Hello, Citizens of Sordland, this week our broadcast has some exciting updates which we are very pleased to share with you.
Firstly, it is with great excitement that we announce the official launch date for the mobile version of Suzerain will be the 8th December. You can watch the mobile trailer below.
Get your small screens ready!
We are also very proud to announce this will be the first time Torpor Games self-publishes a game. This applies only to the mobile version of the game. We worked really hard to make this happen, which means that compared to other platforms, a significant portion of the revenue will come directly to us. For this reason, purchasing the game on mobile will be a great way to support us. Danki!
In other news, last week Paradox released Victoria 3, and to celebrate, we released the 1836 version of the extended Suzerain universe map.
Our universe is growing, and the 1954 version of the same map will be released during our anniversary State of Torpor Games live stream Q&A on the 8th of December on Twitch, as part of the Suzerain anniversary celebrations. Save the date.
To move on to another special announcement, we have recently revealed our next project to some of the most dedicated members of our community:
The Conformist is a narrative role-playing game in which the player guides Orwin – a propagandist working for the government of Sordland – in an attempt to survive the harsh political environment after a civil war, and discover his own path in the capital.
https://www.theconformistgame.com/
Here are the first screenshots that we can share with you and we will be sharing more details about the new project soon.
Also, we would like to extend our biggest thanks to everyone who participated in the ARG and solved the suitcase puzzle, as well as sent letters to all the different factions. We have now contacted everyone who got selected so please check your emails or Discord handles. We will come back soon with next steps.
Now to move on to this month's development updates.
The month of October had some environment progress in the vertical slice of The Conformist, with certain locations of the initial game experience reaching a higher standard of visual quality to improve the production case of how the entire game will look closer to completion. Our concepts of the new districts have progressed to the greybox stage in addition to this. Placeholder UI sounds were added to make the interactions smoother. We also fixed a major vertical slice error that was breaking our scene transition.
Internally, we have been working on planning, conceptual development and pre-production on two new projects since June. In September, we took the first steps in narrative design work on this and fully began development in October. We are excited to share that we are beginning feature and content production, but won’t be able to share any further details at this point in time.
Last but not least, we are happy to announce that we have a new team member!
Anett Jenichen was born in Chile and is living in Germany. She is joining the team as a Graphic Design & QA Intern and is currently studying Game Design at the University of Applied Sciences Berlin. Before that she did an apprenticeship as a Graphic Designer and enjoys illustrating and sculpting in her free time. Welcome Anett!
Remember that on the 8th of December we will be celebrating the two year anniversary of Torpor Games with the Suzerain mobile launch and the State of Torpor Games live stream Q&A on Twitch. Save the date!
That’s all for this month, stay tuned for more important updates next month.
Hello fellow citizens, and welcome to the monthly broadcast for August. Let's take a look at what updates we have for you.
August was a critical transition period for our new project, in which we re-targeted our production plans. Most of the design elements reached structural completion in August, except for the iterations of a few features. Currently, we are gearing up to produce the written and other gameplay content. That being said, we have exciting new developments. The team added lore articles about three key locations, and two new characters have been drawn and added. The art team is focusing on realising essential sections within these locations. We also settled on our first branching quest design!
Our narrative design and content design have progressed very well. As September kicks off, we are getting ready to get writing again. We aim to make a compelling branching narrative that is easy to enter but hard to circumnavigate, just as it usually is with Torpor Games content.
The goal is to produce a Vertical Slice of the experience and test all of our ideas in execution. The VS will represent a small part of the game and, as intended, will be incomplete in many areas. We aim to be technically and conceptually complete for the designed slice of the game in a few months.
We are very excited about the next steps, and thank you for your support!
We are also happy to officially announce that the mobile version will be coming out in a few months to celebrate the original Suzerain launch anniversary. As soon as we have a final date we will share it with all of you!
Want to brush up on your Sordish language skills? One of our superfans, Pyry Paavola has gone above and beyond and added sordish.org’s dictionary file on Github as a public repository, meaning the raw data for the dictionary is available for use and access. Take a look here.
We would also like to thank our beloved SKTheCrusader for another amazing and heart-felt review on YouTube! You can watch it here:
With the project “Auswärtigesspiel”, the Federal Foreign Office together with the Digital Games Culture Foundation wants to use the popularity and potential of digital games to convey basic foreign policy knowledge and to make the dilemmas of foreign and security policy decisions understandable.
Another highlight at Gamescom was seeing our friends from Paintbucket Games present their new game, “The Darkest Files." We have been long-term admirers of their game “Through the Darkest of Times," a political narrative game about the Nazi resistance in Berlin, and are very excited about this new project.
Finally, there is someone willing to meet you in Downtown Holsord. Head there to receive further instructions. Those who seize the power justly will be honoured with authority. Those who don’t will be regarded as fabricators of the truth.
That's all for this month, we will be back next month with some more exciting updates.
The Suzerain Official Universe Codex is now here! This will serve as your official central information source for all information that is available in the Suzerain codex and more. You can read about different characters, countries and timelines. Consider it your Suzerain encyclopaedia.
The month of July brought about some major iterations of our core systems for our next project, and we have concluded a significant portion of the necessary core elements. We are currently working on deepening our key unique features to create a consistent design that encompasses the game while feeding other systems and receiving inputs effectively.
Further developments have led to a significant visual overhaul which has brought us closer to the art direction we set at the beginning of the project. Our artistic team have been doing a great job with realising the vision and we have now seen the first sections of this universe come alive. There is still plenty to do, but the train is on the move and gradually gaining more steam!
We will conclude the remaining design in August and begin building our vertical slice. What this means is directing a total focus on creating the final narrative design for the beginning of the experience.
In addition, the narrative work will be followed by a lot of writing and producing the flow both technically and content-wise. The process of implementing all of our new designs and our narrative design revisions will take several months. Our team believes this is for the betterment of the final product you will experience in the end.
We can't wait to share more about this in the next couple of months.
In this broadcast, we also wanted to bring some clarity to the timeline of our Suzerain mobile launch. Due to some business developments, we had to prolong the initially intended launch date. We wanted to communicate why this happened since our community is one of the most essential elements of Torpor Games.
Initially, we wanted to launch our mobile version in Q1 2022. However, we were inclined to hold the launch due to a significant business proposition. We are still a small company, and this deal was substantial enough for us to hold back until we got a definitive yes or no. This caused us to delay our launch and in the process, led to us not being able to uphold our initial promises about the mobile launch.
The discussions are still ongoing but we have received the green light to be able to release the mobile app. Therefore, we have decided to set the launch date for Q4 2022, regardless of the outcome of the deal.
We are excited for Suzerain to reach new audiences, and our team is excited to let everyone in the community and beyond enjoy the game on an easily accessible platform.
From a technical perspective, the development of the mobile version of Suzerain for smartphones and tablets is fully complete. Below is a gameplay video where you can see some examples of how the gameplay will appear on mobile devices, along with some images of the mobile display.
While the game is ready to be launched on both iOS and Android platforms, we are still preparing our marketing and launch plan so that the mobile version will be able to reach more audiences effectively.
Our marketing team are working on getting the ball rolling so that everyone can easily enjoy the Suzerain experience on smartphones and tablets, wherever you want.
Stay tuned.
We are really happy to see more political games such as "Papers, Please" (one of our inspirations), arrive on the mobile platform. Congrats to Lucas Pope for bringing this masterpiece to the small screen so that we can explore this game in another format.
In other news, we have made some updates on our website that you should check out.
A lovely highlight of the month was that our whole team was able to connect for the first time in Berlin! We felt that this rare moment was due for a celebration and took the opportunity to get to know each other more outside of the office.
We began floating down the Berlin river with a barbecue lunch, we played an Escape Room and then we went up to the famous Berlin TV tower where we enjoyed 360 degrees of the city and dinner together. It was certainly a day to remember!
Finally, we would like to give a big thank you to u/boukhalistan for creating their incredible Suzerain fan art project which included wikipedia entries of different Suzerain countries and factions.
That's all for this month, we will be back with some important news next month.
Welcome to the broadcast for June, here is an overview of the most exciting things we have been working on this month.
Our team has been working on a small patch and updating Suzerain on all platforms and stores. We hope to maintain a high-quality experience for existing and new players.
The Suzerain 1.1.9 patch is out on Windows and Mac for you to enjoy. It has some minor content as well!
Our Nintendo Switch version will also have some updates in the future.
For our new project, we are starting to implement our design improvements, iterations, and new additions and will continue to do so for most of the following month.
These new iterations we are working on are things we will be more proud to share with you when the time comes.
It is super exciting to see our universe come alive piece by piece.
Our team moved offices this month as well. We now can enjoy the spaciousness and breeze coming through the windows.
By the way, we are still selling items on our merch store, like the flag in the background of our office.
We would love to see you flaunting your Suzerain merch online. Tag us in your photos!
Enjoy the month, and we will be back soon for our July update.
Hope you are having a wonderful June. We are releasing a minor patch with a few bug fixes and some extra polish to address the bug reports since January. Please read the bottom after the changelog!
[CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT] [FOR YOUR EYES ONLY - CONTAINS SPOILERS]
Patch 1.1.9 (29/06/2022)
The patch applies to new games.
Content
Added minor content in the form of dialogue extensions, codex, report and news
Bug Fixes and Polishing
Fixed an ending altering bug where a coup wouldn't trigger and instead player enters retirement wrongly causing content desync
Fixed an issue with wrong construction variables being checked in game setup
Updated description of Steam achievements regarding construction opening and frugal to reflect conditions better
Fixed date issue in a historical codex article
Fixed wrong appearance of Manoly
Updated negative situation description for military unhappiness
Added a slight content variation for a Stahler comment
Fixed wrong address of PM of Lespia
Improved conditions for Lileas comment on Rumburg war possibility when in alliance
Fixed a few typos in codex, city details, reports and news
Fixed some more typos in scenes
Known issues
Lack of Assembly impeachment content
Certain codex articles don't update such as parties, cities, armed forces
Country reports user interface has small typo
Queen Beatrice can lose dialogue text colour randomly displaying <=color=>
Hyperlinks randomly break and highlight articles or change codex article text
As always you can send feedback and report bugs on our channels. Take a look at our Discord or Twitter! If you liked Suzerain drop a positive review and spread the word.
Suzerain Community Interest Survey
The Torpor Games team has been working hard on a new project, of which we hope to be able to share more news very soon.
Additionally, we are evaluating the potential for the future of our first game, Suzerain, and what our community would be comfortable with financially supporting our development work.
Please note that we are not working on additional content for Suzerain. The purpose of this survey is solely to help us gauge the interest of our community. Torpor Games reserves the right to act as we see fit regardless of the survey results.
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To find out more about our current plans and upcoming news, keep an eye on our monthly broadcast. You can read past broadcasts on our website: torporgames.com/broadcast.
