Dealspwn has the next review this week for Avernum 2: Crystal Souls, and the reviewer gave the game a final score of 8/10. Here is a short sample why he did.

The Short Version: Avernum 2: Crystal Souls is an enormous, expansive and peerlessly written RPG that succeeds both on the strength of its world and its innovative campaign structure. So long as you're willing to read and exercise a little imagination, that is. Spiderweb have refined their winning formula over the last two decades and the result is pure roleplaying quality.

Himalaya Studios finally posted a new post-funding update for Mage's Initiation that has information on the progress of the game. Hopefully they don't fall behind again.

Polar Vortex 2015

Greetings, mages, magesses, and familiars! We hope that the Fire Mages have been putting in overtime for you if you’re in the northern hemisphere. Between some major illnesses and housing troubles among team members that transpired over the last few months, this update has been incredibly delayed and we’re sorry about that. However, you’ll be pleased to find out we’re quite on track with the game!

General Progress Report

There's nothing scientific about these figures. They're our best estimates on where we currently stand in the grand game development scheme. Nevertheless, when one knows that the light at the end of a tunnel is rapidly approaching, one finds it far easier to gauge how close said light really is. So while these figures contain not a shred of scientific analysis (not even from a magical measurement spell) it's safe to say they are accurate guesstimates:

Writing & Design: 99%

Background Artwork & Animations: 95% 

Character Animations: 93% 

Music: 80% 

Sound Effects: 15% 

Voices: 0% 

Adventure Game Programming: 90% 

Combat System Programming: 95% 

RPG/Stats/Equipment Programming: 85% 

And for the RPG fans who are so hardcore, they need stats about stat-raising game, here are the latest AGS engine assets being used.

AGS Game Engine Assets & Stats  

Total sprites: 17203 / 30000

Sprite folders: 789  

Total views: 745  

Total GUIs: 68  

Inventory Items: 300 / 300 (our custom inventory system is dynamic, we have over 300 items)

Characters: 194 

Dialog topics: 402 / 500 

(Yes, some of these figures went backwards from our last update. This is due to us deleting unused assets and/or the streamlining process of refining certain scenes and removing any wordy or clunky sections that didn't work well to convey the story.)

At this rate, we will be aiming for a May or June beta sans voice acting!

Transistor has earned another Game of the Year award this time from Neoseeker.

In the past few weeks Lydia Sung and I have highlighted the ten nominees that Neoseeker's editorial team decided on for our Game of the Year award for 2014. Each spotlight felt like opening a door into who we are and what we believe in as critics in the video game industry. The nomination process itself is, and you might be surprised by this, a grueling and exhausting endeavor. Yet after the nominees are decided, a sense of serenity takes over. This is perfect. It really could not be any different.

Then we do the process all over with just ten nominees. Recently Lydia and I took to a voice call and recorded our deliberations as we ranked each of our nominees from ten up to number one. One game, having survived a gauntlet of direct comparisons to 2014's best and most amazing games, comes through at the end. One game that we feel best represents Neoseeker and ourselves. This is our example of what games should be -- need to be -- in 2014 and beyond.

That game is Transistor. 

Lydia's written already on why Transistor belongs here and I certainly can't match that in another paragraph. All that needs to be said is that Transistor is a stunningly beautiful game, no matter which direction you look at it. There's purpose in every design decision, intent in every dotted "i".  What is the Transistor? It's in the asking and answering of this question where Lydia and I fell in love with Supergiant Games' second title. With the way it grabbed onto us, there's really no letting go.

Mr.Nixon posted a new post-funding update for After Reset with another huge wall of text about the games development. I found the information important.

FIRST AND FOREMOST: SENDING STEAM KEYS

I know a lot of backers are still waiting on keys, so I’m going to include a status update in every news post until it’s done. By the time of writing this article, 900 of 7200 keys still need to be sent. By the end of this month we should have sent all of them.

We will use the keys for media portals, gamer’s sites, journalists, and You-tube reviewers that should be available 5-7 days before we go to the SEA release.

OPEN SEA RELEASE

We still need to program the inner interface so we can take fair screenshots before the final approval by Steam. If everything goes fine, you’ll be able to proudly link After Reset RPG on Steam to your friends and colleagues in early March of 2015.

THE STORY OVERVIEW

To prepare the game for SEA I needed to finalize the whole game story concept, and taking into account whether or not we reach our funding goals, or exceed them. Here is brief (but spoiler free) overview of the full game story.

Every chapter of the game represents each stage of the big story and it is connected to the sets of regions that are relevant to that chapter. That doesn’t mean every chapter will have and equal amount of game playtime.

In example: the final version of the Prologue should have about two hours of gameplay. It is quite close to the idea that was initially put into Fallout 1, but financial restrictions ending up cutting most of it out, and limited it to just walking through a cave and killing several rats. At the beginning of Fallout 1’s birthday, the creators wanted to give the player the ability to play around in the Vault 13 itself. Therefore the After Reset RPG's Prologue represents only small piece of main story game play time.

If things don’t work out for our funding goals, I’ll rely on my savings and concentrate on the main story. However, there will be many opportunities for random encounters and side quests that can easily be added once we have the game mechanics and gameplay finished. How much or how little gets added will depend on our funding.

In final version the life and event sequences of the chapters should go even without player interaction. That implies you can be caught by story in the Great Desert with a new sequence in it even if you dropped the main storyline earlier.

The next website update for Dungeons Of Aledorn gives everyone a look at the Great Pirate Ship,. Now here is a sample image so make sure to visit the link for more.

Greetings to all fans of dungeons, fantasy and our game Dungeons of Aledorn. Beginning today in exactly one month we began a campaign on Kickstarter and so we decided to show you another part of our game graphics. Last time we showed you how a pirates port city Condra will look like. Today we continue in this vein and introduce you to the main pirate ship. Enjoy the screens and do not be afraid to ask anything of us. Likewise, we welcome any feedback.

Here are two more reviews for Lords of Xulima that I found on the weekend.

Gamebanshee - No Score

I don't want to make this sound like an insult, but LOX is an okay game.  It's a budget title that isn't trying to do anything too out of the box, and it mostly hits its marks.  LOX is definitely a grindy game, but as long as you enjoy building up a party and fighting monsters -- and you don't require much in the way of quests or story to encourage you along -- then it can give you dozens of hours of entertainment.  LOX is worth a flier at its price.

Hey Poor Player - 3/5

Ultimately, Lords of Xulima leans perhaps too hard into emulating classic cRPGs. Most of it is well-designed, but at a $20 price point, it’s obviously going to lack the polish of a game like Divinity: Original Sin. It’s not an unenjoyable game by any stretch; it is, however, an incredible niche experience.

Developer Dreadlocks posted a new update for Dex a few days back with information on the games development that they call New Year’s Dex News. So here a short sample.

Development

As indicated above, we are pretty much finalizing the game. The December update was the last major update without the main storyline and with the game being feature-incomplete. We are now pulling out all the stops in order to drive to the finish line. The process may seem like total chaos, but in fact it is highly organized (actually, it’s somewhere in the middle). Needless to say, we are now putting everything we’ve been working on into the game. Everything that was half-finished or partially-finished, but we decided not to include in the public build, we are now polishing and finishing.

Which means:

• We have finished the preproduction of all the cutscenes, and Bogna is now elaborating and polishing all of them, moving them from concept sketch into fully fleshed out cutscenes, while respecting the art direction set in the rest of the game. This is something we’re all looking forward to seeing; it’s gonna be a blast!
• Axel is now finishing all the dialogues and scripts for the main storyline. We have over half of the story complete now, with an estimate to have all the remaining dialogues done by the end of January. Since we did quite a lot of preproduction on this (numerous internal docs, including all the biographies and backstories for the most important characters and corporations), the job is going quite smoothly!
• Our programmers are now focusing on the hacking/AR/cyberspace functionality. It is still in process and under development, but we can already confirm that after several prototypes and iterations, it works and it’s fun and enjoyable!
• Our two new animators, Kristyna and Veronika, are now finishing all the remaining animations. It is still going to take a good couple of weeks, but we can confidently say we’re moving toward finalization, as we know what remains to be done and the process and workflow are already well established.
• Prokop, our lead artist, has done the remaining portraits and sprites for the NPCs in the main storyline (over a dozen NPCs, in addition to the ones from the side quests you might have met in the earlier releases) and now starts to finalize all the storyline locations. Although we have all of them in concept art, and most of them in color, it is still over twenty full locations, so it’s going to be month of work or more. The good news is that he can now concentrate on this task only, as the animations and cutscenes have been delegated to our new hires).

We plan to have a Beta release—a feature-complete build including the main storyline—by late February or early March.

Ekuator Games latest post-funding update for Celestian Tales: Old North has information on the progress of the opening movie, and shares a few in-game screenshots.

WIP Opening Movie and In-Game Screenshots

Hope you all had a great holiday! We've started working again on the project since two weeks ago. Here's a couple of things that has happened since then:

Animated Opening Movie

We've been busy applying colour blocks and shadings onto the hundreds of frames of the animations. They don't look too good when seen raw without the background and additional effects applied, though. We'll show some of them so you can get a glimpse of what we're actually busy doing.

Environments and Events

We've put in all events that are currently possible to be made. The rest will need to wait until their corresponding scenes are finished, and that means putting in the environment assets. Currently we're doing the most difficult parts -- the large cities. While villages can resemble one another to some extent, each city is pretty unique in geography and style. Therefore, we can only reuse a small amount of assets in creating them.

Cheatmasters Avoiderdragon published the first review for Mount & Blade: Warband – Viking Conquest that I found in the last two months, and they gave the DLC a 7/10.

If its predecessors are any indication, it may be worth waiting for this DLC to get fixed with patches, especially if you’re really into Vikings and all that axe-swinging and plundering action. Fans of Mount & Blade who are already playing with mods may be apprehensive about spending money for this DLC, but the breadth and flavor are what should give them enough reason to decide in getting this.

We had the chance to interview Lionbite Games to get more information on their new Cyberpunk RPG game Rain of Reflections. Here is a sample of the interview below.

Couchpotato: You just announced Rain of Reflections this week so can you share a few details about the game, and what makes the game stand out from other RPG games?

Lionbite Games: It’s just that. Rain of Reflections will be a comparatively shorter, more intense experience where every choice counts and every step leads somewhere new. I love the way video games as a medium can grip you and sweep you away, the escapism of it and how a really gripping atmosphere can make you want to immerse yourself in the game’s world. This is a very important and central part of Rain of Reflections, but at the same time, you will never be worn out by repetitive grinding or repetition in any way.

This philosophy is reflected in the game’s battle system, which will be genuinely unique and made possible through something we internally call the “M3 morale meter”. The struggles are constructed around battle morale, and there are lots of ways to outsmart your enemy without directly resorting to lethal violence. This makes it possible for us to tell the story even during battles using dialogue, distractions and ruse tactics as weapons.

I will have more interviews next month as we have a preview to share next.

Double Bear posted an update on Steam with news on the next patch for Dead State.

Hi everyone! We see you're eager to get an update on our status, and we're more than happy to provide.

Since we've been working concurrently on several things, it's taken us a little bit longer to finish any specific item - but the good news is that we'll be releasing both Patch #5 and the public demo next week!

The upcoming patch is more fix-focused than feature-focused, but you'll see a couple nice polish features in the mix as well. We'll give you the full rundown in next week's changelog, though :)  Hang in there, Patch #5 is coming soon!

The Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen website has a few more updates this week. I will share the links to all three of them below with a short summary of the content.

Developer Round Table - 1.18.15

Due to the length of the discussion, we made the decision to drop the video and keep it to audio only, because the subsequent file size and turn around time would have been a bit unruly. We hope you enjoy this first of many more to come!

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen - Game Features and Summary

Pantheon: Rise of the Fallen is an MMORPG based on challenging gameplay and open world high fantasy, with a strong focus on group-oriented content. It takes place in a world called Terminus, populated by a vast variety of deities, locations, creatures and heroes. Mortal and planar realms have collided, creating the dramatic and epic environment of Terminus. With some of those realms came entire races and cultures, with Celestial deities that, over time, raised empires and forged a turbulent political landscape. Centuries later, this phenomena has continued to occur and the world of Terminus continues to grow in size and in depth.

Welcome to The Keeper's Vault!

We decided about a month ago that we wanted to develop a platform to share all of Pantheon's Lore that was well-designed and enabled us to publish Lore in a streamlined, organized and quality way. Thus, The Keeper's Vault was born - inside you will find a constantly updating repository of Pantheon's Lore as it continues to expand throughout development.

 As you visit the site, bear in mind that much of the Lore is still in development: being written, vetted, polished and finalized before it actually makes it into the Vault. Therefore, as you notice the sections of the site that are empty, those are areas where the content has not been finalized and therefore not released yet. The good news is that now there is a singular location you can bookmark and check often to keep up-to-date with all of the official Lore as it is released.

Seems te programmer that Lars hired did not last long according to a new update on Steam. Such are the pitfalls of indie development, and contracted for work hires.

I'm sorry to announce that Dustin has left the team. It wasn't anything major, he just had time constraints put on him by prior commitments and he didn't want to hold up the flow. I've been there before so I can appreciate his quick decision. Best of luck Dustin, sorry to see you go so soon!*

This turn of events really sucks but it's not the first time the project has lost someone to prior commitments mere moments after they joined. Remember our first lead writer Adi having to bail before the Kickstarter? That was pretty rough too. Of course the silver lining was that it led to Ryan joining the team, and he's responsible for some of the best parts of the game, so you never know how these things will turn out.

Two days after the last update about cut content Snowbird Games posted the ninth status update for Caribbean!. The update is about whats included on release.

Following the last status update, we thought we'd share the list of main new things that you'll definitely see in the game pretty soon. While we're at it, we also wanted to stress that these additions won't be the last this game ever sees — we don't plan on stopping the development after we ship the 1.0 version.

Liminal Games next weekly update for The Memory of Eldurim has information about what new content the developer will be added to the game in new patch this week.

Hey everyone. We had a good week and got in some much needed content.

-New Spell Added: Regrowth
-Ikhor pool increases with Ikhor usage.
-New animations for dual wielding swords.
-Added in numerous sound effects.
-Performance optimization.
-Various bug fixes.

It was a good week. We have been very busy with preparing for the GDC. We'll keep you updated on our progress and will still try to get an update out next week.

Thank you all very much!

Developer League of Geeks is proud to announce you can now buy Armello on Stream to help fix, ans shape the game in the coming months on Early Access.

As you may have already seen, v0.3.0 has arrived! That means if you're on Armellian or the Listener tier your Steam key is ready for you - more details on how to get your keys here. We're sorry that this update is a little bit late, our launch to Early Access has been a busy one! 

If you have any pals that want to help make the best digital board game, share the Armello love! 

Now that we're live it means our Steam page is live too, if you haven't already checked it out head here. We'd love to see more of our backers on the community, so come say hello :)

This update is visually an absolute stunner. Some of the biggest changes include (but not limited to):

• Front end/Title screen overhaul
• New Hero Power animations
• Status feed overhaul
• Communications Stack 
• Overall AI improvements
• In-game Chat system
• 4 new cards: Lightning Strike, Glamour, Feral and Wyld Born.
• Card Gallery

There are heaps more changes and bug-fixes that have been added to this update, head over here for the full build notes.

Dreamlords Digital posted another response on the games comment section this week.

Yes, we will be making an update soon. There's some major things happening and we wanted to verify first our final plans regarding them before we announce them. We definitely will be making an update sometime next week for sure. Please bear with us but rest assured we are currently working on the project. We will also try to be more active on our Facebook account so we suggest everybody to follow us there if possible. We are also preparing the forums so we can hopefully have that soon as well. Thank you!

So look forward to a new update later next week.

Trese Brothers Games posted the next update for their funded RPG game Star Traders 2 with information on how you will run your own starship. Here is a short sample.

Honored Captains, Backers and Friends,

Happy New Year to all! What an exciting year it was, and we’re looking forward to an even better 2015.

Before we start laying down any serious coding, we are in a process of building out a detailed design across the entire scope of Star Traders 2. This means we’re starting at the level of gameplay concepts and driving to the details of data models, game terminology, and gameplay mechanics that will create the best possible experience. The result of this intensive period of effort will be a workable roadmap that is ready for implementation.

This is a very important part of the process, and we want to share it with you. During this phase, we’ll be posting updates with specific details about the parts of the game as we hammer out their design and prototypes. Our first update will focus on your ship, it’s Decks, Compartments, and Upgrades.

Visual Outbreak released a new video about the current state of development for Malevolence: The Sword of Ahkranox on the games Steam Webpage.

Hi all, I'm back with one of my video updates to a) give you an update on what we've been working on and b) reveal what our next bit of super secret online functionality is going to be! I hope you're as excited as I am, and that you all had a fantastic New Years!

Seith mentions on the Ghost of a Tale site that he is moving to Unity 5.0 and that he likes the new lighting engine.

Hello everyone! This is going to be a quick update to tell you that I’m currently in the process of converting the game’s project to Unity 5.0 (beta 20). I’m not even using any fancy Global Illumination yet, but the new lighting engine shines through:

This is a rather involved task but it is also indispensable for Ghost of a Tale to move forward. The reason is we’re going to need the new navigational mesh abilities which should allow us to achieve our goal of streaming the game’s environments instead of having to put loading screens at select locations.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Ghost of a Tale is my first game ever, therefore it’s not going to be a sprawling epic tale. In fact, it is the very first step on a longer journey, for us as well as for Tilo.

If the game meets with success then we will be able to keep on telling this story with greater confidence. So this game is going to happen in a single (rather large) location with environments going from subterranean caves to the top of high towers (think “Ico”). And everything is consistent from a spatial point of view.

So it is important for us to be able to tap into Unity 5’s new capabilities regarding pathfinding across several streaming interconnected locations. Plus this new version has a lot of improvements in many domains (lighting, physics, animation, etc…). There are still many issues that I need to fix for the Unity 5 conversion to be considered complete, but I am confident that this the right choice. And I really hope it will pay off in the long run!

In addition he also mentions the new ability to set a banner to fire using a candle and has some pictures showing just that.

Michael Anderson of Geardiary known as txa1265 on our forum posted a new review for Avernum 2: Crystal Souls. If you have any questions I'm sure he will answer them.

Long-time fans of the RPG genre have certainly seen branching elements in games pruned significantly through the years. It has been explicitly stated by game company executives that it is simply too expensive to produce the assets required for a number of branches that will never be used. As a result you see what I call ‘phantom branching’ in many AAA RPGs – small things that look like significant choices but that all lead back to the same point and use the same core set of assets.

I had commented on the first Avadon game that I felt constrained, and in the sequel felt much less constrained … but as a comparison I referred to the Avernum and Geneforge games. Obviously there are times when you essentially ‘run out’ of quests because the game is pushing you to the next chapter, but in general the game feels open to allow you to make the choices you want for your party throughout.

I have to say that it is a breath of fresh air that you truly make changes and choices in Avernum 2. There are three different and distinct endings, and you can explore any of all of them. It is a wonderful experience to see the world change as you explore and make decisions, and as you make more and more choices in one direction or the other they add up, your reputation is altered and the world before you subtly shifts. It is wonderful to have a game so focused on your experience as a gamer.

Rain of Reflections is a new game form an indie developer calling themselves Lionbite Games. The game sounds interesting so here is a video, and short description

Rain of Reflections tells its noiresque story through three protagonists, two of which are female. The player will get to experience life in the futuristic, dystopian city through all three perspectives, ranging through society’s layers and social classes, interweaving the highly choice-driven journey.

Ambience and mood is an important part of the experience and the player is encouraged to explore the detailed environments in which the adventure is set, learning about the world and its characters (no scattered audio-logs or trails of notes – guaranteed!).

Rain of Reflections finds strengths in limitations. Lionbite Games wants to break RPG conventions by avoiding typical genre mechanics to focus on the very essence. The game will constantly move forward, without fillers, repetitive battles or monotonous grinding.

The battle system is deeply connected to the story and centered around a unique morale mechanic, allowing the player to use environments, ruse tactics, threats and even smart dialogue choices to handle confrontations without resorting to mindlessly blowing enemies to pieces.

Every choice has a consequence. The player is forced to live with them. In the words of the game’s leading characters: “This is my story. This is your story. This is our story. To the very end.”

Rain of Reflections is being developed in the Unity game engine for PC, with additional platforms considered for a later release.

TaleWorlds Entertainment has just posted the ninth developer diary for their upcoming sequel Mount & Blade II Bannerlord.  This update focuses on the creation of Bannerlord's soundtrack:

Finn Seliger, Periscope Studio - With the soundtrack of Mount & Blade 2 one of our main goals was to create a characteristic music piece for each faction – a kind of hymn – that should reflect the faction in terms of culture and attitude.

Having six different factions, the first step was to identify those characteristic instruments. Together with Torsten Stoye and his band Frölich Geschray (www.geschray.de) we were having two great sessions trying out different ethnic instruments. The samples that we were recording during the sessions turned out to be pure inspiration for the future compositions and helped a lot in finding the right tone for each faction.

See here for more, including pictures, audio samples, more information, and even a screenshot of a scene in Bannerlord.

Vince posted a new update on the games Steam website with information the promised Ganezzar Beta has been released, and gives an update on the game.

The beta of the third ‘chapter’ is now available to anyone who has the game in their Steam library. To access the beta build, right click on the game in your Steam library, select Properties, click on Betas tab. If it’s set on “None - Opt out of all beta programs”, change it to Test – Private Testing Branch.

Enter the Access Code (‘blacksheepwall’), click on Check Code, and wait for Steam to download the files.

About this beta. It’s a 'work in progress' build with many rough edges. It's in the same state Teron and Maadoran were when we released them to the testers, so for us it's business as usual (except for releasing it to all Early Access’ patrons rather than to the closed beta testers). For people who just want to play the next chapter expecting a few odd bugs here and there, it might be not what they expected.

To remind you, we put the very first playable build on Dec 24. We spent the next 3 weeks improving it, testing, moving things around, tweaking, etc, so the chapter is in a much better shape, but at this stage it’s still about functionality rather than form.

It would take us at least 4-5 weeks to bring it to an ‘enjoyable’ level and another 2-3 weeks to get it to the same state as Teron and Maadoran.

Snowbird Games posted the eight status update for Caribbean!. The main point of update is about what the developer calls the cut procedure, or less content in the game.

Here are the details.

Today we’d like to share the details on the ‘feature cut’ procedure we mentioned not long ago in our small announcement. Rejecting some of the features is always unpleasant for development teams, as the game won’t be as huge, pretty and awesome as they imagined it to be.

So why is this procedure needed? Mainly, it’s needed for saving the project and getting it out of the endless development cycle. Or save it from a possible disastrous launch. We won’t give examples from games of the past year here, but we’re sure anyone can name some troublesome moments from 2014 related with unfortunate releases.

GameWatcher has the first review that I can find this month for Jeff Vogel's latest remake Avernum 2: Crystal Souls, and the site gave the game a positive 8.5/10.

Although much of Crystal Souls that deserves praise is a product of the close-knit development team and cohesive vision, this inevitably gives rise to its own problems. The absence of a substantial budget to finance extensive playtesting ensures that the game doesn’t always run smoothly – on more than one occasion, Crystal Souls crashed my computer on the title screen. Additionally, there were two instances in which an irreversible bug would take me to my inventory every time I attempted to open a door, forcing me to load up a previous save and repeat the section again. Luckily, the difficulty can be dropped down on the fly to alleviate some of the frustration.

Nevertheless, these technological hiccups – try as they might – couldn’t taint an otherwise rewarding journey through the divided lands of Avernum. For those who are already fans of the series, I’d suggest Crystal Souls is an essential purchase. For those none the wiser to Spiderweb Software’s extensive back catalogue, there’s no better time to join the fight.

Zeboyd Games posted the January update for Cosmic Star Heroine that contains some new new screenshots, and talks about game difficulty & Trophies/Achievements. 

We're busy working on inserting content into the game at the moment. By our latest estimates, the main game should take between 10-14 hours to complete, plus an additional 3-6 hours for major side-quests. Unlike our previous games, side-quests won't just be "Go into non-descript small dungeon & fight a few monsters for loot" and in fact, all of the playable characters except Alyssa has a side-quest that's connected to them. We're having a lot of fun with these (including some homages to some of our favorite games) and hope you will too.

Well we finally have a new post-funding kickstarter update for Bloom: Memories. The developer Studio Fawn released more images, and music samples from the game.

Heya everyone, time for another update!

The last couple of months have been busy as usual filling out the world. So more maps, more creatures / characters, more music, and a bit more programming. 

Map wise, we have over 50 new ones! Bringing us to over 200! (The 2nd "dungeon" turned out to be rather large ~over 37 maps!!~....good thing we have some fun plans for it ;).

And, last but not least, programming wise we have still been doing some major work on the engine to get it to support more platforms (and make it a lot easier to update / download). So nothing fancy to show there yet, but once that is finished we will be tackling new game features.

Anyhow, hope you like how things are going! Let us know what you think :) And, as always, thanks so much for the support in making this all happen.

The developers of Ama's Lullaby posted a new update on our forums today. I look forward to backing  the game when it finally launches for crowd-funding this year.

As you will see with the next pictures, we don't have a lot of screenshots from our game prototype to show you. In facts, it is progressing quite slowly. The main reason is that the project is too complex (because of the RPG and hardore-oriented features) for being developed without any funds. It takes a lot of time, and because in our lives we have full-time jobs, it runs slowly. Furthermore, it's complicated to stay focused, and to motivate the team since the beginning of the project (it has started in the end of 2013…), without any guarantee of a succesful financing in the future. We'd love to give more for this project but we can't.

That's why we're thinking about trying to raise funds, in a few months. It could help us to focus on the game, to develop it in a quite faster way. More importantly, it would give us the opportunity to build a real small game development studio behind the project, to make it more official.

So, what are we doing now in our free time? Well, we're working on a small cinematic 3D movie, showing the game's atmosphere and main lines story. Here are some test renders and screenshots (still work in progress).

Developer Lars Simkins has released a new update on Steam for Frontiers with information he has hired a new programmer to help deal with the various bugs.

Hello, everyone. Outstanding news - we have a new programmer on the bug squad! His name is Dustin Sims and he's going to help me whip this game into shape.

So in the coming weeks if you see a bug get fixed: that's all me. If you see a bug not getting fixed, blame Dustin. Thanks Dustin!

Seriously, though - it's a relief to have him on board. His first order of business is sorting out those pesky disappearing buildings. Wish him luck!

So many games to cover that I usually miss when a game gets new updates, and Ama's Lullaby is one such game. The games developer has a new update from December.

As you can see, these days we're not showing a lot of things. We are working hard on the dialog, inventory  and combat systems: both are really complicated and all the team is quite busy. These features are the core of the game, and just like you we have high expectations in terms of quality.

We also started to work on a precomputed 3D video, to prepare our crowdfunding campaign trailer, next year!

Well there you have it hopefully I don't miss the new updates this year.