Earth Overclocked News

[p]Chronicle Bench just released a new game, ByteRogue! This is a minimalist turn-based puzzle-tactics roguelike where you are a wizard-thief casting spells to plunder a warehouse.[/p][p][/p][p]You can buy ByteRogue during its introductory 25% discount! You can also spend slightly more to bundle Earth Overclocked with it through the Chronicle Bench bundle (Earth Overclocked is 80% off right now as well).[/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

We're putting Earth Overclocked on sale for 80% off as part of the Steam Endless Replayability Fest!

In other news, after years of hiatus we finally have a new game to announce, to be released later this year! It's called Catwink, a casual card-matching party game where every card matched activates an effect. It's our own take on classic card games like Crazy Eights and its contemporaries.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Take extra turns, redraw your hand, force other players to draw cards, copy other players' actions, and more! Not only do these card effects change up the game on every turn, but a Hot Potato sort of mechanic occasionally makes its rounds as well. When a player is being forced to draw cards, they can deflect the attack to other players by matching cards like Skip and Reverse, in addition to being able to stack the draw penalty!

You can wishlist Catwink here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1356870/Catwink/

We may also have other projects coming up. Stay tuned!

-Dramatically changed the AI of most enemies and bosses
-Most enemies have significantly less HP
-Some weaker enemies have slightly more HP
-Boom Blob enemy changed completely to Fire Blob
-New enemy: Frostspark
-The Yeti boss fires its lazorz
-Fixed Yeti boss being offscreen for too long sometimes
-Lowered enemy spawn rates in dungeons
-Adjusted enemy spawn rates in the overworld
-Made the healthbars flicker when unable to pickup a heart/chestplate
-Made "go-to" dungeon rooms glow
-Enemies spawned by arenas can no longer go through barriers
-Increased the dungeon focus border by 4 tiles on all sides
-Harmful puddles flash less frequently
-Remaining hazards are now destroyed on boss defeat
-Made Bombcano's self destruct warning more obvious
-Normal Apocaleye enemies no longer travel through walls
-Made arenas thinner vertically
-Buffed Glove weapon
-Added a yellow glow to awesome weapons' icons
-Other minor changes, various bug fixes, and slight performance boosts

-Dramatically changed the AI of most enemies and bosses
-Most enemies have significantly less HP
-Some weaker enemies have slightly more HP
-Boom Blob enemy changed completely to Fire Blob
-New enemy: Frostspark
-The Yeti boss fires its lazorz
-Fixed Yeti boss being offscreen for too long sometimes
-Lowered enemy spawn rates in dungeons
-Adjusted enemy spawn rates in the overworld
-Made the healthbars flicker when unable to pickup a heart/chestplate
-Made "go-to" dungeon rooms glow
-Enemies spawned by arenas can no longer go through barriers
-Increased the dungeon focus border by 4 tiles on all sides
-Harmful puddles flash less frequently
-Remaining hazards are now destroyed on boss defeat
-Made Bombcano's self destruct warning more obvious
-Normal Apocaleye enemies no longer travel through walls
-Made arenas thinner vertically
-Buffed Glove weapon
-Added a yellow glow to awesome weapons' icons
-Other minor changes, various bug fixes, and slight performance boosts

I am afraid to announce that, after the Linux port and the AI update, Earth Overclocked will not be receiving future major content patches. This means that the Trials expansion has been canceled.

I apologies for this bad news. There are two major reasons why this decision has been made, both listed below.

1. Both the software used to make the game and the engine itself are unreliable.
Since this was the first really big project that the team has made, a lot of mistakes were made during the development of the game, leading to unstable code that is now difficult to maintain support for regarding future content patches. There is also the fact that we are rather unhappy with the software we used to create the game, GameMaker: Studio. GameMaker: Studio is fantastic for creating small, simple games in a very small amount of time. After 3 grueling years of working on Earth Overclocked, however, we learned the hard way that this software isn't well-structured for large projects. I understand that large successful games have been made with this software such as Undertale and Hotline Miami, and good for the developers that pulled that off, but the programmers in the Chronicle Bench team have not really enjoyed using the software ourselves to make a big game.
There is also the problem that as GameMaker: Studio receives more and more updates, it becomes more and more unstable. It has way more bugs than it did a few years ago and my team is basically fed up with poor treatment of the software.
In fact I just loaded up GameMaker: Studio today after a long time of not using it, ready to finish off the AI update and release it after this weekend, and was greeted with this error constantly spamming my screen:



2. We are putting full attention into an entirely new, completely different game.
Right after the full launch of Earth Overclocked, my team has started development for a simple turn-based RPG called Coded Universe. You can read our devlog here: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=54417.0
We are excited to be making this game, since it is my true dream game that tells a very personal story of mine which I created when I was younger. It is dedicated to my coding partner and best friend Aaron Griffin, whom I met through the roleplay that created this story and is currently helping me make Coded Universe a reality. My team wants to put full-focus into this game, and in order to do this we need to move on from Earth Overclocked, which we already completed anyways.

The AI update will still be coming and I will still try to get a Linux port out as well as fix any future bug reports, but major content patches are no longer going to be occurring.