Hey friends,
Happy 2025, happy lunar new year, and we hope you’re still enjoying the Caves of Qud 1.0 update. We have some updates to share with y’all. The team is still taking a rest, but we are still planning out the future of Qud, and the first priority will be looking at localization and console porting. Awards season is also in full swing and we’ve been nominated for some very prestigious categories!
[h2]Award Nominations! x4![/h2]
First is “Best Strategy/Simulation Game” at the
D.I.C.E Awards. The show takes place on Thursday, Feb. 13 at 8:00PM PT/11:00PM ET and you’ll be able to watch from home on IGN’s streaming channels. See if you can spot Jason (lead developer, writer) and Tanya (Kitfox lead) in the crowd!
Caves of Qud has also been nominated for Excellence in Design, Excellence in Narrative, and the Seamus McNally Grand Prize at
the IGF Awards. You can watch along on Wednesday March 19th at 6:30PM PT/9:30PM ET on
the GDC Twitch channel.
We're honored to be nominated alongside these other fantastic games. Any time a game releases it's a miracle, but especially the 17-year wandering journey that it took to make Caves of Qud. To be recognized by other developers is really just the icing on the cake.
You can also participate in voting for Caves of Qud for the IGF Audience Award
right here. Voting closes on Friday January 31st at 11:59PM PT so make sure you get your vote in ASAP! RIGHT NOW! Don’t keep reading! Go vote and come back!
OK you voted? Cool. FYI, Caves of Qud is also eligible for to be nominated for a Nebula Award. The only way a game can be nominated for the “Best Game Writing” award is via an SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing Association) member. If you are a member you should be able to access
this forum post and get a game key, to help you judge! If you have friends who are Nebula voters, send them our way if you think they would appreciate Qud’s unique writerly vibes.
Jason is also going to be hosting a special Writing Caves of Qud Nebula stream on
his Twitch channel on Monday February 3rd, 3-5PM PDT. He'll be talking through the dev process and showing off some of the game's writing.
[h2]Porting, Localizing, and More...[/h2]
As we’ve said, first the team is resting. But, when the team is back from their break, one of our focuses will be to explore localization and porting to mobile and consoles. Localizing a game with procedural text like Caves of Qud is a unique challenge that’s not easily solvable, but it’s also a fun problem to dig into. We already have an international audience excited to take a look, so we need to take the time to figure out how to get it done properly and make sure its unique tone and writerly virtues shine through in every language.
And of course consoles and mobile are also not trivial projects to undergo, but we are committed to getting Caves of Qud available to more folks out there.
[h2]Speedrun Winners[/h2]
Here are the winners of the Caves of Qud Launch Speedrun contest! You can check out the
Wander,
Classic and
Bzzt runs on Speedrun.com and
the Ultra Ending run on Twitch. Thank you everyone who participated, whether it be the streamers, the viewers, or the folks who volunteered to help organize the event. If you’re interested in Caves of Qud speedrunning, you can check out the qud-speedrunning channel on the Caves of Qud Discord or
Caves of Qud on Speedrun.com. We are interested in running another speedrun event in the future for non-streamers too so let us know if that’s something you’d be into. Winners will be receiving their prize packs from Mighty Merch soon.
That’s all for now! Please tune in and watch the award shows and cheer us on. We will have more to say on development soon.
-Kitfox + Freehold Games
