Gemporium News

Hello fellow Moles💎⛏️

It's been a crazy few months at the studio, and it's only getting crazier with everything we have planned for Gemporium! First let's recap what's been going on:

• We were featured in the Six One Indie Steam event!
  
• We recently showcased at DreamHack Dallas and received an Audience Choice award!
  
• Gemporium is starting to be covered by some large content creators 👀
  
• Finally, a new version of the demo is in the works with tweaks based on feedback and new content
  

Gemporium is going to be featured in this year's Wholesome Direct, so tune in Sat, June 7th at 9am PT / 12pm ET / 6pm CET to support us and the other amazing games that will be featured :)

We're also participating is Steam Next Fest this June, which starts on June 9th! An updated demo is going to be available during Next Fest (as well as after it ends) so here's a few teasers for what we have in store:







If you've been enjoying the Demo so far we would really appreciate if you left a review, since it's super helpful for indies and visibility on steam! If you haven't been enjoying the demo (or just want to chat) then come join our Discord and let us know!

It's hard to come to terms with reality, but at Merge Conflict Studio we are committed to the players and boy have they spoken.

The demo has allowed our small studio to get waves and waves of feedback from players, so if you have played and given us your honest thoughts thank you! We have heard your complaints and have tried to ignore it for too long. No one likes with cute and cozy art styles anymore.



In order to stay relevant in this horrible market for games and make sure we can continue to sustain the studio doing what we love, we have made the difficult decision to pivot and fired our artist. Now, we are full sending the new vision for a Realistic, High Fidelity, Raytraced Gemporium.





We are so excited to share this update with you and hope that the AAA approach to graphics will help us find a larger player base. As of now we have only updated the steam page to reflect the new style, but we hope to continue listening and internalizing the feedback from this lovely community.

To make SURE that the Gamers know we are making a Real Product, Gemporium install size will also grow by 200gb.

Hello gem enthusiasts!

Once again, thanks so much for trying out the Gemporium demo! As always, if you want to stay up to date with Gemporium and the happenings of Merge Conflict and/or provide feedback, you can join our Discord!

We've got one main new feature today and some other fixes! Let's get into it.



[h2]Additions and Misc. Changes[/h2]

• Added a new tutorial system! When you start a new save, you will now be asked if you want to do the tutorial. The new tutorial takes place on “Day 0” with no timer running to give you more breathing room to get accustomed to everything in the game.
  
• Added a tutorial popup that lets you know you can return to the mines multiple times a day for new gems.
  
• Added animations to tutorial popups opening and closing.
  
• Added an arrow that bounces over areas you’re being prompted to use in the tutorial to make sure you don’t miss ‘em.
  
• Touched up performance! There should now be less occasional stutters, which we observed was happening for some players.
  
• Slightly increased the buffer time between when buttons linking to external pages on the “Thanks for playing” screen are revealed and when they can be clicked.
  

[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where if you just finished refining a gem, you could place another already-refined gem on the table and the gem would get huge and cover the whole screen. Glad we stomped that one :)
  
• Fixed an issue where if you didn’t close a tutorial popup and reentered the area that activated it, you could get a duplicate of that popup.
  
• Fixed an issue where the TV would reactivate automatically every time you reentered the main Hub.
  
• Did some UI cleanup for ultrawide monitors in some scenes.
  

Hello gem enthusiasts!

First we would like to thank each and every one of you for trying out the Gemporium Demo, we truly appreciate it! Discord to stay up to date with Gemporium, give us more feedback on the demo and see what else we have cooking at Merge Conflict! Today we have a small update to address some feedback after our first week:



[h2]Bugfixes[/h2]

• Fixed a bug where multiple mining spots would generate over each other, leading to a "phantom" spot that either looked interactable or stayed lit after it was used
  
• Fixed the weird collision issues with stone fragments in the refinement minigame
  
• Fixed a bug where leaving and entering the mines quickly would put a tiny gem on the floor
  
• Fixed a bug where dragging an already refined gem into the refinement spot would make it cover the entire screen
  
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to continue mining for gems while the game was paused
  
• Fixed a bug where sometimes the gem bag upgrade wasn't functioning properly
  
• Fixed a bug with audio settings not loading correctly
  

[h2]Balance Changes[/h2]

• Day length as well as shop length has been extended
  
• Day 1 now has a special longer length to help with onboarding
  
• Added a new timer ticking sound when getting close to shop time
  
• Added a blinking indicator to Bernard's Upgrade Catalogue, the mines entrance, the refinement table and shop to give newer players more direction
  
• Gems can no longer be picked up when the bag is full
  
• Gem bag will give you a notification when it is full
  
• Reworded some of the tutorial popups for clarity
  
• Reduced the range a hammer can damage a gem to prevent it from feeling unfair
  
• Increased the amount of gem veins that will spawn in the mine
  

[h2]Casual Mode[/h2]
There is now a new setting for Casual mode, which disables the in game timer and opens the shop at the start of every day. This allows you to freely mine, refine and sell whenever you would like! Finishing a shop day (whether by leaving the shop, selling all of your gems or running out of customers) will progress you to night time. The demo is not currently balanced around Casual mode, so we do recommend new players to leave it disabled (but I'm not your mom do what you want).