Almost two years have passed since we, developer & publisher of trashy games like Father's Island and of course, the „Into the " Games Series by Homegrown Games have moved from Austria to Australia.
This has been recognized now by Steam, who have invited us to participate in their Australia Day Sale, a short Steam sale that highlights games from down under. Of course we participate, and as Australia Day is the 26th, and we have 2 games so far on sale, we decided to lock in a whopping -52% discount! Yiha!
However, more important is, that we have decided to donate all revenues from this sale to charities that really make a difference in our new country of residence. Not only that, we will top up all revenues received before doing so. So, all revenues from the steam sales between the 24th and 28th of January, minus Steam`s share and refunds, will be taken, split into three, rounded up to the next full 100$ and then distributed to:
- One charity that focuses on support for Aboriginal communities and / or students
- One charity focusing on wildlife or nature preservation here in Australia
- One charity focusing on help for the homeless
All that will be done end of March (when the steam report for March is finalized).
If you already have our game, or you hate their guts and don`t want to have them in your steam library, but still want to do something good, here are a few of the organizations on our shortlist:
we present you today with a little bit pride our 2018 Halloween Edition of "Father's Island" - or, as we called it in earlier announcements,
Father`s Island 2.0
Why?
Because it is based on the DirectX11 upgrade of the underlying Gamemaker "GameGuru", and it mitigates or entirely eliminates all problems you might have had with our original release.
- IMPORTANT: If you have problems updating to this version, please uninstall and reinstall Father`s Island. Actually, we recommend uninstalling and a fresh install anyway! -
Changes:
DirectX11 based
Loading times reduced by 30 - 75%, depending on the system
Load only once per session: Smart respawn system
2 new video scenes
3 new posters
2 new side stories in letters
Full PBR support
37 assets converted to true PBR
Multi-Level vertex painted terrain
Advanced atmosphere light scattering
Fixed some minor bugs and logic issues
Fixed the summoning of the Dragon
Possible Troubleshooting:
After you hit the "Start Game" button, just leave your system loading. Even if the game seems unresponsive, it will load (don`t cancel or quit)
If the level fails to load (or an error message appears), open the setup.ini in the installation folder and set
dividetexturesize=1
to
dividetexturesize=4
If Steam keeps reinstalling /or verifying over and over again, please uninstall and reinstall
If you find it too dark / bright / red / whatever, you can adjust ALL rendering options by editing the visuals.ini file
Enjoy!
Father`s Island 2.0 is coming!
Hello everyone,
Just a heads up that
Father's Island 2.0 - The Ultimate Edition
is in development and scheduled for release within the next weeks.
What to expect?
Converted to DirectX 11
+30% FPS on average
Loading times cut down by 30-50%
Autosaves in key moments, no reload on death
PBR support
PBR surfaces on selected models (where it makes sense)
SUMER SALE! Kill your piggy bank! Empty your wallet!
Hi there!
While we are still working on the next version of Father's Island (including a nice drop of loading time by ~ 75%), we are now here to state the obvious:
and then, if you can accept those terms, jump in and start playing Father's Island!
We are in the meantime working on both the patches for Father's Island and Into the Dark (which is also on sale now)....
http://store.steampowered.com/app/266050/
...., and of course on "Into the Ice", where we hope to present the official Steam Store Page soon!
Additionally, we have done some R & D on incorporating PBR (or better PBR-inspired) materials into GameGuru. While it is still a long way to go and we won't trade in performance or loading time for that, the first results are visually quite pleasing.
Dont't get us wrong, we were quite happy with a visual appearance like that
we can do better on the details now:
A detail level like that will be the guideline for Into the Ice, but perhaps it will also find it's way into one of the next versions of Father's Island.
Meanwhile, our fellow Austrian Indies from Unique Games need your support for something totally different (hehe, no competition for Homegrown Stuff), and it would be totally awesome if you can cast your YES vote to them:
THank you very much and enjoy the rest of your weekend!
It's SALES time - but beware!
As you might have seen already - Father's Island is on sale!
But please do not rush in, do not buy blindly.
While we have improved the game heavily over the last 9 months, it still suffers from long loading times. Water still kills you (ok, that's explained pretty well throughout the game) and flying the dragon is still a pain in the A.
So, before you purchase Father's Island and later regret it (in worst case, after the refund timeout), please take you time and read the description, the discussion board, watch some video.
Yes, want customers, yes, we need money to pay our bills, but we rather have few happy customers than a horde of dissapointed ones.
You can also play the free demo! This was done with a now ancient codebase. It runs much slower, looks much uglier and behaves much much more buggier than the game does now. So, if you find the demo "ok", there is a good chance you find Father's Island great.
Oh yes, and don't buy the game if you get offended easily.
Otherwise - enjoy the show!
All the best,
Homegrown Games
PS: ETA next patch - Mid of April
Roadmap for 2017
Dear Fans, Friends and Foes!
In an attempt to make our development procedures and priorities more transparent, we have decided to make our roadmap for 2017 public, so that you know what you are getting into when owning one of our games or planning to buy one of those.
Let's start with "Into the Dark":
http://store.steampowered.com/app/266050/
We will roll out a next (and, as we always say, LAST patch for our oldie in the first half 2017. the target is to apply our new post processing pipeline we have tested, clean up some scripts, implement more HD / PBR-based materials and remastered sound effects / voice overs.
However, the triggering of the voice overs is an important topic we have to give more thought.
Currently, we freeze the player whenever an important dialogue or monologue takes place. This was a design decision that not everyone of you liked, but it prevented us from triggering two narrations at once - something that gets remarked quite often as "con" in
http://store.steampowered.com/app/460940/
Of course, Father's Island will also receive patches and upgrades as we move on. The next most likely by end of march. Currently we are also working on a system that allows basic subtitles / written narration to accompany the voice overs. This doesnt't change the fact that it is very likely you will trigger more than one narration at least sometime during your journey.
The easiest solution would be a freeze as in Into the Dark - but obviously, this is not welcomed. If anyone has a better idea, please drop us some lines!
Of course, you can also write us if you want to test or participate in the production of Into the Ice, the direct sequel to Into the Dark. We prefer in semiclosed alpha and beta testing of course people who played, or, even better, have beaten Into the Dark before.
The release of Into the Ice is scheduled for late 2017.
And while it isn't a Homegrown Game, we would love to see also Unique Games Mars explorer to be here on Steam in 2017, so, please give them some Greenlight love:
we want to wish you a merry X-Mas and what could be better than taking a vacation and visit a remote island?
Father's Island is 50% off during the holidays, meaning you can jump ship as cheap as $ 2,49!
And of course you get all the benefits of the most recent 1.09(A) version!
THE SHEEP has never looked more attractive than now!
https://youtu.be/EbwryJ-hW14
As some of you may have already noticed, we removed the start option for the Halloween Edition for now. Don't panic, physically it's still on your Hard Drive and if you really want, you can start it manually (if you find it). But this has two reasons:
1. We are currently working on moving the 1.09(A) improvements over to the halloween edition, which is a little bit tricky.
2. In the spirit of X-Mas, the nonviolent original game is in the focus.
Have fun!
PS:
You can also get our previous Trash feast "Into the Dark" for 60% off! Or the entire bundle for less than 5$!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/266050/
Weeklong Deal - 33% off!
A good week for you, a bad one for sheep all over the world!
Father's Island runs a weeklong-deal, allowing you to get our latest bizarre creation even cheaper (or sheeper?) !
Don't miss the surreal story of John Richards looking into his dark past and origins, travel to the shores of New England and discover the shocking truth of the experiments conducted there during the Cold War!
Of course, the Halloween edition is still included and will stay there until the next major patch.
When it comes to ratings, Father's Island is the most successful game we ever made, with 90+% here on Steam and 93% on IndieDB. We already have won some magazine / blogs awards and are running in several GOTY competitions all over the world.
Traditionally, we love the IOTY awards, so we would really, really love getting your vote there, too:
http://www.indiedb.com/games/fathers-island
And, as you can vote more than one game in the first rounds, please switch over to
http://www.indiedb.com/games/into-the-ice
and hit the green button, too!
Thanks a lot for all your support, we keep providing ours! :commie:
Save the date - today! And your game!
If you noticed a small update being installed, then you are perfectly right.
HOTFIX 1.09 (A) is deployed!
It delivers additional 5 - 10 % FPS to the gloryious new visuals we have...
...but, even more important:
Save / Load now works flawlessly and you don't lose FPS when loading your savegame. Even better, it is fully compatible with savegames from 1.09!
Enjoy the show!
And, a friendly reminder - please nominate us for the "best usage of farm animal" awaard. Our sheep deserves that!
Why?
Well, play the game or look up the re-recorded sheep encounter 2:
