Beyond ELDERBORN - future updates and more from Hyperstrange
Warriors!
We are Hyperstrange. Two years ago, following over 3 years of development by a tiny team, on October 11, 2018 we've released ELDERBORN in Steam Early access. It has changed a lot since then, and the full release on January 30, 2020 (which coincided with 40-minute total Steam outage) wasn't the end of its evolution. We followed your feedback to make ELDERBORN an even better game.
We heard you, when you said you'd like to see a New Game + mode. We listened to those hard-core barbarians calling for a permadeath mode. But most of all - we took every opportunity we could to further balance and polish the experience so you could enjoy the brutal FPP melee combat at its very best.
It was a long, and curvy road, but here we are - ELDERBORN has earned mainstream recognition.
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Are we happy with the current state of ELDERBORN? Yes. Does it mean we won't expand and improve it anymore? No way. Even though Hyperstrange is now involved in other projects, ELDERBORN remains very special to us. We take pride in what we've accomplished here with all of your support, feedback, and valuable critiques. We know there's much demand for more content, and we're not going to fail your expectations. The game will continue to expand, and we'll let you know about the specifics - soon.
Once again we want to thank you - the players who supported us on our way and took part in writing our success story. Thanks to you, Hyperstrange is now an established studio. We're working with the legendary Running With Scissors team to bring you POSTAL: Brain Damaged. We've released a small horror score-attack FPS called CROSSBOW: Bloodnight just in time for Halloween. We're on our way to help some other indie teams to reach you with their games by serving as their publishing studio. The business is booming, and it is all thanks to YOU - the fierce warriors slashing, stabbing, and kicking their way through the many dangers of the ever-expanding world of ELDERBORN. We salute you!
If you want to stay in the loop for all the awesome things coming your way from Hyperstrange, please drop by our publisher profile and click that FOLLOW button. You can also stay in touch with us via Twitter and Discord. We will greatly appreciate if you do!
Stay metal, WARRIORS!
CROSSBOW: Bloodnight and POSTAL: Brain Damaged
Warriors!
It's been very busy 8 months for Hyperstrange after the ELDERBORN launch. We've pushed two content updates, lots of fixes, and heavily re-balanced the game based on your feedback. We've redesigned some core combat mechanics seeing that there's a high demand for it among you. We're happy to see that our work has made the players enjoy the game even more, and now we can enjoy a nearly 90% positive review count on Steam.
This has been a great boost to our confidence, and the successful launch allowed us to expand as a studio. Here's what's new with Hyperstrange!
CROSSBOW: Bloodnight - new hunt begins!
CROSSBOW: Bloodnight, is our small but polished, and fine-tuned arena shooter in the vein of our own all-time favorite score-attack FPS, Devil Daggers. It has you slaughtering monsters with an arcane mechanical crossbow that doubles for a machine gun, shotgun, granade launcher, and even an aerial attack holy mortar. The game is available for only $2 in the special launch promo that lasts until Thursday, 9AM PST. It's a steal - but if you need more reason to try it, it was recommended by both Civvie11 and GmanLives (both featured in the reviews section). See a gameplay clip.
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What made us make such a game (apart form the obvious - blasting demons with a magic crossbow is cool!)? Are you familiar with the term "boomer shooter"? It describes a throwback, retro-styled FPS following the footsteps of such great classics as Quake, Duke 3D, or Blood. With all the 80s and 90s pop-culture references in ELDERBORN, it's safe to say we've earned all the boomer-cred we need for our But what about shooter-cred? Grab CROSSBOW: Bloodnight and find out how Hyperstrange handles a first-person shooter. This is quite important because of...
POSTAL: Brain Damaged
ELDERBORN made some heads turn. Some of these heads, were the heads in charge of Running With Scissors, the notorious studio of maniacs behind the POSTAL series. You might have heard this already, if not - let us break the news. Hyperstrange is working on POSTAL: Brain Damaged, a boomer shooter spin-off to the series that has pushed the limits of what video games can get away with.
POSTAL: Brain Damaged is planned to launch sometime in late 2021, but we'll be very grateful if you wishlist & follow it on Steam, so you can stay in the loop.
We would like to take this opportunity to once again invite you to our Discord Server, so we can talk to you directly about ELDERBORN, and all the other Hyperstrange projects.
Thank you for your continued support, and enjoy the hunt - now in two Hyperstrange games!
In the midst of Steam Summer Sale we give you the collectible ELDERBORN Steam Cards set. You know the drill - get all cards, convert them to sets, redeem badges, emotes, and profile backgrounds. Here's a little preview of what we have in store for you:
The first ten people who comment under this post using the the "Stay Metal" emote are up for a nice surprise from Hyperstrange!
Also, please follow this profile, as we're almost ready to announce something new and exciting. If you love badass, over-the-top action games (and for what other reason would you be here?) then you really don't want to miss that announcement!
Enjoy the sale, Warriors!
Weeklong 30% OFF promo & Quad Damage Bundle
Warriors!
ELDERBORN is 30% OFF for the week, but that's not all. If you're here, there's a good chance you love old-school, single-player FPS games as much as we do. We have teamed up with the developers of Project Warlock, Hedon, and Nightmare Reaper to bring you a whole bundle of such games with a sizable discount. There's so much BANG! in this ensemble, we had to call it the...
In Quad Damage Bundle each game is a passion project by the creator, or a small handful of creators that managed to pour their heart and soul into lines of blood-sprayed and dismembered code. Do check them out.
Pry the secret of eternal youth from a cursed city as a powerful barbarian in Elderborn. Take control of a pissed off Half-Orc in her quest to repel a cultist invasion in Hedon. Solve the mystery of the nameless heroine in a mental asylum in Nightmare Reaper. Face the minions of hell as a magic-wielding, gun-toting loner in Project Warlock.
This bundle is both about the chance to get all of these games at a reasonable price, and to discover titles you might not have been familiar with. So, without further ado: introducing four games to satiate your thirst for brutal, high-quality, no-nonsense fps.
Elderborn, Hedon, Nightmare Reaper and Project Warlock combine to bring you:
97 power-ups & skills !
101 weapons & spells !!
107 levels and stages !!!
120 enemies & bosses !!!!
Please remember: you only pay for the games you don’t yet own on Steam. Also: for the best deal you might want to buy Quad Damage Bundle between 01.06-08.06! The bundle remains for a week longer after that, but the discount will be significantly smaller.
If you do enjoy the bundle, please consider tweeting about it using the #QuadDamageBundle hashtag.
Fight well, Warriors! And, as always...
Stay Metal!
Permadeath update! ELDERBORN now with Ironman Mode and Russian language support
Warriors! Today is a good day to die. Perma-die. Your continuous support keeps us working on improving ELDERBORN and today marks the addition of a much player-requested feature. As if the game wasn't hard enough (yeah, we know it's not for some of you - hats off!), you wanted to have the option to play with permadeath. As in no respawn. You die, you're dead-dead, and the game removes your save file. Yea, some of you feel THAT cocky. So here it is... Ironman Mode!
This option can only be applied to a new game, so if you want a really hardcore challenge of conduid-filled NG+ and permadeath combined, you need to prove yourself first by completing the base campaign without dying once. The new play mode also comes with an appropriate new achievement to hunt for. Good hunting!
MORE LANGUAGES!
But there's more! Today's update introduces 2 new language packs to ELDERBORN. Players in Russia and Hungaria are now able to enjoy the game in their respective native tongues. This brings us to a total of 8 language versions, including English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Russian, Polish, and Hungarian. We'd like to thank the amazing Lostprophet.hu of the Babble Knights translator team for supporting the Hungarian LOC. The Russian version was prepared by Roboto Global.
That's it for today. We'll see you around, as there's much more Hyperstrange news to be excited about in the near future. We'll keep you posted, so stick around!
Stay metal, Warriors!
Yours truly,
Digital Dragons Indie Celebration brings about ELDERBORN Demo!
Warriors!
ELDERBORN is taking part in a special event that brings together 50 amazing new indie titles either already released in 2020 or slated for launch later this year. An important part of this Digital Dragons Indie Celebration is a community vote, and we thought this is a good time to introduce an ELDERBORN Demo, so everyone can try the game!
You can download the demo directly form our Steam page. It' limited to the tutorial and the first section of the game, so you can get the hang off the combat mechanics and explore the gameworld just a little bit. (If you already own the game, you won't be able to install the demo, but fret not - there's nothing there you haven't seen before.)
Hope you enjoy the demo, folks! Or maybe you already played the full game? Either way - please:
(The voting is held outside Steam, on SurveyMonkey platform)
Console news
Quite a lot of people keeps asking us when ELDERBORN is coming to other platforms. We keep saying that we're working on it. Time to shed some more light on the topic. We're not working on it alone. We've partnered up with the fine folks at Digerati to bring the game to the whole console trifecta - PS4, XOne, and NS. We're not ready yet to announce the release dates, but why don't you sign up for the totally non-spammy and cool Digerati Newsletter, and make sure you'll be the first to hear!
It's only been a week since we've introduced you to our New Game+ mode update, and your reception of our work has been - once again - wonderful. We're happy to see that you enjoy the new content and are happy with the extra polish. Good update! Aaaand... we already have another one for you.
We want more gamers around the world to enjoy ELDERBORN, and - mostly thanks to the wonderful people of the Lostprophet.hu translator community - now we make it possible. As of today, we are adding
German, Spanish, French, and Italian language support
to ELDERBORN. All the text in the game - both the UI as well as the lore and subtitles has been fully translated, bringing the game to a total of 6 supported languages. The voiceovers, however, are still English-only.
We'd like to thank the translators Daniel Yah (Spanish), Marine Wong Tze-Kioon (French), and Luca Cassinelli (Italian) of the Babble Knights fan translations team, for their incredible effort and this treasured contribution to the game itself, and the community. The German translation was prepared by our friends at Roboto Global, a games localization service. We will continue to add more languages support in the future.
As per usual, the update comes with some additional fixes. We always do our best to QA test every update, but with such a extensive one like the NG+ last week, some things have gone under our radar. Thank you for staying vigilant - thanks to your help we were able to track down the problems and fix (hopefully) all of them. A special shout-out goes to Konrad Wargin, who is always the first to follow up each update with extensive feedback.
Another chapter in the story of ELDERBORN, the (hyper)strange, Metal AF mashup of FPS and Souls-likes as been written. Thank you, for being a part of it. More to come!
Stay Metal, Warriors!
ELDERBORN: New Game +
Warriors!
It's been almost two months since we've unleashed all the mysterious mayhem of the ancient cursed city upon you. Your reaction to ELDERBORN is - there's no other way to put it - AWESOME AF! It seems that we managed to hit all the spots we were aiming for. The Heavy Metal feel. The old-school, 90s, and 80s love. The dynamic FPP environment. The souls-like level challenge, combat flow, and exploration. The reviews you drop on our Steam page day by day are not only heartwarming, but also encourage us to keep at it!
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We appreciate all the kind words. We appreciate the critique as well. Now, to make ELDERBORN an even better game. We give you...
The "New Game+" update!
The NG+ mode is just one of the features of today's update. We wanted you to be able to pick up your game after beating the campaign, but we also wanted to make your continued time with ELDERBORN even more enjoyable. That also means addressing the complaints some of you voiced about the combat system. Here's a full changelog:
NEW GAME +
Load your final save game after beating the campaign to start NG+
Start with all the character progress and arsenal intact
Face more powerful standard enemies that leave behind more essence
Encounter rare overpowered Essence Conduit enemies that just GLOW with power
Essence Conduits are larger, and much meaner than their standard counterparts
Essence Conduits drop MASSIVE amounts of essence if you manage to defeat them
There's a higher chance of Essence Conduits spawning in each subsequent NG+ run
Each subsequent New Game+ run becomes harder, but yields higher rewards
COMBAT SYSTEM
Parrying and blocking no longer in input queue
Failed parry penalty decreased by 20%
You can now break the counterattacks of shielded enemies with a kick and stagger them
Blocking has been revamped
Block no longer has a cooldown
Block-breaking attacks no longer does damage, unless you don't defend at all
Parry-breaking attacks will cause damage
Parry- and block-breaking attacks from the enemies are less frequent
The Old Blade has been boosted to make the early game combat less punishing
The Coffer Hammer no longer blocks unblockable attacks - it delivers an unblockable heavy attack instead
More consistent enemy staggering and throwing off ledges
MISCELLANEOUS
Difficulty tiers have been re-balanced and work more in-depth - received damage, enemy attack speed, phial healing amount, and phial number after respawn is affected
Steam Cloud Save feature is now enabled
Brightness setting slider has been introduced in the menu
Some of the Catacombs enemies have been re-deployed in new positions
Scorpions will take longer to turn around
Small scorpions are easily staggered
A bug causing the Jurmum Arena bosses not to spawn on rare occasion has been tracked down and squashed with extreme prejudice
ACHIEVEMENTS
Complete achievement system overhaul to make sure all unlock properly
A progress bar added to The Elderborn achievement
Corrected descriptions to The Gravekeeper, Jurmum's Garbage Collector, Gotta Catch Them All, and Winston Wolf achievements
Steam notifications for achievement progress tracking
Some problematic enemies excluded from the achievement requirements
New achievement: Groundhog Day - complete NG+ for the first time
New achievement: A Challenger Appears - complete all challenges
New achievement: Winner's Don't Do Drugs - kill 10 Essence Conduits
Whoah, that's quite a few. And the countless small fixes on top of that. Hope your time with ELDERBORN will become even more fun and satisfying with this new update. Next phase... additional languages support. When? We'll tell you really soon.
Enjoy New Game+! If you like ELDERBORN, this would be a great time to tell all your friends about it. The update comes with a 20% discount on the main game, as well as the Metal AF edition, so don't hesitate to send your friends this way :)
Thank you for all the wnderful support.
Stay Metal, Warriors!
Coming this week: New Game+ and more
Warriors! We know most of you are probably in the middle of razing hell right now, but we've been busy as well and a short announcement is in order.
You've been asking for a way to pick up your adventure and continue after you beat the game. The update coming this Thursday, at 10am PST, will bring about a New Game+ mode that will allow you to do just that! Just load your save file after you finish the campaign, and you will start over in the Catacombs with all the unlocked skills and collected weapons from your first playthrough at your disposal. You might think this will make ELDERBORN easy. Think. Again.
New Game+ makes all the enemies stronger (but also - worth more essence!). But that's not all. This time around you will notice some of the foes stand out. Watch out for Essence Conduits, enemies filled with the unearthly power so much, that they literally radiate with it. They're bigger, tougher, and meaner then their standard counterparts. But the bounty for slaying them is much greater as well!
You might find yourself finishing the game again. We won't stop you from continuing in New Game++, New Game+++ and so on. Each time with a greater challenge that calls for greater skill, but brings about greater rewards. New Game+ mode(s) are the very core of the upcoming update. But that's not all.
Improved combat
The vast majority of players enjoyed the brutal FPP melee combat in ELDERBORN tremendously. We're very happy to see that the most important mechanic in the game is received so well. Over 85% positive user reviews makes us really proud and humbled at the same time. But it also incites dedication to make the game work even better, so we're looking even closer at those few reviews that focus on the game's problems. We're very grateful that some of the players that did not enjoy the version of ELDERBORN they received after the launch were still kind enough to leave lots of solid feedback in their thumbs-down reviews.
We were very careful not to break what didn't feel broken for most of the players, but we figured out what we can do to make the input queuing less of an issue for the rest. This also called for some weapon re-balancing and even enemy placement alterations. Be here on Thursday and find out what has changed, exactly!
Fixes and polish
You'll get a full changelog but there are a few things worth mentioning today. The Achievement system got a full overhaul, as many of you reported some problems with some of them. There's also a bunch of new achievements - of course - tied with the NG+ mode, but not only those. By request, we've added a brightness setting slider to the menu. Also by popular request - ELDERBORN will now take advantage of Steam's Cloud Save feature. We've made the pesky scorpions a little less pesky and more prone to stagger. We...
Oh, nevermind. You'll find out soon enough. See you this Thursday, when the update goes live.
Stay Metal, Warriors!
UPDATE #1 - fixes and polish
Warriors! We've been following your feedback post game launch and we're very happy to see you enjoy ELDERBORN so much. Bringing fun and joy through ancient ultra-violence was always our life goal! That's why we were even more keen on solving the problems some of you were encountering in-game. As we said earlier, we were working on a polish-bugfix-quality-of-life patch. The patch is now life, and here are the change log highlights:
An option to respawn at the last savepoint has been added to the menu, to help the player in the rare occasion of being stuck in the world map (this still works as a regular death, so no one gets the idea to abuse this mechanics for free fast-travel)
Achievements should now update properly and instantly
"OK Boomer" and "Big F****g Sword" should now work properly
General achievements fixes
A bug causing the player to respawn incorrectly at the place where they died if they quit the game too quiclky ave been fixed
In the second bossfight Anane should not teleport inside the arena wall anymore
Prompt pop-up and pop-away bugs have been fixed
Animation fixes in Ceramic Kopesh and Old Blade weapons
You can no longer trigger the Kopesh special ability by hitting corpses
Knockback should no longer make enemies clip through walls...
... nor should it make the player clip through walls
"Gravekeeper" and "Jurmum's garbage collector" no longer require bosses
You can now check the index for your progress in enemy kill count and essence gained count
The color of the particles that Anane emits has been fixed
Minor in-game text fixes
...other minor fixes and polish
We've put ELDERBORN through a few rounds of pre-release QA tests, which resulted in relatively bug-free launch, and the Windows 7-specific bug that occurred, has been tracked down and fixed promptly. Your help and feedback was instrumental in locating the bugs and issues listed above - thank you! We'll stay vigilant and put those bugs down no matter how many times they try to raise their ugly heads :D
PLUS
We mentioned in the previous post, that we're already thinking about ELDERBORN's future. We are already on our way towards the post-release content update. Again - we're following your feedback closely. We can see that many of your reviews mention the sub-optimal way that ELDERBORN handles blocks an parry. We'll look into it! But that's on the "polish" side of things. Now, about that content.
We know that a New Game+ feature is among your most popular requests. Putting it short: it's underway. We've quite a lot of ideas but - again - we'd love to hear from you about the NG+ you'd love to see. Talk to you soon!
