Soulash 2 News

Greetings fellow gods,

As some of you may already know, I've been under attack by a political group that attempted to infiltrate our community and influence my game design. I took my stance against them with probably the strongest words I could craft in a single tweet, and the whole thing became a global character assassination attempt revealing the source of this attack.

Now that the fog of war has lifted, you can find the gist of this whole drama described in many sources, like:
- ITHardware.pl article - polish press
- Bounding Into Comics article
- Niche Gamer article
- Smash JT YouTube video - very fun to watch!
- Super Virgin's video - great quality, quick written interview, support small creators!
- Michał Chwistek's summary tweet (polish)

And more. You can find all my tweets on my personal Twitter account if you are still in doubt about what I said or what this was about after the lies created about me.

Edit: Here's a rundown of what led to my Polish flag tweet.
Edit 2: Some have begun to use the words "woke" and "anti-woke" concerning my stance, so I clarified I never used any of these words as I'm not an American.

The main source of these heinous attacks was the /r/roguelikes subreddit, which I revealed later came with support of their moderator group, including a popular YouTuber who added hate-inducing context while knowing no context and shared his tweet with over 4 million people.

I want to repeat what I said on Twitter. This is over. Please do not harass anyone. The group has lost all credibility and is powerless, and the right thing to do is not to play into any of their lies.

To address the allegations directly: I strongly believe in live and let live. I am not a bigot, and this was not against the LGBTQ community, but the extremist political group that has been hiding behind a rainbow flag and pretending they are fighting for good. To all the good people of any background, you are welcome to enjoy my games and join our communities. We're gathering here to share our passion for games, and any bad actors who will attempt to stir that into something else will be removed quickly and firmly.

Despite how the narrative was created around my Polish flag tweet, I made it very clear that it was about the suffering of my ancestors, what I've been through, and that the current attempt at inflicting social pressure to bend the knee to this ideology is nothing in comparison. And that was enough to trigger these extremists into thinking I slipped up in my anger and enabled them to go all in against me, which I proceeded to handle with calm explanations, addressing only good people like Xeloph here, who gave me some benefit of the doubt and simply asked for clarification of my stance.

But now this is over. As I said, we will be more strict in banning any attempt at stirring conversations away from our games outside the Offtopic channels on our Discord. Players who can't stand hearing "no" and keep pushing further to continue baiting the community in pointless directions will be removed.

While challenging for me and my wife, as well as people who work with us on our YouTube channel and art for the game, this experience will not change our approach to developing this game or prompt us to share our political views. We plan to get back to regular activity and discuss improvements for the game with you all very shortly.

I'm very sorry you had to watch it from the sidelines as it all unfolded, not knowing what was happening. This was a real information war, and it was my first experience with something like this. I do not plan to become a controversial figure for views and reach - the stress is way too high and I like my dark hair. I just want to play games, make games, and care for my family. But I will also take it upon myself to privately help other developers who may fear of being targeted in the same way.

Here's my last tweet from yesterday that perfectly concludes this weird event in my life. If you wish to discuss this topic any further, please contain it here. I will start moderating Steam Community soon and get it back on track to be about the game. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Valve for handling moderation during the most heated moments.

Thank you to everyone who helped me make my voice heard,
Artur

PS: I will do some hotfixing over the weekend to go through #s2-bugs list, and we'll resume regular update activity next week.
PPS: Please do not write to Valve to clear the review bomb. I want any troublemakers to know this is not a place for them.
PPPS: I haven't stopped laughing ever since I saw this today. Creativity at it's finest: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3319272545

Greetings fellow gods,

As the old saying goes: "Plant a tree, build a house, and father a son." - now we can do all three in Soulash 2! Something to do that outlasts our characters, now also with the ability to continue the playthrough as one of our offspring.

This update finalizes the family system, which has been the most requested feature ever since Soulash 2 was publicly available as a demo.



We can now retire our character and let it reside in our settlement as we begin a new journey. But maybe the father of our new adventurer could join him on his quest as a companion? What about grandfather? A multi-generational squad of dwarves causing havoc in the world sounds tempting.

Here's the changelog:

[h3]Added[/h3]
- It's now possible to retire our character and let it live the rest of its life as controlled by AI.
- It's now possible to continue as one of our children or grandchildren after death or retirement.
- Added a few random encounters.

[h3]Changed[/h3]
- Carpenters in player settlements can process Mush Logs.
- Sheep and Goat ranches produce baby animals.
- Light Bringer requires mushrooms instead of spores.

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Fixed marriage simulator to respect racial adult age setting when connecting people.
- Removed the marry option from NPCs in special locations.
- Fixed persistent stash gold exchange state.
- Fixed crafter ping button sometimes not working.
- Thieves can now talk.

[h3]Modding[/h3]
- Player is considered a party member for the purpose of "ignore_party" property.

And now, the time has come to begin the work on arguably the most critical parts of this game - war, liches, and necromancy. I'm pretty sure that September will come too soon to finish wars, so we'll have a delay of about a month or two in relation to the initial Roadmap estimate.

Let the man fall, and the dead rise.

Artur

- Fixed rare lock during history simulation.
- Fixed rare crashes related to building.

Guess who's back, Artur's back.

Greetings fellow gods,

It's good to be back after the break, recharged, and overly passionate again about pumping out new updates. Today, I have the first of the two parts of the family feature, where you can start your new family in your settlement, marry someone to move to your town and family, and have children with them.



By having your own family, you can also start working at your building as another way to generate wealth, train your potential, or just progress the world by a couple of years while ensuring your legacy lives on after your inevitable doom.

Here's the full changelog for today's update:

[h3]Added[/h3]
- Button to start our new family in our own settlement.
- The player character is visible on the Settlement Screen when visiting the settlement and is allowed to work in a family building to progress the world for a few years.
- The new conversation option "Ask for hand in marriage" is available to NPCs of the same race and opposite sex.
- Spending some time with our spouse in our settlement offers a chance for a stork to bring a new child to the family during a history simulation.
- 3 new hard special locations.

[h3]Changed[/h3]
- Onions are stackable.
- Barley grows in high mountains.
- Silkworm equipment slots disabled.
- Agave plants can drop seeds.
- Children are visible under families in Settlement Screen, however, they can't be assigned to work.
- Age is displayed for characters on the Settlement Screen.

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Fixed crash when throwing trash at self.
- Throwing dragged items cancels dragging.
- Fixed some typos.

[h3]Modding[/h3]
- Optimizations in Data Tables Valuables list.
- Configurable items for marriage per race in character.json.

[h3]Hotfix v0.8.6.1[/h3]
- Fixed a crash related to death.

[h3]Hotfix v0.8.6.2[/h3]
- Fixed a crash related to confirming marriage.

Next week, my goal is to finish the family system by adding a way to continue as one of our chosen children or grandchildren and retire our character without dying. With those features done, we'll finally be able to begin working on probably some of the most exciting features of the entire project - liches, vampires, wars, and necromancy. A lot of the work for war updates will be done in the upcoming weekly updates since some things don't have to wait for the entire feature, like changes to the history simulation related to wars and battles.

I can already say that September will probably not be enough for that feature, so expect it will take longer due to my vacation and the family update, which takes significant work. This feature will shake things up a lot in terms of overall gameplay, so it's probably best not to rush into that.

Anyway, thank you all for playing and sharing your fun with the game, especially to everyone who helped new players in the community while I was away. We have something great going on here, so let's keep going!

Now go make some babies,
Artur

Greetings fellow gods,

We have a new civilization coming to the worlds of Soulash 2 today. This time, it's Trolls, and they will rise up on mountain regions to compete with Dwarves for the tastiest of shrooms.



Here's the changelog:

[h3]Added[/h3]
- Troll civilization.
- Added history event for the formation of new families.
- Beehive can now produce Bee Wax.
- Candlesticks added to Adventuring.
- Glowing and Paralyzing Mushrooms were added to Agriculture.
- Bed of Flowers added to Floromancy.
- New Berries available in Mountain regions.

[h3]Changed[/h3]
- Dead Beetle Necklace turned into a real amulet.
- Limestone added to gatherable resources in the Stonemason player settlement building.
- It's now possible to abandon level 2 and above player settlements once the population drops to 0.
- Frostbite, Bleed, Poison, and Burn can be extended with further applications before the effect ends.
- Demolishing stairs removes the connected ones as well.
- Flower Vase and Large Vase are no longer an item.
- Items without value removed from the stash display on the Settlement Screen.
- Improved stability of early settlements that died from lack of workable food sources.

[h3]Fixed[/h3]
- Fixed crash related to companion still being selected after death.
- Fixed crash related to companions with unlimited stamina cutting down trees.
- Fixed 2 issues with stuck animation when using Magic Deflection.
- Fixed an issue where production actions like milking or gathering could only be done once until the region was re-entered, even after time had passed.
- Crafting items correctly recalculates weight and provides temporary abilities.
- Fixed occasionally disappearing items after a throw.
- Maple Trees spawn on Swamps with Maple Log resources.
- Fixed Freeze stacks application from the Freeze passive.
- Fixed damage amplifier applying damage of type "none" in some cases, causing a disturbance in the flow of rivers.
- Fixed Cow Ranch image.
- Berserkers and Samurai found their tongues.
- Fixed arrows sometimes become something else.

[h3]Modding[/h3]
- Added a cheat command "find_person Name Surname" to find important people in the world.


Folks, I'm going to be brief today. I've been grinding extensively this year, and the last two months saw a lot of activity with a significant influx of new players, which is awesome but also very draining due to my activity. As I hinted before, I'm going to take a break. I hoped to get the family features before that, but I'm afraid my tank is already empty, and I need to recharge under the sun. There will be a two-week break from weekly updates, and we will resume on August 15th.



I wish you all a lot of fun with the game, and I'll see you all in a bit,
Artur