Blood Bond: Into the Shroud
Shinobi Rising : new available to wishlist
Our next game, Shinobi Rising, has got its Steam page up and running. You can view it here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2160040/KatanaRa_Shinobi_Rising/
Looking forward to welcoming you to our second game universe in an innovative take on a stealth detective game.
Sunsetting Blood Bond - Into the Shroud
We are making good headway in the development of the Unreal 5 remastered version of Blood Bond - Into the Shroud. We are nearing the time when the steam page for it needs to be added to Steam.
So as not to confuse consumers who might mistakenly buy this older unsupported version of the game by accident, we are working with Steam to remove this old version of the game from sale on Steam and also from other stores.
This will have no effect on those of you that have already purchased the game, it will only stop any future sales.
The new upgraded version of the game will also feature a free prologue which will come out on Steam first, and the full game will then follow months later.
The removal of this version of the game will take place on November 1st. We appreciate the support the community has given us since 2019 and there are some lovely things ahead.
We are launching three titles in 2023 and you will see Steam pages for those titles coming soon. If you do not follow us as a company on Steam please do, to keep up to date on our next games. Alternatively if you are a discord user, we are on: https://invite.gg/wrksgames and on social we are @WRKSGames everywhere.
WRKS Games selected as a finalist in the Barclays Entrepreneur Awards 2022
As per the Barclays Site (https://www.barclays.co.uk/business-banking/sectors/entrepreneurs/awards/): the Games Award is given to entrepreneurs and disruptive games companies who have shown real innovation and created games, products or services that have positively impacted the games industry or community.
End of Life Announcement - Blood Bond Into the Shroud (Enhanced Edition)
We have come a long way since our 2018 debut into Early Access. With Blood Bond being our first game, we had cautious expectations and never really thought our first game was ever going to be a great game. It was always going to be a best effort to get the company running, the team trained and ourselves confident in our process.
Here is how we did:
On Steam itself: a few hundred units
Steam Keys on Other Stores: a few thousand units
Streaming Downloads through partnerships: a few thousand units
We have done a dozen small patches and two content updates with free content and upgrades.
All in all nearly 10 000 people enjoyed the game, refund rates globally are averaging 1% and on Steam 15% lifetime. Not at all a shabby result for our first effort.
However, sales have now come to the level of only double digits per month and therefore we no longer have a commercial imperative to continue adding content to the game.
So a hearty thank you, to those 10 000 plus people that put money down and gave us our start in the industry. We have come a long way as a game developer now and are working on 4 games internally now that will go to market over the coming 3 years.
We are very close to announcing the first of those in the coming weeks and even the early development of that shows how far we have come since our first effort at game development.
Blood Bond - Into the Shroud will now enter its discounting cycle of sales. The full price has been reduced by 30% and there will be large discounts twice a year to let people enjoy this legacy game if they wish to do so.
I can also reveal that we have started a remastered edition of this game in Unreal Engine 5 that will rebuild the game from scratch to what we always wanted this game to be, but did not have the budget or the know-how to do it in this first effort.
The remastered edition will debut in 2024 and will support multiple platforms, fully RTX enabled, and will be a full rebuild of this original game.
Thank you for supporting us through this first effort and for giving us the start we needed to thrive - we look forward to bringing you ever better gaming experiences over the coming years.
Patch 7.1 - Minor Updates
Released a small patch today to address some minor issues while we wait to complete the second part of the final content release.
- Corrected some typos in the dialogue
- Removed overlapped voice-over triggering in chapter 1
- Improved targeting on melee hitboxes
- Added combat damage numbers on melee attacks
- Removed weird invisible barrier in the top right corner of Chapter 2 map
Blood Bond - Into the Shroud (Enhanced Edition) - Part 1 Patch Notes
Blood Bond - Into the Shroud Enhanced Edition is now live on Steam. The Enhanced Edition will complete over two patches, this one today and a final one end of February. As I was building this patch it was clear the last half of the game did not feel as polished and as enjoyable as the first half.
The culprit seems to be a pacing issue that causes the end part of the story to finish too abruptly and the level design and content design of that section to be less well structured than the first half. This will be sorted in February and the patch end of February will be the last content patch for this game.
New Features
- 2 new difficulty levels added
- 2 new skins added for Astrid
- 8 new abilities added
- Combat animations improved
- New voiceovers to replace the old less well-done ones
- Interface improvements for dialogue
- Difficulty increase for monsters and NPCs
With regards to the reviews that have recently landed on the Steam page: I and the team are quite happy to take on board any feedback and thoughts. As this was our first title and it came out in 2019 as Early Access, there are some areas of the game where improvements we can do now are limited.
However, this is and always was a primarily story-driven title. In order to enjoy the game, you actually need to do the quests and play the game. Combat options have been vastly improved in this update however, the meat of the game is the story itself and therefore just running around killing things - is unlikely to be a rewarding experience.
Blood Bond - Into the Shroud Enhanced Edition - Update
Apologies for the delay in the Enhanced Edition launching. I was hoping to get it done before we went on the big 50% discount Xmas sale we are on now. However...life, or rather Covid got in the way. I was down for 10 days in December with the dreaded VID! So sadly....did not get the update done in time.
It is, however, now in full swing and I expect to go live on the weekend of Jan 3-5th. For those that missed the previous announcement, here are some of the updates coming in a week or so:
Enhanced Edition Preview: New Skins are Coming
We have two new skins coming out in the Enhanced Edition, and we have a preview for you here:
[previewyoutube="LthZJKl22J8;full"]
Blood Bond - Into the Shroud (Enhanced) Collectors Edition
As mentioned before we are doing a limited-time run of creating a boxed set for those that like to have an actual physical copy of the game. The Kickstarter is live now and sporting the following goodies all up for grabs for the next 30 days only:
The Kickstarter for the retail edition of Blood Bond - Into the Shroud
We will be launching a Kickstarter for a Limited Retail Edition of the Blood Bond - Into the Shroud game. This will be an actual physical box that you can add to your collection. A massive selection of goodies will be rolled out along with that and will be available only during the Kickstarter itself.
You can signup for being notified over here: Kickstarter Preview Signup.
Here is the stuff that will be up for grabs in this Kickstarter: