The Light Keeps Us Safe
Sir, You Are Being Hunted: 1.5 Patch, And Announcing The Reinvented Edition (!)
You probably saw this already, but ICYMI: Sir, You Are Being Hunted has been updated for the first time in several years, with the 1.5 patch. 64-bit Mac support is now a thing, loads of bugs have been squashed, and the servers are back online for multiplayer.
Not only that but we've announced future plans for a remaster of the original game in 2022, produced by our friends at Dutch studio Den Of Thieves Games. They are long term fans of the title, and understand exactly what makes the game tick. We're excited to confirm a new, standalone game, with new gameplay options, new UI, and overhauled visuals, all developed in the charming, silly, scary spirit of the original game.
Discounts will be available for everyone who owns the classic edition of Sir, You Are Being Hunted.
If you would like to support us in this new venture, then a wishlist always goes a long way.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1743730/Sir_You_Are_Being_Hunted_Reinvented_Edition/
More soon!
-BR
BEHOLD: New card battler ANCIENT ENEMY is out now!
BUY IT HERE!!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/993790/Ancient_Enemy/
Go! Go! Go!
TRAILER HERE!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2035897519
<3
Hello, You! Please wishlist ANCIENT ENEMY! (Trailer, Dates, Other Stuff)
HERE'S A LAUNCH DATE ANNOUNCEMENT!
ANCIENT ENEMY, the card battler by Grey Alien GMAES, (and written and art-directed by Big Robot's own creative director, Jim Rossignol) will be launching on Steam on Thursday April 9th!
It's good! Check out the...
SHINY NEW TRAILER!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2035897519
AND PLEASE DO WISHLIST HERE!
Seriously, it helps us loads if you do.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/993790/Ancient_Enemy/
(And in other news: we'll soon be celebrating three years of THE SIGNAL FROM TÖLVA next week! Expect a lovely sale and a big discount. Oh and stay safe, friends, it's scary out there and we love you all! - BR)
THE LIGHT KEEPS US SAFE hits V1.0 and transmogrifies its way out of Early Access!
As the headline quoth, we are out of Early Access and on to v1.0!
Here’s a trailer for you to get those v1.0 chills...
https://youtu.be/61k1QHWn9go
For this update we’ve just pushed to Steam there are some minor gameplay tweaks, bunker layout changes, and audio fixes. We’ve gone back in and messed about with the generation templates - the menu we give the level-generation system - so that the levels produce better environments. The initial zone is unchanged, but you’ll find the others now build tweaked worlds that are slightly more challenging. (Don't forget we addressed issues with the spider-craft in an earlier update.)
There are also performance tweaks in this version, although there are still some odd generations that seem to hit performance without our profiler giving us a clear picture of why! We’ve tried to streamline shaders and such to avoid that.
BUT the main change - reflecting the template tinkering - is that there are now overall difficulty levels. You can select these on starting a new game, but also change them in current savegames, which default to normal, which gives you a difficult the same as the earlier updates. (Please note that difficulty can be changed in-game during play, so if you are having a tough time turn it down, or an easy time turn it up, etc!)
Thanks for all the support we’ve received for this, our weirdest and most atmospheric game to date - and please do leave a Steam review if you’ve enjoyed yourself so far!
We’ll have more news on Big Robot things for you soon! <3
-BR
ANCIENT ENEMY, Summer Sales, & The Next THE LIGHT KEEPS US SAFE Update Incoming!
Just a quick update about two things, the first is that ANCIENT ENEMY, the card game that Jim has been working on with Grey Alien Games, is available for wishlist, and isn't too far off release (date TBC!) and if it's your sort of thing then we'd definitely appreciate support!
Jim has been overseeing the art direction (his first 2D game!) and wrote the story. We're hugely excited to have worked with two fabulous artists, Dan Emmerson and Jen Pattison. Jake at Grey Alien has had years of experience at this sort of thing, and we're anticipating a tremendous game a bit later this year.
Here's a teaser trailer!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep_m4tg1HHI
And the main page for plenty more info and that all-important wishlist link:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/993790/Ancient_Enemy/
THE LIGHT STUFF
Additionally, we're speeding towards the next update for THE LIGHT KEEPS US SAFE, and now is absolutely the perfect time to try the game out if you've yet to dip in. If you enjoyed Sir. You Are Being Hunted but want something even more atmospheric and mysterious, then we suggest you take a look!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/853240/The_Light_Keeps_Us_Safe/
We're setting our sights on V1.0, too , and we'll have more news about the end of our Early Access period in the near future.
In the meantime, don't forget that all our games are on sale until the 9th!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/457760/The_Signal_From_Tlva/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/242880/Sir_You_Are_Being_Hunted/
Love you!
-BR
SUNDAY TWEAKINGS: A Fixing-Things Update
Happy Sunday, everyone. We've just pushed up an update with a couple of minor changes.
- Removed some legacy shaders which were hitting the fill rate on specific set ups and causing frame-rate drops. I'm not 100% certain I got all of them, but will continue to go through props and remove/replace in the coming week.
- Altered behaviour of the Spidership so that it's not possible to become "trapped". We had this feedback from a few people with regards to save points being under where a Spidership had moved to. It should be possible to now escape these situations without getting blasted to dirt.
- A few template tweaks and building alterations. These are super minor, positions of certain trap spawns etc, but have been on my list to fix.
More soon!
-BR
Quick Patch: It's Just Minor Stuff Really
- Rework templates for further optimisation.
- Speculative fix for scarecrow not appearing.
- Tweaked ending to be smoother and have a menu return interaction.
And yes, we're aware that the performance is a bit odd for some people. I think it's going to be older shaders not being performant in Unity, so I am going to do some profiling and see what we can replace for future patch.
Outside that there's more level of detail optimisation to be done on the exterior scenes (which sadly can't be occlusion culled or anything because proc gen times.)
More soon!
-BR
UPDATE: New Biome, An Ending, Other Things!
May 2019! A futuristic month. Things have calmed down a bit at BR Towers (ie the kitchen offices spaces that we work in) and we've got busy. As we mentioned in the last report, Tom and Jim have had a fairly tough year so far, which is why this update has taken us a little while. Again, apologies for that, it couldn't be helped. Real life, it turns out, is full of random encounters.
Anyway, excitingly, we've just pushed an new update for THE LIGHT KEEPS US SAFE live. It contains various things, so here's a video to summarise. Scroll below if you want to see the full breakdown those changes.
https://youtu.be/L6MmoVlPu9o
And here are those changes in detail:
New stuff
- New biome, accessible through new door in the bunker.
- New "final" compound.
- The machine can now be "filled" with light motes, triggering the end sequence.
- End Sequence!
- New Louise voice-over material for injury, looting, and other interactions.
- Multiple save games supported (previous save slot now called "Legacy Save").
- Localisation support for Spanish, French, and German languages. This includes front end language selection wrapped and support throughout the game. (Please note the localisation is text only, voice over remains English only.)
Fixes and tweaks
- Numerous changes to bunker interior.
- Rebalanced number of light motes in the exterior world.
- Rebalanced number of flashlight components in exterior world.
- Increased damage and difficulty of all traps and enemies.
- Fixed fatal savegame issue that was removing objects from the world.
- LODs adjust on all props to increase stable frame-rate in exterior scenes.
- Invisible zombies now appear in multiple locations.
- Drones will not path to the same location when leaping.
- Alien Garden and Ruined Farm compounds fixed.
- Greater chance of holes in inner compound walls.
- Texture compression on all textures changed, speculative fix for some video memory issues.
- Fixed bug where component holder would not empty.
- Added missing colliders to barrels and other minor props.
- Enemy chase state now lasts slightly longer.
- Bottle noise level adjusted so that it can't be heard so far away.
And some images of the new biome:
More soon! <3
-BR
BUT ALSO THIS: Ancient Enemy is coming soon!
Just a quick note to let you know that Big Robot's own Jim Rossignol has written the story for Grey Alien's ANCIENT ENEMY - an atmospheric RPG card where the baddies have already won - due out this summer. It's going to be great!
You can, almost certainly should, wishlist it over here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/993790/Ancient_Enemy/
Thanks! <3
-BR
SO ANYWAY: Is This Thing On? *tap tap*
Apologies for the general silence over here (psst, follow us on Twitter for more regular blithering from HQ.)
The awkward truth is though that Tom and Jim have been buried beneath slabs of real life problems since Christmas, which has made things a bit slow going in Game Making Land. Not really an excuse, but it is the reason! So apologies, and hopefully we'll soon be past that.
Anyway, there's a new TLKUS biome in the works, which will be heavily flooded and feature new enemies and traps!
That will appear in the next update, which should be a big one.
We also tried making an alternative game mode, which didn't quite work out, but nevertheless might turn into something even fancier, given the opportunity. More on that at some point! Hmmmm.
Other stuff that's nearly done includes:
- localisation for Spanish, French and German, and we're looking at Chinese(s), Japanese, and potentially Russian, but it requires some bothersome font rejigging because of the fonts we've already used, and it's quite the faff.
- The Ending. Yes, you'll be able to escape the bunker and complete the game. We already have this working, and it's... um. Well, we better not spoil, eh?
- Louise. She's going to have a lot more to say as the game progresses. We recorded literally hours of dialogue, so we hope you enjoy!
Anyway, again, apologies for long silence on this one. We are working on it, and juggling everything to get more stuff to you ASAP. <3
More soon!
-BR