Eon Altar cover
Eon Altar screenshot
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Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Adventure, Indie

Eon Altar

An Unfortunately Abrupt Ending
We understand that a lot of the vocal and supportive members of our Eon Altar community have wondered just when the next episode would be coming out, and we’ve been quiet about it for way too long. I’ll hit with the bad news first – Flying Helmet Games won’t be developing any new content for Eon Altar. In other words, there won't be a Season Two.

In 2012, Lukas and I had a crazy idea to use mobile devices to re-imagine the tabletop RPG in a way that digital games had been unable to, to that date. We were extremely fortunate to find a team of friends, ex co-workers and ardent supporters to help us in our cause, and even more fortunate to receive the funding we needed to get started, partly from family and friends, and in a very large part, from Creative BC and the Canada Media Fund. I can only look back at the hard work our team did to release an innovative new way of playing games with friends, and be incredibly grateful for the outpouring of positive support from our community. Our review score on Steam makes me undeniably proud.

But this has been a hard journey. Many of you know about our unsuccessful Eon Altar Kickstarter in 2013. This nearly stopped us, and certainly forced us to make some dramatic design decisions. We doubled down on using our resources to complete a season, or 3 episodes of darn good story, in hopes that we’d be able to secure more funding and/or see reasonable success in Early Access and launch. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

The past year has hit us pretty hard. Our skeleton crew worked a ton to make sure our 2nd and 3rd episodes went out without a hitch. As sales cratered, we tried one last Kickstarter for a simple top-down shooter with a twist. We hoped a bit of support for SPARK:Resistance could help us bring back a few team members to help us finish some more episodes of Eon Altar down the road, but when that campaign fizzled, we were out of options. The last of our staff have gone on to other endeavors, and I wish us all good fortune.

Perhaps you and your party just got to the end of Episode 3 and have logged more than a few hours in the arenas waiting for the next part of our story to continue. You’re probably disappointed, mad, furious with us and I understand. This has been our lives for 5 or more years now, and there probably isn’t anyone more excited to see what’s on the other side of that floating bridge than me.

Yes, we made a lot of mistakes, and absolutely we’re going to learn from them, and we’re sorry to let you down. You may, justifiably, be thinking of writing a scathing Steam review.

However! If you’ve played Eon Altar and liked it, if you think this innovative game-play deserves more: Please tell your friends to try our game. The prelude’s still free! We might never finish this story, but your positivity might give us an opportunity to try again – or give a new, intrepid studio a chance to take this idea somewhere new.

Thanks for your support,
Scott Penner
Lead Developer
Flying Helmet Games

Update #19 - Episode 3 Combat Arena and Gear Changes
What? An update? It's true! For Update 19, we're bringing you new content, and a much wanted update to how gear in Eon Altar works.

First, Episode 3 Combat Arena! When we first delivered Episode 3, we wanted to make sure that our focus was on delivering awesome content for the episode, which unfortunately at the time precluded spending time on another combat arena. However, we've taken the formula we used for our first combat arena, and updated it for the latest outing! Explore the Cursed Mines and survive to Wave 20 and beyond! New achievements for surviving past the 20th Wave will test your tactical combat skills and cooperation.

We're also making a change to how gear works. For a long time, folks were stuck filling their gear slots with potions to be able to survive, and couldn't really justify spending those limited gear slots on the cool items they could craft on Silent Thorn, Marcus, and Shasek. No longer! Items are now divided into Offensive and Defensive types--if it can be used on an enemy, it's offensive; if it can be used on your self or an ally, it's defensive. Each character now starts with an Offensive and a Defensive gear slot, with upgrades to add more slots. All characters ultimately will have access to 2 Defensive slots, and 1 Offensive slot, though the aforementioned characters will have 2 Offensive slots. Play with those arrows, chakram, and bolas and open up new tactics for your group!



As always, we're thankful to the support and patience of our community. We're aware we've been super quiet, and that's left a lot of uncertainty floating around. We should have a more thorough communication post ready for folks in the next few weeks letting you know where we stand and our plans. Thanks for playing and you'll hear from us again soon!

Join the Resistance!


The SPARK: Resistance Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight campaigns are now live! Go to our Kickstarter and Greenlight pages for more information about how you as a Spark can plunder the research corporations of Hephaestus Station in our upcoming online cooperative top-down shooter for 1-4 players. Can't afford to pledge, or want to wait and see? Vote Yes on our Greenlight page so we can bring our game to Steam and you'll be able to get it down the line!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRS6u3C3ub8
We look forward to continuing to interact with our community during SPARK: Resistance as we have with Eon Altar, so don't be shy!

Thanks,
The Flying Helmet Games Team

What's Next for FHG? SPARK: Resistance


UPDATE: Our Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns are live!

One moment you’re on the beaches of Hawaii soaking up the sun, the next you’re on a cold metal table in a monolithic space station. Your day couldn’t get much stranger.

But then you died.

You are a Spark—a weaponized incarnation of the human spirit—life, death, mechanics, and biology are no longer boundaries for you. You must learn to control your abilities, fight to claim powerful weapons, and learn more about the competing forces that brought you here.



Flying Helmet Games has been busy over the past few months cooking up something new! We call it SPARK: Resistance—an online, cooperative, top-down, objective-based shooter for 1 – 4 players.

But it’s not just cooperative in the usual sense. As a Spark, you are synced with your Core body to shoot down your enemies and traverse the level, but you can desync from your Core to jump into your friend’s body to protect them or help fend off enemies! Or you can jump into electronics to interact with them directly, such as computer terminals, turrets, and doors. These are just a few of the ways to utilize the Spark's potential to influence your environment.

While this is just a (very) small preview, we’re going to be announcing a Kickstarter soon to help fund the development of SPARK: Resistance, as well as a Steam Greenlight campaign. We've got some awesome gifs, videos, and descriptions up and running, and there's more that we want to build! So be on the lookout for more news from us soon!


Wait, what about Eon Altar?



Eon Altar is very much alive. It’s a game that we called our Grand Experiment, and that experiment resonated strongly with many of our fans. We’re humbled and happy that folks love our game, and we at FHG are looking to make more. We’ve lived and breathed Eon Altar for years and we’re extremely passionate about our vision for it.

Part of what makes SPARK: Resistance something we want to build is that drive to make funky, fun, experimental multiplayer games. We love games like Helldivers and Alien Swarm, and we want to bring our own spin on the multiplayer aspect of top-down shooters. Eon Altar doesn’t scratch that action game itch, being a very different game.

Another aspect is that for some of us, Eon Altar has been our entire focus for over 5 years now, between our original prototype, throwing that out, and then what turned into the Eon Altar many of you know and love today. SPARK: Resistance is a way for us to explore some of our team’s other ideas and talents to create something different and give us a chance to come back to Eon Altar with a fresh perspective after letting it percolate a bit.

Finally, our community has given us lots to think about for Eon Altar. Between platforms, feature requests, ideas, likes, dislikes, issues, and the stuff that you think makes our game special and different—we've some thinking and planning to do about what form Season 2 should take. What's worked, what could be streamlined, what hasn't worked, what's almost there but not quite. We're not satisfied with just making more content: we want the game to continue to get better and evolve. We're still listening to and reading feedback, and we have so many ideas yet to come. The company is focused on SPARK: Resistance right now, but rest assured we are thinking, planning, and present in the community still, and we are still working towards more Eon Altar in the future.

But for the moment, hopefully SPARK: Resistance sparks some fun and excitement in you, as it has us! More information will be here soon!

Thanks,
The Flying Helmet Games Team

Update #18 - Cloud Save is Here!


Welcome to Update #18! Today we bring you the refreshing overcast skies of Steam Cloud Saves. No longer do you need to manually schlup your save files from computer to computer: Steam will do it for you! It will even work across both OSX and Windows!

Note that Steam only syncs on game app open and close, so if you have multiple computers you want in sync, ensure you run the game once and close it on all machines. If you've taken the time to duplicate your file across multiple machines, Steam will prompt you asking which file to keep. After that, there's nothing else to do but let Steam do its thing!

A few other fixes include some reported save blockers, and the upgrade code to fix existing saves with the reported issues.

You can find the full update notes here.

Thanks for playing, and as always, thank you for your feedback! Let us know how it goes!

Update #17 - Portable Save Files and Episode 3 Fixes


This update brings a much requested feature: the ability to drag and drop save files into and out of your save folder from machine to machine. This will help folks transfer save files wherever they like (assuming it's under the same Steam user account), and also help with support. This is a step towards full Steam Cloud Saves for Eon Altar, coming soon!

It also contains a large number of fixes for Episode 3 content. Some folks ran into bugs that blocked their progress in Episode 3, and we've nailed each one that's been reported so far in this update. No need to worry, existing save files are covered and will also get these fixes! Thanks to our amazing community for help here, it's been awesome!


  • The Mysterious Stranger should now load correctly on reload, including for existing saves that were broken previously, though it may take him a few moments to find you. He will be much, much harder to lose, despite maybe wanting to drop him in a mine shaft.
  • You can now leave or re-enter the Paths of Madness after reloading the level. Existing save files should also no longer exhibit this issue.
  • You should no longer get stuck in the Pit Mine on one side of the bridge unable to continue. Existing save files should also no longer exhibit this issue.


Finally, we've made Episode 3 better all around, with a few more visuals, some combat re-tuning, and more optimizations to make the levels run faster.

A full list of the issues addressed can be found here.

Update #16 - Episode 3: The Watcher in the Dark


Eon Altar: Episode 3 - The Watcher in the Dark is now out for your playing pleasure!

Episode 3 contains two new sessions: The Paths of Madness and Hall of the Builders.

After the defeat of Lady Allevia and putting an end to her centuries-old torment, a mysterious, powerful figure has saved you from Guild Lord Davian's attack and left you in the dark caves below. Explore the mined-out caverns below the Catacombs of Tarnum as you try to get back on Davian's trail, starting in The Paths of Madness--a place of terror that's claimed many miners' lives. What creatures await you in the dark? What does this mysterious benefactor want, and can he help you escape? Or is escape what he's even after? Come heroes of Arilia, your destiny awaits!

  • More Story! Your characters continue their journey to the Eon Altar. Will Shasek find the treasure he seeks? Will Silent Thorn finally end her target? Find more about two ancient races that have inhabited Arilia for centuries, hidden.
  • Puzzles! The Hall of the Builders was created by a now seemingly extinct race. What contraptions have they created to guard the path to the Eon Altar?
  • More Player-To-Player interaction! From quests that bring your players into direct conflict, to conversations where you can come to a mutual understanding. Will Baryson and Muran ever truly get along?




Update #16 also includes some bug fixes, optimizations, and an overhaul to Silent Thorn's Assassin powers!

Poor Silent Thorn has been a little underpowered for a while. Overall her Archery Tree was okay, with Void Arrow and Volley having niche uses, and Double Shot being the meat and potatos of Silent Thorn's rotation. But her Shadowstep/Assassinate loop was a little slow and unfun compared to other characters, to the point that the right tactical answer was always "Archery tree". We wanted to speed up the Shadowstep/Assassinate loop, and also differentiate Eviscerate from Assassinate a little further to make their combat niches a lot more pronounced. Making Shadowstep a Free Action helps with this, but given the damage boost, untargetability, and extra move action it gives, we needed to frontload some Energy cost to it to prevent spamming it off cooldown becoming the optimal strategy.

This change should let you weave in Shadowstep, Eviscerate, and Assassinate into your rotation a lot more often, and keep them differentiated from the Archery tree.

With the changes to Eviscerate, Void Arrow's Blinded lasting 3 Rounds already, Double Shot potentially applying Slowed twice, and Rank III Shadowstep applying Demoralized twice, Silent Thorn's Debuffs stacking was becoming a serious balance issue, so we've also made it such that named Debuffs such as Slowed, Blinded, Hindered, Demoralized, etc. no longer stack. Rather, the last one of that name will get overwritten by the new application. So no more applying Slowed twice to make the enemy have 0 Movement, for example.

Note right now we think these changes may have left her a little overpowered--even with the Debuff stacking change--so we're going to keep an eye on that.

  • Shadowstep is now a Free Action, but costs 5 Energy. It also still has a 1-Round Cooldown. Eviscerate and Assassinate will reset the cooldown of Shadowstep immediately so it can be used again next round.
  • Eviscerate will now cost 0 Energy (previously 5 Energy cost), but generate no energy. Its damage has been nerfed slightly, but the debuffs it applies have been extended to 3 Rounds duration instead of 1 to further differentiate it from Assassinate.
  • Assassinate will now cost 5 Energy (previously 12 Energy cost).
  • Concealed (and the damage bonus that comes with Shadowstep) both fall off at the beginning of the next round instead of the end to adjust to Shadowstep's Free Action. This will still allow you a round of untargetability.
  • Debuffs no longer stack; rather, the last one of that type (ie: Slowed, Blinded, Hindered, etc.) applied wins, even if it's a lower duration. This does not affect Buffs, Heal over Time (HoTs), or Damage Over Time (DoTs)




Some of the other notable changes are as follows:

  • Trading with someone in Dialogue should no longer cause your Movement Marker to disappear on the handset.
  • Initiating Dialogue with someone Trading should no longer cause their Movement Marker to disappear on the handset.
  • Further code/graphical optimization to increase framerate.
  • And more!

You can find the full update notes here.

Update #15 - Are you Ready for Giving?


Welcome to Update #15! As usual, while we've been busy with Episode 3, we've also been busy building new features and making Eon Altar better for our existing and new players!

Just in time for the holidays, you can now give items and resources to your friends in-game! While some items are unique to a given character and cannot be traded away, most items can. And you can now trade in the combat arenas, as well. So give the gift of healing and hand over those Vials of Copperweed!

You can also now finally start a game without hitting the Start button on the computer! Once you're in a campaign and everyone has joined, everyone can hit "Ready" on their own controller and the game will boot up in 5 seconds!.



In other features, the game's been tracking your player-to-player relationships this whole time quietly, but we haven't been showing this information to players...until now! When you're in a player-to-player dialogue, you can now see the effects of certain dialogue options on your relationship, and you can see the totals in your Stats screen in the controller app. Right now these values don't do anything, but come Episode 3 they might just have an effect.

Finally, Free Run. Boy, that's been a bit of a neglected feature. We basically implemented it early on in our development cycle and haven't changed it since, and, well, it shows. It's been a little rough around the edges, and by rough I mean it would...stop on edges. No longer! Now, Free Run will run around narrow objects and not be as pedantic when you're running near walls. It should feel a lot better when free running around now! I mean, it'll still feel like you're driving a land boat, but at least now it's a land boat with some smarts about moving around things.

Some of the other notable changes are as follows:

  • Potion of Mastery is now in the game! Congratulations to Oleg Trylis on his winning Crafting Challenge entry!
  • We now correctly store your choice about the fate of a certain someone at the end of The Wolf of Yriel such that Together We Fall actually makes sense.
  • A Special Thanks to MaxLimitz in the credits for all the help he's continually given us over the past few months. You've been amazing!


You can find the full update notes here.

January 19th - Episode 3: The Watcher in the Dark


Check out the Episode 3 store page on Steam to follow and to add it to your wishlist.

So order the pizza, soda, and/or beer, hop on the couch with your friends, and get ready for the deepest, darkest dungeon crawl yet!

Eon Altar: Prelude Free Demo Now Available!
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