It has been a while since the last update about what I am doing so I thought I better post something to let people know I am still here. I seemed to be a lot more excited about the 5.0 than anyone else and went on a bit about what was coming with the build up to its release last year, but then if I am not the most excited about what I am doing then there is probably something wrong with what I am doing. So with the 6.0 release I am not going to be doing a big road to 6.0 discussion but below I will cover what is planned for this next big release.
Crisis Mode
I am currently working on Crisis mode, the final game mode for Siberian Dawn, and it is going well. It uses the normal Mission structure with the player completing a series of Objectives to stop a crisis, but with a few changes placed on top to give a new twist to the game. The Mission will have series of Crisis Points where you will be given a choice of which Objective you want to tackle next, and these Objectives will have a set of actions that will earn or lose you Objective Points. When you have reached the target Objective total by completing these actions then you will get another Crisis Point. Each Crisis Point will also have a set of modifications to the ongoing Mission and will also give you points towards resolving the Crisis. Once you have reached the target Crisis value you will then get the Final Crisis objective.
Work is progressing well on this mode, I am currently building the Objective lists, and there will be two unique Crisis with 6.0, one for the Core game and one for Chapter 1.
Heroes of the Union
The other big part of the 6.0 update will be the Heroes of the Union DLC. This pack will add 8 new Rank 7 units to the Union forces to add new tactics to your game. You will have options for how to add these powerful units to the Union market, if you want to replace the original two rank 7’s or add them all into the mix. These units are all designed now and need the art doing for the cards, but will be a big part of the 6.0 update.
And There We Go
So there you have it, I am still doing things on Siberian Dawn but just not going on so much about it now as before. There are some other projects I am also working on that I am excited about but we will just let them remain private for now
Winterflood
The Huge 5.0 Update Has Arrived
Today is the day we have all been waiting for as the road to 5.0 reaches its destination and the update that I have been talking about for a while is now live.
I have covered in detail the content of this update in 3 "5.0 The Final Approach" news posts on here so check them out if you want to find out more, but I have included below a list of the changes taken from the Update Log in game.
Hope you all enjoy the new additions to the game and any feedback is appreciated, which can be posted here or in the 5.0 Discussion thread.
Winterflood
- Siberian Dawn 5.0 Update / 24th November 2022 - ● Added in the Graphics section of the Options menu a button to adjust the brightness level of the game ● Current Round number is now displayed within a mission and Mission briefings will show the Average Time in Rounds to complete a Mission ● 3 new V Missions added to the base game that are full missions using all the Union and Guild cards previously not available in base game ● Skirmish Mode added to game and this is a mode where missions are played against a Round timer and the Objective is to kill a set Rank worth of Hostile enemies based on the Skill level being played ● Skirmish Mode displays on the briefing screen the best time taken to complete that Skirmish at the chosen Skill level ● Added the ARK to Siberian Dawn, and in this section are several clusters that can be unlocked with ARK points, and contain content pods that hold information and artwork for most of the cards in the game and other mysteries to discover ● ARK points are now displayed in the ARK and Overseer Data ● Added Echoes to the ARK, which if activated will give the option to replace the All Systems Normal event with an event to pay for Glory ● Added Nemesis to the ARK, which can be activated when a Boss is killed in Skirmish Mode to add a Nemesis card to a mission, which when killed will give 16 ARK points ● Removed the need on PC to own Mission Pack 1 to play Mission Pack 2 ● Optimised organisation of sprites to improve game transitions ● Altered artwork for Peacock card to make it fit better with other Animus Guild cards and also adjusted the brightness on some other cards to make them a closer match with the others ● Expanded load warning to now include Skirmish missions and menu ● Various corrections to game text and code to improve the game
Steam Awards 2022 Labor of Love Nomination
With 5.0 just around the corner filled with lots of lovely new content and all the updates I have brought to the game since its release in 2018 it has been a bit of a labour of love you could say, and now is your chance to nominate Siberian Dawn for just such an award if you agree.
Steam Autumn Sale and 5.0 Release Date
Just a short news update today to say Siberian Dawn is in the Steam Autumn sale along with the 2 DLC packs and also to give big news that might be of interest to some of you for when the 5.0 update will launch.
5.0 Update Release Date
Currently doing the final testing on the update, searching for any extra features that shouldn’t be in the game. Added all the ARK content pods mentioned in the last news post, along with a few extras, bringing that total to 89 pods for the 5.0 release, so plenty to keep players interested.
Didn’t want to release the update when the Autumn sale started as the store goes a bit crazy at that time so the release date, subject to any circumstances outside my control, will be Thursday 24th November.
Not long to go and I hope you all enjoy what 5.0 adds to Siberian Dawn.
Winterflood
5.0 The Final Approach Part 3 – The ARK
Intro
And so we come to the third part of our final approach to the release of 5.0, which is on course for this month, and this time I am going to focus on the ARK, the big button that has been sitting at the bottom of the main menu for a few years tempting us with the mystery of just what it holds.
ARK Points
Right from when the game released back in 2018 if we finished a mission we were rewarded with up to 5 Stars for our performance but what wasn’t known was that we were also rewarded with ARK points. The amount of ARK points we got from succeeding at a Mission was based on the number of Stars earned multiplied by the Skill level we had played the mission at, so if we got 3 Stars from a Mission we could have earned between 3 and 15 ARK points depending on the Skill level chosen. With 5.0 the total ARK points we have earned will be shown in the ARK and also on the Overseer Profile.
Meta Game
So what is the ARK and what does it bring to Siberian Dawn? In the previous 2 Final Approaches I mentioned how we need to win Mission V3 to unlock the ARK and how beating a Boss in Skirmish mode unlocked the Nemesis in the ARK and these are examples of how the ARK stretches over the whole game to give the Meta game.
Playing Siberian Dawn is like we are playing the memories of the Overseer going through these missions over and over uncovering the past but with recollections changing slightly with repeat play. The ARK is an extension of these memories giving us ways to alter our memories and also offering clusters of these memories to unlock.
The Memory Clusters
The main portion of the ARK is made up of Clusters containing several content pods that can be unlocked using ARK points, although some will be already open for free. These content pods will vary in what is inside but with 5.0 these will be Lore for the game, so will take a card from the game and show the original painting for the card along with where we can find the card and a narrative text about it. I have nearly finished adding these into the game for all the character cards in Siberian Dawn and this will come to 84 unique content pods, so a lot of content to be unlocked with playing the game.
Echoes
The other type of content in the ARK are things that modify the game and this is where the Echoes come in. Turning on Echoes replaces the "All Systems Normal" event with an Echo event where we are given the choice to pay 2 ARK points to gain 8 Glory or just resolve it as an "All Systems Normal" event where nothing happens. Echoes let us get a helping hand in the mission and as this will always be the first event in a Mission we can get an early boost, and they are more likely to be drawn again at lower skill levels. So if we want to get that elusive 5 Star ranking or get a better time in a Skirmish then Echoes could help for a price of ARK points.
Nemesis
And the final feature that the ARK adds with 5.0 is the Nemesis. When we defeat a Boss in Skirmish mode their Nemesis will be unlocked in the ARK, and if we activate Nemesis mode then one of the Nemesis we have unlocked could turn up in a Mission or Skirmish. When we then kill a Nemesis we will earn 16 ARK points along with the normal Glory for killing a unit. A trophy wall is also contained in the Nemesis section of the ARK where it will show all the Nemesis we have unlocked and the number of times we have killed them.
And there we have the ARK, a big addition to the game that offers you ways to change the game or to unlock content relating to the lore of Siberian Dawn. Post 5.0 the ARK could expand as new content is added but there is a considerable amount there when it opens. I could have decided to only do a few content pods covering a handful of cards but thought it was better to try and get all of the character cards in there with 5.0 regardless of how many there were, I just wasn’t expecting 84 at that point, but I am nearly there.
The ARK adds a lot of replay value to the game and to unlock all the content could be over 50 hours. So that ends the coverage of what is coming in 5.0. I hope you are all getting excited about these additions and that you enjoy playing Siberian Dawn when it gets this update soon.
Winterflood
5.0 The Final Approach Part 2 – Skirmish Mode
Intro
Continuing our final approach to the release of 5.0, in a few weeks time, today I wanted to focus on the second big addition to Siberian Dawn in the 5.0 update, a new game mode called Skirmish that brings a few different things to the way a mission works.
An Idea
Normally each Mission is made from a fixed set of defined Objectives that tell the narrative of that Mission. The first time we discover an Objective we have that surprise and possible change of the tactics we were using at that point but, reflecting the memory theme in the game, every time we replay the mission we now have this memory of what came before. During a Mission we will be playing through this set of Objectives and they could be widely divergent in what we have to do, but always fitting the narrative.
With Skirmish mode I wanted to present a way of playing the game that had simpler Objectives, with a clearer goal from the start and more of a focus on combat. Initially this was going to be a set of dynamic objectives that changed as we went through the mission but this was going to be too random and chaotic, so that idea got scrapped when a much more simpler idea was struck upon.
Skirmish Mode
Skirmish mode is a game variant for Siberian Dawn that uses the standard mission structure we already know well but with 2 very important changes. The first change is that there is only 1 Objective, and this will always be the same for any Skirmish, to kill X Rank worth of Hostile units. The second change is we are up against the clock and only have 30 Rounds to complete the Objective.
With the objective of killing X Rank of Hostile units this is not having to kill a set number of Hostile units but a Rank total. Using Rank as a target we are given the choice of killing lots of lower Rank units or maybe going for fewer of the tougher higher Rank ones to get to the target. There is also the additional twist that if we have a unit killed their Rank is deducted from our progress, so we have to watch how we treat our higher ranking units as losing them will be costly.
The time limit of 30 Rounds gives a new challenge to the Skirmish mode because this is a defined end, we still have the normal way of losing a mission if Vitae hits 0, but with the addition of a time limit we now have the pressure of getting to the target kills in time. Whichever skill level we are playing at the time limit will always be 30 Rounds but the target value of Rank kills will change so we can pick our challenge level. We will also be shown on the briefing screen what our best time record was at each skill level.
The base game will come with 2 Skirmish missions and each DLC Mission pack will add an extra one. These Skirmish will be built from the cards of the set of missions they are based on so each Skirmish will be a different challenge with a distinct group of Hostile units and events. There is also Skirmish 0 which is a Skirmish that is built from all content we own, so every mission mixed together in an epic Skirmish.
An Extra Challenge
And the final surprise that each Skirmish mission holds is the Bosses. Every Skirmish will have 2 unique Boss cards of which 1 will be randomly selected towards the end of the Skirmish based on skill level. These Boss cards are powerful Rank 8 cards, so will add a lot to our progress at a vital point if we can take them out, but they might be better to avoid if we are close to our target. Killing one of these Bosses not only gives us the Rank reward but will also unlock their Nemesis variant, which we will cover in Part 3.
So Skirmish gives us a simpler alternative game to the normal Missions but provides a number of additional mechanics that make it still a very challenging addition to Siberian Dawn. We will also still be getting stars awarded for our performance so getting that perfect 5 stars and completing the goal is another challenge all together. But you might be thinking what is so important about these stars, well that will become clearer in the next part of our final approach as we uncover the ARK and the big additions that brings to Siberian Dawn.
Winterflood
5.0 The Final Approach Part 1 – The V Missions
Intro
With the release of 5.0 getting very close I wanted to detail some of the things that it will be adding to Siberian Dawn, and also cover the 3 big content highlights of this update in a series of Final Approach news posts. So in this first part I will be giving some more information about the V Missions.
Brightness and Rounds
Before getting on to the V Missions I want to first mention a couple of global features that will be added with 5.0 that might be of interest.
In the Options menu under Graphics you will find with 5.0 a new setting for Brightness control. If you found the game too dark or even too light you can now adjust it to your taste with a few simple clicks. 0 is the current setting but you will have 5 steps up and 5 down that can be used and this is a combined Brightness and Contrast adjustment to bring a bit more punch to the visuals of the game if required.
The other global addition that 5.0 will bring is the display of Rounds. Currently when we finish a mission and get the breakdown of our performance and how many stars we earned you may have seen how many rounds we took to complete the mission. The game will reward us a Star if we completed the mission 10 Rounds less than the average for that mission but we were not told what the average was and we could also not see during a mission what round we was on.
With 5.0 each mission briefing screen on the Mission Menu will now display the average number of Rounds to complete that mission, which will also help us see how long that mission will normally take to play, and show us what we need to aim for the get that time Star.
When playing a mission the current Round will be displayed on the Data Display at the start of each Phase and will also be shown at the top of the Data Display when no items are resolving or are selected, when we normally get the screen prompt text. At the end of a Round we will also get a message about Round X is complete. With 5.0 we will now always be able to see what the current Round is and the greater importance of this will become clearer when we cover Skirmish mode in the Final Approach Part 2.
The V Missions
Now we move onto the main focus of this update the V Missions. With 5.0 the base game will be getting 3 new full missions comparable in size and complexity to the missions found in the 2 Mission Packs of Chapter 1. These 3 V Missions are a narrative prologue to Chapter 1 and presents the story of an attack on the research base of a Union scientific advisor and the following mission to discover who was behind it.
As with the missions in Chapter 1 each mission here will have its own unique set of objectives and challenges to give us a full set of missions that will require us to think about what we are doing and how we are going to handle the various stages of the story. And completing Mission V-3 on any skill level will also unlock the ARK, but more on that in the Final Approach Part 3.
The hostile units we will be going up against in these mission will be of 2 types. Firstly we have the familiar Vbots of the Training missions, now with the addition of a VBot Mob, which will also be added to the Training missions. And then we have the new corrupted units, who are familiar Union units that we have been using in the game now controlled by the VBot technology and turned against us.
These new corrupted units will have similar abilities to their Union originals but when they are killed we are freeing them of their VBot control and we will gain the Union version of that card. This is a new way to gain these Union units in the game but also provides us with the problem of getting rid of these cards if we don’t want to deploy them, so this gives a new resource management twist to these missions.
With the new corrupted hostile units and the other challenges presented in the V Missions these 3 missions will provide a fresh set of missions to the base game and help to show what Chapter 1 has to offer if you haven’t ventured beyond the Training Missions yet. They are not missions designed to be easier than those in Chapter 1 but are of an equal standing.
And so we have come to the end of part 1 of the Final Approach, I am currently very deep into adding content to the ARK, but in part 2 of the Final Approach we will be seeing what Skirmish mode is all about and what it will add to the base game.
Winterflood
A 4th Birthday Celebration and 5.0 News
"Are memories set in stone?"
- The Orphan
4 Years of Improvements
On the 20th September 2018 Siberian Dawn was released on Steam, so today we are celebrating the 4th anniversary of the game with a birthday sale and news about what is to come.
I have continued to develop the game over the last 4 years, adding a number of additions and improvements to make this original card game a more enjoyable experience and to expand the content on offer, and this will continue into its 5th year with the release of 5.0 soon.
Now some of you might be asking why is he still working on this game after 4 years, hasn’t he abandoned it yet and gone to work on something else that might make more money?
Well the most important reason for why I am continuing to work on the game is that I still enjoy Siberian Dawn, and prefer to play it over most of the other card games I own on Steam. And as I am developing it on my own, with no hired guns to help, it has taken a while to add all of the parts that I wanted to put in the game, and maybe the initial thoughts of it being a simple card game to make were an underestimation of what was involved for a single person working on it. So now 4 years later the base game is done and with 5.0 we are getting an addition of content that greatly expands Siberian Dawn in game and mythology.
5.0 News
Currently I am testing the 3 prologue V Missions, I mentioned previously in the news, that will be added to the base game. These are 3 full missions that will each have their own unique challenges and are comparable to the missions in the Mission Packs for difficulty. They will also include our cover star on this news post, a Grunt with a different greenish look who will also be bringing a few other familiar faces to these missions.
I am also busy testing the Skirmish mode, which had a bit of a change from my initial thoughts for it, but it is now a more defined, clearer challenge where you have to kill X Rank of Hostile units within a time limit. Skirmish missions will also contain Hostile Boss units that are higher Rank versions of some of the cards we have already faced. The Base game will get 3 Skirmish missions and each Mission Pack will get an extra Skirmish mission, with each Skirmish constructed from the Hostile units and events of the missions they are based on. One of the 3 Skirmish missions included in the base game, Skirmish 0, will be a combination of all the Missions that you own in one grand Skirmish.
And finally the Ark will also be unlocked in 5.0, and this is the part that brings together the meta game of Siberian Dawn. Using the Ark points you have been gaining through completing missions since the game launched you can unlock the mythology of the game and various other items that will modify a mission, like Echoes and the Nemesis.
So enjoy the birthday celebration and I hope you found the 5.0 news exciting. I will now return to testing and crafting more devious content for Siberian Dawn.
Winterflood
Not Unfinished Development Hell And A Story About Apples And Oranges
I noticed a review from a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to talk about but first...
...its story time with Winterflood, people!
The village of Pipville loved their apples, you wouldn’t believe how much they loved apples, in fact they considered themselves to be the experts on apples, apple connoisseurs. Then one day a man moved into town, for the sake of this story and to protect his identity we shall call him Mr W, and set up a shop selling oranges. He offered people a free orange with the possibility of then buying a Delightfully Lovely Container of more Oranges if they liked the free one. Now the Pipvillian saw these oranges and thought “hey, that is a round fruit, and I love round fruit” and several thousand oranges were given away for free by Mr W, and some even brought his DLC orange pack.
But quickly after opening his store some of the Apple connoisseurs voiced their opinions of these oranges. They told everyone they were experts on apples, they were connoisseurs after all, and these oranges were not right. They were much more complex than apples, much harder to understand with all this peel and lack of pips, and despite being free they had to warn people of the complex danger of this new round fruit and its clear apple inferiority. Now Mr W was confused he had never advertised the orange as a being an apple, sure he had said it was a round fruit, but these expert reviews seem to be looking for something else. So Mr W continued to improve his oranges as they were lacking with proper instructions on how to peel them and enjoy the fruit within, but the connoisseurs still wanted apples and until the day the orange became an apple they were not going to be happy.
Mr W continued for years to develop his oranges when he had time, adding more content, improving the flavour, and making them easier to peel, with little reward. Always in his mind was the thought that maybe he should just shut his store and go do something more rewarding as these people only wanted apples, but there were the few who did get that these were not apples and they enjoyed the complexity of the oranges, and some even told their fellow Pipvillians they enjoyed this new round fruit. And Mr W continued to improve the orange as he believed in it and that it wasn’t an apple, and he didn’t want it to be just another apple, as Pipville had plenty of them already.
Then one day Mr W came along with something new, he pulled out a banana and that just blew their pip minds completely away.
And the moral of this story is?
Now on to this review I just noticed from the 10th July. This was obviously another negative review by someone who does a lot of negative reviews, and yes I read the explanatory essay on their profile for why they do a lot of negative reviews. They seem to have spent more time writing the review than playing the game, and obviously they wanted a shiny apple and not an orange.
So the review is not aimed at me but the players, to tell them how bad my game is. As I am the only person working on this game any feedback is always going to be felt to be directed at me, I am not hired by a big company and can think “well I get paid by them to do this and it is just a job, and any negatives are aimed at my boss or whoever was in charge of developing this.” This is something I have worked on for several years so will always feel the negatives. And Steam has a refund policy where you can try it yourself with no risk, so can make your own mind up.
But back to the review and some of the things it says which will impact the potential player.
“It's deceptively out of Early Access despite being unfinished. The game is getting updates but it's firmly in development hell with no clear indications it will ever be finished.”
It was never in Early Access and it was finished on the day of launch, but with feedback I have updated the game and added content to improve the experience. I don’t believe I ever made claims on the store page about features that were not in the game and have always been open about what is going on with the game and things I want to add. The game is not in development hell and it was finished. I am adding 3 new missions as I changed it from free to paid but the full game is in there and anything else that is being added is extra.
“there's a lengthy English translated tutorial, and I mean, a serious investment of time just to try to learn how to play the game. It's very hard to make the argument that it's worth it.”
Not sure what “English translated tutorial” means but translated means it wasn’t originally in English, and I only speak English. The store page clearly shows what the game is with a video from the original release and the description so it should be obvious what you are getting before having to invest time or money.
“Resolution is locked and can't be changed, and there's no graphics tweaks, but given the simple 2D interface there's not much to impress PC gamers anyway.” There are SD and HD resolutions but they seem to want 4K 3D graphics looking at their profile and feel there is no place for the type of graphics here. There are also several tweaks you can make to how things are displayed. “There's a lot of confusion about the pricing of the game, originally I think this was a paid game, now it's got DLC you're expected to buy to unlock the full game... all this despite the game not even being finished. I don't think that in this case it's a deliberate attempt to mislead or scam gamers as many Early Access games do, rather it's just unclear marketing for this unfinished game.”
Originally it was free and had DLC at launch so players could see what the game was like but that didn’t seem to work and was changed recently also from player feedback. There is no confusion on pricing and no scam. The base game has training missions that give several hours of finished game play and the 3 missions I am adding are to add to that value and I am clear about these. So still it has never been early access and the game is not unfinished as it offers the full gameplay I would expect for the price.
If you got this far then well done, you could have learnt the game in less time. So why did I write this response to a review and not just ignore it as another negative to the pile? There were a lot of things said that I highlighted above that were not accurate of what I have done, and previously I would just take the punches and get on with it, but isn’t that saying you don’t care about what you are doing. As I am the only one working on this, and don’t have a legion of fans, I am the only one who is going to defend my work and they may say they are not aiming the review at me but of course it is aimed at me, and therefore I am going to defend my self and my work.
Winterflood
Update 4.65
● Added modifiers screen showing all active modifiers for both Union and Hostile units currently deployed on sites which can be opened by clicking on the Modifiers button on the Data Display under the deployed card ● Added load mission warning to Mission Menu if you are trying to load a a mission from the Training Menu so this now matches the warning in Training Menu ● Added extra line hint for training 3 - such as the Influence ability of the Scout, and the Subdue ability of the Core, Heavy, and Shield units. ● Added option on Android to stretch screen to fit device or to keep aspect ratio locked
