Genre: Real Time Strategy (RTS), Simulator, Strategy, Indie
War for the Overworld
Play Dungeon Hearts Now!
Darkest greetings Underlord,
Today we’re proud to finally reveal our next project, previously codenamed Project Aftercare. Now we know we’ve all been here before and it’s important we address the elephant in the room that is the now-defunct Virtual Dungeon Pet Management Simulation Game, Skargz.
When we announced Skargz we were extremely confident in the design we had for reviving the Virtual Pet genre and we know that there were many fans looking forward to it. Which is why we must apologetically confirm its cancellation in favour of our new project.
Press X to pay respects
Ultimately we felt that the Virtual Pet genre wasn’t a lucrative enough investment after all, and presented minimal opportunities to capitalise on the War for the Overworld IP, which conveniently brings us to our big announcement!
We’ve always said that we’ve wanted to continue exploring the War for the Overworld universe beyond the current scope of the existing game; and though we made it clear that Project Aftercare would not be a direct sequel, that didn’t preclude us from expanding the universe elsewhere.
To that end, we’re now expanding into the lucrative visual novel and dating sim space!
Introducing Dungeon Hearts™!
Dungeon Hearts™ is a Visual Anime Waifu Dating Dungeon Management Simulation Novel Role Playing Game (Or a VAWDDMSNRPG) that continues to progress our ambition to develop only the most genre-busting titles. In Dungeon Hearts™ you’ll assume the role of an Underlord joining the school of Kairos High, to build your harem of minions through a combination of social interaction, critical choices and good-old-fashioned dungeon management.
We know that our history with the now cancelled project Skargz leaves some room for doubt; so to assuage your concerns we have prepared a prototype! This is a proof of concept, as it were, which you can try out by clicking the image below:
Content warning! Contains: sexual content, violence, bad language
Instructions
Compatible with: Google Chrome, Firefox and maybe other browsers
Upon reaching the page you will be presented with a black screen; please give the game a moment to load. Loading time may vary based on your connection and browser. If you are using Internet Explorer, please make better life choices.
If the game hasn’t loaded after a few minutes you can download an offline version for Windows, Mac or Linux via
Itch.io. (The Mac and Linux versions may or may not work.)
Dungeon Hearts in the Future
It’s important to clarify that this is very much a proof of concept - a flex of our muscles - and will be used as a basis for future iterations, very much in the vein of War for the Overworld’s development. In short, this is a 30-minute experience to excite the loins.
So given this is just a proof of concept, here’s what can you expect from the final version - coming soon at an indeterminate date in the future!:
<*>Explore the realm of Kairos like never before - Set in a parallel universe where Mendechaus’ long-abandoned thoughts of conquest have turned instead to thoughts of love. Explore a modern Kairos as an upperclassman at Kairos High.
<*>Build your harem - Pursue dozens of unique minions or even heroes, such as Raven the Succubus, Agnes the Chunder, Brian the Cultist, or Pierre the Bard - all with their own personalities and stories to discover. Build their Dungeon Heart by appealing to them with gifts, dates and even casual conversation!
<*>Manage a dungeon to keep your lovers - We know how that sounds but hear us out: in Dungeon Hearts™ you’ll be able to build your own dungeon filled with all the amenities to keep your sweethearts for years to come… wait that didn’t sound any better.
<*>Experience a compelling story - With over 9000 hours told across 2500 individual episodes (MSRP £29.99/$29.99/€49.99 per episode) you’ll be able to play for the rest of your life. Especially if you’re a whale!
<*>Turn the adventure on its head with Hero Mode - Rather than playing as a dungeon- keeping Underlord, instead explore the story from the other perspective with Hero Mode! This will be a day-one DLC for each episode (MSRP £15.99/$15.99/€99.99 per installment) which unlocks an accompanying dungeon-crawling RPG. Placed in the polished boots of Lord O’Thelove, you’ll need to overcome various minions with your otherworldly charms!
<*>Bring your lovers to War for the Overworld - By popular demand, with the Dungeon Portal you can bring your fully-hearted-up lovers to War for the Overworld to act as unique elite units - provided you build them a special room via secret room layouts.
<*>Date smart not hard with gifts from Kairos-1337 - Travel between the parallel worlds works both ways! In the hotly-anticipated v2.0 update for War for the Overworld you can now earn or purchase Warboxes, which contain sets of random loot such as maps, units, dungeon themes, and even gifts for your lovers in Dungeon Hearts! Pride and accomplishment never felt so great!
We hope you enjoy the exciting prototype of Dungeon Hearts™ and that you drop by again tomorrow for more exciting news!
Calling all Intrepid Underlords: Closed Alpha Soon
Darkest greetings Underlord,
Work continues unceasingly on the upcoming Patch 2.0. There’s so much exciting stuff happening right now that we’re dying to share with you; but alas the secrets must be kept for a little while longer, as we prepare for the biggest release since WFTO’s launch!
In case you missed it, a few months ago we put out some videos highlighting the lesser known heroes of Patch 2.0. These showcased new animations for a whole swathe of units, which you can catch here:
https://youtu.be/f-C2ZGuLclM
There’s still quite a few more that are underwraps, but hopefully that taster should satiate your cravings for now.
Calling All Map Makers & Intrepid Underlords: Closed Alpha Test!
In the meantime, we’re looking for some committed and dedicated members of our community to join us on our (not so) top secret community testing team, as part of a closed alpha process for the Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4 release.
In particular, we’re very keen to introduce some of our community map creators to the extensive suite of new features and improvements coming to the Map Editor in 2.0.
We’ll be reaching out directly to some of the content creators; but if you’re interested in getting a sneak peek, and helping us ensure the new features are working well and are expansive enough to enable highly-creative endeavours, then please get in touch. Send us your Steam Workshop profile in this thread or send us a private ticket on UserEcho!
The hoar frost has settled across the once verdant fields of the Overworld, coating the land in the icy fingers of encroaching death. In the caverns below the fires of the foundry lie extinguished for the first days in months as the development Imps close up shop to spend time with loved ones and family.
While we lock up the office and make our way out of the door until 2018 we wanted to reach out and extend our festive greetings to all our fans and customers and wish you all the very best of times. We thought we’d also use this opportunity to share a few messages, thoughts and previews of things that were, things that are and some things that have not yet come to pass.
So please Underlords before you indulge in the season’s graces read on!
Steam Awards 2017 - Thank You for Your Support!
In the Steam Autumn sale, we humbly put forward our bid to become a nominee for the Labour of Love award, the award in the 2017 Steam Awards that we felt the best fit the five-year journey since first leaving Kickstarter!
If you missed it we hastily put together a small infographic on the journey thus far which you can see below and we also shared our thoughts and feelings as to that journey in our Labour of Love and Message of Thanks posts.
Five years of sweat and toil summed up in a handy image!
It is with a tang regret that we must announce that we have not made it as one of the nominations for this award despite the best efforts of ourselves and the community.
This result was not entirely unexpected, we knew it would be an uphill battle to top many of other great games out there with incredible teams and we have to congratulate all the nominees for every Steam Award and we’d like to thank all our fans who took the time to vote for us and encourage you to now vote for the games you’d most like to see win the Awards!
Warm congratulations to the nominees, there's a lot of great games on display!
Even though we did not make the cut we were deeply humbled by the response we saw to our bid. You came out in force to support us and showed us just how much you love WFTO in its current state. You showed us that our game is something we could be proud in a way we never thought possible by raising our review score a whole percentage point overall and up to a staggering 98% recently!
Unmanly tears were shed upon reading this figure
Time and time again we’ve leant on the support of the community as we’ve gone through hard times, we’ve faced delays, difficult releases, countless bugs and issues and even the spectre of bankruptcy together and as always we cannot thank you enough. Together we’ve made WFTO into something great and the best is yet to come, inspired by your support we’re confident 2018 will bring the best version of WFTO yet!
War for the Overworld in 2018
We can’t deny that next year is going to be a bittersweet one for War for the Overworld, with Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4 travelling down the tunnels of the internet to usher in the final form of War for the Overworld in Q1-Q2 2018.
This collective update will be the largest, most involved and significant in War for the Overworlds and is likely to touch nearly every corner of War for the Overworld, shifting the game into high gear and hopefully delivering what will be the ultimate version of our first and most loved game.
Sadly we’re still quite some ways away from a release so we’re not quite ready to spill to beans on everything that will be coming, and a few of you will already know the features revealed so far but for the benefit of those not yet in the know here’s some of what’s coming:
New Singleplayer Campaign - Focussing on the Underlords and replayability factor
New Underlord AI - Built from the ground up to be more flexible, intelligent and challenging
New Veins of Evil Aspects - New units, defences, spells and more make their debut
New Dungeon Themes - New Underlords come with their own new themes, including Dungeon Hands!
More Map Editor Features - Get creative with new features in the Map Editor including My Pet Dungeon support and more!
We’ve also released a few teaser concepts in our previous posts as a thank you for all your support and to give you some idea of what’s coming. So we couldn’t well go without showing you something new today!
While our previous previews have focussed entirely on what is new today we’ll show off some things that are changing to make the game better. In particular, a number of swanky new animations coming to the game to inject some additional personality into some units whilst they work!
Please note that all previews below are very early Work in Progress versions and there’s still plenty of work to be done!
And it’s not just units getting some love, this defence, in particular, has been needing a touch up for a while
We can’t wait to get all this in your hands, but alas we’re not quite ready yet. Rest assured that in the new year we’ll be able to share so much more as our final update is realised.
After that, we’ll keep our eyes on WFTO and arrange to make some passes on supporting existing features but we’ll also be moving our team fully onto our new project, which we’ll likely share some details on later in 2018!
Happy Holidays from Brightrock Games
All that remains to be said now is from all of us at Brightrock Games we wish you all happy holidays, merry Christmas and happy new year regardless of who, what or how you celebrate and we hope that the new year will bring you all joy and happiness.
It remains to be said that until the new year our office will be closed but some of us will continue patrolling our forums and support infrastructure to answer questions or help if needed, but response times will be slower.
That’s it for now Underlords, we’ll see you in 2018!
The end of the year is fast approaching, and our imps are hard at work on new content for you to sink your gnarled teeth into in 2018. In the meantime we have a short announcement for you: another Worker has joined the cause, and made a call for charity!
Introducing the Yogscast Worker
Indeed, this stout little fellow was recently unearthed in an old mineshaft deep in the Underworld, where he was found munching his last Jaffa Cake. He doesn’t speak much, and we don’t even know his name; but what he will do is sing about digging a hole. Oh, endlessly will he sing it! Ceaselessly!
“I am an imp and I'm digging a hole, diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole!”
You can acquire the Yogscast Worker and his diamond pickaxe, along with dozens of other games, in this year’s Yogscast Jingle Jam. By donating the calling price of $35, this annoyingly chipper fellow and a whole slew of incredible games and content can be yours, with every drop of the proceeds going to charitable causes!
“... I am an imp and I'm digging a hole, diggy diggy hole, digging a hole!”
Who says that a little evil can’t change the world for the better? Now please take him off our hands and use him as a Worker skin in War for the Overworld, before his warbling attracts a wandering Augre and we have a little accident.
The Cynical Imp Is Still on the Campaign Trail
Before we leave you, Underlord, the other member of our growing troupe of charitable Workers, has asked us to remind you that he is still fighting for the (no doubt deserving) cause of dungeon workers’ rights.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMS-tQxTFdY
If you’re feeling particularly charitable, The Cynical Imp will hit the campaign trail for a small donation of £1.99, with all of Brightrock Games’ proceeds going directly to GamesAid, our partnered charity (Registered UK Charity # 1081706). They are a team of incredible individuals that work with the UK games industry, acting as an umbrella for smaller charities, to help those in need.
For Underlords willing to give a little extra, you can also get your Hand of Evil on the previously-exclusive Kickstarter and Founders Dungeon Themes - all in the good name of charity!
“... diggy diggy hole, diggy diggy hole!” Where is that incessant racket coming from, wondered The Cynical Imp.
You can acquire The Cynical Imp and the exclusive Dungeon Themes via the Steam Store or our website!
Hotfix Patch 1.6.66f1 - A Message to our fans and sneak peek!
Darkest greetings Underlord,
The relentless march towards the much anticipated Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4 continue, with great strides being made each and every day. Though we are super excited about the upcoming content, we know better than to neglect our valued Underlords that have encountered issues. So we’re rolling out a hotfix to steel you against the approaching winter months.
We also have a few announcements for you, namely reminders of the upcoming end of Steam sale, as well as the rapidly approaching closure of submissions for Steam Awards nominations!
Read on Underlord.
Hotfix Patch 1.6.66f1
Our development imps have been hard at work for the past week addressing some issues you highlighted to us in the latest patch. As always we’ve looked to resolve any reports as efficiently and speedily as possible, and we’re always looking for more. Never ones to cease our constructive efforts though, there are a few minor improvements sprinkled on top of this hotfix too.
Gameplay
Volcanic Bridge spell can now be cast on Blood tiles
When you sell a defence or construct on a Stone Bridge it will no longer also sell the bridge
Removed push forces caused by livestock and Ghouls, meaning they can no longer push other units, but can be pushed themselves
Visual Changes
Reduced the saturation on the instruction arrow, making it a little less obnoxious
Small visual changes to the Spirit Chamber
Some corrections to the possession view of units based off the “Lord O’theland” model
Text Updates
Updated Juggernaut name to make it more appropriate in Simplified and Traditional Chinese
Updated mutator tooltips to give more information about disabling Fortified Walls, and disabling the ability to dig them out (all languages)
Fixed a few typos
Miscellaneous
Updated Unity Engine to 5.4.6f3 from 5.4.5p5 yielding a few minor improvements
Please note that game engine updates are complicated affairs and can cause unexpected issues. This is only a minor leap and we believe we caught every issue, but please don’t hesitate to report anything that seems out of place.
Added secret holiday cheer!
Removed some unused audio.
Bug Fixes
Sacred Earth will now display the correct gold texture in the icy terrain theme
Fixed an issue where prisoner AI would continue to search for a bed to make in the Lair, which they could not reach, causing performance issues when a player had many prisoners
Icy terrain theme should now load more consistently
Empire Workers should now only play Empire audio
Fixed a number of issues with the Ember Rift textures
Unit animations should now slide slightly less when the animation displays them as stationary
Steam Sale Ending Soon
Before we begin the main course below, we thought we’d make a shoutout to remind you all that the Steam sale will be ending tomorrow!
If you’re yet to embrace your dark side, WFTO products are up to 72% off. Don’t miss your chance!
Last Chance to Help WFTO Become “The Labour of Love”
The positive feedback was so overwhelming, and we simply cannot thank you enough. In our bid we talked about our journey: the work, energy and lifeforce that we have poured into War for the Overworld; the trials and tribulations that we’ve faced, and with them how the strength and support of our community has helped us drive WFTO to become something truly worthwhile. Your response has driven that home more than ever.
The fact is that there’s a great deal with the WFTO project that we were not happy with. The launch stands chief among them, where we made so many mistakes. We’ve always been hard on ourselves, but also driven to make WFTO something truly special. Nevertheless, there’s been a looming spectre of our numerous failures in the project, which has hung over us for a long time.
When we made our bid last week, we did so knowing that we had done a lot for WFTO and our customers, but not knowing what that had truly meant to you. To be told by so many of you that we deserve such a nomination was deeply touching and extremely humbling. You showed us that the work we’ve put in from the very start, past release, and right up to today is praiseworthy; and that although WFTO may never be the perfect child we want it to be, that it has some right to claim a spot as a respected title. What more can a developer wish for with their first project?
So from everyone at Brightrock Games, we’d like to humbly thank everybody who took the time to nominate us, leave a comment, or even leave us a review. We cannot thank you enough for an incredible five years!
We want to give an extra special shoutout to everyone who left a review, because you’ve raised us past the 78% barrier on Steam! This 1% may not seem like much, but it means a whole lot to us!
As a small reward, here’s one more teaser of our upcoming content.
From concept to work-in-progress VFX!
If you’re not sure what all this is about, you can read our bid for the award here. If you’d like to support us (and you don’t already have a deserving nomination for the category!) then you can do so on our store page.
Thank you all once again, and remember, Underlord: Keep it evil.
We have a somewhat peculiar and spontaneous announcement for you today. As you have no doubt noticed the Steam Sale is now live (WFTO products up to 72% off!) but also the nominations are now open for the Steam Awards of 2017.
We'd like to humbly request that our fans, customers and fellow Underlords consider nominating WFTO for the "Labour of Love" category. A category defined by the commitment shown by a developer towards their game and community long after the release of the game itself.
We know that this must appear somewhat self-serving and it is not usually in our nature to seek any sort of recognition beyond the appreciation we already receive from our fans for the work we do. But we felt that this category so accurately summed up our journey with WFTO thus far and where we hope to take it over the coming months.
To help illustrate our commitment we've even (very hastily) prepared a small infographic about this journey.
(Click to expand)
If you're happy with all that you can head straight to our store page if you're happy to nominate us.
For the Journey
War for the Overworld has dominated our lives for the five years since we successfully funded the project on Kickstarter, not a day has gone by where some work hasn't been poured into it on some level.
But through it all we've stayed strong, we reaffirmed our commitments to our backers, customers, fans and the game itself. We've worked hard, sometimes through nights, weekends and holidays and into the next morning to see WFTO take the shape we hoped it would.
We've released patch after patch, update after update bringing new features, fixes and releases. We've deployed platforms to help us best facilitate your needs and we've taken on board as much community feedback as we can. We have built our company, Brightrock Games around our community.
Our hope that one-day WFTO could live up to the lofty expectations both we and our fans have for it. We've done so much in the 5 years of development, not least bring a uniquely challenging and large scoped game to life.
In just over two and half years since the launch from early-access we've:
Released 56 Free Patches, 6 Major and encompassing over 2400 fixes, changes and features
Added much requested features like the Map Editor into the mix
Introduced new game modes through the Crucible and My Pet Dungeon expansions
Pushed out maps, balance adjustments and much more as fast as we can
Released three expansion
Heart of Gold - We gave away free to anyone who owned the game up to one month after launch
Crucible - Which was free for everyone!
My Pet Dungeon - Developed at huge community request, and offered on a try before you buy basis!
WFTO is so very different from when it was released and there's still so much more to come, even as we approach the final stages of this production. With Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4, which promise to be our biggest releases yet we've got some exciting things in the pipeline. Stuff like:
Underlord AI Overhaul
A New Single-Player campaign with focus on Underlords & Replayability
More than half a dozen new aspects in the Veins of Evil!
New Dungeon Themes
More Map Editor features (Yes including My Pet Dungeon support!)
And that's just what we can talk about, there's a great deal of stuff still under wraps. Just waiting until the day we can release the news and let us assure you that if everything goes according to plan you will find this to be by far the most important update that WFTO has ever received.
You don't have to take our word for it though, here are a few teaser concepts to get you salivating for more!
For us all here at Brightrock Games, War for the Overworld has truly been a labour of love and we hope that you will consider us for your nomination in "The Labour of Love" category!
If you believe that we are worthy then you can vote for us on our store page (or just grab the game at a huge discount!)
Hi guys, after a long night at the office getting ready to reach out to you we came back this morning to the incredible sight of your support. We didn't know how this would go down and we cannot thank you enough for every kind word you've written for us.
It means a lot to see that the five years of our lives that we've dedicated to WFTO have meant as much to you as it has to us, what we've seen today has been incredibly humbling and we hope that our upcoming content will be enough to reward you for your incredible incredible support!
Spanish, Italian, Polish, and Russian Return Triumphantly
Darkest greetings Underlord,
You may recall in the not-too-distant past that we announced the return to War for the Overworld of the four languages we were unable to support post-launch; namely Spanish, Italian, Polish, and Russian. Well, our translators have been beavering away like a colony of Workers who’ve just had a Work-A-Lot potion smashed over their heads!
So lo and behold, with today’s release of Patch 1.6.66, the new localisations are now live in the game! It is our hope that they will be as well-received as our recent Chinese release.
What Has Been Localised?
All game content released after the initial April 2015 launch has been localised into Spanish, Italian, Polish, and Russian, by our professional localisation partner. This brings these languages up to speed with the English, French, German, and Chinese, and means that their translations are now 100% complete!
Naturally, this covers quite a sizeable amount of content, not least the three expansions that have come since launch: Heart of Gold, Crucible, and My Pet Dungeon!
But that’s not all. It also covers:
Subtitles for the voiced Dynamic Tutorial System
Closed captions for the pre-rendered cinematics
Names and descriptions for the full range of Skirmish and Sandbox maps
All the title-screen and miscellaneous narrator lines
Map Editor user-interfaces
Mutator user-interfaces
And more!
We’ve also updated all our major storefronts with new localisations for these languages, to appropriately reflect the up to date nature of the translations.
Moving forward towards WFTO’s final major update, we will continue to keep these languages updated. So you can rest assured that Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4 will be perfectly playable in all the languages that we support!
Why Did We Leave These Languages Languishing?
We talked about this in our previous post on the subject, and what it boils down to is that the initial translations were graciously handled and paid for by our physical-publishing partner; after launch, no additional funds were apportioned to support the ongoing localisation of content. We assessed the possibility of continued support for all languages, but unfortunately could not justify maintaining all of them at that time with the limited resources at our disposal.
We’ve never been happy that these languages fell by the wayside. But today they return to front-line service!
Community Translations
We must also once again take a moment to thank the stalwart bastion of community translators, who stepped up to fill the void left when support for Spanish, Italian, Polish, and Russian was withdrawn. Thanks to these people, there has still been an option for players of some of these languages - not to mention that they have also brought the game to languages we have never been able to support officially! So from the whole Brightrock Games team: thank you!
We cannot ever demonstrate enough our appreciation for all the hard work you’ve put in as community translators; but if you head on over to your personal developer forums on your Steam Workshop items, you will find codes for each listed member of your team. These will grant you access to the exclusive Golden Worker skin, awarded only to the most dedicated members of our community!
All community translations still exist, both on the Steam Workshop and in our own Foundry content repository; so if you as a player have a preferred fan translation, you can still happily load it in. We’re also more than happy to take feedback from our fans on the new official translations, so please feel free to share your thoughts!
Patch 1.6.66
The new official localisations were released today as part of the fiendishly named, Patch 1.6.66, which also contains a number of bug fixes. We have prepared full release notes for your perusal (English only).
Now we must leave you, and return to the depths of the Underworld; Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4 won’t unearth themselves, after all. So until next time, Underlord: Keep it evil.
The patch number of the beast marks an auspicious occasion for our fans in a number of countries over on the continent! At long last we’re in a position to update our unsupported but not forgotten European languages, and bring them in line with the English, French, German, and Chinese localisations.
As announced in our previous post, and in today’s announcement, we’re proud to reveal that the discontinued European languages are now updated and back in the game, and we’ll be continuing their support into the future! We welcome your feedback!
Updated previously deprecated European Languages to include all the game’s text updates since Patch 1.0.1:
Spanish
Italian
Polish
Russian
Added subtitles in various pre-rendered cinematics throughout the game for the above languages
Gameplay Changes
Units
Spirit
Can no longer pass through Possession Doors
Spirit Worker
Can no longer pass through Possession Doors
Constructs
Constructs may no longer be placed inside shrines or Dungeon Cores
Rituals
Assembly
Now has an effect if used twice on the same defence.
AI Improvements
Workers will no longer attack anything except rival Workers, regardless of how high their chances are to win. This is to keep them on task when working near low-threat objects such as doors.
Mutator Changes
Extra Workers granted by increasing the default minimum Worker amount no longer grant mana when sacrificed in the Dungeon Core
Undiggable walls can no longer be tagged
Wall tooltips will now update to correctly reflect if undiggable walls is enabled
Performance Optimisations
Improved the performance of Worker scouting behaviour
Optimised unit behaviour to significantly reduce “garbage” created on unit spawn
Game Text Updates
Clarified the mutator behaviour on tooltips for disabling Fortified Walls, and disabling the ability to dig them out, in relation to certain Aspects (prompted by a user forum issue)
Visual Changes
Small improvements to Slaughterpen lights
Increased brightness of Slaughterpen slightly
Miscellaneous
Gold Piles will now be placed up to 17 tiles from where they are dropped in the Vault, rather than 5
Achievements for My Pet Dungeon unlockable themes are now listed in level order on the unlocks screen
Bug Fixes
General
Fixed an issue that allowed units to teleport into walls/map border
Gameplay
When a Dungeon Core is claimed, the gold it held now correctly enters the new owner’s Vaults
The Garrison buff will no longer incorrectly stack for multiple activated props
Aureate Monoliths now correctly update the minimap after use
Removed Last Stand from Templar abilities list as the ability had been disabled for some time
Levels
Fixed an incorrectly rotated “corridor” on My Pet Dungeon level Ponygrasp
Visuals
Highlight effect on the Dwarven Dungeon Core should no longer present with visual artifacting
Garrison prop range corrected, now more representative of actual range
Corrected a minor clipping VFX in the Spirit Chamber
Audio
Removed duplicate line from War for the Overworld Level 3
Fixed some errors caused by missing audio on War for the Overworld Level 3
Arcane Chunder now correctly uses the Chunder voice
The Arcanist boss should now correctly play her post sleep voice-over
Necromancer, Gnarling, and Chunder all now issue battle cries when in the Arena
Gave Duke and Duchess missing voice-over from their base unit
Vampire now correctly plays his eating voice-over when in the Tavern
Multiplayer
Fixed missing VFX and SFX for Lightning and Shockwave spells for clients
Fixed missing animation and effects on Bombards for clients
Text
Made "fortified wall" a proper noun on tooltips for Siege Shrine, Underminer, and Augrum Wall (consistency issue)
Fixed a tooltip typo for the Ember Demon Rally Flag
Fixed the time limit on the War for the Overworld Level 5 timed achievement, so that it now correctly reads 23 minutes, not 18 (in Simplified and Traditional Chinese)
With the Chinese language release successfully completed, we’ve not stopped for a moment immediately moving to address any issues that have been reported to us. The release itself has been fantastic and we have to thank our community for the incredible reception and support we’ve seen.
We hope our continued support and the features, improvements and fixes below help to demonstrate our commitment to delivering the best experience possible and that we can repay all the dedication shown by our community over the many years of WFTOs life!
We also have great news for anyone affected by the startup loading issue where the loading bar would freeze, by working with our partners at GOG.com we have identified the cause and have moved to fix the third-party DLL that was causing the issue. Hopefully this should now be resolved and you should be able to play the game. We’d love to receive feedback on this to confirm!
Read on for the full patch notes!
Gameplay Changes
General
It is now vastly easier to grab gold piles from vaults
Units
Cultist
Toned down the Cultist debuff stacking effect which previously allowed a stack of three cultists to one shot a level 10 unit
Spells
Blood Money
Gold Statues can now be claimed
On Neutral ground will remain with their previous owner
When the tile below them is claimed the statue will become owned by the new tile’s owner
Gold Statues can be dropped on allied tiles to transfer ownership
Audio Changes
New Audio setting “Unit Voice Volume” added, separating it from the primary SFX slider
Visual Changes
Units dropped into Tavern Spitroast now fall in and play and SFX while being mulched
The Dungeon Core in the menu scene plays now a pulsating VFX as intended
Made some improvements to the Foundry textures
Map Editor Changes
The “Paint Gold” tool in map editor now places gold piles on ground tiles, in addition to vaults or wall blocks
Vaults in map editor which have had gold added (via “Paint Gold”) no longer spawn loose gold piles when removed
“Paint Gold” can remove gold from vaults and tiles
Level Changes
My Pet Dungeon
The MPD Tutorial video now has Spanish, Italian, Russian and Polish subtitles
Miscellaneous Improvements
Several improvements to game text
Removed some walls in the Main menu to reduce clipping on camera transitions
Removed unnecessary logs which could eventually cause the game to slow down
Bug Fixes
Crashes
Fixed an issue with a GOG Library causing an loading error which prevented some users from starting the game, becoming stuck on the loading screen
SFX
Fixed an issue where the Oculus slimy SFX continued playing even if it has been killed (until fully rotten) or transformed into a golden statue
Levels
Fixed an issue that made a loaded skirmish map incompletable when it was saved a split second before the win condition was met
Rooms
Fixed an issue that made Garrison duplicate its buff on blocks in range each time it was reactivated
Fixed an issue where the Beast Den would never be upgraded if a non-upgraded Beast Den was removed before upgrading
Fixed an issue where the Garrisons active state ring would not show after saving and loading
Fixed an issue which would made prisons with a certain non rectangular diagonal layout (stair like) spawn rats into the map origin (location 0,0,0) rather than into the prison, after many months of listening to walls and yelling “They’re in the frakin ship!”
Units
Fixed an issue where units would not be removed from minimap when not killed by a normal attack (eg. tortured)
Fixed an issue where dropped units never have shields again if "Always show" is selected for shields in the options menu
Fixed an issue which caused log spam when a flying unit was fleeing too low over chasm, probably causing the game to lag for a moment
Map Editor
Fixed map editor placed doors were logically closed but visually open when they were set to open and “Disable AI Control” was selected
Environment
Fixed an issue which made artefacts not disappear from the artefact panel after being used when they were already present in a save game
Misc
Fixed an issue where the menu scene would not transition to the correct part of the menu dungeon after the Load button was clicked
Following our update last month we’ve been hard at work returning to the world of War for the Overworld, and beginning to pile in on the upcoming Patch 2.0 and Expansion 4. While we work on these we have a few more items of news to announce, not least that there are currently big discounts across WFTO content, to coincide with our new patch!.
But first of all we have a big announcement for a growing portion of our community!
China Release, Dragon Worker Skin, and New Sale!
We’re happy to announce that for the past few months we’ve been working on a Chinese localisation of the game. This work is now complete, and as of today we have officially launched WFTO in China, with both simplified and traditional localisations!
People of China, meet the people of Kairos!
As such, we’d like to issue a very warm welcome to all our Chinese fans, who have been extremely patient as we worked towards localising the game. We hope that it was worth the wait! We’d also like to thank the community translation teams, who handled the Chinese translations until now (these of course are still available as well).
When loading into the game you’ll now find the new language selections in the Options menu. If your computer has either simplified or traditional Chinese selected as its default language, the game should load into that language automatically. The whole game has been completely translated from start to finish, but please let us know if there’s anything missing!
To celebrate the Chinese launch, our perky mascot, Stumpy the Blood Imp, has donned a delightful new costume, to show his appreciation to all our Chinese fans!
Enter the Dragon
Any player who launches the game between now and the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations (February 2018) will unlock the Dragon Worker skin for use in game. Once the celebration has passed, the skin will then only become available to unlock during future Chinese New Year festivals. So don’t miss your chance to grab this awesome new skin!
But that’s not all we’re doing to celebrate the new release! From 5th to 18th of October there will be big discounts across all WFTO content on Steam, GOG.com as well as a number of other partners, not least a 70% discount on the base game!
Patch 1.6.4 Now Live!
And still there’s more! We’ve spent the last few weeks working on a few new features, improvements and fixes to help further enhance your experience in WFTO. As such, Patch 1.6.4 is now seeing the light of day, and it’s certainly not insignificant!
You can of course read the full patch notes here; but to give you a brief taste, here are the headlines:
Added 14 new Skirmish and Scenario maps
Significant performance improvements which should yield positive results especially on lower specced GPUs, up to 25% gains in FPS and reduced Stutter.
Dozens of changes and bug fixes
European Languages Return
With all this talk about the Chinese localisation, we’re sure there are many of our fans wondering about the existing and deprecated European languages - namely Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Polish, which we’ve unfortunately been unable to maintain since the original launch.
We’ve talked at length about this decision in the past, but the long and short of it is that the initial localisations were handled by our physical publishing partner, who graciously arranged and paid for the localisations. After release, no additional funds were apportioned for the maintenance of these languages, and upon making our cost assessment, we could not justify continued support for all languages at the time.
We’ve never been happy with this state of affairs, and we know that this feeling is reflected across our fan base. We’ve always wanted to return to the deprecated languages, and now we’re finally in a position to do so.
So we’re proud to announce that at long last we’re once again working with our localisation partners, to return official and complete support to Italian, Spanish, Russian, and Polish languages. This process will be commencing hot on the heels of the Chinese release, though it is a substantial undertaking (WFTO is a surprisingly text-heavy game) - we will update you on progress over the coming months.
We’d like to thank all our fans for their patience in waiting for these localisations. We know it has been a difficult road, and we’re sorry for the delay in returning these to active status. We’d also like to thank those that have stepped in with community translations - these will of course be going nowhere, and will still be available from the Steam Workshop, should you prefer to use them.
So, that just about wraps up our update. Don’t forget the big discounts that are now available on WFTO content for the next two weeks. Until next time, Underlord: Keep it evil.
