Hey everyone!

Now that the release date for Necesse 1.0 is out, we also wanted to share an updated version of our 2025 roadmap for Necesse!


As you can see on the roadmap, we’re planning to release the creative mode update next month! It’ll be released alongside a bunch of cool new building assets and we’re really excited to see all the new creations you guys can come up with!

After that, we’ll be working hard on finishing up all the features we got planned for 1.0. If you haven’t seen our 1.0 trailer yet, then you should definitely check it out!

Thank you all again so much for your ongoing support. We hope you can sit tight until 1.0, cause trust me, it’s going to be worth it!

- Fair

There have been many questions about many different aspects on the game on Steam, Discord, Reddit and elsewhere.

We have decided to collect all these questions and answer them, in a centralized position.

We hope this can help with giving you all the information you need.

You can find them here.

Please feel free to reply and ask additional questions or clarifications should there be any further confusion.

Added system that allows players to buy and sell items from NPCs.

Time for our grand finale playtest session of STRIDEN before the Early Access launch! On June 27th, we’re opening up our playtest app to the public for one final free playtest weekend. To join, make sure to sign up for the playtest on our Steam page.

If you’ve played before, just sit back and relax, you’ll automatically get access when the beta starts.

So, what have we been up to this past week?

We’ve been fully focused on tracking down bugs, fixing performance issues, and preparing our back-end systems.

Every week, we run at least one internal test, and we’ve also held two stress test sessions with full servers playing STRIDEN for about three hours each to make sure everything works as it should.

Our talented, tight-knit team has been hard at work developing fresh new content and replacing placeholder assets.

Our team of interns has made fantastic progress on our new urban map, Nuke 08.

Nuke 08 is set in Sweden’s capital, Stockholm, where a tactical nuke has destroyed large parts of the city. This setting brings a fresh twist to the game and stands out from our other maps — with a mix of tight close-quarters combat areas and wide open streets with varied elevation.

This new map won’t be included in the Open Beta, but we’re aiming to have a playable version ready by late summer 2025.

The biggest update is that we’ve added a new system to how Powerspikes work. Now, you have to choose which Powerspike (animal) you want to play before each match — and you’ll be locked to that animal for the entire match. You make your choice in the match lobby before deploying onto the battlefield.

This means your team will need to think more strategically about which Powerspikes fit the map and your overall tactics. Powerspikes still charge up based on your individual player score, and when you activate them, you must place them carefully on the map no more Moose Tanks spawning inside Strongholds! It also now takes time to channel into your chosen animal, so you can’t instantly spawn a Powerspike anymore. Enemies can attack you while you’re channeling, so pick your moment and location wisely.

We’ve also removed the timer for how long you can stay in your Powerspike. Now, you can cancel it at any time. Plus, you can now spot enemy Powerspikes to alert your teammates.

With these changes, Powerspike balance has improved significantly not every player can just summon a bear or a Moose Tank anymore.

Our beloved Moose Tank has received a lot of love too. We’ve reworked its driving and movement to make it feel less clunky. Enemies can now destroy the Moose itself, which disables the cannon turret — so if you’re facing one, aim for the Moose! Think of it like tracking a tank in other games.

The Radioactive Bear has also been polished for smoother movement. The biggest new feature is that teammates can now ride a friendly bear! Just approach it, hold the interact button, and voilà, you’re basically Rambo on a Scandinavian bear.

For the Eagle Hook, we’ve continued improving the flight controls. This Powerspike is quickly becoming a STRIDEN favorite, it opens up a whole new dimension for transporting teammates or trolling enemies by grabbing them and dropping them from the sky.

The Bomber Eagle is both amazing and terrifying, depending on which side you’re on. Having a flying bomb plane in STRIDEN is perfect for clearing out an Air Supply zone or blasting a pesky sniper hiding on a hill.

But once we added birds to the game, we realized something was missing. A counter to hunt them down. So, naturally, we made a fighter jet… well, a Fighter Eagle! This bad boy comes equipped with a light machine gun (MG-42) and two air-to-ground missiles. So keep an eye on the skies during the next playtest!

All of our soldier voices have now been replaced with real voice actors — a huge milestone for us, finally replacing all the placeholder lines in the game. Some lines have already become iconic, so we made sure to keep a few classics while adding plenty of new ones. With real voice talent, we were able to get much more creative and bring our soldiers to life.

We’ve also programmed soldiers to react more naturally to what’s happening around them. For example, they now shout warnings about incoming grenades, scream or curse when suppressed, and react vocally when they take damage. These changes have made a big difference to the game’s immersion — now it really feels like you’re in the middle of a chaotic, intense battle.

More shouts, more personality, and even more epic moments for everyone!

As I mentioned when talking about the new soldier voices, we’ve now added a suppression system to the game. Before you tear your hair out, don’t worry! It’s very subtle, but it makes the combat feel more intense and realistic, adding to the immersion when bullets whip past your head.

We’re also planning to fine-tune it so that different weapons cause different levels of suppression. For example, light machine guns will create more suppression than a submachine gun.

So, if you get suppressed, take a few bullets, and get killed you’ll now see it all through our improved death camera. Previously, we had a first-person death sequence, but in about 80% of cases, you’d just see your body flying away like a happy dolphin in the ocean. It looked odd, and we also got feedback that the kill cam lingered too long on the enemy who killed you.

Now, your view follows the head of your soldier as they fall, making the sequence feel much more grounded and realistic. We’ve also added new camera effects to enhance the impact. Plus, the time spent showing the enemy who killed you has been shortened for a smoother experience.

A big part of the game is our construction system, which isn’t just for base defense and team resources it also plays a key strategic role out on the battlefield. We’ve now polished the repair system, including how the Sentry Gun works. Enemies can destroy a Sentry Gun, but not completely the owning team can repair it and bring it back into action.

We’ve also renamed our Vending Machine to Loot Storage to make its purpose clearer: it’s for storing loot. A new feature is that Loot Storage now generates new consumables over time. So, when you respawn at your base (Stronghold), you can grab a can of beans or other supplies before heading back into the fight.

If you raid an enemy Stronghold and destroy their construction items, you’ll be rewarded with blueprints. And if you destroy an item that stores loot like a weapon station all the stored items will be dropped on the ground.

So make sure your base defenses are solid!

We’re currently working on a spawn protection system to reduce spawn killing, with a main focus on protecting Strongholds (bases). This has been a common piece of feedback for a long time players getting killed by base campers and we hope this update will help solve that issue.

We’ve also added a change so that you always respawn with a full clip/magazine after being killed. Additionally, we’re working on a system where, if you join a match already in progress, you’ll spawn with a basic submachine gun to get you into the action right away.

After replacing our placeholder radioactive fog with our epic dynamic weather system, we realized we wanted players to engage in more battles during radioactive storms. So, we’ve tweaked how much radiation drains your gas mask filter and how much damage it deals. Now, your filter lasts longer, giving you more time to fight in radioactive zones.

We’re still working on sound mixing to make sure we don’t blow out your eardrums during intense firefights. With so many sounds playing at once and a lot happening on-screen, getting the balance right is a big challenge, especially since we don’t have a dedicated audio engineer in the studio. But we’re doing our best to deliver a great audio experience for Early Access, with proper reverb zones and realistic sound behavior at different distances.

We’ve started production on new menus to make navigating the settings and other screens much easier. Up until now, we’ve been using very basic placeholders, but what the team is working on now looks really promising.

Of course, we’ve also been busy fixing bugs and improving performance over the past week. We spend a lot of time on this to ensure a smoother experience for everyone. One of the biggest fixes was resolving screen tearing and flickering, this was a nightmare to track down, but switching to a different anti-aliasing method finally solved it.

We’ve also made server performance more stable, especially on our 60 Hz servers.

We’re working around the clock to deliver an amazing first version of STRIDEN, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with players around the world. As mentioned in earlier blog posts, this is just the beginning of our journey. Together with you, our community, we’ll shape a fast-paced, fun, and action-packed looter shooter.

We’re committed to listening to your feedback not only for fine-tuning gameplay but also for shaping future content. Your voice will truly have an impact on the development of STRIDEN.

Early Access will be priced at $24.99, with a special 20% launch-week discount to thank our early supporters. This pricing ensures we can maintain servers and continue developing the game without relying on crowdfunding. When you buy STRIDEN, you’re directly supporting our team and the game’s future.

We’re also planning cosmetic DLC soldier skins, weapon skins, and more that will be purely optional and won’t affect gameplay. No pay-to-win mechanics or map-based DLCs that split the player base.

Starting now, we’ll post weekly updates here on Steam leading up to launch, plus exclusive behind-the-scenes footage from our studio where 80% of the team is hard at work bringing STRIDEN to life.

Get ready STRIDEN’s Early Access is just around the corner!

Join our Discord to join our community and say hey to the devs!

Take care and see you at the Open Beta June 27th.

Greetings Obscurants! A THIRD update has gone out to the Occlude Demo, which is now on version 0.2.6.

This includes:

• A fix to stop cards sticking to the player's mouse

• A fix to say that the Demo is not, in fact, from the future, but 2025. The present year. Which is now.

Make sure you update the Demo to get these changes. This now brings us up to three Updates in under a week (help me) and joins the following:

• An Undo button for any move before committing a card to a Foundation

• Animations to notify players if they need to Undo or Redeal

• Increased speed of cards following the mouse

• Double click to instantly send a card to the Foundation, right click to Mark

• Tableau piles now resizing, so cards don't stack off-screen

• Fixes for Continue/reloading games

• Fixes for a bug with clearing saves

As we spoke about in our other, longer blog post, we're now working on the following Launch features based off community feedback:

• An optional Story Mode that gives you an unlimited Undo, extra Purgatory slots and easier seeds to play with

• Improvements to the seed generation system across the board, aimed to make sure you can sort the deck without having to place a Final Card early

• Improved tutorialisation

• More information on past runs, including past coins earned

• More meta-narrative and more rituals (these were planned, but people have asked for them!)

This will likely be our final Demo update as the above is taking up 90% of our time.

Now, a personal request - We've worked really, really hard on the Demo to date, then to sift through hundreds of feedback points, to then make these changes carefully and quickly.

If you like game studios who are dedicated to their craft, why not wishlist Occlude?

It's going to be even better on launch thanks to this Demo and we could do with the help against the dreaded Steam algorithm, who is currently absolutely uninterested in showing Occlude to, well, anyone.

Thanks again - We'll talk soon!

Sam

[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3547010/Occlude"][/dynamiclink]

Hello, this is TEAM HORAY.

We would like to inform you that the demo version of Sephiria will soon be temporarily deactivated and made available again following a version update.

The current demo version is not compatible with save data from the full game. This means that even if you've played the demo, you'll need to start over if you purchase the full version.

To address this issue, we will be temporarily disabling the current demo and plan to release a new demo version sometime in June.

The upcoming updated demo version will support save data compatibility with the full game. However, please note that save files from the current demo will not be usable. For optimal performance after the update, we also recommend deleting any existing save files.

We kindly ask for your understanding, and we are committed to providing a better gaming experience.

Thank you.
Sincerely,
TEAM HORAY

○ Added ν mode (change with OLD/ν in OPTIONS)

○ Attack power of #1 changed to 1.2x, #2 changed to 2x, and #4 changed to 1.6x.

○ Added skip between games.

○ Changed so that Z-ZONE cannot be used in unnecessary situations (Z-ZONE will not be activated while the gauge frame is red, and the cooldown will be reset the moment it returns to normal color)

○ Changed some attacks of the final boss.

○ Achievements, Global Rankings, and Effects tabs have been added to the configuration screen using the production tool's functions. (This allows you to display the game like an old CRT monitor.)

---Differences between previous versions of ν mode---

○ Destroys normal enemy bullets and destructible bullets in the Z-ZONE, and also attacks enemies when the slow button is pressed (previously destructible bullets did not release items during boss battles, but in ν, items are released when destroyed in the Z-ZONE)

○ If there is a hidden character in the Z-ZONE, it will appear (fairies react to the appearance position)

○ Recovers the Z-ZONE gauge at the start of the boss battle according to the bonus points earned for the hidden "Z" in that stage (the gauge is MAX when it reaches 16,000 points, and there is no difference if more Zs are earned)

○FAIRYBONUS is 30,000 points and is not related to the gauge. If you continue to find it after that, the score will increase by 60,000 → 90,000 ..., and if you fail to find it, it will return to 30,000 points.

The gauge also fills up when the boss is destroyed, and it also returns to full again after deploying the Z-ZONE to collect items.

○Z-ZONE cooldown time is half the previous time.

This week was a big one for us – we announced the game via the PC Gamer Show on Sunday and sent a few keys to friends of ours for a special first look at the game.

We’ve been overjoyed with the response from you, our community – our wishlists are climbing and we can’t wait to show you what else we’ve been working on. But that will come later. For now, we’ll direct you to some of the incredible creators which have covered the game in the last week.

• Splattercat - It’s always an honour to be covered by the indie tastemaker, so we were delighted to see this video from Splattercat, one of our favourite content creators.

• Interndotgif - Another influencer hero, join Interndotgif as he explores the world of DarkSwitch.

• Dan Field - Pour nos amis en France, we have Dan Field – one of the greatest creatives working in French language broadcasting.

• OrbitalPotato - The soothing tones of our favourite extra-terrestrial tuber will guide you through the prologue of the game in style.

In addition, we thank the press and news portals for the many positive reviews of our announcement.

• PC Games N | Frostpunk 2 has a fantasy rival in city builder and survival game Dark Switch
  "The city building of Frostpunk 2 and survivalism of Endzone and Project Zomboid are unified in Dark Switch, with music by a gaming legend."

• GameStar | In the dark construction game DarkSwitch you fight with high cities for sheer survival
  "A renowned composer, Akira Yamaoka, who rose to fame with Silent Hill, provides the necessary atmosphere."

• 3D Juegos | There are two reasons why you'll want to play this Lovecraft strategy game: the Silent Hill composer makes its music and it will remind you of Frostpunk.

  "Its aesthetic, branching narrative, and constant tension promise to offer more than just management: a desperate fight for sanity and light in a world forgotten by the sun."

• Multiplayer | StarRupture - Official Co-op Gameplay Overview (14k views so far)
  "Dark Switch is a management game where you have to build your settlement around giant trees, the only source of resources for the survivors of a world where, during the night, a murderous fog arrives."

• PC Gamer (Paid) | DarkSwitch is a fantasy city-builder where you construct a metropolis around a massive tree, but watch out for the fog that drives citizens mad

  "I'm always up for a new twist on city-building, and the idea of constructing an elvish haven is certainly one that appeals."

Finally, we would like to thank YOU for your response and involvement. Thanks to you, we can boast a huge increase in the wishlist!

Brave Ones!

Hardcore mode is a true challenge that not every warrior dares to face. That's why the Goblin Bank, led by Mr. Goblin himself, has prepared a special sale of useful sets for the bravest among you! With this support, you'll surely restore order to lands consumed by chaos!

In the Bank's "Recommended" tab, you'll find new Rare Hardcore Sets for each location at an attractive discount! Don't miss your chance—this offer lasts until June 16 at 12:00 UTC.

⚠️ Note: These sets become available only after clearing the "Infernal" difficulty of the corresponding location.

---

From June 13 to 16 at 12:00 UTC, you’ll earn more gold by clearing any locations!

Grab your coin pouches and set out to claim your fortune!

---

Relog into the game for the changes to take effect.

May luck guide your journey!

Shop Simulator: Waifu Pillows will be supported by 🍒 Cherry Kiss Games in the future! 🌸✨

What does this mean for you?


🍒 Cherry Kiss has revised the Asian translations for you!

With version 1.2.23.1, there's improved Chinese (simplified and traditional), Korean and Japanese! ⛩️ Plus, Thai has been added as a new language :) 🇹🇭




The collaboration brings more than just new languages: We're working on a very special Waifu collection featuring the most popular characters from the 🍒 Cherry Kiss universe!

This collection will be released as DLC later this year and will surely make your shop a truly memorable experience! 🌶️



That's all for today! Sayonara and have fun selling pillows! ❤️

Stable regards,
Three River Games (3RG)

💬 Our Discord Server:
https://discord.gg/WpxwA9B8G3