Hey guys, my new game Hidden Cats & Dogs is coming along nicely - it's even got a Steam store page already, and it would be super cool if you guys added it to your wishlists, as this helps boost it in the Steam store.
The game is around a year away from release, so there's a lot of work left to do, but I'll try to have a demo out in the next few months. As it's Autumn, I've been working on spooky-themed levels recently.
Hidden Cats & Dogs features...
Thousands of items to find, and 20+ hours of gameplay.
3 difficulty modes, with different goals in each, allowing for multiple playthroughs.
Spot-the-difference challenges, and other secret game modes.
Diverse areas including ancient Egypt, volcanic islands, European forests and castles, arctic tundra, fantasy jungles, and many more.
Occasional dark humour. (which can be disabled for a family-friendly experience)
100% DRM-free, so you can make a copy for your grandma.
Meanwhile, if you head over to the EBF Discord, you'll find that there's been a lot of progress on several EBF5 mods. Recently people have started modding monsters from earlier EBF games into EBF5. Some of the mods are already playable, and you can get the patch files in the Discord. When they're a bit more complete, I'll make them easier to install using the Steam betas tab.
To participate in the contest, you can create new fanart of my old games, specifically any of the eight featured in the EBF Collection. These are: Mecha Dress Up Game, Brawl Royale, The Kitten Game, Epic Battle Fantasy 1 and 2, Bullet Heaven, Adventure Story, and Cat Cafe. Make sure to post your final submission in the #contest channel on the EBF Discord Server alongside the contest tag, the name of the art piece, your name/nickname, and a link to your art page. The contest tag is "Collection-Contest-Entry", so just include that in the comment with your submission, so we can find it more easily.
The deadline is Tuesday May 30th at 10PM BST. You can make as many entries as you’d like, but all art must be new, still images (no animations please), your own work, and PG-13 (bonus points for avoiding copyrighted material - we'd prefer if you used the updated characters from the Steam version). The EBF wiki is a good source of references, if you want images and information about characters and enemies.
There is a total of £500 (~$620) to be split between the top entries, as well as Steam or mobile keys to any existing Epic Battle Fantasy games. Cash prizes will be awarded by PayPal or bank transfer. Entries will be judged by me and Ronja (and maybe some others), and winners will be announced within a couple weeks after the deadline.
Let me or Ronja know if you have any questions. (we're easiest to contact on Discord!)
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In other news, we're still working on Hidden Cats - the game is around 30% finished. We've got a few playable levels done, but have many more to go.
Even though it’s mostly a suitable-for-everyone game, there will be a lot of dark Easter Eggs to find – but these can be turned off in the options if they are not to your taste.
Mods, Ports, and Hidden Cats.
Hey guys, I recently created some new item icons for modders to use in Epic Battle Fantasy 5. If you want to learn more about mods and try some out, check out the EBF Discord.
EBF5 can be modded using decompiling tools, and a patcher can be used to modify your EBF5 installation. Currently the largest mod being worked on is called Tough Love, and it has new status effects, equips, player skills, and more intelligent and powerful enemies. At some point I will make it a beta branch of the game on Steam, to make it easier to install. But until then, you can try it out yourself using the resources on the EBF Discord. The community there is still quite active, and we also do fanart competitions with prizes a few times a year.
In more EBF5 news, the iOS and Android ports of EBF5 are both complete - they don't offer any new content over the PC version of the game, but if you have any friends who haven't played it yet, this is a great place for them to start. The mobile version has a lot of free content - like the web version did before Flashplayer was killed - and only the optional dungeons and extra game modes are behind a paywall.
In related news, Ruffle, a Flashplayer emulator, has made a lot of progress in the last year. It's getting close to being able to run EBF5, and can already run many simpler Flash games. What I'd love to do is eventually use Ruffle to run the Steam version of EBF5, which will lead to much better performance, especially on higher resolutions. This would also give me a good reason to consider updating the game in other ways too.
Finally, I've been working hard on Hidden Cats, my new hidden object game. I'd say it's around 20% finished - I've started on the coding, and some simple test levels almost work. Here's an example of what a medium-sized level would look like:
And let's zoom in a bit on a smaller scene:
The goal of the game is just to find objects, obviously, but I'm trying to make it more interactive than some similar games. You can look inside buildings, use keys to open chests and other containers, push items out of the way, smash clay pots, etc.
It's a bit more casual than my other games, but it'll be something cute that anyone can play, and will have a ton of content, so hopefully it will still appeal to many of you.
Anyway, that's all. Hope you're all having a good 2023 so far.
New Game and Price Updates
Hey guys, I've got two pieces of news for ya'll.
First of all, I'm working on a new game - it's a hidden-object game codenamed "Hidden Cats". It's still early in development, but I'm having a lot of fun working on it. And I think you'll enjoy it if you're into relaxing games with cute art. It's loosely tied into the Epic Battle Fantasy universe too.
The second news is that I’ve been thinking of increasing the prices of my games in line with inflation…
Since Epic Battle Fantasy 4 and Bullet Heaven 2 came out on Steam in 2014 and 2015, the US Dollar and British Pound have dropped in value by around 25% due to inflation. Epic Battle Fantasy 5 came out in 2018, and there the difference is around 20%.
Since these games are still getting customer support and occasional updates, I think it’s fair to raise the prices from $12 to $15, and from $20 to $25. Most of you already own the games, so this won’t really effect very many of you who are reading this. And if you don’t own the games yet, the games are on sale 4 times a year, if you’re looking for a bargain.
Epic Battle Fantasy 4 got a “version 2” update not too long ago, and I still regularly clean the Bullet Heaven 2 leaderboards. The Epic Battle Fantasy 5 Android port is finished, and work on the iOS port has begun. So all three games are still getting some attention from me.
I’ve also noticed that some regions aren’t happy with Steam’s new regional pricing, so I’ll make sure that Turkey and Argentina, for example, are not effected too drastically by this price update. Steam’s new pricing tool makes it easier to compare the new and old prices, so I’d like to avoid any unreasonably big changes.
Anyway, I’m aiming to update the prices in January, after the Christmas sale on Steam. So the Christmas sale will be the lowest price you’ll see for a while!
The EBF Collection will cost $8 and include EBF1, EBF2, Bullet Heaven, Adventure Story, Brawl Royale, Mecha Dress Up, The Kitten Game, Cat Cafe, and a bunch of prototype games and artwork, and 150 Steam achievements!
All of the games have been updated with quality-of-life features, such as volume controls, new difficulty options, and other cool stuff. Adventure Story has a bunch of new levels, Bullet Heaven has new playable characters, and Epic Battle Fantasy 2 has new unlockable upgrades!
On top of all that, the 65-track soundtrack is included as a free DLC download!
I still need to make a trailer, fix some minor bugs, and set up the soundtrack DLC (which will be free). There’s not very much work left to do, but it’s very boring stuff, so I’m taking my time with it.
The EBF Collection will cost $8 and include EBF1, EBF2, Bullet Heaven, Adventure Story, Brawl Royale, Mecha Dress Up, The Kitten Game, Cat Cafe, and a bunch of prototype games and artwork, and 150 Steam achievements!
Plus all of the games have been updated with quality-of-life features, such as volume controls, new difficulty options, and other cool stuff.
Christmas Key Giveaway 2021
Hey guys, as is the tradition, I’m giving out 20 Steam Keys for Epic Battle Fantasy 5 this Christmas. I assume that many people following this news already own the game, but it could also make a good present for a friend of yours.
For a chance to win, leave a comment on my website about what you’ll be doing this Christmas, and make sure to fill in the email field, which will only be used for sending you a key if you win.
Here's the link: http://kupogames.com/2021/12/17/christmas-key-giveaway-2021/
I’ll be giving out the keys on the 23rd of December, so you have until then to enter. If you would rather receive keys for Epic Battle Fantasy 4 or Bullet Heaven 2 instead of EBF5, please let me know in your comment.
Tough Love Mod Progress
Hey guys. About a year ago I made an announcement about an EBF5 mod, and since then people have been asking me if it's finished yet. Well, the mod isn't finished, but it has grown in scope since then, so there's a lot more content than originally planned.
The mod is being made by EBF fan Feit-Neo (also known as LightningLaser), with some new icons being made by me. It features many new status effects, new enemy behaviour, 4 new weapons for each character, some new skills, new weather conditions, and more.
Here's a preview of some of the weapons...
And here's a list of the new status effects. Many of these are exclusively used by enemies as they would be overpowered if the player had access to them... but maybe some rare summons and weapons could trigger them...
It’s not finished yet, but you can try out the mod using the patch files found in the #ebf-mod-archive channel on the EBF Discord.
And you can chat about Mods in the #ebf-mod-discussion channel.
Alternatively, you can wait until the mod is finished, as it’ll be distributed as a Beta Branch of EBF5 on Steam, which would make it very easy to opt-into and install.
It's also not the only mod being worked on. There's another one called Tried and Tempered that makes the game much harder, but it's still quite early on in development. You can also try that one using a patch from the EBF Discord.
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In other news, the EBF5 mobile port for Android is almost done - I've got a few people testing it, and it mostly works smoothly. iOS is also planned a while afterwards.
That's the main thing I'm working on at the moment.
EBF5 Mods and Ports
Hey guys, Epic Battle Fantasy fan LightningLaser is working on a game mod that makes EBF5 more challenging. So far he's improved enemy AI and given them more varied attacks, added some new status effects, made some of the enemy skills usable by the players, and is adding weapons from previous EBF games to EBF5. Here's a video showing off some of the changes. (it's a bit out of date now)
I've been helping out a bit by making some new icons, since he's just a programmer.
When the mod is complete, it will be available to you guys through the Steam Beta branches feature, and should be compatible with existing saved games. We're not in a hurry to release it though, so it may still take some time.
At the moment, EBF5 is only being modded through the use of decompilers, which is not ideal. Eventually I plan to release the entire source code to make the process a bit easier. But there's not many people still hanging around who work with Flash, so don't expect a huge surge of mods!
If you want to chat with the modding community, check out the modding channel on the EBF Discord server.
In other news, I'm slowly working on a mobile port of EBF5. The game already runs on mobile devices, it's just a bit laggy, so I need to optimize things until it runs reasonably well. I'm starting off with Android first, and if that goes well, moving onto iOS later. I don't really know what I'm doing when it comes to mobile development, so I'm not making any promises yet, but it's quite likely that you'll need a fairly powerful device to run the game.
I think that covers everything. I hope you're all staying safe!
Soundtrack changes and Bug Fixes
Hey guys, I've created a new beta branch of EBF5 - this is mostly to fix some very small bugs and typos. The only substantial changes are that NoLegs can now use Art Attack, and bosses have some resistance to HP debuffs from Scorch. This version will soon be live for everyone. You can opt-in early by going to Steam client -> EBF5 properties -> betas tab -> v2.1, the main menu should say "version 2.1.2" if done correctly.
In related news, I’ve made some changes to the Epic Battle Fantasy soundtracks. Soundtracks used to be DLC, but now they are their own type of content, with the main difference being that they no longer require the base game to be owned. If you already own them, you may need to go to the soundtrack’s Steam store page and download them again.
With that in mind, I’ve increased the price of the EBF5 soundtrack from $5 to $10, and the BH2 soundtrack from Free to $10. The EBF3 and EBF4 soundtracks will continue to be free. The price changes are mainly to stop people getting the soundtracks for incredibly cheap, without needing to buy the games first.
I’ve also added two new bundles – EBF5 with the soundtrack, and BH2 with the soundtrack – so you get 20% off if you buy a game with the soundtrack, and this will combine with seasonal sales.
Here’s some other changes: • The EBF5 soundtrack now includes 3 new songs that were added to the game after the original launch. • Lots of metadata has been updated – some tracks weren’t numbered correctly, mentions of HalcyonicFalconX have been updated to Phyrnna. • Some EBF3 tracks weren’t in 320kbps, now all of them are. • The track “zomg Victory” was removed from the EBF4 soundtrack, because it’s a duplicate from the EBF3 soundtrack.
If anyone feels scammed by these changes, please get in contact with me and I’ll sort it out!
