Black Forest News

Greetings,
Resilient Survivors of the Black Forest,

The moment we've all eagerly awaited has finally arrived! Black Forest 2.0 is now officially launched, marking a new era of survival. My heartfelt gratitude goes out to my dedicated community for making this journey possible.

Are you prepared to face the horrors that dwell within the forest? Darkness reigns, and sinister secrets stir. Can you defend your village from the relentless attention of the woods' malevolent inhabitants? The darkness awaits, and it’s time to embark on your journey to survive the unrelenting horrors that await you.



Being a small indie studio, I truly understand the mighty power of our community, and you can help me in numerous ways:

🌲 Spread the Love: Unleash the darkness! Introduce Black Forest to your family, friends, and even your favorite streamer. Your whispers can beckon more survivors to our realm, and united, we’ll confront the looming shadows that await.

🌳 Steam Review Magic: After you’ve braved the depths of the forest’s darkness, consider leaving us a review on Steam. Your insights not only illuminate the path for potential chiefs but also stokes the fires of determination as I relentlessly refine my game. Your feedback fortifies my resolve!

🌲 Social Media Squad: Share our news, unveils the updates, and recount your harrowing experiences with fellow chiefs on social media and become a harbinger of Black Forest tales.

No pressure, though! I'm just thrilled to have you here with us, whether you're gathering resources, building up your village, or simply hanging out. Your presence in the Black Forest community means the world to me.

Join our fellow village chiefs on my Discord channel, where you can report any bugs, share your thoughts, and provide feedback on the game. Your insights are invaluable, and together, we'll continue to shape the future of Black Forest.

The darkness may be unrelenting, but so is our gratitude for your unwavering support. We can't wait to see you in the Black Forest and hear your tales of survival.

Stay vigilant, stay determined, and most importantly, stay alive.
The adventure has just begun,
Tom

Greetings, brave villagers and survivors of the Black Forest!

It's been a long, treacherous journey through the darkness of Early Access, but the time has finally come. I am thrilled to announce that Black Forest is stepping out of the shadows and into the light of its full 2.0 release! Prepare yourselves for a harrowing experience like no other, where danger, death, and despair are your constant companions.

If you haven't been keeping tabs on the project, or just tried it out somewhere along the way, below is a quick recap of what I’ve added to the game during Early Access. If you’re curious to see all of the updates we have done through EA you can look back through the NEWS section here on steam!

New Additions in Early Access:

• Expanded from 2 maps to 13 maps - and from one difficulty level to four, for a total of 41 playable levels!
  
• More dangers, 15 monsters to meet instead of 2 - and also added unique behaviours to the various monster types, background information and guards to defend against them!
  
• So many new buildings - when we started this journey two years ago, we had a handful of basic buildings. Now we have workshops, four types of walls, four types of fields, various animal pens and decorations.
  

The most recent additions, coming to you with the 2.0 release on the 25th:

• Monster Discovery Panel: Uncover the secrets of the forest with the all-new Monster Discovery Panel. Dive deep into the lore of the creatures that haunt your village.
  
• Exclusive Castle Level: Prepare for a new and exclusive castle level that will test your survival skills like never before. Can you withstand the horrors that lurk within?
  
• Onion Field: Tend to your onion field - small, slow-growing, and undemanding. A valuable addition to your resources.
  
• Banner Decoration: Customize your village with the new Banner Decoration. Make your mark on the Black Forest and claim it as your own.
  
• Personalize Your Banner: Once you've discovered a certain number of monsters, you can upload your own image and choose your own colors for the banner. Show off your unique style as you lead your village to survival.
  

Gameplay Changes:

• Rebuilding Walls and Gates: Walls and gates can now be rebuilt in place by choosing the repair option, even if they have been destroyed. Reclaim your defenses and fortify your village.
  
• Unlockable Difficulties: To truly test your mettle, harder difficulties such as Hard and Doomed must now be unlocked by conquering easier maps first. The forest demands a greater challenge.
  
• New Icons: A fresh look with new icons that enhance your gaming experience.
  

Plus, as always, lots of bugfixes.



🌳 As we take this momentous step into the 2.0 release, I kindly ask those who have spent time playing Black Forest to consider leaving a Steam review. Your reviews are invaluable to me as solo indie game developer, helping me reach more players and continue to improve the game.🌳

Thank you for being a part of the Black Forest community. I can't wait for you to dive into the darkness once again and face the challenges that await in Black Forest 2.0. Your village's fate is in your hands, and together, we will rise to the challenge.

Stay vigilant, stay determined, and most importantly, stay alive. The Black Forest beckons and your destiny awaits.

Tom
(Black Forest Developer)

• Fixed: Two code bugs leading to minor errors
  
• Fixed: A few localization erros
  
• Fixed: Leaderboard for story "Rebuilding" should now work
  
• Fixed: No more duplicate paths for existing buildings
  
• Cleaned up dialogs and removed old lines from the removed storyline
  
• Continued translating the dialogs to German (currently: 243 of 769 entries translated = 31.6 %)
  
• Updated a few tools and packages used
  
• Updated a couple visual assets to fix possible shader and render issues
  

New:

• Reworked the stories. The incomplete "Betrayl" removed and replaced with "Rebuild" - a winter story focussed on resource management and supplying your village with very few attacks.
  
• Added the final sandbox level: Ziegwald
  
• New: Some levels have experimental setup for automatic paths. When you build houses, a path to the nearest road or other path will be added and peasants will generally follow these paths when going somewhere, except when cutting across grass is much shorter. The levels that have this set up now are Kroburg, Refugee Camp and Swinvale.
  
• Added a page about weapons to the manual.
  

Bugfixes:

• Fixed: The elusive bug that caused some monsters on some maps to spawn in the sky
  
• Fixed: Several bugs in "Children's Tales" where dialogs would repeat when loading a save game.
  
• Fixed: A bug where in the demo levels appeared to be available, but would never actually load.
  
• Fixed: A few tiny visual errors you probably didn't even notice
  
• Fixed: A bug that caused buildings not being available in some stories after finishing specific quests
  
• Fixed: A bug in the flow of "Children's Tales"
  
• Fixed: Old messages and events in "Founding Kroburg" should no longer repeat after loading a save game
  
• Fixed: Wording error when sending individual peasants (now correctly "a peasant is ..." instead of "a peasant are ..."
  
• Fixed: Rotation of fishing spots on the Antoburg map
  
• Fixed: Some manual pages were outdated, updated them.
  

Other Changes:

• Considerably expanded the german translation
  
• Improved guards animations and logic
  
• Increase peasant character sizes and raised movements speeds accordingly - to make them fit the other models better and make them more visible when zoomed out.
  
• Shaved 700 MB off the install size of the game by optimizing. This should also reduce the RAM requirements and make the game run more smoothly on some low-end machines.
  
• Removed voice-overs and the voices audio setting. Voice-overs were incomplete and had no serious chance to be completed at a quality level that I would be happy with. If the game sells enough copies to hire proper voice actors, I'll be happy to do that and add them back in.
  
• Removed the ballista from the game. It was never finished and in testing just didn't add enough fun for all the complexity it brought with totally new game mechanics.
  
• Updated Unity and a bunch of assets to latest versions. Hoping for performance improvements and fewer small bugs.
  
• Updated the steamworks and Facepunch (the library I use to manage Steam things like leaderboards)