Greetings, adventurers!

Today, Archaelund has been listed on Steam's main page as "Daily Deal", a curated selection of great games offered at the best prices. It is the first time Archaelund goes on sale, and it is a great opportunity to buy it at a price very similar to the original Early Access release price.

Enough merchant talk, let's talk now about the good things to come.

Most of the features listed on the roadmap for 0.9 are already released as of 0.8.5, past month. Only a few things are remaining, and we expect to have them out quickly.

Controller support is almost ready for the beta, and will likely be available to beta-testers next week, in release 0.8.6. A few weeks later, there should be another update with the conclusion of the main quest chapter 2, and some interesting new features, such as dual-wielding.

I can already disclose some news about the next major milestone, version 0.10. It is scheduled for the end of 2025 (estimated!), but it will likely be released in smaller installments; it will enlarge the world significantly, and expand character development through several levels, adding Advanced Careers to the game.

More importantly, 0.10 will also add detail to the existing areas, including dynamic quests and random encounters, and giving Companions a more active role at dialogues and other interactions.

Besides this, 0.10 will include localization to various languages, there will be more information about this during the summer.

If Archaelund's current content includes about 55h of unique gameplay, I expect 0.10 to reach 75-80h.

If time allows, I might also add some improvements to animations and UI redesign, but it is likely that I choose to delay these until 1.0 release is real close.

Hi everyone,

After the spine-chilling journey of Ikai, our team has embarked on a new adventure, one that’s a bit—okay, very—different but just as special.

We’re thrilled to share that our new cozy game Instants has officially launched during Wholesome Direct! 🥳

Available NOW with a launch discount, Instants is a heartwarming narrative puzzle game that we’ve truly poured our hearts into. While it’s a big shift from the horror of Ikai, we hope Instants brings you warmth and peace of mind during those breaks when all you want is to unwind.

[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/2948560"][/dynamiclink]

So... What is Instants?

Instants is a cozy narrative puzzle game where you piece together a family’s life story through photographs, assembling a chronological puzzle of heartwarming memories.

You’ll receive a collection of pictures that are all mixed up, and your job is to figure out the order in which the moments happened and arrange them correctly inside photo albums. As you do, the story of the family slowly comes together, little by little, photo by photo. Once everything is in the right order, you can decorate the pages using scrapbooking tools like stickers, washi tape, and pens to make each album your own.

The game isn’t fast-paced or stressful. Instants is a calm, reflective experience focused on concentration, discovery, creativity, and storytelling. If you enjoy games that invite you to slow down and really take in the details, Instants might be just what you’re looking for.

• 🧩 Reconstruct memories

• 📖 Uncover a family's journey

• 🎨 Customize with Scrapbooking tools

Your support has meant everything along the way, which is why we hope Instants brings you comfort, joy, and maybe even a few tears (the good kind).

Grab your favorite cup of tea and come join us on the bright side.

See you in Instants, 💖

-Endflame team

• FPS improvements during heavy AI turns (luke) - multithreading of AI to have its ‘thinking’ interfere  less with graphical updates. See 2x to 3x improvements in the more intensive AI scenarios (where AI has a lot of units and is doing things ;-) ). 

• General performance improvements (Luke)

• Creep wrongly charged sometimes (Patrick, Luke) -If a leader ordered a unit with it to creep on own the leader would still pay 2 Orders and continue to do so thereafter :-( (i.e. keep acting like creeping).

• Montelimar - c14_5: Re-fixed artillery images to match designer updates to maps. (Allen)

Hi everyone!

We are thrilled to announce that Worldwide Rush will be released on August 20th this year. This date was in the world map the whole next fest, so some of you might know it already.

I hope everyone enjoyed the AI addition, even if it is still early. Now we can evaluate the feedback much better as all the core mechanics are in the game. Next, we need to improve what we have and work on QoL. We will talk a little bit about our next development goals in this blog post.

Like everyone, we enjoyed and played some demos. There are many good demos this fest. There were some demos we loved, like Escape Simulator 2, some that inspired me as a developer, for example BitCraft and how it is made.

AI definitely changed the biggest concern of it being too easy to unfair. At this point, I believe that AI is still not smart enough, but it already poses a challenge to many. I have seen players concerned that it is impossible to beat and later the same day destroying it. It is the matter of understanding how it plays and how to counter it, like with any strategy game. The problem here is that there are too many variables moving that need multiple clicks to find. We will need to add more tools to compete and know what is happening.

Also, demo does not help with having a small map and small vehicles. It just leaves with AI spamming tier 1 vehicles, connecting everything it can connect. At some point, the game stops feeling satisfying, and we do not want that.

First, we want to change how the game is played. The problem is passengers and how many of them there are. Because of the sheer quantity, players are forced to connect everything at one point or another. This leads to vehicle chaos that prevents us from making some on the map visuals, like routes. What we want to do is change the meta from connecting everything, to moving travelers to a bigger hub where bigger vehicles will transfer them to another bigger hub and from there they will disperse as needed. Basically, like in real life, it does not make sense financially buy double-deckers to all surrounding cities and villages and repeat that in every city and village.

We already reduced passengers count per destination and max destination level. We still want travelers to travel in many different directions. Adding a cap to that leaves many cities wanting to travel to some big cities, but their count is not significant enough to have direct routes. With this already, you will find yourself hoarding travelers at a single point so that a bigger and more profitable vehicle can take them in one go. You will still be able to connect everything, but that will reduce how much money you can generate.

To help with chaos and expansion, you will have hub managers to help you. They will act independently with their own budget. That budget will come from vehicles that are in the hub. Hub managers will act as mini AI managing vehicles, making sure there is profit and buying new routes if you tell them so. All unused money minus hub manager salary will be transferred to you. They will provide a helping hand once there is too much to manage, allowing you to focus on where you want to play.

Graphics are also worked on daily. Probably the biggest workload left is to complete vehicles. Here are some trains that we currently have in the game. Now I am mostly working on EU vehicles, but there are still two more continents. Once we have more, it will be very interesting to balance them between continents.


Until the next week!

Beta playtest for the Flashes of Chaos DEMO is now live!

This version is planned to be the official Demo for Flashes of Chaos. As an action roguelike, it offers multiple hours of replayable gameplay. Each Demo run takes around 15–30 minutes.

Have fun! And feel free to share your feedback—I'd love to hear what you think!

Please report bugs to https://support@brainburnstudio.com.

When reporting a bug please include a screenshot, or copy of the error message.

You can mail me the feedback (https://support@brainburnstudio.com), or post it on the Steam community server. In the future I might create a Discord server.

• UI readability tweaks: minimum font size raised to 12 pt, wider panel spacing, and more room between objectives

• Fixed an issue where Facility will not correctly queue units if clicked before building completion

• Fixed an issue that could cause buildings to not complete even at 100% during late game

• Added fresh sound effects for the auto-cannon

• Fixed a rare game freeze reported by some testers

• Ongoing work to mitigate performance drops with rotator parts

• Turret modules attack range has been increased by roughly 10%

• General improvements to cockpit view:

  • Command Center no longer rolls or spins when you switch to Cockpit View

  • Manual input commands no longer stop working when the entity is not selected

  • Fixed an issue where pitch spin would never stop in Cockpit View

  • The Cockpit View now closes automatically when a unit is docked

  • Now you can't re-enter Cockpit View while a turret is recycling