Arcen Games News Has Moved!: March 2013

Friday, March 29, 2013

Shattered Haven 1.007 "Wrath Of Doors" Released!

This one is a fairly minor update in the main, but it fixes a number of level design issues late in the game where doors would turn out to be one-way and trap you if you didn't use your suicide pill.

Shattered Haven is something that people who are playing it really seem to love, but we're really having trouble getting the word out. If you play it and love it, please spread the word! We can use all the help we can get. A huge thanks to all of you who have already done so.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

AI War Beta 6.014-6.015 "De-Faulting The Logic" Released!

This one is a relatively small release focusing on balance issues and fixing a few bugs introduced in recent versions. We also addressed some of the longstandingly high-voted mantis issues.

There would be more but we've been working hard on another project (that we might drop some hints on tomorrow, we'll see). Of course it's not another apparatus designed to deliver a "you lose!" experience to players. We'd never do that.

Update: 6.015 hotfix to fix some exo and cloaking bugs in 6.014 that could cause significant problems.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Shattered Haven 1.006 "Balloon Flight" Released!

This one has a variety of tweaks and fixes in it, as well as a new vehicle: a fast version of the hot air balloon for use in Alden Ridge! Several levels have also had some new hints added to them to keep their puzzles from being quite so devilish.

Shattered Haven is something that people who are playing it really seem to love, but we're really having trouble getting the word out. If you play it and love it, please spread the word! We can use all the help we can get. A huge thanks to all of you who have already done so.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Tidalis in Indie Royale Mighty Bundle

Indie Royale has rolled out The Mighty Bundle, included in which is our addictive puzzle game Tidalis! You can pick the game up, along with five additional games, now through April 4th.

The rest of the bundle's titles are pretty enticing as well, with Avadon: The Black Fortress, Derrick the Deathfin, Waveform, Zafehouse: Diaries, and War of the Human Tanks. Six games, all for a minimum of around $5 (price fluctuates based on sales, currently at $4.77).

In other news: I'm in San Francisco this week for at GDC, and I'll be demoing Shattered Haven tonight at the POW POW music event at the DNALounge. If you are in town, and have an hour or two (or more) in between the hours of 7:00 PM - 2:00 AM, stop in and say hi.

Here's the latest coverage for our games that's come in over the past week:

Reviews
Tierra Gamer: [Review] Shattered Haven (8.3/10)
Saving Content: Shattered Haven (3/5)
Invision Community: Shattered Haven Review (3/5)
Dad's Gaming Addiction: Valley 2 Review (8/10)
IndeeGames: A Valley Without Wind 2 Review (7/10)
Best Games Today: Discover New World in A Valley Without Wind 2
ComboCaster: A Valley Without Wind 2 Review (7/10)
Dad's Gaming Addiction: AI War Review (8/10)

Videos
MugetGaming: Shattered Haven Gameplay Walkthrough First Look
Dad's Gaming Addiction: A Valley Without Wind 2 -DGA Play Session #1
EhPlusGamer: Eh Reviews A Valley Without Wind
Dad's Gaming Addiction: AI War: Fleet Command - DGA Play Session #1

Other Coverage
IndieGames.com: Release: Shattered Haven (Arcen Games)
Capsule Computers: Valley Dual Pack Highlighted in Indie Spring Sale

Monday, March 25, 2013

Shattered Haven 1.005 "Stantonsburg's Revenge" Released!

This one doesn't really contain anything individually notable, but rather a laundry list of small fixes and tweaks. A lot of them have been centered around Stantonsburg, hence the name of the release. That town has a mind of its own, and I don't just mean when it's going all scary on you, the player. It clearly likes to play mind games with us developers, too. ;)

Shattered Haven is something that people who are playing it really seem to love, but we're really having trouble getting the word out. If you play it and love it, please spread the word! We can use all the help we can get. A huge thanks to all of you who have already done so.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Shattered Haven 1.004 "Gunfight With An Eyeball Snake" Released!

This one includes a new boss fight that involves... well, eyeball snakes and guns, as I suppose you could guess. This is actually the boss level that you can watch me design in the level editor in our recent Let's Play videos. There are also a number of fixes and tweaks included in this update, of course.

Shattered Haven is something that people who are playing it really seem to love, but we're really having trouble getting the word out. If you play it and love it, please spread the word! We can use all the help we can get. A huge thanks to all of you who have already done so.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Steam Indie Spring Sale: Valley Dual Pack, AI War and Tidalis 75% Off

As Shattered Haven soldiers on from Monday's launch, Steam has rolled out a big time, 400+ indie game sale that has Arcen's catalog front and center with some major discounts.

Here's the breakdown:

Thursday, March 21, 2013

Shattered Haven 1.003 "Brevity Is The Soul Of Wit" Released!

This one is the second release of the day. Based on some feedback that we got from a member of the press whom I greatly trust, I realized that our tutorial was just too darn long. There were some parts where players were getting lost even in the alpha and beta, and the whole thing was taking quite a bit of time and delaying "getting to the good stuff," so to speak.

So we've cut down the tutorial to the parts that really matter, including the key things you need to learn and the long-term story bits, and hopefully this will give a better first introduction into the game.

Shattered Haven is something that people who are playing it really seem to love, but we're really having trouble getting the word out. If you play it and love it, please spread the word! We can use all the help we can get. A huge thanks to all of you who have already done so.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Shattered Haven 1.002 "Mind The Gap!" Released!

This one has a litany of small fixes and tweaks, and a couple of cool new features.

First off, when you're walking you no longer fall into pits or water. Handy when you're navigating tight ledges while not being pursued by angry grays

Secondly, when you scroll through items in your inventory, it now shows popup text at the top of the screen to remind you what the function of that tool or weapon is. This is really useful for people who don't already have the game's many weapons and tools fully memorized -- saves the steps of going into the encylopedia.

Thirdly, whenever any new encyclopedia entry is unlocked, the encyclopedia now opens directly to that entry when you next open it. That saves you time hunting through the categories.

Shattered Haven is something that people who are playing it really seem to love, but we're really having trouble getting the word out. If you play it and love it, please spread the word! We can use all the help we can get. A huge thanks to all of you who have already done so.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Shattered Haven 1.001 "Dual Control" Released!

This one is our first post-release update. It includes the ability for you to use both the analog stick and the d-pad on your game controllers interchangeably, and it allows you to create new levels directly in the level editor rather than making you initialize them in the file system first. Also it has a couple of bugfixes and tweaks.

Shattered Haven is something that people who are playing it really seem to love, but we're having trouble getting the word out. If you play it and love it, be sure to spread the word! We can use all the help we can get.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

AI War Beta 6.013 "Core Foamhammer" Released!

This one adds Core (MkV) versions of the 18 fleet ships that previously maxed out at MkIV. So you can now get those from Core Fabricators. Abuse of Core Shield Bearers may result in... well, I guess you don't have much to fear if you have Core Shield Bearers.

The bulk of this release answers the results of the recent nerf polls with significant hammerings handed out all around.

Gravity won the AI-side poll and came in second on the human-side. Since the universal gravitational constant laughed at us when we tried to nerf it, we instead nerfed the units trying to use said gravity. Except the player home forcefield grav-generator, that's still just as nasty as it was.

Manufactories won the Player-side poll. Yea, the things that convert metal to crystal and vice versa when you ask them to. The player sentiment wasn't that these were overpowered (that would have been kind of amusing) but that they were unnecessary. Why have them be physical structures with automated turn-on/turn-off logic when the game could just handle the conversion automatically? Normally we wouldn't have prioritized this, but the poll told us it was important to the players, so it's been done. The foam hammer hit the Manufactories so hard that they don't exist anymore, and the conversion is now done on an as-needed basis (there's still a control you can use to restrict or completely prevent the conversion, if desired).

Other winners include Counterattack Guard Posts, the Spirecraft Scout, the Ravenous Shadow (which will now be even more hungry, thank you very much), and the Interplanetary Munitions Booster. Salute the victoriously Hammered!

This release also includes a few other changes, including some buffs to Heavy Bomber Starships, Regeneration Golems, Spire Corvettes, MkII Transports, and munitions-boosting-for-starships. An attempt was also made to rein in certain Astro Train varieties.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Shattered Haven Launches on Steam, GOG, GamersGate, and Green Man Gaming

Arcen Games is excited to announce the launch of Shattered Haven, now available for PC and Mac on Steam, GOG, GamersGate, and Green Man Gaming; as well as directly through the Arcen Store. To celebrate the release, the game is on sale for 25% off until Friday, March 29th. A launch trailer for the game has been released as well.

The 2D action adventure horror title has you solving environmental puzzles in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by Grays -- an unusual and powerful type of living dead that doesn't rely on infection to spread its numbers. Play through dozens of levels in pursuit of your kin, who are forced to scatter across the region after a breach on the family compound. Make your way through branching story paths that result in several different outcomes, all the while completing bonus objectives to reach higher scores and gold markers.

Shattered Haven packs local 2-player co-op, gamepad support, and also includes access to the game's level editor we used to make the main campaign. For more information on the game, check out Arcen founder Chris Park's development blog article on exactly what the game is all about.

About Shattered Haven
An Environmental Puzzle Game About Family, Grit, and Survival

Grays roam the land, largely in the absence of human interference. These aren't your typical Zed -- theirs is a very different sort of apocalypse. Animals spontaneously transform into twisted, violent beings. The earth decays, collapsing into a network of abysses. The wilderness thickens.

It has been nine years since That Day when it all started. Pockets of humanity still exist, but are ignorant of one another. Within these isolated havens people try to live as best they can -- for even in a world so broken and dark, daily life must go on.

Darrell and Mary Williams were able to build such a life inside a five-acre fenced yard out in the country. They were even secure enough in their isolated compound that they had a daughter five years after the zombie-like grays appeared.

Life carried on as normally as it could, until another refugee on the run is killed during a nearby attack. Her son is saved and taken in by the Williamses -- who do not realize that this kind action will destroy their home and threaten their entire family. They find themselves caught in the midst of a struggle between two eldritch horrors, and the path to survival is anything but clear.

Key Features

A 2D action adventure game where you solve environmental puzzles under duress. Figure out how to use various tools, traps, and weapons in each level to clear all the Grays lurking about.
Nearly 100 hand-crafted levels with multiple difficulty levels ranging between casual and hardcore, developed end to end by two experienced adventure level designers.
Complete bonus objectives for higher scores and gold markers.
Follow the story of Darrell and Mary as they try to save their family from a new and unexpected threat through in-game storytelling and painted-style cutscenes.
Guide different members of the Williams family through branching story paths that result in one of several endings. Depending on your actions, the story may end very poorly, happily, or anywhere in between.
Music and sound by composer Pablo Vega provides a chilling atmosphere for players to experience.
Included level editor: The same editor used to make the main adventure will let you make your own levels, cutscenes, or even entire adventures.
Local 2-player co-op. Using two gamepads, two players on the keyboard, or any combination of the above.

For game updates and more, follow Shattered Haven on Arcen's Forums, Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook.

About Arcen Games
Arcen Games entered the PC indie scene in 2009 with their cult classic AI War: Fleet Command, which was named the 40th best-reviewed PC game of the year by MetaCritic. Their second year was a busy one, seeing the release of The Zenith Remnant, the first full expansion for AI War; Tidalis, an innovative block-based puzzle with casual appeal and hardcore depth; and Children of Neinzul, a micro-expansion for AI War with all profits benefiting the Child's Play charity, of which Arcen is a platinum sponsor.

AI War's third and largest expansion Light of the Spire marked Arcen's first release of 2011, with the rest of the company's focus being devoted to their most massive project yet: A Valley Without Wind, which released in 2012. The end of 2012/start of 2013 has been another busy time for the team, with AI War's fourth expansion Ancient Shadows launching, A Valley Without Wind 2 hitting 1.0, and now Shattered Haven's release.

Originally a one-man shop, Arcen Games has grown to have half a dozen part-time or fulltime contributors to its various titles. For all the latest news, media coverage, and some of our other musings, visit us on our website, or follow us on Google+, Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook; as well as Arcen lead Chris Park's Games By Design blog.

Shattered Haven 1.0 Released!

This one is uncharacteristically gargantuan, even by Arcen standards. Josh, Zack, and I have all been working all weekend to get all this finished up, and in particular Sunday was an 18 hour day for Josh and Zack, and so far looks like a 25 hours day for me.

But it's all worth it -- I couldn't be more proud of what all the finishing touches we've put on the game. Well, for one thing, the end of the game is actually complete. Zack was designing away on Alden Ridge and Ganan Fields, as well as the final boss fight, while Josh and I were working steadily on implementing the voluminous story cutscenes that come at the end and near-end of the game. A lot of the volume comes because of all the branching, really.

The release notes really gloss over all the coolest stuff; you get hints of it based on what sorts of scripting commands I added, but I don't say how they were actually used in our scripts and levels. That's more fun to find out by actually getting there yourself!

The Shingen Rapid Prototyping Facility is one thing that has been pushed back to post-1.0. I should be able to get that finished this week, but basically I wanted to make sure and take time to do that right. It contains two of the endings, but they are both endings you can't get until New Game Plus anyway. Right now there are two main endings that you can get, although there are some smaller things that vary based on your actions as you get to the last legs of the game.

Fun fact: there is a way for every character in the game, be they an NPC or a main character or what, to die. Well, actually there are a couple of characters that won't be fatality-prone until the Shingen facility is in there, but that's a minority. And keeping all the characters alive is not possible, by the way. ;)

There are a couple of other little extras that we have planned for this week in particular, but as of this release this is a complete game that you can play end-to-end.

Level Editor!
Oh! And the level editor is now unlocked -- I'll warn you that the scripting window is a bit nuts when the scrollbars come in, but that's largely because of the unity 3D lack of support for good scrolling multiline textboxes. I've implemented some partial solutions there, but I'm going to take another crack at it this week. That would be a useful thing to have for all our games, actually.

The Road To Creation
The creation of this game has really been quite a saga. Originally it was just me any my wife working on it in 2008. She did a good 30-some levels, I did around 60. Then in the summer of 2008, Lars Bull -- the lead designer of Tidalis, you may recall -- came in and really gave me a huge amount of useful testing feedback. The game jumped in quality.

Then I got stuck on something (how exactly to marry the puzzle and adventure elements, basically), and decided to take a "short break" and work on this game called AI War. AI War was just a side project, in my mind. Then of course that turned into something really cool and it became the basis of Arcen, and we were off to the races.

Four years later, in August 2012, we picked this back up again and started working on it in earnest. I ported it to our newer engine, Zack started improving the levels and especially the overworlds, and he designed out the whole tutorial.

Erik and Zack and I had lengthy calls talking about the story up through around November or so, figuring out how to make all the elements I had started with really come together in a satisfying conclusion that made sense. Erik in particular was really helpful on figuring out large plot points, because he's got such an encyclopedic knowledge of the macabre genres. Not to say that Zack and I weren't holding our own.

Then while Valley 2 was really taking up everyone else's time, Zack was pretty much left all by his lonesome working on Shattered Haven. I kept telling him we'd be back, heh. Then as soon as Valley 2 came out, Josh and I jumped in with both feet and suddenly we were whirring along towards 1.0. Zack had made enormous progress in the time since he'd started on the progress, and the overworld areas were a lot more intricate and Zelda-like than what I'd originally designed.

When Josh and I got onto this project, so did Pablo actually. He started composing new music tracks for the game, and remastered the better of the stock tracks that I'd been using up until that point. All in all we tossed out about three quarters of the music that had been in use prior to the porting, and the result was something much stronger. This is the first Arcen soundtrack that isn't 100% composed by Pablo, but he did a lot of the more emotional stuff that you hear emphasized.

Around the time that Valley 2 was really getting underway, Heavy Cat Studios was also starting work on Shattered Haven. They wound up setting that aside for a while, same as I did, but then came back to it starting in February. "Blue," Arcen's new part-time art director, also spent a fair bit of time doing things like the cloud effects and some of the other things that make Shattered Haven pop. I did the particle effects with Particle Illusion as usual, and I did the shadows and lighting.

It's been a really long road for this game, but we had a blast making it despite the long hours here at the end. We hope that you enjoy playing it!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Shattered Haven Beta 0.900 "Preparing For Launch" Released!

This one is actually fairly small, though it does have some good new story stuff in there, and more of Alden Ridge has been implemented. But the big thing is fixing a bunch of exceptions that would be thrown whenever you encountered NPC3.

Now that's fixed, and all the NPCs have their final graphics (though the named NPCs still need some tweaks from me, and their New Gray versions are not yet updated).

The point of this release was just to get that fix out ASAP, while we finish the last bits of the game for tonight.

Tonight is going to be 1.0! We're really excited about it. Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Shattered Haven Beta 0.811 "Zombie Mom's Story" Released!

This one has a huge metric ton of stuff in it, including a lot of work on the final boss (still not done yet), story cutscenes and so forth all through the game, and even a new weapon that many people won't find on their first playthrough.

Probably my favorite thing in this particular release is the work done on the subplots involving "Zombie Mom." You meet her really early in the game, and her story can play out one of two main ways -- well, four, I guess. There's one split, and then another split after one of the first splits. Anyway, her story is carried fully through the first split, following what can happen with her through the midpoint of the game in either part.

One note: I think that probably a lot of the NPC graphics are messed up (them animating the wrong directions, etc), because we updated the graphics and I forgot to actually go in and update the code to match them. Sorry about that, but it doesn't affect functionality; I'll have that fixed next release, tomorrow.

Tomorrow night is going to be 1.0! We're getting very close, now. Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Shattered Haven Beta 0.810 "Grim Wilderness" Released!

This one has a bunch more in-engine cutscenes of varying scope and importance, and several new comic panel cutscenes without voiceover (the voiceovers are used for key emotional scenes, but the comic panels are also used for area transitions to help set the sense of what an area is by giving you a painted view of the area while Darrell and Mary talk).

As part of the above, the reason behind the Marsh being so (seemingly) empty of enemies is now made more clear from the start. A lot of this writing goes way back in terms of what we planned, and it's just that we're finally getting to the point of integrating it into the game itself because we wanted the levels to be pretty well finalized before scripting too heavily in them. Pretty exciting to see it all coming together, at any rate.

There are also some minor graphical updates, some bugfixes and tweaks, and a new Water Balloon weapon.

More to come soon. Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Shattered Haven Beta 0.809 "Shadow Children" Released!

This one has a couple of new in-engine cutscenes (as opposed to comic panel cutscenes). There's a goodly number of both remaining to do, and I had hoped to get more of that done today, but instead there was just a huge wash of minor bugs and polish stuff I wanted to get done so that it wouldn't impact further testing.

So, yeah. Lots of minor tweaks and so forth. The Shadow Children show up in several contexts now (whereas before they were mostly restricted to the final boss fight), starting very early in the game. Probably my favorite two tweaks in this version are:

1. Eliminating the annoying skipping in the ambient sound loops (rainfall, etc).
2. Colorizing the text of who is speaking during in-engine cutscenes.

More to come soon. Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Shattered Haven Beta 0.808 "Stantonsburg Renovations" Released!

This one is the second release of the day. It has a number of fixes and tweaks that are nice, but nothing too major.

The big thing this time around is our work on implementing/polishing more story and voiceovers and comic panels, etc. We still have more than a little bit to do over the next couple of days on that score, but we're making good progress toward having everything ready and sparkling by Monday

Stantonsburg hasn't really changed all that much, but some loose ends have been tied up and it has been finalized excepting any bugs that are found. That's also true of the Phoenix Forest as of yesterday. Stantonsburg is a lot more complex in terms of scripting than most of the other parts of the game, so it's one of the more time consuming ones to implement compared to the more wilderness-focused overworld sections.

By the way, I can now confirm that we're going to be coming out on Monday on all the major distributors you'd expect from our past games -- plus one major one we've never had a game on before.

Oh, and also -- I'll be very curious to know if anyone ever made it into the Mines. I think everyone has been taking the Deadlands route from what I've seen. I think that's because the blue key was way too hard to find before (not on purpose); that's now much easier to find. But choose carefully between the Mines and Deadlands! The Mines are a far harder road (something about digging too greedily and too deep? I'm not sure.).

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Shattered Haven Beta 0.807 "I Can't Feel My Fingers!" Released!

This one is the first of two releases for today. It includes one critical bugfix where you couldn't always pick up items correctly in the last version, which is the main reason this was pushed out. But it also has other bugfixes and tweaks, a new cutscene, and four new music tracks. Also improvements to how well the grays are stunned by being shot with small caliber bullets.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Shattered Haven Beta 0.806 "Now I Know Where I Put Those Keys" Released!

This one includes a ton of inventory improvements, makes the follower NPC invulnerable, and improves several levels as well as making the "sliding around objects" logic work better. More to come soon.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

AI War Beta 6.012 "Darkened Sky, Altered Starship" Released!

This one revamps the Dark Spire minor faction and does a balance overhaul on Starships, notably adding a long-requested new important capturable structure: The Advanced Starship Constructor.

For the Dark Spire:they should still be just as influential upon the galaxy once truly unleashed (in fact, more influential due to improved "what do I do now?" logic), but now they (probably) won't melt your CPU in the process. Previously you could wind up with 50k+ of the things if you really cranked up one of the vengeance generators, but now it's much better about concentrating spawns into a smaller number of more powerful units as the overall Dark Spire population increases.

For the Starships: the main combat and combat-support starships have had their caps halved, their cap-DPS reduced significantly (so individual DPS is the same or a bit higher), their metal/crystal/energy costs halved, and their knowledge costs slightly-more-than-halved. The result is a better deal but it's much less likely that you'll be able to get all the core firepower you need from just starships. This helps better emphasize the role of starships as a category: supplementary to fleet ships, and capable of some important independent operations, but not something that contests with the fleet ships category for the role of damage-dealing.

In addition, there's now a starship equivalent of the Advanced Factory so you can produce mkIV versions of many starship types (if you have the corresponding mkIII type unlocked). To top it off, Fabricators for the mkV versions of those starship types are now also on the list of possible experimental-starship fabs.

The release also has a few other changes, notably an increase to starting metal/crystal stockpiles. The difference is only a matter of minutes even at just-the-homeworld resource harvesting levels, but it does help the very early game drag less.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.

Monday, March 11, 2013

Shattered Haven Beta 0.805 "Corners Like It's On Rails" Released!

This one is actually the fifth update that we've done since beta started three days ago. However, this is the first one that is getting its own post; I was just in too much of a hurry with everything going on to post about the other releases, despite the fact that they had significant improvements and polish.

This new version includes a lot of top-requested features, such as: not losing your inventory when you die on the overworld; some better handling of some specific annoying cases with the follower player-2-standing; some improvements to the visual clarity of the bonus objectives completion status; and having the player characters slide around object corners rather than getting stuck on them.

There are also a bunch of new music tracks in this one, and a bunch of levels that had only had ambient sound effects before now have their music tracks properly set along with that. There are also two new weapons that are largely overworld-specific.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. When you launch the game, hit the big "Play" button and then you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

Valley 2: Reviews, Podcasts, and Let's Play Videos

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Valley 2 Official 1.003 "But The Third One Stayed Up!" Released!

This one addresses a few minor issues that had collected, including a couple of annoying things with the ending cutscene of the game. The largest thing overall in this one is that Swamp Castles now work properly in actually granting your NPCs speed bonuses on the world map.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have any version of the game. If you have the beta on Steam, it will automatically update for you. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have the standalone game, you can download that here. If you already own the first game, just use your existing license key to unlock the sequel for free!

Friday, March 8, 2013

Shattered Haven Beta Begins Now!

Arcen Games is proud to announce that the Shattered Haven beta is starting today! The beta will last from today through March 18th, when the 1.0 version will be launching.

During the beta period, you can buy the game and get full access to the latest and greatest beta version for 25% off the usual $9.99 price tag.

An Environmental Puzzle Game About Family, Grit, and Survival
Grays roam the land, largely in the absence of human interference. These aren't your typical Zed -- theirs is a very different sort of apocalypse. Animals spontaneously transform into twisted, violent beings. The earth decays, collapsing into a network of abysses. The wilderness thickens.
It has been nine years since That Day when it all started. Pockets of humanity still exist, but are ignorant of one another. Within these isolated havens people try to live as best they can -- for even in a world so broken and dark, daily life must go on.

Darrell and Mary Williams were able to build such a life inside a five-acre fenced yard out in the country. They were even secure enough in their isolated compound that they had a daughter five years after the zombie-like grays appeared.

Life carried on as normally as it could, until another refugee on the run is killed during a nearby attack. Her son is saved and taken in by the Williamses -- who do not realize that this kind action will destroy their home and threaten their entire family. They find themselves caught in the midst of a struggle between two eldritch horrors, and the path to survival is anything but clear.

Features

Solve environmental puzzles under pressure. Figure out how to use the tools, traps, and weapons in each level to clear all the Grays.
Nearly 100 hand-crafted levels with multiple difficulty levels ranging between casual and hardcore, developed end to end by two experienced adventure level designers.
Complete bonus objectives for higher scores and gold markers.
Follow the story of Darrell and Mary as they try to save their family from a new and unexpected threat through in-game storytelling and painted-style cutscenes.
Guide different members of the Williams family through branching story paths that result in one of several endings. Depending on your actions, the story may end very poorly, happily, or anywhere in between.
Music and sound by composer Pablo Vega provides a chilling atmosphere for players to experience.
Included level editor: The same editor used to make the main adventure will let you make your own levels, cutscenes, or even entire adventures.
Local 2-player co-op. Using two gamepads, two players on the keyboard, or any combination of the above.

Screenshots
(More screenshots available at the link above).

Video is coming soon!

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

AI War Beta 6.011 "Nemesis of the Dubious Honor" Released!

This one starts addressing some longstanding requests related to champion balance and answers the most recent "worst unit" poll where the game's least impactful units get shamed into some kind of improvement.

#1 in the poll were the AI's normal guard posts. The core ones that protect the AI homeworlds (and particularly the "brutal-pick" posts) are plenty nasty enough, but their normal brethren... well, most of them really didn't matter much. Now they'll at least be getting more kills. (Note from testing: when driving a spire starship, do not park next to a MkIV Arachnid post.)

Tied for first was the decoy drone, which had a very small cap for the human player and an antiquated health value. Now if you have a decoy fabricator it's much easier to field enough decoys (and durable-enough decoys) that they'll survive at least the opening phase of a battle.

Third place was the Spire starship. Not all that long ago the Spire and Zenith starships were redone as separate starship lines and largely re-imagined. Well, people missed the high-mark versions and in general didn't find the new ones very compelling. So they've been "promoted" up one tech level and condensed into stronger individual units. There's also some straight-up buffs, and the Spire's beam now cycles over 3x faster (with correspondingly lower damage, but easier to get a higher % of optimium damage now). The Zenith starship was included in this because it was just 1 vote below the Spire in the poll and their fates are kind of intertwined.

On the champions: feedback's been coming in for a while that paints kind of a strange picture. For some, champions made the game extremely easy even with the 20%-of-a-normal-player boost to many forms of AI threat (and lower boosts to stuff like exos, etc). For others, those same threat increases made champions simply nonviable, and in some cases downright lethal (to the wrong side). Also, the "nemesis" mechanic that built up the AI HW defenses if you advanced to a really powerful champion while still in low AIP didn't have any offensive component, so it was still fairly cheesable.

So now the "nemesis" mechanic has a couple offensive manifestations and thus when you fly champions you'll be facing AI champions here and there (hopefully, exactly where you wish you weren't facing them). These are just frigate-sized champions, though, enemy versions of the bigger hulls are still only found through the Heroic AI type (which is still taking applicants for the next human to crush, by the way). Accordingly, human champions no longer boost other threats. We may have gone a little easy on the balance of these new counterbalances, but the pain can be cranked up as needed.

A few other fixes and changes round out the update. Notably, you can nuke carriers again. Have fun with that.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater itself, if you already have 4.000 or later. When you launch the game, you'll see the notice of the update having been found if you're connected to the Internet at the time. If you don't have 4.000 or later, you can download that here.