Two years ago today we launched Abandon Ship into Early Access. The night we launched we hit 4th in the Global Top Sellers charts, which was an amazing success for our little micro-studio to achieve.
It was an important milestone, as it allowed us to spend time on implementing everything we wanted before leaving Early Access.
To celebrate, not only is the game discounted for a Daily Deal, but we've also added three new ships for you to find - they're from the Sloop, Corvette and Man O War classes - and as long as you can capture their blueprint intact, you'll be able to equip them yourselves:
We've also added the latest batch of Chinese translations, a new language menu plus some other bug-fixes and polish you can read about in the Patch Notes here:
开发团队：“We know that a lot of Chinese gamers are keen to get their hands on the game with a full translation. We're getting close now, and a lot of the text is already translated and available to play.”
以上
Jericol Xiao
Artbook Available Now!
Ahoy Captains - We've released an artbook!
"The Art of Abandon Ship" has over 150 pages of lovingly crafted concept art and behind the scenes information on how the game was made.
Starting with our original artistic inspiration, it covers every stage of development to the present day.
If you're interested, check out the store page here:
Below you'll find a few example pages from the book :)
See you on the high seas,
The Abandon Ship Crew
PS - Lots of people ask, but don't worry - new Chinese updates are on the way, our translators are working hard through the over 165,000 words in the game!
New Languages Added: Japanese & Italian!
Greetings Captain,
We've just added Japanese and Italian languages to the game.
These join our already supported translations for Russian, German, French, Spanish, Turkish and Brazilian Portuguese.
Chinese is next on the list, with just over 40% of the text in-game translated. As we have over 165,000 words it takes a while, but it is coming. Keep an eye on this post for translation progress:
Korean, Polish and Dutch translations are being done by the community, and they could always do with extra help - if you're interested, there are more details in the following link:
In the next few weeks, keep an eye out for the release of our Art Book - you can see a sneak preview below. It's got over a hundred pages packed with amazing concept art, behind-the-scenes images and information about how we made the game.
We'll post more about the Art Book plus a little treat we have coming late February closer to the time.
Oh, and we hope you all had a wonderful end to 2019!
The Abandon Ship Crew
Cracking the Secret Code
There is an island in Abandon Ship with a solitary building on it. Sailing to its event marker will reveal entrances that require multiple codes to enter. By using clues hidden both in the game and our website the doors could be opened. Once inside, the final piece of a puzzle was revealed, allowing one person to win a special prize.
That prize has now been claimed.
This post is the first time Fireblade Software have publicly acknowledged the existence of this treasure hunt, and it will explain how and why we did this, along with quotes from two people – going by the handles of bytor_x86 and BeardedS0ul – that were racing to crack the code first.
If you wish to complete the puzzle yourself without assistance, it’ll be best to stop reading now, as below will contain lots of spoilers. Back in 2016, approximately three months before we would officially reveal Abandon Ship with an Announcement Trailer, we started to create our website.
We knew that players are often interested in the people who make the games they play, so we started to write “Meet the Team” blog posts.
Collectively we weren’t enthusiastic about plastering our faces all over these posts, so we decided to show images of our working areas instead. When creating my post, an idea struck: what if we buried clues in the images for observant players to find?
Abandon Ship is a big game. There are over a hundred maps, each one with a unique island and event or quest. This was a very early goal of ours, and I was thinking about the sorts of things we could populate the world with. Having a treasure hunt seemed very appropriate.
With thoughts of the Goonies “One-Eyed Willy” treasure, along with the James Halliday quest from Ready Player One swirling round my head, a very approximate plan was sketched out:
That each Meet the Team (henceforth known as ‘MTT’ post would contain a clue
In order to read the clue, you’d have to maximise the image (the post just showed a thumbnail)
Except the first one, they should be easy to miss, only observant people would notice them
The clues should have some sort of nautical theme or association
You could follow these clues to access something in the game
This would then allow you to complete the puzzle and the first person to do so would win something unique
We wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of the clues until the whole thing had been solved
The MTT blogs were posted between August 2016 and January 2018. Within the images, either on our PC screens or notepads on our desks we had hidden Morse code, flag symbols, map co-ordinates, code that could only be broken by enigma machines and phrases (written backwards and upside down, requiring the person to flip and mirror them).
The clues could be used both in-game in a special location, and combined with a secret website that would ultimately reveal an email address. The first person to message that address would win a prize.
We also had two messages in a bottle that we spawned randomly around certain regions to give cryptic clues and act as the initial breadcrumbs.
-- The bottles could appear in any one of 30 maps, spread across multiple regions --
With everything set up, it was just a case of seeing if anyone started following the trail we’d scattered around. We had no idea whether this would happen or not, fully expecting to have to drop a more explicit hint several months further down the line.
How wrong we were.
Abandon Ship graduated from Early Access on 22nd October 2019, and a few comments would crop up in our Discord, asking about the meaning of the messages in the bottle, and whether anyone had success with the barriers in the island building. A thread developed on our Steam forum, titled “Password for Barrier”. This is where several people started to make good progress narrowing things down.
Talking with BeardedS0ul he explained how he took up the hunt: “After completing the story and the other modes of the game I still hadn't found the password. So I checked the steam forums to see if I had missed something that others had found. Shout out to Bytor_x86 that pointed me in the right direction”.
Bytor_x86 was the first person to work out the messages in bottles referenced the MTT posts on the website: “No in-game event was about meeting a team, nor finding an assortment of pictures or images”, he said. “This made me think that I should be looking at developer profiles or something along those lines”. Once he’d discovered the correct posts on the website, the hunt was on.
The first barrier fell shortly after that, BeardedS0ul explaining “I was in the scouts as a child so noticed the Morse code right away, translated it and got an 8-letter result, just the fit for the first barrier”.
With breaking the second barrier, Bytor_x86 had this to say about using the co-ordinates on one of the posts: “Google maps placed me in a park, so I went to check the list of attractions in that park, and found a statue with the name I was looking for”.
Bytor_x86 originally thought at this point the treasure hunt was completed: “After unlocking both barriers and getting the remaining hidden achievement, I thought that was the end. Although the final event message was a bit open-ended, it still gave impression that victory had been achieved! Only when BeardedS0ul in Steam forums insisted that it seems to be deeper, I decided to check the images again”.
While the in-game portion had thus far been defeated, the second half of the puzzle was yet to be broken. BeardedS0ul details how he used the clues in Aaron’s post to uncover the secret website: “I'm Danish and we learn a couple of different languages, German being one of them, so I recognized the words and googled them, focusing on naval and combat as this seemed to be a theme. Saw that it was about an enigma machine, its model and the settings for it. Found an emulator online, tuned the settings in and decoded the code and got a URL”.
The next clue Bytor_x86 solved was the flag symbols: “The pattern of the flags immediately drew my attention, so tried to decode it starting with ICS flags. But those were missing some of the flags from the image, so I started looking at other sets. Eventually I found Popham's flags and I recognized the pattern”. While the clue was solved, Bytor_x86 confirmed that nobody had yet worked out how it should be used: “Figuring what to do with that was another story...”
Meanwhile, BeardedS0ul was solving the remaining clue: “This one sent me for a spin. The legacy of Hashimoto… I went with a naval theme search, submarine captains and dead ends.” This forced him to take another approach: “I went back to the website and inspected its code structure to find clues. I found a reference to a plugin, so the legacy referred to was Kazuhisa Hashimoto's. I know the code by heart and typed it in and that sent me to a new page, one that asked for a login.”
Only one clue had not been used thus far, and entering this as the password allowed progress to be made. But as BeardedS0ul discovered, it wasn’t over quite yet: “A new challenge, half of an email address, but could I find the rest?” That was when he recalled the final part of the in-game quest: “When you pop the achievement in game, you get an event flavour text, which contain another Morse code. Combining the two I sent the message. But did X mark the spot?”
It did. On the 21st November 2019, the challenge was completed. Bytor_x86 emailed the secret address first, with BeardedS0ul doing so a mere hour later.
When I messaged BeardedS0ul to say he’d missed out on being the first by an hour, he didn’t mind: “The quest and challenge was its own reward!” he went on to explain that he and Bytor_x86 had even collaborated: “We talked and helped each other. We agreed to only help people on Steam in a slightly cryptic manner so as not to ruin it for others”.
But what of the prize? We wanted to commemorate this in the game, and name the island after the first person to discover it. After discussion with Bytor_x86 he wanted to use his handle, so next time you’re sailing through the Breeding Islets and navigate past “Bytor’s Rock”, you’ll know where the name came from.
Major Update Released: Blade of the Assassin
Ahoy Captain,
We've released a new Major Update, our first since leaving Early Access. It's titled "Blade of the Assassin" and you can read about all the exciting new additions below.
Your saves from the full release version of the game will work with this update, as will those on the recent Beta Branch update from November. Here's all the cool new stuff:
Second Combat Campaign
Our original combat campaign was a popular game mode from our very first Early Access release. Since then we've added many more environmental modifiers, so we wanted to bring all those together into a new combat campaign.
The original had randomised ports and the maps were random-within-groups, which meant that RNG could have a massive influence on a particular run.
We wanted this new one to be slightly different, so while there are still ten battles with up to five port visits for you to deliberate over, this time the ports stock all weapons and upgrades all the time, and the combat arenas are in a set order, so you can plan your runs and try different approaches in battle.
Like all our game modes, the story has some cross-over with the main campaign. It focuses on the mysterious Far Haven Assassin's, and for those people who have explored some of the farthest reaches of the world you'll gain insight into a character you meet.
More Ships
We've added six new vessels for you to fight against and capture their blueprints. We've chosen ship classes that had slightly fewer variants than others, so these cover the Schooner, Brig, Frigate, Corvette, Galleon and Man O War classes.
New achievements
There are two new achievements you can get, both related to the new combat campaign. The first can be obtained by winning the final battle, while the second is a slightly tougher challenge.
The vessel in the final battle is one of the new ships we've added in the update. It's called the "Fireblade" and is named after our studio. You can only find it in the final battle on this game mode - so the achievement relates to capturing it's blueprint.
Remember that you cannot obtain blueprints for ships that are of a higher class than yours, and you start the campaign with a Warship. So you'll need to save enough money to get a better ship, make it to the end and capture it intact. Needless to say it's intended as a tougher challenge ;)
Japanese & Chinese Testing
Our Japanese translation is about 90% complete, while our Chinese translation is about 40%. We've put these in the game so that they can receive testing from our community, so if you find any problems please report them on our Translations Steam sub-forum.
Once these languages are 100% complete we'll mark them as officially supported, but until then please consider them as work-in-progress.
Other Notable Updates
There's a lot of minor bug fixes and other improvements, and you can read the full list in the patch notes here.
There are a few noteworthy additions we wanted to call out:
- If there is an environmental modifier in combat it will now be displayed as an icon with tooltip on the middle-right of the combat scene.
- Enemy loadout information is now displayed over the enemy section display, so hover the mouse over individual sections to see what weapons and upgrades they have. This ties into visibility rules, so if you can't see the section health, you won't be able to see their loadout. Either get closer or purchase an Advanced Crow's Nest to gain better insight into enemy vessels weapons.
- We wanted to give more reasons for engaging in faction battles, so there are a few changes with this system:
Defeating a Cult Kraken Boss will now reward you by removing a random negative mental trait.
Defeating faction pirate ships now reduces wanted level. Handy for if you find yourself pursued by bounty hunters, low on money with no floating outposts about.
Ports in maps under faction control will now have a small price penalty.
- We've slightly increased the costs of the last four ship classes as a lot of people were maxing out everything too early.
- There's also two new monologue images in the original combat campaign! As 2019 winds down, Adam, Alex and I will be taking a well-earned rest - but fear not! Early 2020 has more cool things in store, including Italian, Japanese and Chinese translations plus some other things that we can't quite talk about yet, but as soon as we can you'll be the first to know :)
Thanks for the support,
The Abandon Ship Crew
Beta Branch Updated!
Ahoy Captain,
The Beta Branch has been updated with an incoming Major Update!
To learn how to gain access to the Beta Branch, click on this link:
If the number in the bottom-right corner of the Main Menu ends in 13531 or later, you have the correct version.
Your saves from the normal version of the game will work with this, although as this is the beta branch we would at least advise you to take backups of your saves just in case there is an unforeseen issue. Better safe than sorry!
Your saves folder is located in here: C:\\Users\\YOURUSERNAME\\AppData\\LocalLow\\Fireblade Software Ltd\\Abandon Ship\\Saves
If you start a new game on this beta branch, you should avoiding going back to a prior version and continuing that particular save. Here's all the cool new stuff:
Second Combat Campaign
Our original combat campaign was a popular game mode from our very first Early Access release. Since then we've added many more environmental modifiers, so we wanted to bring all those together into a new combat campaign.
The original had randomised ports and the maps were random-within-groups, which meant that RNG could have a massive influence on a particular run.
We wanted this new one to be slightly different, so while there are still ten battles with up to five port visits for you to deliberate over, this time the ports stock all weapons and upgrades all the time, and the combat arenas are in a set order, so you can plan your runs and try different approaches in battle.
Like all our game modes, the story has some cross-over with the main campaign. It focuses on the mysterious Far Haven Assassin's, and for those people who have explored some of the farthest reaches of the world you'll gain insight into a character you meet.
We really, really need your feedback on the balancing of this campaign. Is it too easy? Too hard? If anything, we'd like it to be more of a difficult challenge for experienced players. Let us know in the Beta Branch Sub-Forum or on our Discord.
More Ships
We've added six new vessels for you to fight against and capture their blueprints. We've chosen ship classes that had slightly fewer variants than others, so these cover the Schooner, Brig, Frigate, Corvette, Galleon and Man O War classes.
New achievements
There are two new achievements you can get, both related to the new combat campaign. The first can be obtained by winning the final battle, while the second is a slightly tougher challenge.
The vessel in the final battle is one of the new ships we've added in the update. It's called the "Fireblade" and is named after our studio. You can only find it in the final battle on this game mode - so the achievement relates to capturing it's blueprint.
Remember that you cannot obtain blueprints for ships that are of a higher class than yours, and you start the campaign with a Warship. So you'll need to save enough money to get a better ship, make it to the end and capture it intact. Needless to say it's intended as a tougher challenge ;)
Japanese & Chinese Testing
Our Japanese translation is about 80% complete, while our Chinese translation is about 40%. We've put these in the game so that they can receive testing from our community, so if you find any problems please report them on our Translations Steam sub-forum.
Once these languages are 100% complete we'll mark them as officially supported, but until then please consider them as work-in-progress.
Other Notable Updates
There's a lot of minor bug fixes and other improvements, and we'll provide the full list in the patch notes when the update is released. There are a few noteworthy additions we wanted to call out:
- If there is an environmental modifier in combat it will now be displayed as an icon with tooltip on the middle-right of the combat scene.
- Enemy loadout information is now displayed over the enemy section display, so hover the mouse over individual sections to see what weapons and upgrades they have. This ties into visibility rules, so if you can't see the section health, you won't be able to see their loadout. Either get closer or purchase an Advanced Crow's Nest to gain better insight into enemy vessels weapons.
- We wanted to give a few more reasons for engaging in faction battles, so there are a few changes with this system:
Defeating a Cult Kraken Boss will now reward you by removing a random negative mental trait.
Defeating faction pirate ships now reduces wanted level. Handy for if you find yourself pursued by bounty hunters, low on money with no floating outposts about.
Ports in maps under faction control will now have a small price penalty.
- We've slightly increased the costs of the last four ship classes as a lot of people were maxing out everything too early.
- There's also two new monologue images in the original combat campaign! If all goes to plan we'll release this update onto the main branch before 2019 ends.
Let us know what you think in the Beta Branch Sub-Forum or on our Discord, and if you haven't yet, please leave a review - we only need 18 more to hit 500, which is an important milestone.
Thanks for the support,
The Abandon Ship Crew
New Language Added: German
Hello Captains,
The Abandon Ship crew would like to extend a hearty thank-you for all of the support over our recent graduation from Early Access. All the reviews, forums posts and new Captains that have joined us on this adventure make a massive difference to us, and for that we'll always be eternally grateful.
This update is to announce a new language has been added to the game: German. This joins our existing languages of Russian, Turkish, French, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese - with more on the way!
As with any translation, if you spot any errors please report them on our Translations Sub-Forum.
If you'd like to know the status of our work-in-progress translations, you can check out this post here:
Don't forget you can have your name included in the game as a randomly generated crew-member by signing up to our newsletter - full details here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/1564364251352390803 And please keep on spreading the word and leaving reviews - just another 55-60 reviews and we'd break the 500 barrier, which is an important milestone :)
Once again, thank-you for all the support, you're the best!
Gary, Adam and Alex.
Abandon Ship is now Version 1.0!
Important and exciting news, Captain - Abandon Ship has graduated from Early Access and has reached version 1.0!
Here's our launch trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIw8fvqGjLg It's been a fantastic journey, and we'd like to extend our thanks to all those that have supported us and provided valuable feedback. It's helped shape Abandon Ship into the game it is today. On a personal note, I'm extremely proud of what such a tiny team has achieved.
The game has received a lot of testing throughout Early Access, but there is nothing like a huge swathe of new players to flush out weird bugs! In the event you're struggling with anything, you have a few options to reach us:
The Steam forums - there is a pinned post on our bug forum here with common compatibility issues. The steps here solves the vast majority of problems. If that or any other post doesn't help, create a new one, or reach us on one of the following places...
Our support email address: support@firebladesoftware.com
I'll be manning all these channels most of the time so I should respond promptly - please bear in mind I'm in the UK, so during sleeping hours the response will be longer :)
If you're wondering what new content you can expect in Version 1.0, you can check out this post here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/1564364251370530377 Remember that if you want to enjoy all this new content, you'll need to start a new game. However if you wish to continue playing your previous save, you can do so by syncing to "0.5.13007 - Sword of the Cult Version" on the Beta Branches system. Instructions on how to do that are here. There are quick-starts in the campaigns to get a head start if you wish.
If you're returning to the game after a while, and are curious what has been added during Early Access, all of our Major Updates are listed here for your perusal: https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/2704893329100702332 https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/1608261029763621814 https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/1735477647578453999 https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/1691558597331600976 https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/1691552256164152883 https://steamcommunity.com/games/551860/announcements/detail/3275682189139112231 We'll still continue adding cool stuff to the game, certainly as long as the community wants more - so if you like the game, tell us by leaving a review!
Thanks again for all the support, you're the best :)
