Ancient Frontier: Steel Shadows
Steel Shadows - Trading Cards are now Live
We are happy to announce that Steam Trading Cards are now available for Steel Shadows. Have fun collecting the whole set. This also means that all new badges, backgrounds and emoticons are ready to be earned.
We hope everyone continues to enjoy their adventures on the Frontier. Good luck out there.
Thank you for playing our games!
Steel Shadows - Patch 1.07
Greetings Commanders! Today we bring you a large balance patch and a few polish improvements. Read on for the details.
Balance Update - The Whole Game is Easier
As mentioned in our last patch we looked over all of the player data to see if changes needed to be made. It seemed very clear from the data that there were multiple areas where the experience needed to be improved. Today we bring a large number of balance changes.
First off we lowered the difficulty in all sectors but the very first area. The first area we still feel is offering the right level of challenge to introduce players to the game.
Secondly, as we recently did for Ancient Frontier, we reduced the number of ships you face in the second half of the game so that portion is less of a grind.
Third, we increased the starting resources on both the Beginner and Veteran difficulties.
Finally, we made some under the hood changes to make the experience easier on Beginner and Veteran difficulties.
Voice Acting
First off we have been very pleased with the reception the voice acting work has gotten this time around.
We had more opportunity to think about improvements for this game after the lessons we learned doing Ancient Frontier. One of the improvements we made was to have the actors read short little command lines for their ships while they were recording.
Today we bring you this update. Now all of the ships with a character will sometimes speak when you give their ship a move order. This should make it easier to tell who is who on the battlefield.
We also added one short conversation that did not make it into the last patch.
End Credits Song
We were honored that the lead composer of the game, Mimi Page, wrote us a unique song for the end credits. We were very pleased with how this turned out. Several of you have asked us for the lyrics of the song.
With this patch we have updated the Credits screen so that it now displays the lyrics. You can now all enjoy Mimi's poetry as she helped us bring this world to life for all of you. We hope you enjoy this update.
And... that's it! We hope everyone continues to enjoy their adventures on the Frontier.
Thank you for playing our games!
Steel Shadows - Patch 1.06
Greetings Commanders! We hope that everyone is enjoying their exploits on the Frontier. Today is a huge update as we finally reveal the voice acting. We also bring you new events and a few balance changes.
Voice Acting!
We are very pleased to finally bring full voice acting to all of the lines in the game. We know this is a feature many of you have been requesting. After months of work this feature is now finally fully realized.
We want to extend a huge thank you to the voice actors and actresses who poured their energy into bringing these characters to life. Your talents are very appreciated. Also a special thank you to all of the returning characters who reprised their roles from the first game.
Be sure to let us know what you think of the voice acting in the forums and in your reviews!
Options
We are proud of how the sound work turned out. However, we know that some people prefer the game the way it has been, with no voices. For those people, we also have you covered. Simply go to the options menu and turn the dialogue volume slider all the way down, and you can enjoy the game as you have.
New Events
We continue to expand the number of random events in the game. This should continue to make each playthrough even more unique and immerse you in the life of being a fleet commander on the Frontier. This has been a popular addition to the game, and we hope to continue to bring you more events. This patch adds another group of random events to the pool.
Balance Tweaks
We have gotten a fair amount of feedback that the later boss missions are too difficult, even on the easiest difficulty level. Part of this is related to the difficulty in general of turrets. To address this we have reduced the difficulty on all of the late game boss fights, and reduced the number of turrets on all difficulty levels on all missions that had them. Hopefully these missions are a little easier.
We are looking over the player data from the last several months and will be using that to potentially make additional balance tweaks in the future.
Bug Fixes
Finally, we think the game is largely bug free. However there were a few small issues that should be addressed in today's patch.
- Fixed all bugs related to all events not spawning for older games.
- Fixed minor display errors that could occur on a ship's detail inspection.
And... that's it! We hope everyone continues to enjoy their adventures on the Frontier.
Thank you for playing our games!
Steel Shadows - Patch 1.05
Greetings Commanders! We hope that everyone is enjoying the new year. We bring you a patch today that adds two new features and a group of bug fixes.
New Events
We continue to expand the number of random events in the game. This should continue to make each playthrough even more unique and immerse you in the life of being a fleet commander on the Frontier. This has been a popular addition to the game, and we hope to continue to bring you more events. This patch adds another 5 random events to the pool.
Quality of Life Improvement
Today we have also added a pop-up box to inform you whenever new ships are available to be purchased. We know that it could be tedious checking the market after each story mission to see if there were new ships to buy.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where the Hellraiser didn't spawn dialogue.
- Fixed a bug where the game could save on quitting the game for standard non-ironman games.
- Fixed a bug on the checks for three achievements. They all can be gained now.
- Fixed a bug where the Hellraiser pilot portrait could not appear in the Fleet Screen.
And... that's it! We hope everyone continues to enjoy their adventures on the Frontier.
Thank you for playing our games!
Steel Shadows - Patch 1.04
Greetings Commanders and Happy New Year! Today we bring you Steam Achievements, a new Mercenary, and several minor bug fixes and tweaks.
Steam Achievements
75 Achievements are now live and working. Almost all of these were already being tracked by the game, so when you first load up a new game you should automatically get credit for the ones you have already completed. We are happy to be able to support this feature now in this title like in all of our other games.
New Mercenary Mission
We have added another unique ship, the Hellraiser, who is sneaking around Crosius. This unique pirate carrier is sure to help late game fleets who are able to find and unlock it.
Tweaks
We slightly altered the deployment values of several of the mercenary ships. In addition we fixed the mission reward for unlocking the Scion. That mission is no longer worth zero.
And that is all for now. We have the trading cards ready to go but are still waiting on Valve's approval to release those, so we can't promise a timeline on that. We are still reading the forums and emails for feedback and bug reports. Finally, we continue to look into adding voice acting to this game perhaps early this year.
Thank you for playing our games!
Steel Shadows - Patch 1.03
Greetings Commanders!
We have not had any more major bug reports since the last patch, and so we were able to spend a little time working on balance tweaks and small quality of life improvements. We are still listening to all feedback in the forums and by email. Now that we have several weeks of player data we have made a few adjustments. Read on for all of the tweaks in this patch.
Optional Mission Display
A user suggestion was that we hide all optional missions when there are none available, as they clutter up the interface. After talking about it, we saw no advantage to displaying all of the Optional Missions when a player has no Optional Deployments remaining. So, we have tweaked the display to hide optional missions when you can't take them.
Final Dialogue
Some of you had reached out to us with questions about how the game ended. To clarify the ending for all users we added a few lines of dialogue to the final conversation. Hope that clears everything up!
Added 9 New Bounty Missions
We heard from several of you that you thought the endgame could be too restrictive at the point where Bounty Missions stop showing up. Due to this it was possible for a campaign to get "stuck" very near the end. While some players appreciated the increased tension and resource management, we decided that giving more options to players near the end game would improve the experience for everyone.
To accomplish this we have added optional mission refresh to several of the later missions, along with 9 new high level bounty missions that randomly generate (plus two new simulator missions). These eleven new missions give you more opportunities to gain resources, experience and crew right before the final battle.
We hope the addition of these missions improves the late game experience.
Balance Changes
- Slightly reduced the difficulty of the final mission.
- Slightly reduced the difficulty of all Bounty Missions in Crosius.
- Increased the drop rate of capital and escort crew members from all missions that drop a random crew member. You will now promote less fighter pilots.
And that is it for the tweaks made based on player data and player feedback so far. We are still working on achievements and trading cards, and hope to be able to roll those out soon in another patch.
Thank you for playing our games!
Steel Shadows - Patch 1.02
Greetings Commanders!
We hope you are all enjoying the holiday season. Today's patch brings a host of minor and one major bug fix. Thanks again to everyone who has been active on the forums and by email to let us know about these problems.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that caused the dialogue to sometimes not play. The entire story should always play on every setting combination now.
- Fixed a bug where upgrading torpedoes on the Heartless could freeze the game.
- Fixed a bug where two bounty missions could spawn without enemies.
- Fixed a bug where the Find the Derelict Cruiser mission could take you to a late game cutscene.
- Fixed a bug where the game could freeze while examining certain late game enemies.
These were the most critical issues impacting our players. We hope you can all enjoy the game again. Please let us know if you find any other issues.
What's Next?
We are all going to take a couple of days off to enjoy the holidays. This launch has been a whirlwind of work, and the whole team could use a break. We will be back at it though by the end of the week.
The most important thing we want to do is to get Steam Achievements in and working before the end of the year. After that we have a wishlist of improvements for both this game and the original that are waiting to be tackled. And of course we will continue to do our best to keep up with all of your feedback and any problems that you do find.
Take a break. Relax. Blow up some enemy space ships! Enjoy the holidays.
Thank you for playing our games!
Steel Shadows - Patch 1.01
Greetings Commanders!
Thank you to each and every one of you that decided to engage in a new adventure on the Frontier. We hope that everyone is enjoying their time with the game so far.
Today we have for you a small patch to fix a number of minor issues that have been reported.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that stopped some games from loading.
- Fixed a bug that could stop Corsair's from equipping crew members.
- Fixed a bug that could crash the game on the dialogue after Story Mission 8.
- Fixed a bug that could cause the mission to crash on the Collect Energy bounty mission in Externus.
- Slightly lowered the difficulty of the Midnight Star mercenary mission.
We want to let you all know how much we appreciate those of you who found these problems and reported them to us in the forums or by email. When we know about issues we can make this game a better experience for everyone.
What's Next?
Our plans for the next patch are to get Trading Cards and Steam Achievements up and working. And of course to continue to address any issues which are reported to us.
We hope everyone is enjoying the end of the year. Thank you for playing our games!
Steel Shadows is now available!
It has been a long road, and now Steel Shadows is available! Dive back into the world of Ancient Frontier playing as an all new faction through a new campaign.
Let us know what you think! Be sure to drop us an email, comment in the forums or leave us a review. We really appreciate your feedback.
Thank you for playing our games.
The Beta is now closed. Thank you for playing.
We want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who played the beta, and especially those who submitted feedback and bug reports on the forums and by email.
The beta is now closed and is no longer accepting new players.
The game will be available in full on December 11th. We hope to see you there!