The Matriarch News

Hey Sinners,

I spent the past couple of weeks implementing a lot of feedback you provided during and after the beta.

New Features

• The big new thing is the rework of the lever system, in an effort to prevent the sinners from instantly going underground to dig and win too fast, without having to cooperate much, I replaced the previous lever with new ones which not only require to be found but also set on the right number. The combination that opens the exit is progressively revealed each round, and someone will have to take some risk to find it!
  
  
  
  
• More timer options (45s & 75s)
  
• Nun names are sorted alphabetically in the book
  
• The interacting / reporting UI has been reworked
  
• New menu for controls
  
• The names of Sinner are now green
  
• When you're sent back to the main menu after the Host disconnected, you now receive a message 'Lost connection with Host'
  
• To ensure balanced games, there are now recommended settings based on the number of players
  
  
  
  

Bug fixes

• Improved chat (movement correctly works after sending a message)
  
• 'Press F' correctly disappears when activating a lever
  
• Ping should show the correct value instead of 9999
  
• Names of sacrificed nuns don't stack anymore on top of each other
  
• Characters are not wrongly displayed on top of certain decor elements (like the apple tree) anymore
  
• Devices that are bought in the game lobby are not saved properly
  
  

Finally, after 1 year of developing the game, I'm happy to see that the Matriarch made it to the top 500 most wish-listed upcoming games on Steam, the game is slowly getting ready for the release, more to come soon!

Enjoy the week-end, cheers!

Chewa

Hey Sinners,

First and foremost, thanks to everyone who participated in the beta, it was a quite big achievement, the demo was in the top 5 steam demo in term of concurent players (which peaked at 400!) and there were tens of thousands of players over just a few days! I'm thankful for all the feedback you shared and I can't wait to continue improving and preparing the game for the next phases.

Here is a quick update on what will be my focus in the upcoming weeks:

• The most frequent feedback was that as a Sinner, you spend too much digging and not enough time pretending, which I agree is an issue, ideally I would like it to be 50/50, but currently rushing to dig seem to be the most efficient strategy to win (it's even more problematic when The Matriarch is inexperienced). There were some great ideas to counter it, like adding constrains to when you can use the trapdoors or limiting how many tiles you can dig each turn, but ideally I would want a solution that still allows this strategy but make it way more risky / less efficient. An idea which I'm going to try is that instead of having levers with a binary state (activated/deactivated), each lever will have a number that Sinners can change (like a padlock), the right combination to unlock the exit will be hidden next to the church and revelead progressively, which should encourage the Sinners to spend more time outside and also to communicate more with each others.
  
  
• Another feedback was that having flexible game settings is great but can lead to unbalanced games, I will add recommended settings that change based on the number of players.
  
  
• Stability also continues to be a priority, I'm happy to see that the last beta much more stable and the vast majority of you could join games and complete them without major issues but there are still a bunch of annoying glitches that need to be fixed. Bugs like the Matriarch journal not showing the correct information have already been fixed!
  
  
• I'm also adding small quality of life features, I've just implemented to option menu that will let you configure the audio and resolution settings.
  
  

That's it for now, have a great end of the week, cheers!

Hey Sinners, hope you're doing well!

I've been a bit less active on social media recently, that's because I've been busy fixing bugs reported during the recent Beta and there wasn't much to show, but in the past few couples of weeks, I've also worked on the second map, which I am happy to share now. I also have nice news that I'll keep for the end of the devlog

• Bug fixed:
  
  - Not being able to use the chat
  - Character that doesn't turn / can't use their capacity
  - Invisible character
  - Stuck on a black/green screen
  - BOTs are not correctly marked as 'dead' in the book
  - Players being able to join a game that already started
  - Game doesn't end when Matriarch leaves
  
  
• New Map: The Barn
  
  - The map is designed for shorter games & fewer players, (2-4 players ideally), it's much smaller than the first map and has only 3 activities
  - New activities such as shearing sheep or peeling potatoes, the gameplay is a bit different than the activities of the first map since it's not about moving but rather using or holding the action button with the right rhythm. In the future, I'd like to experiment with a variety of gameplay (like action + movement)
  - Check out the new map video https://twitter.com/matriarchgame/status/1530539132505792512 if you want to know more
  
  
• New Game Option: Random Matriarch
  
  
• And finally, I'm happy to announce that The Matriarch has been selected to participate in the upcoming OTK Expo, on June 8th & on Asmongold's twitch channel. Asmongold and the OTK team will be reviewing 30 indie games, save the date!
  
  

That's it for this month, after wrapping up the new map, I'll focus on public servers and a few other small features, stay tuned!

Cheers,

It's been a while since the last devlog here!

After the Steam Festival in February and a short break in March, I've been working on a mix of big and small new features.

1. Scoring and shop systems: At the end of each game, earn a number of coins that depend on if you won, lost, or died. Use these coins in Mephisto's workshop to buy new exciting killing devices! My plan is to regularly update the workshop with flavorful cosmetics.
   
   
2. The Golden Shovel feature! At the beginning of each game, a special shovel is hidden somewhere on the map, if a sinner finds it, they will be able to dig 2x faster
   
   
3. Sinners now have bigger names than BOTs (for sinners only), making it easier for players to identify their allies.
   
   
4. The Matriarch now has a 'reset all' button in the journal, changing all the checkmarks or crosses to '?'
   
   
5. I slightly reworked the first map (adding some flavorful decor elements) and started working on the second map
   
   

I will activate the demo on Steam for 4 days from the 29th of April to 2nd of March to test all of these, if you didn't have a chance to test the game yet, or want to test the new functionalities, I'd be happy to have you participating in this new beta!

Cheers,

-Chewa

Hey Sisters,

I'll be playing The Matriarch with some friends, come chill with us!
Ask me anything, I'll be happy to talk about the development or the future of the game.