The Great Whale Road
A heartfelt goodbye
After many a month traveling the whale road it is time to stow away the oars. Our heartfelt thanks go out to our players, beta testers, friends and everyone who worked on The Great Whale Road.
The game, while a labour of love, is certainly not without flaws. This obviously impacted sales and stopped the ideas for any expansions or follow-up titles.
We will be stopping sales of the game shortly as we are closing the studio. The game does not have any server side components, thus will stay playable in your libraries - as long as Steam exists, thus for a long time.
Enjoy the many great games out there, 2018 will be great vintage.
Thank you!
Sunburned Games
v1.2.4: The Franks and the Frisians are here (and French language support, too)!
Hello Everyone!
After a longer than planned beta all three storylines are available. The game can be played in five languages now:
- English
- German
- French
- Spanish
- Italian
The two new storylines illuminate the Frankish-Frisian conflict of the 7th century from both sides. This adds a lot of hours and new content to TGWR.
This version includes the following additions and changes:
- A Frankish and a Frisian storyline - each with their own heroes and backstories
- Auto-end turn during combat
- Revised village upgrade trees
- Combat balancing tweaks
- Over a hundred new event illustrations for key events across all three storylines
- A number of trading quests for each of the storylines
- Some new sailing events for the Danes
- Revised tutorial pages
This is the likely end of the 'whale road' and we heartily thank you for rowing along. If you encounter any issues please post them on the support forum.
Please note that we recommend that you start a new game with this release. We have tested some older save games and in general they work, but the balance will be impacted and you might experience technical issues.
Thank you!
New Storylines BETA - Now Available!
Hi Everyone,
We are happy to announce that the storylines for the Franks of Furna and the Frisians of Duvanburh are available on the Beta branch.
Please make sure to read the second half of this announcement for instructions, if you want to play the Beta.
The BETA is the penultimate step for us to complete our work on TGWR - it has well over 130,000 words now - and we are also releasing it in the five languages we had announced:
- English
- German
- French (Oui!)
- Spanish
- Italian
This Beta will be the final version and will be released once it's ready - give and take a few tweaks and bug fixes. There might be an event pack or two coming in the future as well. We want to thank everyone, who worked on The Great Whale Road for the last 2 years, and you the players, who accompanied us through splendid weather and rough seas.
This version has a few changes compared to v1.1.0:
- Auto-end Turn
- Revised upgrade trees
- Combat balancing tweaks
- Loads of event illustrations for key events across all three storylines
- A number of trading quests for each of the storylines
- Some new sailing events for the Danes
- Revised tutorial pages
Before playing the Beta:
You will notice that the two new stories are in some ways harder than the Danish one - some combat events will require you to win or reload.
If you want to play the new stories, just right-click on The Great Whale Road in the left-hand library list and select BETAS. Then you just choose the "beta - beta branch" from the drop-down and Steam will refresh The Great Whale Road. To get back to the production version, you select NONE in the same drop-down. Should you return to v1.1.0, before we have rolled-out v1.2.0 to production, you will continue to see the other stories' save games - but don't try to run them. The new stories need v1.2.0 to run. Note that Steam is quite busy with the summer sale, so beta downloads might be slower than usual.
We strongly recommend that you make a backup copy of your SaveGames folder before starting out on a Beta adventure (You can find it here: Steam\SteamApps\common\The Great Whale Road\greatwhaleroad_Data\SaveGames). The Beta will overwrite your production/live saves.
If you return to the live version before we roll-out the new version and you have new save games in your directory, you will experience UI glitches in the Load Game menu. Your Beta save games will continue to work, once we have rolled-out the new version to live.
One of the key things we are looking for is translation/localisation feedback - is the text too long, wrong, missing etc. If you have a suggestion for text changes, please post them in the Localisations forum. If you find a bug, please post it on the Beta Testing forum.
Thanks!
v1.1.0: Fix - Stuck Loading Screen after Combat
v1.1.0 might not be the most exciting patch, but it includes a fix for the "stuck loading screen" problem, which turned into something of a nemesis of ours.
In case you encounter any problems, please let us know on the support forum.
Thank you!
v1.0.9: Fixes, Weapon Balancing, New Illustrations
v1.0.9 has arrived and it includes:
- Fixes: Added an event marker for the final event of the Trading in Death quest, added a check to prevent task related events from hunting or tavern to overwrite quest events at triggering.
- Weapon Balancing: we added some new weapons and rebalanced existing ones. This makes earlier fights a tad bit easier.
- Event Illustrations: We added the first set of 28 event illustrations for the main quest of Úlfarrsted.
In case you encounter any problems, please let us know on the support forum.
Thank you!
PS: We also improved the save game list - there are more saves now, and they are in chronological order.
v1.0.8: Balancing & Small Fixes
We have released v1.0.8 - it includes the following changes and fixes:
- Trading: We increased the availabilty of many goods (especially metals), updated availabilty of weapons across locations. We also fixed the issue, where goods couldn't be purchased when only 1 unit was in store.
- Sailing Events: We started to tier sailing events, to be able to make them more challenging as the game progresses.
- Combat: Fixed that "slashing attacks" were 100% blocked, this is linked to the block chance now.
In case you encounter any problems, please let us know on the support forum.
Thank you!
v1.0.7: Event Fixes
This patch includes a few smaller fixes for events:
- Lundenwic: Updated the scripts to prevent duplicate linked events.
- Auðunn: Increased the probability that a winter event is triggered, when you return home from a quest with him.
In case you encounter any problems, please let us know on the support forum.
Thank you!
v1.0.6: Tougher Enemies and Fixes
This version includes the following changes and fixes:
- Balancing: Fights are getting harder - starting with tougher enemies.
- Story: Fixes for one story option not triggering at Hamma and one option not triggering at Lundenwic.
- Saved games: The list of saved games has been updated.
- A number of small fixes for the trader, storage and production screens.
Fixes have also been released for these two issues - but we are waiting for players' confirmation, as we cannot reliably reproduce them:
- Sailing: Loading screen hangs after sea battles.
- Sailing: Black or blue screen after leaving locations.
In case you encounter any problems, please let us know on the support forum.
Thank you!
v1.0.5: Fixes for the AI and for Event at Sœbersundh
We released v1.0.5 with the following fixes:
- AI: Fix for the AI hanging before a move
- Story: Fix for a missing event at Sœbersundh
Known issues, which we are working on for the next patch:
- Sailing: Loading screen hangs after sea battles
- Sailing: Black or blue screen after leaving locations.
We don't have an ETA for the two known issues yet, and we will update you as our analysis continues. Please let us know, if you still encounter any issues with the fixed items above.
Thank you!
v1.0.4: Hotfix for Missing Event Markers, Hamma and NPC Freezing Battles
This patch includes fixes for the following issues:
- Event Markers not showing - commonly in Nesse and Umgardh.
- Story Issue in Hamma (Quest: Punishment)
- NPC enemies freezing the combat
Known issues, which we are working on for the next patch - ETA tomorrow, Thursday:
- Sailing: Black and blue screens
- AI hangs thinking about its next move
Please let us know, if you still experience issues related to the three fixed items above. Thank you!