Believe it or not, we finally hit this very important milestone. After 3 years of work I can hardly believe it myself (it's a very surreal feeling). Anyway, the first group of colonists is already playing the demo, so far no crashes or other unpleasantries. If everything goes well, we'll add 10-15 people this weekend and keep adding more each week until we have all the missing pieces, then release it to generic public.

What's left to do: replacing some old animations that Ivan never had a chance to finish, female animations and models, coats (the models are nearly done, need to be textured), all customization options including hair and beards, some GUI tweaks here and there, and extra sounds.​

Der Geisterturm is a futuristic dungeon crawler with survival horror elements set inside a mysterious tower known as Turm der Wiederkehr. It is a spin-off to Das Geisterschiff.

By 2074 the Earth turned into a scorched wasteland, forcing the population to leave the planet or move underground while two megacorps are stuck in an endless war over the territory and resources. After graduating from the military academy you've decided to join Eberbach Corp as a Robotic Combat Suit pilot...

...but something went wrong. You wake inside a large Robotic Combat Suit with no recollection of your past, and a mysterious man commands you to climb to the top floor.

Will you reach it alive or die trying?

KEY FEATURES

• Fight your way through 15 floors filled with dangerous encounters, traps, and puzzles;
  
• Tactical turn-based combat within dungeons that will test your resource management skills;
  
• Original progression system: search for upgrades to improve your armor, abilities, and weapons while the pilot gets better through killing or avoiding enemies;
  
• Unique wireframe-like graphics style supported by the atmospheric electronic soundtrack.

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We’re excited to announce that we’re working on another DLC for Battle Brothers called ‘Blazing Deserts’.

The focus of the DLC will be on expanding and enriching the existing world with a new land of burning deserts and lush jungles to the south. Across these lands you’ll find a unique culture loosely based on historic Arabian and Persian cultures of the medieval ages built atop the ruins of the Ancient Empire in the world of Battle Brothers. You’ll find new lore and a different political system, equipment not seen anywhere else, and fresh contracts to earn your stay with. There’ll be a new late game crisis, new legendary locations and several new beasts roaming the wilds. This DLC will be our biggest one yet for Battle Brothers.

Here’s the rough list of features we’re aiming for:

• A realm of independent southern city-states with their own lore, equipment and services, as well as entirely new character backgrounds to recruit
• A new late game crisis that tests the mettle of your company in the fires of religious turmoil
• A gallery of company feats that grant permanent boons with which to customize your company to your playstyle as you progress throughout your campaign
• A variety of new opponents with their own fighting styles – from exotic beasts to desert raiders and southern armies quite unlike those in the north
• New environments both on the world map and in tactical combat
• Several new origins to pick for your company for a different campaign experience
• New banners, weapons, armors and helmets inspired by historic Arabian and Persian cultures of the medieval ages
• New legendary locations and legendary rewards
• New contracts and events
• New crafting recipes for owners of the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC
• Several new music tracks by Breakdown Epiphanies to accompany you on your travels south

In addition to these major features, the DLC will also include countless smaller additions. Just like in the past, we’ll explain all major features and most minor ones in detail in future dev blogs as we go along, so you’ll always know what we’re working on and why. We expect to be finished sometime in Q2 of this year and will announce a release date and final feature list once we’re closer to the finish line.

Alongside the DLC, which will not be free, the game will also receive a sizable free update again. This update will contain a whole bunch of improvements, quality-of-life features and balancing changes, as well as some minor content additions.

Join us next week for our first dev blog on the new DLC!​

We have important news regarding Cyberpunk 2077’s release date we’d like to share with you today.

Cyberpunk 2077 won’t make the April release window and we’re moving the launch date to September 17, 2020.

We are currently at a stage where the game is complete and playable, but there’s still work to be done. Night City is massive—full of stories, content and places to visit, but due to the sheer scale and complexity of it all, we need more time to finish playtesting, fixing and polishing. We want Cyberpunk 2077 to be our crowning achievement for this generation and postponing the launch will give us the precious months we need to make the game perfect.

Expect more regular update on progress as we get closer to the new release date.

We’re really looking forward to seeing you in Night City, thank you for your ongoing support!​

Why Early Access?
“Graywalkers Purgatory was launched on Kickstarter in late 2014. It successfully got funded and our experience there has taught us the value of feedback from the community. This is why we are here in Early Access, to hear what you the fans think of the game, and hopefully improve it from there.

Our goal with the feedback is basically to achieve what could be the most fun we can deliver with the game. We know that we would not be able to make everybody happy but with your feedback, we would know what most of the community thinks, and take that into consideration in our decisions.

In addition to feedback, it also gives us time to fine tune everything about the game so that when we do a full release, the game will really be stable, optimized and will have as few bugs as possible.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“The reason for our Early Access is to get feedback from the community and then to implement those into the game. Thus, we are trying to be dynamic and flexible with regards to our schedule in order to release a game that will be worthy of your time and money. Our goal is to have the full release in about 9-12 months. This is of course not final and can possibly be shorter. We definitely want to get the full game to you as soon as we can, but we also want to make sure you get the game you want and deserve. In the end, it will mostly depend on the amount of feedback we get feedback from the community and then to implement it into the game”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“The biggest difference from Early Access to the Full Version will be the Single Player Campaign. Though you will be able to play almost all of the features of the game in Early Access, we will not be releasing the Single Player Campaign. We want to keep the epic story we have crafted as a surprise for you to discover when the full game comes out.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Graywalkers Purgatory is currently in Alpha. Many of the foundations and systems for the game are done though there are still things that need to be worked on and improved.

We do have a road map for our Early Access. When first released, it will feature our "Mission Mode" initially. With this mode of play, players can choose from many different missions available to them. As they complete more missions, additional missions will appear. The focus here is tactical combat. Each mission will be part of a story arc and each arc normally focuses on a specific faction.

Another mode added is the Preludes mode. This mode of gameplay is basically equivalent to short story modules featuring one of the main Graywalkers in the story. Each monthly update will feature a new character being added to this roster. In the release, there will be only 1 prelude character but more will follow.

As Early Access progresses, we will be adding more features, until the game is feature complete.”
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Greetings, Pathfinders!

It feels like only yesterday we have released Pathfinder: Kingmaker. The game we put our souls into, the game of our dreams. And it is you, our community, who made it possible in the first place. We want to say thank you to all backers and supporters, for your passion, feedback, and patience. As you know, we always take work with our community very seriously. Especially with all the teasers and jokes (if you remember our first free DLC and announcement of announcement you will understand what we are talking about).

And with our next project – Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous – we want to bring work with the community to the next level. We will engage content creators, build a new forum for players’ discussions, held detailed surveys during alpha and beta tests, and put emphasis on feedback from our community. You will help us to shape the game, drive our vision and achieve the most daring ideas. And to accomplish this we will launch a new Kickstarter campaign.

Why Kickstarter, you might ask? We want to make this adventure as epic as we imagined it when playing Wrath of the Righteous at the table. And, of course, we want our next game to become better than the previous one in every aspect. While we already have essential investments, there are a lot of things to add and improve. And you will be able to support us in this endeavour!

On February 4th, we will lift the shroud of mystery and share our creative vision, revealing all the main features we aim to deliver, along with the first gameplay video of Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. And even more details are coming in the Kickstarter updates!

Subscribe to our newsletter so you won't miss anything.
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Ink Stains Games here! We’d like to wish all of you Happy Holidays and to present you the long awaited update for the Prologue as a Christmas gift.

The original Prologue was published in May 2018. At the time it was more of a proof of concept, designed to demonstrate you, our Kickstarter backers, our vision of the future game. A lot of time has passed since then, most systems of the game have changed beyond recognition. And at some point the Prologue grew so outdated that updating it became a priority.

Now the Prologue is mechanically equal to the main game and we hope it will make it easier to wait for the February release, especially for those of you who didn't take part in the closed alpha and beta tests. It's available for download on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/869760/Stoneshard_Prologue/

The list of changes is too expansive to be presented in detail – after all, this update includes a year and a half of hard work. The Prologue’s structure remains the same, but if we are to list the most important changes, here is what you should expect from this update:

• An improved tutorial with detailed advice on main game mechanics.
  
• Vampires were swapped with Proselytes – a new group of enemies with their own set of abilities.
  
• A reworked boss fight, which now consists of two consecutive phases instead of two parallel outcomes.
  
• A reworked health, injury and needs system. The old Prologue had it functioning based on RNG. Now it’s a transparent, deterministic process which you can assess at any time.
  
• More weapons, equipment and all kinds of items.
  
• Abilities from the closed beta are now available in the Prologue.
  
• Destructible environment. Press CTRL to attack environmental objects!
  
• Reworked Dual Wielding system.
  
• Lots of QoL improvements: better controls, more hotkeys, item comparison, inventory auto-sorting, pop-up hints and more. Though keep in mind that the game is designed primarily for mouse controls.
  
• Most of the game art was reworked.
  
• Dialogues and lore notes were rewritten to better clarify the opening events of the story. New voice-overs for the characters.
  
• Lots of changed and added mechanics (reworked Attributes, for instance).
  
• A reworked UI.
  
• Fullscreen support for 1366х768, 1440х900, 1600х900, 1680х1050, 1920х1080 and 1920х1200 resolutions.
  
• Added an event log.
  
• “Last Hope” and “At What Cost?” achievements were replaced by “The Bitter Beginning” and “Eternal Hunger” achievements. The rest of the achievements were updated to fit with the content changes.
  
• Enemies learned how to open doors.

It’s worth to remember that many of the planned mechanics are still missing. On February 6 the game is just being released for Early Access, during which we plan to continue developing it for another couple of years, gradually implementing our vision.
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Why the silence?

As you probably know, Ivan Soloviov, our animator, the guy we worked with for 14 years, died on Sep 5 after being ill for months. It's a hard thing to deal with, so I didn't post any updates since his death (it just didn't seem important). Ivan handled animations, creatures, and everything that goes onto the character model, from weapons and armor to facial hair. The armor system is a lot more complex than the one in AoD which had only body armor and helmets. In Colony Ship we have boots & leggings, combat vests, jackets and coats, armguards, helmets, goggles, and breathing masks. When Ivan got ill, our progress in these two high-visibility areas had slowed down to a crawl and what we expected to wrap up in early 2019 was pushed back over and over again. We’re making progress now but we’re way off schedule, of course.

What’s done: vests, boots & leggings, armguards, helmets, goggles, respirators, weapons; energy armor, implants, most ranged and melee animations for male characters.

What’s not done: combat stimulants, jackets and coats (we have the “prototypes” that have been much improved and optimized; so we need to make variations which is relatively easy but like everything else it takes time), female animations (won’t take long once all male animations are done), and hair styles. Jackets are being work on right now; should be done by the end of the month.

We have enough to start beta testing the combat demo and this time around we fully expect to finish the rest in 2-3 months. We will start the first round in mid Jan (closed beta with new participants added each week) with public release around mid or end of Feb. Better late than never and all that.

Implants:

Implants offer another way to improve your character and give you yet another reason to explore abandoned decks and places of ill repute. There are seven implants with two modal upgrades each:

Brighten up your world with CoreProTech's inSight 7L. Tap into 25th century image processing technology today to automatically adjust gamma, contrast, color and shadows to give you the best picture quality at an unbelievably reasonable price. Every day looks a little brighter with CoreProTech!™

Perception +1

Upgrades:

This handy piece of military surplus kit will upgrade your sluggish and dimwitted retail security guard into a trigger-happy killer. Point Zero instantaneously responds to sudden movement in the user's vicinity and sends a reaction impulse directly to the motor cortex, bypassing the clumsy and unreliable decision-making process. [Currently outlawed in the European Federation.]

Snap THC +10, Reaction + 15, Stagger +10, Aimed -20

A cost-effective alternative to actual highly trained (and therefore greedy and entitled) snipers, NoScope 360 reprograms the subject's ocular system to reproduce the enhanced accuracy of a high-powered scope, boosting precision shooting at any range but negating the ability to quickly zero-in on targets.

Aimed THC +10, Critical Strike + 5, Critical Damage +25%, aimed attacks only (all other attacks are disabled)

Combat stimulants:

Regen – 5HP/turn for 4 turns; the strain on the body results in -2 penalty to all stats for the duration of combat. The regen effect isn’t stackable (so you can’t use two stimulants in one turn to boost regen to 10HP per turn) but the side effect is, so if you use two stimulants per fight, you’ll severely cripple your character. Still worth a shot if you have 2HP left.

Super Soldier – 2-4 Extra Melee Damage, +4 AP, +10 Evasion for 4 turns; same side effects as above.

Lockdown – neural resistance is maxed for 4 turns; best defense against mental attacks, especially for solo characters.
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2019 is nearing its end, and with it comes our last dev diary for the year. It’s been a wild time for us, from the announcement at GDC in March, to meeting you at PDXCON. All throughout, we’ve been blown away by your enthusiasm. It’s now more than three years since Andy, Brian and Ka’ai pitched the idea of making Bloodlines 2 to Paradox. You and your support have made this real in a way that’s difficult to describe.

As Andy mentioned in the November dev diary, we’ve turned our attention inward for a bit. Right now, our number one priority is development, with the goal to make Bloodlines 2 the best game it can be. That’s starting to bear fruit. For example, we recently passed our Alpha!

This is one of the big milestones in game development, although in different places, Alpha can mean slightly different things. For us, it means that we are “systems-complete”; we’re done adding gameplay mechanics and features to the game. By contrast: Beta, which’ll happen next year, is “content-complete”. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the core game is done and ready to put in a box (“systems-final”). There are still quite a few people busy tweaking, balancing, and art-ing up the gameplay. It’s actually quite possible that our final game will ship with a few less mechanics than we had in the game at Alpha. In the end, we want to offer you really compelling, smooth gameplay. If over the coming months we find that something sticks out, we’d much rather put one less bullet point on the back of the box than shoehorn things in.

As you may imagine, work changes after Alpha. For some of us, it becomes much more about keeping the details consistent. For example: Earlier this year, some of our engineers and the UX team had come up with a better, more natural-feeling way of using elevators and choosing floors in the game. What this means is that we’re now going through all of our virtual Seattle and make sure all elevators fit this new logic. Not a big thing - but still, it involved diligent work by our technical designers supported by lighting, environment and UI artists.

In other places, systems-complete means that we get to add that extra in art that we didn’t want to risk spending time on before. Finally, we had time to invite everyone to the 'dismemberment meeting' - just another day in game dev. At the same time, the audio team are having a blast recording weapon foley, to make everything from picking up, to loading, stashing away and y’know, firing each individual weapon feel another bit more real.

Audio is also involved in completing the lines in the NPC Bark system - they work closely with engineering and narrative on that one. Barks are all those words and short sentences you hear AI utter in a video game. Often, that’s connected to AI states, like for example “aggressive”, “searching”, or “hurt”. Sometimes, it’s also tied to the NPC’s role in the world - a policeman will have different barks than a drunk barfly. Good barks are useful without drawing too much attention from the player, and it is not a piece of cake to find 15 different ways to say “I think I’ve seen something odd in that back alley”.

Of course, not all of us are chasing gameplay details towards that elusive “Final”. A big chunk of our team, our level and narrative designers, animators, environment, VFX and lighting artists are hard at work on the quests you will experience that gameplay. We’re looking forward to talking more about that race to Beta in the coming months. For now, to conclude this blog post, we’d like to share the work of our VFX team on blood effects. These are research prototypes created by Wesley Eldridge and Tracey Landau.

Time to put down the quill and wish you all great Winter Holidays! See you in 2020!
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – December 17th, Wrocław, Poland

Hitting its Kickstarter goal in less than one minute. The biggest 2018 campaign on the platform. 9/10 score on Board Game Geek – the already-extensive list of Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon achievements is still growing. One of these milestones was to develop a PC game – not simply a board game adaptation, but a fully-fledged digital adventure that aims to be its own great RPG experience. Be a part of an engaging, non-linear story based on the grim re-imagination of Arthurian myths. King Arthur is dead and the Menhirs protecting humans for centuries are going dark, losing their vitality, and beginning to die. Use your wisdom and tactical skills to survive each day. Customize your characters and create unique combos while fighting for your life. Try to stay alive, or you’ll end up as another forgotten hero who died a meaningless death.

Tainted Grail takes place on the dying island of Avalon. The ancient guardian stones that once helped people conquer this mythical place are now fading. As their light dims, a malignant power retakes the land inch by inch. Your desperate hometown sent a party of champions to seek help from distant Camelot.

You were not one of them.

Now, the true heroes have failed, the king is dead, and the Round Table is in disarray. The ordinary people of the island, such as yourself, scramble to find safety. Set out on your journey to uncover the secrets behind the legends.

Save Avalon – or simply try to save yourself.

Tainted Grail is a dark, fantasy open-world RPG with fresh turn-based exploration and combat. It is based around a deep, immersive story from one of the best board games (biggest Kickstarter project of 2018!) but introduces a totally new experience crafted specifically for PC. Full of stirring art and incredible, non-linear narrative content, the game will offer a unique mix of discovery, challenge, and exciting cRPG character progression, as well as involved combat and diplomacy systems.​

Barcelona, Spain / Vienna, Austria, December 13th, 2019 - „Welcome to the colony!“ – how is it possible that 18 years have passed since we first heard that phrase at the beginning of Gothic, the game that set a milestone in the history of German fantasy RPGs, such as Risen and Elex? Since then, we all have grown older, acquired some wrinkles, and are laughing at how we look in pictures from the early 2000s – or how games looked back then.

But, what if we could turn back time, take everything that was great almost 20 years ago, and put it in a beautiful modern look (let’s say powered by Unreal Engine 4) along with improving some things that were not that great, like the combat system, for example?

To find out what the true Gothic fanbase thinks of a modern remake of the cult classic RPG, THQ Nordic and it's new Spanish development team, THQ Nordic Barcelona, will start an experiment. Today, a free playable prototype (Gothic Playable Teaser) of what a new Gothic could look and feel like will appear in the Steam Library of everyone who owns a game from Piranha Bytes, be it Gothic 1-3, Risen 1-3, or ELEX. They can play the yet-untitled Gothic Remake project and roam around the Mining Colony of Khorinis. After that, THQ Nordic is eager to learn from the players through a survey following the completion of the prototype, whether and how it should proceed with the production of a full Gothic Remake, or leave the heritage and the great memories associated with it untouched.

You want to learn more about the Gothic Playable Teaser? Check the official website: www.gothic-game.com

FAQ

We know you must have a thousand questions– we’ll try to cover a few in this FAQ:

Q: Who is developing this project?
A: THQ Nordic Barcelona. You can find out more about the studio at www.thqnordicbarcelona.com (Hint: We are looking to grow our team)

Q: Is Piranha Bytes involved in the project?
A: No! Piranha Bytes is working hard on a different project, which will be announced in 2020.

Q: Wait, why can we only play two hours?
A: Because it’s just a prototype, done by a new small team in Barcelona and we wanted to do an unusual approach and give this into the hands of players early. What you are going to play is all we have to show you at the moment.

Q: Ok, got it. But if we want the full game, how long do we have to wait?
A: Quite some time. We will only start full production if the community demands a Gothic Remake. In order to do so, we will need to grow the development team and rebuild Gothic from scratch.

Q: This can become a remastered HD version of Gothic?
A: We’d like to call it a remake. We are using a completely new tech (Unreal Engine 4) and so basically nothing but the story, the setting, the atmosphere, the music and the world of Gothic will remain. The whole tech, all graphics, the sound, different systems will be recreated according to modern high quality standards.

Q: Can I buy the prototype?
A: Yes and no. Everyone who owns ANY game from Piranha Bytes will get it for free - so if you don't have either Gothic, Gothic 2, Gothic 3, Risen, Risen 2, Risen 3 or ELEX you can buy one of them now and the prototype is also yours.
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