Genre: Shooter, Role-playing (RPG), Strategy, Tactical, Adventure, IndieHordeCore
HordeCore is a Part of Gamescom!
HordeCore is a part of Gamescom! Come enjoy our stream, and don’t forget to wishlist the game while you are here! The HQ needs all support possible!
Thank you!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/980210/HordeCore/
HordeCore is a Part of Gamescom!
HordeCore is a part of Gamescom! Come enjoy our stream, and don’t forget to wishlist the game while you are here! The HQ needs all support possible!
Thank you!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/980210/HordeCore/
HordeCore is a part of Gamescom!
HordeCore is a part of Gamescom! Come enjoy our stream, and don’t forget to wishlist the game while you are here! The HQ needs all support possible!
Thank you!
HordeCore is a part of Gamescom!
HordeCore is a part of Gamescom! Come enjoy our stream, and don’t forget to wishlist the game while you are here! The HQ needs all support possible!
Thank you!
Spirit of the island Kickstarter Campaign is Live - Come Visit!
Hello survivors! How are you doing?
We are excited to announce that our friends at 1M Bits Horde have launched their Kickstarter campaign for the upcoming life-sim Spirit of the Island!
They are making a vivid mix of a relaxed life-sim and an action-packed adventure game that can be enjoyed solo or with your friend in co-op! And there's a lot of things to do there: adventuring (as in sailing across different Islands, exploring ancient caves, and fighting fearsome enemies), farming (planting crops and harvesting the goods, raising animals, having your own pets, and so on), improving tourism — yes, actual tourism with visitors, landmarks, shops, income, and other fun stuff — as well as LOTS of other activities!
Got you interested? Then come check out the campaign and back it if you like it!
Thank you!
Spirit of the Island Demo is Out at Seam NEXT FEST!
We at META are thrilled to announce the release of the demo version of our upcoming project - Spirit of the Island!
Spirit of the Island is a colorful life simulation RPG set on a tropical paradise. Help the locals, grow crops, take care of animals, and turn a desolate archipelago into a prosperous tourist destination!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1592110/Spirit_of_the_Island/
We invite everyone to come and enjoy a glimpse of the tropical paradise that will await you in the world of SOTI! The new demo is available right now and will be accessible throughout the duration of the Next Festival (June 16 - June 22nd, 10 am Pacific), so don't miss it!
Thank you and have fun!
Developer Diary: Three New Exciting Features and Your Questions!
Hi! Recently we’ve been receiving lots of questions regarding the development process of HordeCore, so we’ve decided to answer the most popular ones! Without further ado, let’s start!
How did the game’s idea evolve through the development process?
Quite a lot, actually! We can’t stress the importance of player-driven feedback enough! While the core groundwork stayed the same throughout development, we’d say that the overall “fun-factor” has definitely been cranked up by a lot!
We had quite a few different phases of prototyping and iteration of our new ideas, and some of them ended up filling in the gaps that were brought to our attention by both our “closed doors'' testers, as well as by everyone who played our Prologue throughout the last few months.
It’s a really good sign that we’re already having a blast with a lot of these features internally, and we can’t wait to show them to everyone!
3 new planned features you are most excited about?
Skill Modifiers! We’re really excited to showcase what we’ve been working on and continue expanding on how we’re allowing the player to further customize their battle-hardened Survivors through skill modifications that can have bombastic results! No, we’re not talking about slight damage adjustments; every modification results in a completely new set of skills for every class. How exciting is that?!
Hordeling Modifiers! We couldn’t let our Survivors have all the fun, so we’re also creating new subclasses for our green-skinned friends with very different aesthetics, resistances, and behaviors! We even saw one of them run away with a pack full of loot the other day.
Our new Quest system! Having exciting new ways to explore our Wastelands and face many different challenges with a combination of dynamically generated content and hand-crafted objectives seriously improve both first-hand enjoyment and replayability!
Where do we look for inspiration? How do we plan new stuff?
As a team, we’ve always preferred to work with a healthy dose of “free-flow” regarding new ideas and influences, meaning we’re very open to discuss the pros and cons of inserting (or, at least, prototyping) any new ideas that have the potential of improving the overall experience.
The balance between adding an extra workload versus said potential is something that definitely takes both the ability to follow a strict timeline and quickly adapt our planning to include these “extras”, keeping in mind that game development is a constant juggle between deadlines and creativity.
That said, while we wouldn’t go as far as defining our development style as a so-called “controlled chaos”, we definitely welcome new, inspiring experiences and allow them to influence our creative process.
How do you test all these fun things?
Videogame Development is a beast that can be faced in very different ways. There are countless creative approaches, but we found that sometimes taking a few steps outside of the “digital” medium is the easiest and most efficient way to tackle certain themes, which was especially true with our Horde Tactics minigame!
Starting with hand-cut pieces of assorted paper and a bunch of fresh ideas on what HordeCore could look like in a tabletop experience, it didn’t take us very long to come up with a fun way to translate the mechanics and theme into a traditional CCG format. We even made some alternative game modes, like “boss hunting” and “2v2”!
Once we reached something very close to its final iteration, we decided to order a professionally printed CCG set! It was a very amazing tool to get more hands (literally!) on the game so we could “crash-test” the entire experience with our friends, family, and everyone attending our booths in conventions, making the whole process really gratifying.
We can’t wait for everyone to get their hands on the full version of the game! It’ll be an exciting journey for sure!
Don’t forget to add HordeCore to your wishlist, and see you soon!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/980210/HordeCore/
Your island gateaway starts now: Spirit of the Island!
Did you miss the news from us? Well, well, we have some for you: we are pleased to announce a new game coming soon from META Publishing - Spirit of the Island. This is a new and colorful life simulation RPG set on a tropical paradise. Help the locals, grow crops, take care of animals, and turn a desolate archipelago into a prosperous tourist destination!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1592110/Spirit_Of_The_Island/
ADD IT TO WISHLIST AND FOLLOW the community and never miss the demo version that will be available very soon!
Thank you and have fun!
How We Improve Prologue Through User Survey
While we know that some don’t really like surveys, please bear with us for a bit. While surveys may sometimes have drawbacks (dishonest or inaccurate answers, unclear data, and so on), they are still a very powerful and simple tool, which can immensely help you fine-tune your project. Surveys are also a bit more helpful than reviews, as they are better at pinpointing the problem (not always, but in many cases, they are).
We in Meta help our developers by implementing user surveys in the free trial versions of our games, such as Time Loader: First Memories and HordeCore: Training Ground (we’ll use that one as an example today). The survey window only appears when the player has either finished the game, quitting it or present as a separate option in the main menu. That's how it looks in HordeCore:
Pretty straightforward, right? We are always giving our players the liberty to decline. After all, not everyone wants to give feedback or spend their time doing surveys, and that’s absolutely fine. Let’s go through a couple of examples to see what questions we ask and what data we get out of the answers (we recommend opening survey images in a new tab):
Do you like the current weapons variety?
At first glance, it might look like everything’s okay, but only a mere 55% of respondents are okay with our arsenal (and that’s a game about shooting!), while 43% of people think that the weapon selection could totally use some work. The interesting thing is that the problem could lie not in the weapon selection itself but in the character interactions. Let’s take a look at another one.
Which characters did you enjoy playing the most?
And this is where the problem really hides. Grenadier and Shotgunner were liked by only 4,6% and 3,9% of people respectively, and almost half of them preferred playing as the main (basic) character. Flamer and Gunner sit at ~45%. Looking at the whole picture, you can clearly see that it’s either the character’s design or the game’s balance that is heavily skewed towards using the starting hero and ignoring others. In any case, that area clearly needs some changes. All characters would sit at equal 20% usage in a perfect world, but everyone knows that it’s an impossible feat. So the current objective is to try and make the usage numbers more even than they currently are.
Now that we have the data, time to act on it. And that’s usually the hardest part because finding a solution to a game design problem isn’t always that simple.
What did we do with the characters?
We’ve decided to try a brand new approach and give players more control of the whole group of survivors, instead of focusing on one at a time, by changing our skill system: now you can use all skills ‘within one character’ by pressing dedicated buttons. That way, you lose the need to switch your characters every time you need their skills and at the same time have more control over everything.
Another thing we’ve added is skill modification. Now you can equip a special item (like Tesla Coil on Engineer) and change your turret from a ranged one to a close-range electric type. That change allows players to fine-tune their abilities and give a lot of space for creativity.
Did the changes work?
Absolutely! We did some internal and closed playtests, and the responses have improved immensely. Other characters are no longer collecting dust since you control everyone simultaneously, and the new skill changes make people try and experiment with different set-ups and combinations! We’d say it’s a win-win situation!
As for the weapons, we’ve added a new weapon tier that makes loot hunting a much more rewarding endeavor. While it is a much softer fix than a whole new skill system, we’d like to test them out with new abilities and controls before making more radical changes.
When will we see some of these new things?
As soon as they are ready for a public test! We are putting a lot of work into these changes, and we do have plans to update the free version of the game with a preview of new features and mechanics. Not only for everyone’s enjoyment but to also compare previous survey results with the new ones so we can see if our changes really work.
In the end, that’s what surveys are for, and they work best with iterative content. It is a rather simple but very effective method to polish and improve your projects, especially in the early development stages. So don’t be afraid to experiment and ask people what they think about it!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1421960/HordeCore_Training_Ground/
Training Grounds ver.0.12.0.7: Stealth Kills and Graphics Update!
NEW MECHANIC — STEALTH KILLS
Survivors, check your updated Survival Manual! By approaching Hordelings silently, you can finish them off in one hit without alerting the others!
GRAPHICS UPDATE
- We’ve completely reworked the game’s render module! Expect to see better visual effects and more vivid colours!
Some people with NVIDIA GPUs can experience a texture bug (all background textures will turn pink). If you encounter this problem, we suggest to do the following:
- Find HordeCore in your Steam Library.
- Right-click the game and select "Properties".
- In the first tab (GENERAL), under "Launch Options", type or copy and paste the following command: -force-opengl
- Play the game!
OTHER CHANGES
- Improved the game’s performance on various PC configs
- Fixed the bug, when the game could crash if you were AFK for 15-30 minutes
- Resolved the FPS drops on Overpass and Gauntlet levels
- Lots of other small fixes
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1421960/HordeCore_Training_Ground/