Pawnbarian cover
Pawnbarian screenshot
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Genre: Puzzle, Strategy, Tactical, Indie, Card & Board Game

Pawnbarian

1.2.2 - Degrindification
Progressing through Chains might've been a bit too grindy to begin with, but definitely became so with the new characters introduced in 1.2.0. This has been completely reworked. The chains still require unlocking, but it can now happen much faster.

The highest unlocked Chain is now shared between all characters, and the required dungeons can be conquered by different characters.

To be clear, the difficulty itself is unchanged, and actually conquering the chains is still separate for each character (same for the achievements), but you can skip a bunch if you feel up to the challenge. Conquering a chain counts as conquering all the lower ones as well.

change: reworked chain progression, as explained above
change: player gets fully healed before entering the Gauntlet
change: menus have new crown icons that correspond to dungeons conquered for the currently selected character and chain
change: chains on the character select screen turn gold as they're conquered, instead of all being gold at Chain X
fix: game starting in a broken state if never launched through Steam

Cheers,
Jan

1.2.1 - Small balance tweaks + French, Spanish, Swedish
Yo! The new characters have been very well received overall, and exactly 0 bugs popped up.

That being said, the Mystic turned out to be slightly overtuned. With 1.2.1, her starting deck no longer has Diagonal Splash on one of the Ghost pieces. She remains very strong at all levels of play, but early floors should no longer be such a heavy snowball.

The Gauntlet now heals 1 damage after each floor, so you're able to keep going for much longer if you feel like it.

Martin Alonso returned to update his Spanish localization for the new content, Alain & Nicolas Cordier stepped up to both fill out and clean up the French localization, and Bruno Krynicki Storskog provided a whole new Swedish localization. Thank you so much!

The community translation effort is ongoing. Do you want to help translate into another language, or perhaps just suggest some changes? Check out this thread.

new: Swedish localization
change: Mystic lost the starting Diagonal Splash
change: Gauntlet now restores 1 health after each floor
change: Spanish localization updated
change: French localization updated

Cheers,
Jan

1.2.0 - New heroes, DLC bling, and more!
Hello! Pawnbarian is almost exactly 6 months old today, and there's some fun stuff lined up for that.

Most importantly, 1.2.0 is a major content update, bringing three new heroes into the game.

  • The Nomad fights using her deadly aim with a bow instead of a melee weapon.
  • The Capyzerker fuels his rage with pain, and enjoys improved healing to match.
  • The Mystic relies on supernatural blessings to stay away from harm.
Each has an unique ability and a whole new playstyle to explore and master. Their decks are based on international chess, but each brings a single fairy (non-standard) chess piece into the mix, which complements both the mechanics and the theme.



Releasing alongside the free content patch is the Support the Developers DLC, which gives all your heroes a gaudy snazzy gold coat of paint. This is purposefully a minor, purely cosmetic change. as I didn't want to nickel-and-dime you by splitting up content into DLC for what's ultimately still a small game. If you enjoy the work me and my two wonderful co-creators did - please consider blinging out your heroes!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1938870
Of course, you can disable the DLC if you want to throw some extra money our way, but don't like the new look.

Both the game and the Original Soundtrack are 30% off for the week.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1734720/Pawnbarian__Original_Soundtrack/

Patch notes


new: all-new Nomad hero
new: all-new Capyzerker hero
new: all-new Mystic hero
new: chain 0, V and X achievements to match
new: Support the Developers DLC release
change: +1 loot track gold on all floors, as a gentle global buff for the player
change: all characters now unlocked with a single Pawnbarian victory
change: updated all achievement icons
change/fix: minor text adjustments
change/fix: minor sprite adjustments

A note about localization


Pawnbarian relies on generous community translations, and the new content isn't fully localized in all the previously supported languages, using English placeholders where relevant. It's been translated into Polish, as well as Traditional & Simplified Chinese thanks to AJiang. If you'd like to fill out the remaining content in one of the languages which are almost there, or help support a whole new language, check out the dedicated thread. Thanks!

What's next?


Mobile version, full steam ahead!
Follow me on Twitter and join the Discord to keep an eye out for updates, and likely some playtests along the way. I'm also inevitably going to get started on another project sometime soon.

Hope you enjoy!
Jan

Stand with Ukraine Bundle + new stuff
Pawnbarian is part of the absolutely massive Stand with Ukraine Bundle, a charity bundle of games organized by Humble. 100% of the proceeds are going towards organizations dealing with the ongoing humanitarian crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is a cause particularly close to me in a very literal sense - I live in Warsaw, Poland, mere hours of travel away from the atrocities commited by the Russian army, and minutes away from places where many of the millions of Ukrainians fleeing their country are currently living.

Anyone reading this probably already has Pawnbarian, but the bundle should still be a pretty amazing deal. You can also spread the word about it, and most importantly, please consider helping in ways other than just getting some viddy games for cheap. You can get started here: https://linktr.ee/razomforukraine

Here's to a free, independent, and peaceful Ukraine, and a kinder world for us all.


NEVER AGAIN WAR - a monument at Westerplatte. credit



In some strictly game-related news, for all your escapist needs - a free content patch with three new characters is coming to Pawnbarian, and you can try them out right now. They're mechanically complete, just unfinished on the audio-visual side, and will probably have a balance pass or two. Join the Discord and follow the instructions there to join the private-beta branch.

Cheers,
Jan

Pawnbarian is now Steam Deck Verified
That is all. Have a great day!

1.1.7 - Chinese & Spanish
Yo! The Lunar New Year is almost upon us, and that's a prime occasion to release the traditional and simplified Chinese localizations of the game, gracefully provided by AJiang. Just as great to have is the Spanish localization by chuky666. Thank you so much! This means roughly 1.5 billion more people can play Pawnbarian in their native language, and that's pretty bonkers.

The community translation effort is ongoing. Do you want to help translate into another language, or perhaps just suggest some changes? Check out this forum thread!

new: Traditional Chinese localization
new: Simplified Chinese localization
new: Spanish localization
change: changed the underlying CJK font support
fix: improved some formatting issues for all languages

cheers,
Jan

1.1.6 - Serbian, gamepad hints, mouse tweaks
Thanks to community member Lazar Ljubenović, Pawnbarian is now available in Serbian in both Latin and Cyrillic script versions!

The community translation effort is ongoing. Do you want to help translate into another language, or perhaps just suggest some changes? Check out this forum thread!

There are now onscreen button hints when using a gamepad (on by default, but you can turn them off in the settings), and you can use the mouse scroll wheel to select cards.

new: Serbian (Latin) localization
new: Serbian (Cyryllic) localization
new: scroll wheel selects cards (the same way gamepad shoulder buttons do)
new: togglable gamepad button hints
change: game font is now Libertinus instead of Linux Libertine (should be mostly invisible, but some things might look subtly nicer, and some issues for non-Latin glyphs were fixed)
fix: Dragon Drop sfx no longer missing (has been since 1.1.4? oops!)

build 73d56fc
fix/change: made the splash screen shorter again

build a87ddab
fix: restore stroke to cost of Heart items in the shop

Cheers,
Jan

1.1.5 - New languages & more
Happy New Year! Thanks to generous contributions by community members Supernova888 and ivanilos, French and Brazilian Portuguese localizations are now available.

The community translation effort is ongoing. Do you want to help translate into another language, or perhaps just suggest some changes? Check out this forum thread!

Additionally, there is now a new Display settings menu, with several frame limiter options achievable via either VSync or a soft target rate cap. For most people there's no reason to ever touch this setting, but it can be helpful if the default VSync setting doesn't work for whatever reason and your GPU is getting melted, or you want to skip frames to reduce power consuption on battery-powered devices, especially ones with high refresh rates.

new: Brazilian Portuguese localization
new: French localization
new: separate Display settings menu, with several frame limiter options
change: updated Polish localization
change: Webbed! status is now shown with an icon instead of text

Cheers,
Jan
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