AI War Beta 4.028 -- The First Light of the Spire Beta -- Released!

This update fixes a few small things for the main game, and then includes the first of the new content for Light of the Spire!  Also, preorders are now open for Light of of the Spire (it's a full expansion, so $9.99).  Right now it's just available through the Arcen store, as is generally the case during our preorder/beta periods, but in December it should be available through all the usual suspects that carry AI War products.

The Spire are coming...
Ravaged by their recent encounters with the same AIs that pushed humanity to the brink of extinction, the Spire are an alien race that have also been all but destroyed. However, while the AIs were successful in their surprise attack against the Spire, the Spire are far more powerful than even the AIs seem to have realized. The Zenith were broken-down and ancient when humanity encountered them, but the Spire were at the height of their deadly power until quite recently.


Now the splintered remains of their race are regrouping, and entering the galaxy with a vengeance. Their attitude toward humanity, who after all spawned the AIs that harmed the Spire so, is unclear. Proceed with caution.
If you'd like to read about what features have been implemented or announced so far, please see this page on the wiki.

This Expansion Is Still In Beta!
Beta means it's not finished, and that you should expect bugs and balance issues until it gets out of beta. But we're making it available to folks early, because there's already some seriously cool stuff in here that we think you'll enjoy, and we'd also love feedback on it all. Light of the Spire will be released in the first week of December or thereabouts, so the development time schedule is very short on this one -- we're leveraging a lot of groundwork that we put in place in 4.0, as well as picking the features that go into this very carefully, in order to make this possible.

But, even so, we're obviously concerned about scope creep and want to avoid having to go back on a feature we promise. So with that in mind, we're being rather uncharacteristically secretive about the features in this expansion until they come out. Basically, the only stuff we'll talk about in concrete terms in advance are things we know we can without a doubt accomplish in this timeframe. Stay tuned over the next three weeks or so, and all will be revealed as that time passes. If you want to wait until after that period to order or preorder this one, we quite understand. We think you'll agree that this is the best expansion yet to AI War when you see it, though. Again: stay tuned!

Key Features That Will Be Coming
* 100+ new ships, including new "spirecraft" ships (larger than starships, smaller than golems).
* 2 new campaign types: Defender and Construction.
* Exciting new Fallen Spire "minor" faction.
* New in-game music tracks.
* Other new stuff not yet revealed. :) 

What's In This Beta Version For LotS So Far?
The exciting new Defender mode, as well as the Vanilla and Everything AI types make their debut. As a warning, Defender mode is extremely preliminary, so will probably need a lot of tweaking to be in balance. But it's pretty fun already, if you like getting beat up. ;)

Also bear in mind that we do still need to teach the AI a few new tricks for this mode. It's not used to working on a timer, it's used to thoroughly crushing you. When it's on the clock, it needs to do a better job of prioritizing your quick defeat, rather than obliterating every last trace of you.

In short, if you play with too few planets the AI will crush you; too many, on too short a time schedule, and it won't have time to crush you so you'll likely win despite the thousands of high-level ships slowly scouring you from the galaxy. We'll be working on that in future releases, but for now we suggest you use maybe 4-5 planets as perhaps a sweet spot. Or, feedback on what seems to work best (and what doesn't) is also welcome. Part of the point of the beta, after all

More to come soon!

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.

AI War: Children Of Neinzul Beta Opens!

The first beta release of Children of Neinzul, the new micro-expansion for AI War, is now available for demo or for preorder (only $3.99)!  After the longest time ever between AI War releases, the new beta 3.173 version of the game is also now out with a few bugfixes aside from the new CoN micro-expansion features.  The following features have been added so far for the expansion:

* Starship Class: Neinzul Enclave Starships Mark I-IV.
* Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling Commandos Mark I-V.
* Bonus Ship Type: Neinzul Youngling Tigers Mark I-V.
* Map Types: X,Concentric Circles
* AI Plot: Hybrid Hives

The Neinzul aliens are an insectoid race of perpetual "younglings," who live for an extremely short span before dying and being superseded by fully-aware and vicious replacements. The Neinzul are organized into localized "Enclaves" that form mini-collectives with their own personalities, goals, and desires. In this second expansion to AI War, players face off against the Neinzul minor factions, against new AI types in general, and enlist the help of the friendlier members of this new alien presence.

The new Enclave Starships bring a long-awaited feature to AI War: mobile space docks, including variants that go all the way up to mark IV. Optionally, for those players who felt that the normal types of AI in the game weren't challenging enough for them already, there are new Hybrid Hives that bring an all-new-to-AI-War type of AI structure to the game. Hybrid hives are part Neinzul and part AI, consisting of loose fleets organized around the Enclave Starships. Hybrid hives have various personalities and goals, and might work together or might go it alone. They are far more aggressive than the regular AI, they gain in power over time, and they can even recapture planets. For advanced players who want to try their hand at a whole new kind of AI War experience, the Hybrid Hives provide more cut-throat opposition than ever.

Child's Play
But wait! Perhaps the best part is still yet to come. When you purchase AI War: Children Of Neinzul, you're not only getting an exciting new expansion, you're also supporting an important cause. Arcen Games has partnered with the Child's Play charity, pledging 100% of the profits from sale of Children of Neinzul (excepting any taxes and distributor fees) to helping sick kids in need.

The staff at Arcen has long admired the work done by Child's Play, and we're very excited to finally be able to contribute in a substantial manner. Our goal is to raise $14,000.00 USD for Child's Play in 2010, but even after 2010 all of the proceeds from this micro-expansion will continue to be donated to the charity. We'll post monthly updates on how we're doing towards our goal, so check back!

Want to read about all the features in extreme detail? You can of course try the demo of the expansion to make sure that you know what you're getting, but the full feature list is also now available on the AI War wiki. There's quite a bit that will be coming in this one even though it's technically a micro-expansion rather than a full expansion!

Tidalis Beta Begins, Now Available For Preorder!

What happens when a notable indie strategy developer makes a puzzle game?  We have no idea.  Our first game happened to be a notable indie strategy game, but we’ve never considered ourselves tied to any particular genre. Truth is, we made Tidalis because we like puzzle games and we wanted to take our opportunity to innovate in that space.

The "streams" mechanic employed by Tidalis is what makes it so unique -- chain reactions with a dozen blocks are trivially easy to create.  This makes the game really easy to get into, but also makes the creation of advanced multi-stage combos more challenging than in other block-based puzzlers.  At an advanced level of play, it’s the difference between Chess and Checkers; with Tidalis in the hands of an expert, there are more variables to keep in mind as you set up truly elegant interactions.

But never fear:  the easier difficulty levels are quite relaxed, and our Zen mode provides a particularly no-rush style of gameplay.  The core mechanics are so simple that the two-year-old daughter of one of our staff enjoys playing along with him.  And we suppose it goes without saying that many of our mothers are hooked on it, too.

Whether you’re just looking for a casual fun time,  a deep and strategic puzzle experience, or a series of brain-bending puzzles, we’ve got you covered.  About half of the five staff members working on this game are the hardcore puzzle types, and the other half have completely casual tastes.  We’ve approached this with our usual attention to detail: the mechanics of the timing, chain merging, and other mechanics have been refined to a ridiculous degree to provide an optimal experience in all play styles.

THE CURRENT VERSIONS ARE STILL BETA!  Sorry for the caps there, but it’s that important. This game is not nearly complete, content-wise.  We have so many more levels, puzzles, game modes, and so forth to implement -- not to mention network play.   But the core gameplay, and the first 30% or so of the content, has been polished to the point where we’re excited to finally be able to share it with folks.  We hope you enjoy playing it as much as we’re enjoying making it!

What Do I Need To Know?
If you're potentially interested in the game, and potentially being part of the beta, you'll want to first take a look at our newly expanded Tidalis section of the website.  That first page has information on the beta, including what is currently available in the initial release, and what our upcoming roadmap is for hitting final release in a couple of months.

If you want to try before you buy (which we always strongly recommend), you'll particularly be interested in the Tidalis download page.  Both the Windows and Mac OSX versions of the game are now available.  If anyone is interested in trying to run one or the other of those on Linux, we'd be curious to hear how it works -- we're also still looking for feedback on what the minimum system requirements seem to be.  At present the game does great at 60 fps on the lowest-powered hardware we have around (around 1.6 Ghz), so we know it's somewhere south of that, but we don't know precisely where.

If you're looking to create and share puzzles, or to download puzzles from other players, we've set up a Tidalis Custom Puzzles forum.  Actually, there's a whole set of forums for the game here that you should check out if you're wanting to be active in the early Tidalis community.

Please visit the Tidalis tech support forum if you need any tech support.  Unlike AI War, Tidalis does not have any prerequisites, though it helps if your graphics card drivers are functional.

The Beta Begins!
If you were around for the Zenith Remnant beta, this process will be quite familiar.  We'll post updates several times a week (sometimes several times per day), and you can download them at your leisure.  The Tidalis engine includes a built-in patching system that is multiplatform and is even superior to the one currently being used by AI War (AI War's patching system will get an upgrade to this model soon).  For the latest beta update news and release notes, be sure to check or subscribe to the main Tidalis forum.  The first beta update will be out sometime tomorrow, and they will follow regularly from then on.

We at Arcen would like to extend our heartfelt thanks for all your ongoing support.  Even as this post was being typed out, a few preorders have already gone in for the game based on players who were actively waiting for it.  We couldn't do this without our wonderful community, and we're really excited not only to see AI War continue to grow, but to see Arcen grow as a company as we explore the first of what will hopefully be many genres in our portfolio.

The Zenith Remnant Now Available For Preorder!

Arcen Games is pleased to announce that The Zenith Remnant, the first expansion to its popular space RTS AI War, is now available for preorder.  This expansion is still in the early stages of development, but we're making the alpha/beta versions available to anyone on a trial basis, and in full for anyone who preorders, so that our community can be involved with feedback and ideas as development progresses.  This sort of open development process has been so successful for our 2.0 version that we just couldn't cut our community out of even the earliest stages of our expansion.

Spokes Map

Tree Map

 
What Is Planned For The Final Release?
To some extent, exactly what is planned is a bit uncertain, and for a very good reason -- we plan to rely on community feedback and discussion to help us build the product as we go.  That said, there are a lot of very specific ideas that are now on the schedule for implementation: This is the list of planned features, and you're free to comment on any of them at any time.

As you can see, we actually have over 80% of the planned features somewhat finalized, but then again nothing is finalized until we go live.  If players hate a feature, or a better one surfaces before we get started on one idea, then we're going to adjust our plans accordingly -- that's the uncertainty mentioned above.

In a broad sense, here's what will definitely be in the expansion:
* 80 to 100 new ships, including:
   * At least 12 new ship classes with a variety of abilities.
   * At least 6 massive "Golem" ships.
   * At least 5 new "capturables" other than Golems.
   * Several new ships for allowing players expanded ways to control fleets.
* At least 4 new map styles.
* At least 12 new AI Types.
* A new, neutral minor faction in the galaxy: the Zenith Aliens (NPCs).
* 30-40 minutes of new in-game music tracks.
* At least two universal new AI ship subsystems (like Astro Trains).



Three Upcoming Golems (Shown Actual Size In Window)

AI War Demo And "Advance Release" Now Available

Arcen Games is pleased to announce the general availability of AI War: Fleet Command! You can now download a trial version of the game, as well as purchase a license key to unlock the full version.

Our release date for version 1.0 of the software remains May 15, one week from today, but the current build is quite stable and a blast to play.  We decided to do an "advance release" of the pre-1.0 version of the game in response to requests from gamers who weren't able to be part of the closed beta.

All future patches for AI War will be free, regardless of when you purchase the game. We play this game ourselves (it's replaced our other weekly RTS sessions), so rest assured that we're committed to continually updating and expanding the game.  In addition to a pair of planned expansion packs (pricing TBA), we'll also be including free DLC for all players. During the first month after release, we'll have at least one free new unit, gameplay mode, AI type, or game mechanic per week. After the first month, we'll be adding at least one of those new features for free every month, even after the expansion packs come out in 3-6 months.

AI War is already a huge game -- it will take you well over 120 hours to see every current feature if you play full campaigns -- but we're committed to expanding it even further. So much of this game is about exploration that we want you to always have something new to discover!