Shadows of Forbidden Gods News

Two weeks after release, and after a bit of a holiday for me to rest and rebuild, work can resume on Shadows. I've not yet fully planned out how things will go, just getting to V1.0 full release was enough of a task.

The first new addition is a new god, which is now available on the beta-branch. Its powers and mechanics are roughly playable, but need polishing and almost certainly bugfixing.

Going forward I'd like to avoid breaking mod compatibility as rarely as possible. There were a few issues even with V1.0, and I'd like to avoid repeatedly forcing mod creators to update their work. This may mean working towards one big release in October, rather than releasing this new god onto the main branch at the end of the month.

This god itself is quite a technically challenging one, which required a fair amount of changing stuff under the hood in the past few months. It involves games of many thousands of turns, letting players reset the world after each victory, and playing against a more powerful humanity which adapts to how the player has won in the past. Expect even more bugs than usual, as this infinite gameplay pushes the game's systems to their limits, past what they were initially intended to do.

Its gameplay mechanics build on this cyclic system, and it has the ability to curse families, then empower these curses by harming the family, in order to create powerful agents in the next cycle out of their descendents. It can also buff its current agents and harm heroes, making it quite an individual-focused god.

Regardless of how much testing is done, bugs seem to always slip through

This bugfix catches a couple of them, in a way which in testing lets people carry on past pre-crash saves.

Specifics:
-Fix gamebreaking bug, where a civil war could crash the game and prevent game progression
-Fix major bug where the "Kill the Chosen One's mentor" questline would break when selecting "spare" option

After a year and a half in Early Access, Shadows of Forbidden Gods has reached the end of its roadmap and is ready for full release. The game has come a long way since its first version. New Gods, new agents, bunch of UI changes (in the first few versions, you couldn't even click on units to select them, you had to rapidly click on a location a bunch of times, a truly awful UI choice).

The game has also expanded to include modding, and the community can now enjoy a variety of extremely high quality mods, covering new narrative events, entirely new gods with complex mechanics and new high quality art.

This community participation has gone beyond just the modding side of things. The gods themselves were based on ideas from the community in the very early days, leading to a variety of interesting perspectives on how a dark god could be, both from a narrative perspective and from a mechanical one. As well as this, players have stepped up and offered services such as the new style portraits by Brad which have been included and made the game better for everyone. Alongside these, a great many of the good ideas which have shaped the game over the Early Access period have come from the players. Youtubers have also been instrumental in getting players to discover the game, and been vastly more effective than my own attempts at marketing ever have. Lastly, but not least, the detailed bug reports have allowed a quick and painless process of patching issues as they arise, with players going above and beyond and submitting save games, steps to reproduce, screenshots and log files to let the problems get fixed as soon as possible. Everyone who has contributed, in whatever capacity, has my enduring gratitude, and has made the game what it is today.

Version 1.0 marks the end of the roadmap, and the end of the game's core mechanics being changed, but not the last update Shadows will receive. A new god is already being worked on, with the art being finished within the week, ready to go on the beta-branch in July, as well plans for a new agent with some mechanics I want to try out. There are no concrete plans for the future beyond that, but definitely some exciting ideas worth trying out.

Sadly not everything I'd hoped for could make it into the game. Translations are still not in, although not ruled out for a future update. Time is a finite resource, with only one full time developer, and some things took longer than hoped for, or caused more issues than anticipated. Human-aligned Divine Entities stand out as the worst design decision, which were cut because they simply weren't good. Maybe they'll return in a new form (ideas have been proposed and discussed, and seem good).

Overall, this whole process has gone way better than I expected, and better than I could have asked for.

As for the update Version 1.0 itself, it brings updates and buffs to the game's most deserving peoples: the humble orc. Granting them new ways to expand their territory a bit (including a new agent), and letting them build economic alliances with the Dark Empire (which has also been buffed). New victory screens have also been added for the harder-to-achieve victories, as rewards for the most dedicated players (Frozen world, Madness and Deep Ones).

Art for the new screens has been by https://rettroper.artstation.com/
While the various gods and holy orders have been brought to life by https://www.artstation.com/meganwong
Both of whom have been great to work with, and are responsible for giving the game its unique monsters and apocalypses

Thank you all for being here, it's been and hopefully will continue to be, amazing,
Yours, Bobby Two Hands

Update changes in detail:

Gameplay:
-Added new bonus god, as a fun alternate way to play with how powers work
-Added "The Shaman" an orc spellcaster which can create a geomantic locus
-Orcs can now "encroach" on human settlements, taking them over if the settlement's society goes to war with a third party
-Divine Entities removed
-Chosen One "redeem sovereign" motivation reduced
-Chosen One "build Alliance" motivation reduced
-Heroes' motivation to access item caches now depends on their contents
-Item caches now gain profile over time
-Gold cost of orc expansion reduced
-War length now increased somewhat if nations are far apart
-Added more mourning events, decreased frequency of existing ones to compensate
-Chosen One's motivation to warn national rulers specifically now depends on world panic
-"Aware hate Dark Empire" changed to the more thematic "Alliance hates Dark Empire" and applies only to The Alliance
-Dark Empire VP gain reduced 5.5 -> 3.5
-Warlords may now secure funding for the orcish hordes from The Dark Empire
-Wayfinder motivation to perform "find ruler" quest increased
-Hero motivation to perform "redeem ruler" quest increased for Alliance capital if using "Alliance is Vigilant" option
-Hero motivation to perform "drive back shadow" quest increased for Alliance capital if using "Alliance is Vigilant" option
-Unrest reducing party event probability reduced by 75%
-Nobles will only rebel from Dark Empire formation if they AND their settlement are below 90% shadow
-Influence gained by donating to Holy Orders now rounds up

Other:
-"organise the horde" challenge now chops down nearby trees and ruins the terrain a little bit, for cosmetic orc flair
-Trade route view made less dark to hopefully reduce disorientation
-Added "World Nations" panel to allow at-a-glance view of nations and their relative stats
-Added "Self" to the family view, so you can click and pan to the current focus
-Mods can now define custom configuration options, which can be changed by players from the main menu's mod config screen
-Message for a lost evil temple will now have a go-to for that temple's location
-Added turn log
-Added SHIFT and CTRL modifier keys to left click to help selecting units/locations

Bugfixes:
-Fixed incorrect probabilities in exploration event with razor wire
-Fixed political agitation not working
-Fixed Elves having double political agitation
-Ophanim's faith can't be removed by heir inheritance
-Fixed (again?) neutral evil creatures such as vampires, deep ones or drones causing menace when attacked by agents
-Deep Ones can't have Deep One children (or if they do, at the very least they can't inherit and become accepted and normal members of human society)
-Ophanim theocracy take-over now works properly when performed on non-capital locations
-Dark Empire outposts will now start enshadowed
-Fixed The Dissident's Security change from "Sympathisers" trait
-Fixed Orchish Encroachment doubly-applying and not being infiltrated
-Fixed game options not working on some monitor resolutions
-Armies no longer wait to join battles which they can't find a side for (due to being at war with both sides)
-Agent portraits fixed in person finder view
-Improved clickability of locations
-Nations will no longer move capitals away from Elven cities as soon as they encompass a human city

Quick bugfix, putting it on the main branch due to its severity: Political Instability, a core mechanic for taking down empires, wasn't working. Fixed now.

Quick fix to an issue which caused ALL agents to spawn with 100% Cordyceps infection. Thankfully benign, and won't affect anything gameplay wise (I think?) but still probably best to clean that up real quick.