In collaboration with Klabater, we're pleased to announce that Starward Rogue is Available Now on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch. Check out the launch trailer!
We'll also be pushing a small patch soon for the PC version with bugfixes, balance tweaks, and a couple of extra UI improvements. :) Thanks!
Nintendo Switch: https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/starward-rogue-switch/
Version 2.602 Achievement Fixes - And Console Launch!
New Starward Rogue build!
Here are the full release notes: https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Starward_Rogue:Post-1.5_Release_Notes#Version_2.602_Achievement_Fixes_And_Console_Launch
This has some general balance tweaks for a few specific edge cases, some general quality of life improvements, and then also fixes to a couple of achievements.
Enjoy!
In other news, the game launched on the Playstation, XBox, and Nintendo Switch consoles yesterday! We're very pleased with how that turned out. Big thanks to Klabater, the publisher, for their great work with it.
In OTHER other news, did you know that we're working on a new 4X strategy game in partnership with Hooded Horse? It's called Heart of the Machine, and you can check it out here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2001070/Heart_of_the_Machine/ There's going to be updates with more concrete information in the next few months, as well as some testing starting for it, so keep an eye out!
Version 2.601 (XInput Fix)
New build! https://wiki.arcengames.com/index.php?title=Starward_Rogue:Post-1.5_Release_Notes#Version_2.601_.28XInput_Fix.29
This one fixes a memory leak that was part of XInput.
SR version 2.6 (Room for one more?)
Hello there.
Today we have a new update you probably didn't expect. This is a big one, so there's a little something for everyone in it and we hope you enjoy it.
The list of changes is pretty long, but here is a quick summary:
* 50 new rooms for the AuGMENTED expansion. * 4 new weapons: The Dragon Cannon ATR, Salvo Minigun, Spinblade Cannon and Horizon Sniper Rifle. * New missile launcher: The Knowledge Hound Launcher. * 2 new modules: The Assassin and Rocketeer Modules. * 3 new powerups: Toxic Ammo, Contaminated Ammo and Tampered Regulator. * 6 new consumable drones: Missile, Casket, LaserTwin, Overload, Riot and Biotech Drones. * 6 new Ancestor Guardian consumables: Sunstone, Bloodstone, Sapphire, Diamond, Emerald and Amethyst Ancestor Guardians. These will allow you to channel the Ancestors power for a short duration, giving you an elemental breath attack and various special effects, depending on the Ancestor. * 15 new communications from Rodney in the mech selection screen, based on victories. * Less desirable items and perks have been tweaked to make them very much worth picking up. * Weapon stats have been given an accuracy pass to eliminate inconsistencies. Frequency of primary and secondary weapons have been changed so they are more evenly distributed. * Firerate and energy cost of the boss-themed weapons have been completely re-balanced. * Spawning rules of bosses have been tweaked for both the base game and Augmented expansion to allow bosses exclusive to mid floors to appear more often. * Statistics menu has been cleaned up and reorganized by tags to make it easier to look through. * Dozens of item descriptions have been extended and clarified. * Duration of the shot cancelling effect when using a teleporter has been greatly reduced to avoid accidentally wasting missiles and energy. * Caltrops tiles now have improved visibility and sharpness. * Countless rooms tweaked. * Tons of other refinements and bugfixes. * New music track by Pablo Vega!
One final little bonus, is the Galactic Arena test chamber. This isn't officially supported as a proper feature, but we wanted to include it in the base game for people to try out. It is a wave survival mode mini-game which can be a fun change of pace from doing regular runs. To access it from the main menu, simply click Mods, select the Galactic_Arena test chamber and buckle up! (Par time: 5mins)
Many thanks everybody for your support and have fun. :)
AI War 2 has left early access!
Chris here! By any sane metric I can think of, AI War 2 shouldn't exist. And yet it's more than I ever imagined it could be.
When we first set out to make this game three years ago, it was far less ambitious. Even that was going to be really hard. Somehow, in the process of falling down the stairs over and over again during this period, we wound up with a game that seems to be superior to the original.
This game shouldn't exist, but it does, and I'm both proud and stunned.
The Secret? Community
The intro to this post runs the risk of sounding like I'm tooting my own horn, but it's not actually about me. I'm not capable of making -- even just designing -- this game on my own. I don't think anyone is, really.
The fact that this game exists isn't a testament to me having some brilliant insight or a singular vision that I doggedly pursued. The reviews of the game are lovely, but give me entirely too much personal credit.
The state of this game is thanks to dozens of people critically thinking about this game -- what this one and the original means to them and to others -- and then a process of relentless, continuous, arduous iteration and improvement.
MVP Award: BadgerBadger
This section is long, and in some ways tangential, but if you read it you'll understand why I've put it here so prominently. You have this guy to thank as much as me or Keith for this game existing.
Badger has been involved since the kickstarter, with questions and comments and key insights. For a lot of the first year, he was responsible for something like 80% of the bug reports and feature ideas on our idea tracker. When a lot of other people were just bouncing off the game and waiting around for Keith LaMothe and I to figure things out on our own -- understandable, really -- Badger was there providing really key insight and ideas.
But that was barely the start for him. After a while I was essentially like "so, do you just want source code access, given how much you're doing here?" Because he had started doing some mods -- nanocaust and macrophage, at the time, IIRC -- and it was clear he would be less hand-tied if he had more access.
What happened next was essentially us getting a developer -- volunteer, no less -- who contributed as much to the design of the game as I did, in my opinion. Not only did he single-handedly conceive of and implement the nanocaust and macrophage, but he also did the dark spire and marauder impelementations, among many, many other things.
Some of the most brilliant and devious things that the AI has in this game compared to the first one? Badger. Some of your favorite UI detail screens, like metal flows? Badger.
Not to mention all the bugfixes, balance tweaks, and... just oodles more. This game wouldn't exist in anything like the state it does now without Badger. Any credit for my "singular vision" on the game is doing him a major disservice, but he's a quiet sort of guy when it comes to taking credit, so I wanted to take this chance to call him out in particular.
Growing Volunteer Developer Corps
So, Badger is not remotely the only person I need to call out as being absolutely indispensable.
RocketAssistedPuffin has also been involved heavily for the last year plus, and has taken over huge numbers of things that I never would have had time for. After I implemented the new tech system one way, he's the one who figured out how to make it substantially more balanced. Most of the voluminous "balance change" sections on the release notes are from him working with other players or just reasoning things out himself.
Puffin has also had a ton of ideas on how to make things better in all sorts of sections of the game, and there was a period of about three months late last year where he and Badger were basically doing ALL the development on the game and I just pushed out releases of what they were doing. I was going through a really painful divorce and had a ton of anxiety and couldn't face work, and these two kept things alive and improving.
But it never stopped there. Those new tutorials you like? Puffin. I wrote the bulk of the "How To Play" in-game wiki sections, but the most basic and understandable ones for new players were... again, Puffin. I'm excellent at writing encyclopedic entries that fill you in on huge numbers of details, but he's the one who distilled "what's the most central stuff you need to know, as briefly as possible" so that people can actually get into the game in any reasonable timeframe. Compare his work here to the tutorials I did in the original game, and it's night and day.
And I'm still selling Puffin short, frankly, because he's done so many things over such a long period that I can't remember it all now.
More recently, we've had folks like WeaponMaster and Asteroid joining in and adding lots of bugfixes and quality of life improvements that I never would have had the time to do myself. Things like hovering over galaxy map links to see information on them were Asteroid. Endless tricky bugfixes were WeaponMaster. I'm selling them both short, but the release notes are filled with things that they either implemented or suggested or both.
And it doesn't stop there. Quinn stepped in an made a bunch of additions. Keith laid the original groundwork for the entire game simulation and multithreading (he was the main programmer and designer for the first year and a half, and actually on staff during that time).
And there were so, so many others. And more each month!
Volunteers Beat Modders, I Think
I'm pretty free with the source code access, because I'd rather have a consolidated community of people helping rather than a bunch of mods that you have to hunt down and find.
So a lot of the folks that have turned into volunteers are what would have been modders on most other games. They would have made their own thing that you had to install and then wonder about the cross-compatibility of.
This game does have a ton of moddability, and for anyone who wants to "just" be a modder, that's absolutely fine with me. But for a lot of the mods that are getting the most love, I'm happy to share source code access with those folks so that they're in no way hobbled, and so that their work can go out as additional content that every player can find via in-game options without having to hunt through Steam Workshop or whatever else.
It's an unorthodox approach, but a lot more team-oriented and lets us do quality control on each others' stuff, "mods" included, which is a big win. If someone wants to steal the source code for this game, they can just decompile it like any other game for the most part. I'd rather put my trust in people and see things flourish rather than retain a stranglehold out of fear or pride.
What Did I Actually Do, Then?
All of this help from others let me focus on some of the really tricky architectural and design problems, which led to things like us even being able to HAVE a simulation of this size, and to have it perform as smoothly as it does.
I got to build lots of mechanics that other people then actually turned into specific units. It also gave me time to focus on some really nagging problems that just made the early versions of the game... unpleasant.
If I hadn't had the time to think and talk to people about all those things, we never would have seen all the game evolve this way; I would have been mired in content development and other items just to get the basics out for the game.
The original design for this was something that Keith and I put together as a pair, but it only worked out so well. It was a good foundation, but needed... a lot of help. We both pushed that forward a lot, until the money situation got to the point where he (and all the other staff, eventually) had to step away, and I carried on "alone" (but with all those volunteers).
There came a couple of major turning points where I was reflecting on why I was so unhappy with this game as it existed, and listening to the various gripes that playtesters had, and then I was able to spend a month or three implementing something drastically new.
Fleets are the most notable of those, and they were initially met with a lot of mixed feelings and distaste because only part of my idea was there on the first public launch of those. Only in the last month or so has that feature completely come into its own, and that also had a lot to do with continuous feedback from people in early access telling me what they needed and what they did and didn't like.
We also had a number of points during development where we just couldn't escape certain performance problems, because there were suddenly battles that were an order of magnitude larger than the first game (which was itself the largest strategy game simulation of individual units that I'm aware of on the market until this sequel). So I got to focus on a whole bunch of crazy improvements and data structure inventions and even GPU shader tricks in order to make all this stuff work.
Without the rest of the community helping, there's no way I could have had time to work on all that sort of thing, even in three years of development. A game of this scope shouldn't run this well -- it shouldn't be possible -- but it is because I was given the gift of time by so many others.
A Decade In The Making
It has been 10 years to the day since the first AI War came to Steam, and it's been 3 years of developing this sequel.
We didn't do any work on any AI War games from late 2014 through late 2016, but the rest of that time has been spent at least partly working on the original game or this sequel.
From version 5.0 of the original game through version 8.0, Keith was pretty much the sole developer on that while I focused on other things. He built out a ton of creative and clever things that made a return in this game, and also pushed the concept of what the AI could be -- adding in some traditional decision-tree style logic in places in addition to the more decentralized-style AI that I had come up with back in 2009. That one that originally made waves on slashdot and reddit and hackernews and so on.
I've worked as the producer and design lead on this sequel, among my many other roles, and so the fact that there seems to be a "singular vision" is hopefully a sign that I did a good job in that role. But the degree to which this is a product of dozens of people's work, over an extremely long period of time, really can't be understated.
That's what I meant all the way back at the start. This sort of thing shouldn't have happened. It's just so... unlikely. A ton of people came together over a decade and helped make something unlike anything else on the market.
That's before even getting into other major (former) staff contributors like Daniette "Blue" Shinkle doing the vast majority of the art and coming up with the way-prettier style of ship that evolved AFTER the kickstarter, the awesome score by Pablo Vega, and 25 voice actors who did a fantastic job as various humans and the AI.
And good grief, I'd be remiss not to mention Erik and Craig and all the other folks at Indie Bros, who helped manage so many aspects of this game, as well as often doing work like helping clean up voice lines, etc.
I never wanted to make this game, because I didn't think I could. The original AI War seemed to be the high water mark of my career, and I spent a lot of time trying to make peace with that. But when the market shifted in 2015 and 2016 and finances started getting tight, it became clear that returning to the game that started it all was what made the most sense.
Thanks to all of the kickstarter backers for believing that we even COULD build this game. Keith and I felt like we could do something that would make you happy, but probably not something that would top the original. It took two extra years of development and an enormous village of people to make THAT a reality. So thanks to everyone for their patience and support during that time.
I also want to say a big thanks to everyone for their understanding during my divorce, which happened shortly after entering Early Access for this game. That made everything so much harder, and took me out of commission for a full three months or so where I just couldn't work much. I had to learn how to be me again, and come to terms with being a dad with shared custody rather than a full-time father, and all of that was incredibly hard.
But the good news is that, as has happened with this game itself, a lot of things in my personal life have turned out unexpectedly, improbably well in the last year. After deciding to date again (after 18 years off the market, wow), I wound up meeting the woman who is now my fiancée surprisingly quickly (all things considered). Kara and her daughter have made my entire world so much richer than I realized it could be, and my son finally has the sister he's wanted for so much of his life.
I feel incredibly fortunate, and a lot of my ability to get back to work and not crumble under the weight of anxiety and expectations for this game were thanks to Kara's support and presence. The reality of her life as a doctor and surgeon also helps to kind of put my own work into perspective, sometimes, in the best way.
However this turns out financially, and despite my anxieties about my future as a game developer, I'm incredibly proud of what we've all created together, and I feel surrounded by all the right people both at work and outside of work. This has been the hardest three year period of my life, but the end result has all been worth it.
Thanks to everyone, and I hope you enjoy the game -- both what it is now, and what's to come.
Very Best,
Chris
After Two Long Years, AI War 2 Hits Early Access!
It's been quite a saga, if you've followed along all this time. All that extra time paid off!
At this point we have what fans have nearly-universally hailed as a worthy successor to the original classic. We still have plenty more to do prior to 1.0 in Q2 of 2019, but the game is ready to play now and we hope you'll come enjoy it and give us further feedback.
Humanity has already lost the war, and now you command the last remnants in a desperate campaign to take back the galaxy.
More than most strategy games, your actions have consequences: taking every minor outpost you see is a surefire way to alert the enemy and spell your own doom.
Strike smart, capture new technology, and bring down a foe that overmatches you in every way.
What's New In 2?
The sequel improves the UI, the graphics, the audio, and many of the core mechanics. It's an across-the-board upgrade.
But even more than that, it brings in new friends and foes alike -- large factions are now possible, with their own sophisticated AI, economies, and rules.
Marauders are now able to conquer territory, and build up their own bases if left un-checked. The nanocaust feeds on the strength of those around it, while the macrophage happily grows in the background, sending out spores...
Enjoy the classic human vs AI cage match, or expand to a much wider living galaxy.
25% off Loyalty Coupon!
If you own the original AI War, or The Last Federation, or Bionic Dues -- check your inventory on Steam! You may need to restart it, or log out and back in. Inside, you'll find a coupon for 25% off on top of the launch 10% discount. Both are only valid this week, so hopefully this isn't sitting in your inbox too long!
SR version 2.5 (Unlock Overhaul) and AI War 2 early access launch news
Hey everybody
In celebration of Arcen launching AI War 2 into Early Access today, we're also pushing the next update of Starward Rogue: The Unlock Overhaul! There are also huge discounts on all Arcen's games for the first week of AI War 2's launch.
This is a free content update that adds 87 new items to the game: 62 new unlockable items for the base game, a further 16 unlockable items for the AuGMENTED expansion, and 9 new items going straight into the base game. The unlockable items are awarded after completing achievements. For any already completed achievements, the rewards will automatically be unlocked.
Back when Starward Rogue launched around 2 and a half years ago we weren't able to get everything into the game that we originally wanted. One of those things was reward unlocks. But with this update, that has now changed! Now for nearly every achievement in the game you will unlock an item reward upon completing it. The only two achievements that don't have unlockable items are Unlock All Items and Find All Items since we didn't want to gate any items behind such extremely difficult achievements. The types of rewards are wide ranging from simple upgrades to new familiars to crazy boss themed weapons. Unlock items such as Flash Sale, Red Scorpion, Kamikaze Minibot, Ripple Laser, Durandal, Chrono Claw, the Commando Module and many many more!
There are, of course, also the usual tweaks and bug fixes. Here is the whole changelog. This update has been many months in the making and it's something the team is very proud of. We hope you enjoy it. Thanks for your support everyone! :)
Oh, just in case anybody is experiencing problems with the build or just wants to go back to the previous version for whatever reason, you can revert that by right-clicking Starward Rogue in your library list, selecting properties and then opting into the beta version called 2_004.
SR 2.004 (Refiiiinement) plus AI War 2 news
Hey everybody. Things have been pretty busy over at Arcen with AI War 2 set to launch into Early Access in July. You can wishlist that here to be notified when that launches if you're interested.
But now onto Starward stuff. This update mostly contains a bunch of fixes and quality of life refinements, including aesthetic improvements to certain shots, clarified descriptions, item tweaks, 15 updated rooms, hitbox adjustments to some enemies, and more. Here's the whole changelog. A few other notable changes are that some of the late game star backgrounds have been tweaked to reduce glare, we've added outlines to all the enemies to make them stand out more, player location and warp pad destination visibility on the minimap has been improved, and all slot based items now have a colored text prefix signifying which slot they fit into. In addition to that we have the following new achievements:
Perfect Clear Boss -- Periphery
Perfect Clear Boss -- Metal Legion
Perfect Clear Boss --Sunder
Perfect Clear Boss --Largesse ("The Humbled")
Perfect Clear Boss -- Valor
Complete Run With Incredibility - Creator
Complete Run With Incredibility - Lilliputian
Complete Run With Incredibility - High Speed Danger
Complete Run With Incredibility - Corrupting Power
Time to hunt down foes and grab some of the most dangerous incredibilities available.
Plus, there is also some new content, we have 9 new rooms and one new enemy variant for AuGMENTED -- the Gold Zombot! Additionally, there is a small bit of "new" content, too. Basically, there have been two perks in the code for a while which we thought were appearing but apparently haven't been due to a typo. Ahem. Sorry about that! In any case, those have now been fixed. The "new" Deep Blue mech specialist perks are Beam Buddy Ver2.0 and Beam Buddy ver3.0.
We hope you enjoy this update! :) Cheers!
Starward Rogue: 2.001 (Die A Fiery Death, Audio Crash)
Hey everybody
Here's our first major update since the launch of AuGMENTED and it contains two big changes. Firstly, we have finally managed to track down and fix a longstanding problem with regards to very occasional crashing that could happen. I'll leave Chris to explain this!
"FINALLY fixed the longstanding super-infrequent crashing that was happening for some-but-not-all players. This has been a thorn in our side for two years now, but we finally got some excellent help from Unity's engine developers themselves, and it turns out that we were triggering a crash bug somewhere deep in the engine via calls to audio.GetAudioClip(). That's now on their list to investigate and fix, but in our case now that we know what the problem actually is, we've switched approaches to no longer use that method at all, instead baking the music and voice tracks into the game itself. This is also why it would happen sometimes specifically during tutorials."
Phew! So, that should be the last we see of that issue. Many thanks to everyone who has submitted crash reports for this problem, and also to the folks over at Unity for helping us track down what the issue was.
Now for the second big change -- the probation overhaul! The whole probation mechanic (those optional little challenges you get at the start of floors 2+) of the game has had a bit of sprucing up thanks to Logorouge and Draco. All rewards for the probations have been improved, 2 new probations have been added, any existing probation issues have been fixed, and there have even been some extra niceties added like SFX and console notifications on success or failure.
In addition to these two big changes, there have also been the usual bunch of fixes and balance changes. There is a also "new" sacrifice item for AuGMENTED that was accidentally not set to seed when the expansion launched -- Parasite Armor. We hope you enjoy this update! :)
AuGMENTED Goes Gold
It's here! Arcen Games are proud to finally announce the launch of the first Starward Rogue expansion: AuGMENTED. Available now!
This is a bumper content pack for Starward Rogue featuring the following list of goodies:
* A new gold floor with unique challenges and rewards
* 4 new music tracks composed by Pablo Vega and The Overthinkers
* 3 new mechs: The Zephyr, The Paladin, and the Warhog
* 90+ new items
* 30+ new enemies
* 125+ new rooms
* 8 new room obstacles such as the pulse trap and the flamethrower turret
* 10+ challenge rooms (a new room type exclusive to the gold floors)
* 6 new minibosses
* 9 new bosses
We are also introducing Starward Rogue: Gold Edition which is a package deal featuring both the base game and AuGMENTED. Both AuGMENTED and the Gold Edition will also be on 10% discount until January 31.
It's been a lot of work, but AuGMENTED is something we're very proud of over at Arcen Games. Thanks, everybody. Hail to the Hydral! :)
We also wanted to make a special thanks to Windless Zephyr for inspiring the Zephyr mech, and also for providing us with so many episodes of your long-running Starward Rogue series! :)
