Negotiations Have Failed! News

[p]It's been 1,390 days since I first wrote a note in my Obsidian vault on a sleepless night in January of 2022, when I saw, in that almost-dream state, the layout of a playing card game and rapidly came up with rules that determine how units attack each other, how their armor works, and how turn order can be determined. And that game is now available for you to play, with a whole lot more features and a grooving soundtrack.[/p]

• [p]Get NEGOTIATIONS HAVE FAILED! this launch week for a 15% discount![/p]
• [p]Click here to join our Discord to find other people to play its multiplayer mode with![/p]
• [p]Tell your friends to check out the game and join the Discord, too![/p]

[p]If you beat the demo...[/p][p]I have a secret to share if you beat the demo and don't wish to replay the tutorials, allowing you to get right to grinding shards to invade the Aetheryx Lair! But if you wish to find out, either join our Discord to ask, message @goofysocksgames on X, or make a post in the Steam Discussion board to ask us how to do the tutorial skip.[/p][p]Other fun things:[/p]

• [p]To celebrate the launch of the game, I did a quick stream of three games that influenced NHF!: Final Fantasy I, DUNGEON ENCOUNTERS, and Magic the Gathering. You can watch it here if you want to hear some interesting tidbits on how these games influenced NHF[/p]
• [p]I have been and will be streaming NHF! on my Twitch channel in the coming weeks, including hunting down all of the game's achievements! My current plan is to stream by myself on Tuesday evenings and then on Thursdays with @home from the NHF! Discord.[/p]
• [p]In the Discord, I shared some of my musings on possible development directions of the game post launch, depending on the levels of interest I see. There may be extra, multiplayer-only battle rules that I may add, or if I'm really ambitious, additional bonus campaign modes![/p]

[p]Thank you for reading, have fun with the game, keep in touch![/p][p]--"Moody"[/p]

[p]Hey everyone![/p][p]During the Next Fest, we had a successful doubling of our total wishlists on Steam, and a good portion of people who tried out the demo. Please share any feedback in our discussion board or our Discord![/p][p]What Moody's been up to:[/p][p]Mostly marketing the game on various social media, and also doing some IRL playthroughs of the game with friends. Moody also livestreamed the entire demo.[/p][p]Very minor issues were identified, and the muse continues to visit me as I see in-game events happen, inspiring me to add just one more challenge achievement for the post-campaign content this past Friday. Some of the most fun things to do in NHF's battle system are after you explore the main campaign![/p][p]In our Discord, we started a high score contest for the Endless Patrol mode, featured at the end of the demo. We even did a fun live stream with side-by-side competing, followed by a head-to-head match from the full game's multiplayer mode. (I won 😉!)[/p][p]Short-term plans after release:[/p][p]What's ahead after release is addressing any emerging issues that players may identify, including any issues that players may experience with their diverse sets of console controllers. If I hear enough reports, I'll likely update the controller library that I used for the game. And depending on the interest levels, I'd be very excited to add more content post-release, like extra rules for the multiplayer modes which recently came to mind.[/p][p]Looking forward to hearing more from our players![/p]

[h2]The NHF Discord Community is here![/h2][p]Click here to join us and start our community to...[/p]

• [p]Discuss NHF![/p]
• [p]Share high scores[/p]
• [p]Connect for Remote Play Together sessions (for the full game's P2P skirmish mode)[/p]
• [p]Suggest game ideas/improvements[/p]
• [p]Report issues[/p]
• [p]Talk about other games[/p]

[p]Looking forward to chatting to you there! Your participation and feedback will directly help improve NEGOTIATIONS HAVE FAILED![/p][h2]Achievements and post-game content fully implemented[/h2][p]The past three weeks, I finished fully implementing and testing the game's achievements as well as other goodies to make the game even more enjoyable after beating the campaign. I'm really excited to see everyone compete with one another and push themselves in their runs of the campaign.[/p][p]We'll have more updates in the near future as the Next Fest commences![/p]

[p]It's here! Download the demo to train yourself in NHF's battle system through the main tutorial area![/p][p]Once you're more comfortable, tackle the demo's final section and share your high scores in the Steam community or on X while tagging @goofysocksgames![/p][p]In the meantime, I'm doing some final additions to make the post-campaign game modes even more enjoyable, in response to the divine gameplay muses visiting me at the most inconvenient of times even though I already was excited to share the game before these additions.[/p][p]About the announcement image:[/p][p]I spent a majority of my progress of the game on artistic assets that weren't implemented along the way, so you can see in my GitHub contributions over the last month how last minute inspiration has been striking me![/p]

[h2]What I've been up to[/h2][p]It's been just about four weeks since I last published an update, and I'm really excited that we're so close to sharing the game with a bigger audience. Here's where my attention has gone:[/p][h3]Setting up playnhf.com[/h3][p]We have a public website live, with a lot of the content that is already available on our Steam store and a link to the demo on itch.io.[/p][h3]Steam Integration: Cloud Saves, Remote Play Together, and Build Approval[/h3][p]Since this is the first game I've published on Steam, most of the time lately has been learning the process of implementing the Steam SDK into the game's code and getting NHF to launch/run. While it's a bit of work to find your way around, the actual integration of the game's code amounts to not much more than installing a library and adding a few lines of code.[/p][p]What was most exciting to me was how easy it was to set up things like Cloud Saves and Remote Play Together, the latter being especially desired since the game has local multiplayer. I've always wanted to include it as a listed feature in the store, but I wanted to double check first-hand that everything was functioning first hand before listing.[/p][p]This past Thursday had an important milestone, too, with the full game build getting approved by Steam.[/p][h3]Achievements![/h3][p]Up until last week, including achievements seemed more like a "nice to have" than a "must have." But once I had all of the necessary elements above in place, I couldn't help but wish to do some crunch time (i.e., working after dinner until a later-than-usual bedtime) this week to define the achievements, design the unlock badges, and implement them into the codebase.[/p][p]While NHF's game experience is rewarding on its own, I know how much that little notification of an unlocked achievement during a key gameplay moment adds to the experience. I wish to respect those who invest their time and attention into my game, and I feel that including these is a fun little gift for player's game profiles.[/p][p]I'm mostly done with the achievements, with just the last steps of testing to verify that they unlock throughout the game experience.[/p][h2]What's next?:[/h2][p]Still lots of marketing stuff! We've been active on X and now TikTok as of this week, showing some interesting trivia for the soundtrack. We're also contacting some streamers, too.[/p][p]I'm currently determining whether the demo will be published next week for the press or for the start date of the Next Fest. Again, you can find the demo on itch if you wish to play now.[/p]