically if not used after 10 seconds.
-An additional visual indicator has been integrated to indicate whether or not the repair parts are connected to the electrical network.


Quality of life

-Experimental support for 21:9 ultrawide displays was added
-Experimental support for 3 new languages ​​was added, German, Polish and Russian.
-More elements were changed to support PS controllers.
-In the player death menu, if you have beaten the first level you can now access the hub map from there.


Fixes

-Fixed a save bug in level 2 that could prevent the storm from working in very specific situations.
-A rebalance of music and various sounds was performed at different levels.
-Adjusted some chest and item collisions to prevent issues such as cores falling out of reach. (This particular fix doesn't work with older saves.)
-Fixed some scrap pieces that were out of reach of the player
-Fixed level 1 and 2 bug where some elevators could initially work without power


Extras

Several visual details have been added, such as:
-New wiring terminations on all levels.
-New color changes for drones that are disconnected from the power grid (they are no longer confused with green cores).
-New color details for grenades (depending on the type of ammunition used).


What are our next steps?

First of all, if you want to suggest changes or improvements, you can join our Discord community; your opinions are important to us.
Secondly, we'd like to add a new game mode. A semi-procedural, endless mode where you can play freely. This will take some time, but it's our next goal.

Several bug fixes and Quality-of-Life updates, here are some of the most notable:

• Weapons Tutorial Revamp: Players can now freely rotate their ship from the start of the tutorial, removing forced aim alignment. This prevents issues with ship drift during the railgun section and improves player agency.

• Basic Flight Training Enhancements:

  • Instruction text now animates to maintain player focus.

  • Visuals adjusted to improve readability; asteroids and background clutter reduced.

  • New logic zeroes player velocity when movement goals are achieved to reduce false detections.

  • Freelook sections now require players to look at designated targets to progress.

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• New LineDraw Widget: A versatile, anti-aliased line-drawing system for HUD and tactical UIs supports dashed lines, directional highlights, and screen-edge guidance to better locate off-screen or targeted enemies.

• Zoom Settings Overhaul: Refactored settings menu to align with the new ATZ (Auto-Track Zoom) and manual zoom decoupling systems.

• Added finer control and granularity for targeting behavior and auto-settings.

• UI Refinements:

  • New center-screen masking function ensures HUD elements don’t overlap critical displays.

    • Velocity vector switches to alternative display mode when it would conflict with weapon aim-point.

  • Updated railgun crosshair for reduced clutter and improved recharge/reload feedback.

• Ship Editor Layout Updates - Began the process of improving usability and UI consistency for the Ship Editor.

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• Removed motion blur from spectator camera for improved clarity during post-death replays.

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We’re nearing completion on the full Input System overhaul, which includes major improvements to both the Settings Menu and the underlying input management framework.

The current focus is on finalizing profile saving, loading, importing, and exporting, along with extensive frontend refinements for a smoother configuration experience.

This update isn’t quite ready for release yet, but it’s close and it represents a significant upgrade in reliability, customization, and overall usability compared to the current system.

Changed Unity version for safety according to Unity's suggestion.

Greetings players, UGSF soldiers, and Swordsmen—thank you for playing Shadow Labyrinth.

In response to player feedback, the Shadow Labyrinth Information Bureau is pleased to share details about the upcoming Patch 1.1.0.

See the Future Patch 1.1.0 video herehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orbAUuybgiI[/url][/b][dynamiclink href="https://youtu.be/orbAUuybgiI?si=9Mwnu9Jh88XZ0BBo"][/dynamiclink][/p][p][b]For updates please follow [url="https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fx.com%2FBandaiNamcoUS"]Bandai Namco US on X[/url], [url="https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.instagram.com%2Fshadowlabyrinthgame%2F"]Shadow Labyrinth on Instagram[/url], and join the Shadow Labyrinth channel on the [url="https://steamcommunity.com/linkfilter/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdiscord.gg%2Fpacman"]Official PAC-MAN Discord server[/url].[/b][/p][p align="start"] [/p][p align="start"]END TRANSMISSION.[/phttps://youtu.be/orbAUuybgiI?si=9Mwnu9Jh88XZ0BBo

For updates please follow Bandai Namco US on X, Shadow Labyrinth on Instagram, and join the Shadow Labyrinth channel on the Official PAC-MAN Discord server.

 

END TRANSMISSION.

Bokoyoss Games here. Bleu Bayou is coming to Steam in December.

Bleu Bayou was born five years ago as a jam submission to GBJAM-8, where it took #1 Fun in competition.

We’ve competed in dozens of game jams since, and our full catalog is available for free on itch and Newgrounds.

Why Bleu Bayou? As we turned our attention toward our first commercial release, we were consistently drawn back to the lightning-in-a-bottle fun factor we captured in one of our earliest projects.

We’re bringing you the magic. We are pleased to present a definitive, overhauled, substantially expanded version of Bleu Bayou for your enjoyment. Battle, vibe, bet, and challenge yourself to your heart’s content. Everything is here.

Catch us at Animal Fest, November 10 – 17. See you in December.

Love,

Bokoyoss

Hey everyone, TCG Card Shop Simulator is really coming to Xbox at Q1 2026! Sorry I was supposed to announce it after the trailer is out but I got the release time wrong and slept through it ːPupazzː

It will be coming to Xbox first, and then the Playstation version will be worked on after that, most likely a few months after the Xbox version is released.

Check out this trailer on IGN:

Hello bookworms!

We hope you're enjoying your time on Shelf by Shelf. Now we're back with a new update! In this version, we've made a few improvements to enhance the player experience:

- Market prices have been updated, so books, shelves, and renovation materials are now more affordable.

- Tags and objects can now be removed, so you can get rid of items you don't want.

- New directional indicators have been added, along with some visual cues to make things clearer.

Thank you for your support and feedback. We strive to make Shelf by Shelf a little better every day 💜

Update Note:
The Item Storage for Crafting Items in chests now matches the Gold storage system used in the Item Shops. I’ll be moving them to their own dedicated shops or town areas in a future update, but everything’s ready and fully playable for the Halloween Sale this week!

If you spot any bugs, you can submit a ticket through Discord via the link on my main page or from the game’s title screen.

Happy Gaming! 🎃