Black Forest
Summertime is here !
It's also a great time because the game just received a major update, and another (smaller) update is on the way.
Go and defend these villagers, they'll be eaten without you !
Attention: Next Update is a Breaking Change
So if you have any quite old saves (from before the last update), now is the time to finish those game.
In the next update, I will be removing old walls and no longer used buildings. This might break old saves, meaning that those buildings won't exist anymore if you load a game where they were still present.
In other news, the update will also include French localization. I know it's been asked a few times, it's finally coming.
Sale + Update
Steam tells me that over 10,000 of you still have it on your wishlist. Now, with the sale and the big update that just came out, is the perfect time to get Black Forest into your library.
2024 Major Update
That includes the night watch option for villagers and the armoury, weapons and guard posts. The game was always meant to be unique in that you don't have combat as a serious option, and having these elements in the game creates the false impression that this is how you could (or should) defend your village, when it was only ever meant to be a small part of your total strategy.
- New building: Barn - you can't build it but most maps come with one set up already. It serves no purpose and is only for decoration (though it does block monster attacks)
- New building: Waypost - use it to guide the dynamic paths that some buildings automatically create.
- New building: Harvest stuff - a decoration item showing crates, sacks, etc. full of harvested fruits, grain, vegetables. Also added some of these to several maps.
- Gameplay change: When a building construction finishes and the building can have people assigned to it, the game will automatically assign workers. No longer do you have useless buildings because you forgot to assign peasants.
- removed the armoury and guard post from the buildable items. They will still exist in saved games, but will be removed with the next update
- removed weapons from smithy, market, storage and manual
- removed archers from the tavern. Rangers and Guardians remain.
- Walls have been reworked. More variety with procedural generation and reduced cost in resources and workers.
- Known issue: When building a wall with the new wall builder while the game is paused, the wall will show up as if finished immediately, then begin construction when unpausing
- Carpenter and Mason will now provide a construction speed bonus to wood and stone walls - 10% per Carpenter/Mason you have.
- Steward will now rebuild destroyed walls when you click the "repair walls" button
- updated manual and various UI texts to reflect the above changes
- Added a small random bonus to wall construction speed just to break it up visually.
- Removed the map editor
- Small updates to most of the maps
- Big update to the Schramberg (and tutorial) map, with new vegetation
- Peasant visuals update: Now using tools (hammer, bucket, etc.) when building, digging a new field, harvesting wheat or carrying water
- Major update to how Guardians work. They now target monsters directly, emerging from the tavern when a monster is spotted.
- Slightly extended the length of the day on maps Castle, Farmstead, Friedmarkt and Ziegwald
- Reworked the monster spawn timings to be more interesting and predictable
- Loading screen will now show loading progress instead of just pulsating
- Context menu will now stay over the building you selected
- Several small UI improvements
- Balance: Buildings recover their "soak" value slightly faster
- Balance: No monster spawns the first two nights on easy levels, or the first night on medium levels
- Balance: Increased the score for monsters
- Balance: Changed some monster spawnings on some maps, just small adjustments
- Balance: Slightly raised the amount of monsters on the doomed map "Calm Village"
- Balance: Slightly increased the amount of starting resources on easy maps
- Fixed: Kobolds attacking as orcs (damage and log texts)
- Fixed: Pathfinding monsters (such as rats and kobolds) should no longer walk through walls in some instances
- Fixed: Reduced volume of the chapel bell
- Fixed: Smithy sound effect
- Fixed: Made sure repairs can never require more resources than the initial construction cost
- Fixed: Herbalist should now actually go to the herbalist hut to work
- Fixed: Vegetation masks and dynamic paths now show up correctly when loading a game
- Translations: Added translations for Tavern UI and option toggles
- Translations: Added missing translations for monster spawns and construction completion
- Also updated the Unity engine to the latest version, which might fix some bugs and give small performance improvements
Short New Features Dev Stream
Stream will be on my Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/blackforestdev/
If I can manage it I will upload a recording to YouTube afterwards.
The time is 21:00 local time. Check here to convert to your time: https://www.zeitzonenrechner.net/at/2761369
Update Teaser #2
- New building: Barn - you can't build it but most maps come with one set up already. It serves no purpose and is only for decoration (though it does block monster attacks)
- Walls have been reworked. More variety with procedural generation and reduced cost in resources and workers.
- Carpenter and Mason will now provide a construction speed bonus to wood and stone walls - 10% per Carpenter/Mason you have.
- Added a small random bonus to wall construction speed just to break it up visually.
- Removed the map editor
- Small updates to most of the maps
- Peasant visuals update: Now using tools (hammer, bucket, etc.) when building, digging a new field, harvesting wheat or carrying water
- Major update to how Guardians work. They now target monsters directly, emerging from the tavern when a monster is spotted.
- Slightly extended the length of the day on maps Castle, Farmstead, Friedmarkt and Ziegwald
- Reworked the monster spawn timings to be more interesting and predictable
- Loading screen will now show loading progress instead of just pulsating
- Context menu will now stay over the building you selected
- Fixed: Kobolds attacking as orcs (damage and log texts)
- Fixed: Pathfinding monsters (such as rats and kobolds) should no longer walk through walls in some instances
- Fixed: Tavern UI was lacking german translation
- Fixed: Reduced volume of the chapel bell
- Fixed: Smithy sound effect
- Fixed: Made sure repairs can never require more resources than the initial construction cost
- Fixed: Herbalist should now actually go to the herbalist hut to work
And there is more to come. This will be a major update. I am trying my best that it won't break save games, but I cannot guarantee for 100%. So if you have a running game that is very important to you, best to finish it before the update.
I estimate that it will about two weeks before the update is released, i.e. second half of May.
Major Update Teaser
That includes the night watch option for villagers and the armoury, weapons and guard posts. The game was always meant to be unique in that you don't have combat as a serious option, and having these elements in the game creates the false impression that this is how you could (or should) defend your village, when it was only ever meant to be a small part of your total strategy.
In addition to that, I have given several maps small upgrades, added tools to many of the villagers' jobs, completely reworked the way walls are generated (you won't see a big difference, but it's a lot easier for me to manage them now) made monster spawn timing more predictable and interesting.
I'm still working on more bugfixes and improvements. Looking forward to putting this big update into your hands.
Black Forest is part of Freedom Games Publisher Sale!
The game will be 40% off from April 15th through the 22nd!
Make sure to check out Freedom Games Publisher Sale page to pick up some awesome indie games at great prices. Whether you like to play alone or with friends, there are some great deals you won't want to miss out on!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/523070/Black_Forest/
Black Forest is part of the Steam Spring Sale!
If you were thinking about getting the game, now is a great time to do so as we are part of the Steam Spring Sale! From March 14th until the 21st, the game will be on sale for 50% off! Make sure to check out Freedom Games' Steam Spring Sale page to pick up some great games to play.
Get Black Forest here.
February Patch - Balance and Bugfixes
- Balance update: All gather tasks on easy and medium difficulty as well as most story levels are now more efficient, which means you get more resources from the forest
- Fixed a number of smaller issues that you probably didn't even notice.
- Fixed some remaining issues with achievements
- Fixed some translation errors
- Slightly streamlined the tutorial dialogs.
- Reworked backend handling (leaderboards, achievements) to clean up the code.