Nowhere Prophet News

The Steam Awards are here, and what better time to look back at the amazing year Nowhere Prophet has had! From a wonderful beta-run through to all the new updates (with one right around the corner) we've had a tremendously busy year, and we couldn't have done any of it without you!

This Awards season, we needed to pick an award to suggest to you, and right from the very start, you've always talked about how much style the game has. Every card, leader and effect is brimming with it, and you've made sure we know which have been your favourites along the way! There's no better feeling than sharing some content only to have folks enthuse about it, so that's the category we've gone for!



Of course, it hasn't only been your favourites you've talked about all year. Your feedback from first-access through to the latest updates has been crucial to making Nowhere Prophet the game it is today - you've talked through strategies, posted videos and constructed essays(!!) that have helped us build and grow, and for that, we cannot thank you enough.

We were especially glad that so many of you joined us during the Discord meta-game, and crossed Soma with us on the run-up to the game's launch. Some of you were even lucky enough to be entered into some of the game's events, and created some new cards and convoys, which was an amazing experience to be a part of! We're always in awe of how passionate folks are at launch time, and this was no different!



We're constantly floored by your energy and enthusiasm for Nowhere Prophet, and undoubtedly we're carrying that forward with us to a bright future - we've got an update for you that's JUST around the corner as well as some other secrets and topics that we're actively investigating, so there's plenty more to come - We hope you love them as much as we do!

Thank you for an amazing year, it's been wonderful travelling with you
Martin, Mike, Dan, Arwyn & Pip xoxo

I've finally had time to step back and take a look at Steam Cloud Saves and I managed to get it to work. That's the good news.

The bad news is that it requires some changes to the save game system.

But any tweaks to the save system are dangerous business. Your progress is important and should never be lost or deleted by the game. This is - in my opinion - one of the biggest sins a game can make. That's why I tested these changes on Windows, OS X and Linux and found them to work.



However this is something I want to handle with care so I will first roll out these changes in PREVIEW. If you are playing in PREVIEW and want to be extra careful, do make a backup of your save game files before you launch the updated game.



You can find your save files here:

• Windows: %USERPROFILE%/AppData/LocalLow/Sharkbomb Studios/Nowhere Prophet/
  
• OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Sharkbomb Studios/Nowhere Prophet/
  
• Linux: ~/.config/unity3d/Sharkbomb Studios/Nowhere Prophet/
  

Also note that this does NOT enable cloud save. It is simply the changes made in preparation for steam remote storage.

Also, if you've played in the PREVIEW branch without any strange or unusual behavior, then please do let me know, preferably via Discord! The more people tell me it works the sooner I can roll it out to everyone and enable cloud syncing!




If you're interested in the behind the scenes code stuff, here's what I had to change and why:

There's two types of Steam Cloud: Automatic and Manual. Manual cloud gives me more control but also needs to put the save files in a folder relative to Steam. That's a problem because we already have a save file elsewhere. So either we convert all files with a lot of work or we keep two sets of save games at all times which is unreasonably finicky.

Automatic cloud on the other hand works great, but it has the issue that it only downloads files to your local drive, it never deletes them, even if the game did so. So if you play, some files got deleted. It syncs to the cloud. You play on your other system, it syncs but the last version of those deleted files still exists on this machine. That causes trouble.

As it stands the game deletes the save for your current run when it's over and it checks for deleted files to see if you have an active run. That's obviously not playing well with Steam Auto Cloud.

So the change I made is that on Steam it doesn't delete the files but instead overwrites them with very simple files that only contain one letter ("X") and then not only checks for missing files but, even if there is a file it makes sure that if it contains only "X" that it's considered to be nonexistent for the purposes of the Main Menu "continue" button and other things.

This change is to the game itself. However "enabling auto cloud" is a steam-wide feature that is either disabled, enabled for developers or enabled for everyone. But before I can enable it for everyone without causing deleted-file weirdness, everyone needs to have a build with the save game changes. And that needs to be tested first. It was tested internally and is now moved to Preview testing before it rolls out to everyone.

And then finally, can I enable cloud saves.

And that's the full story.

- Martin

Oh, and by the way: If you've read this far and haven't yet written a Steam Review, I'd really appreciate it if you'd take the time to do so now! Reviews are very important to Nowhere Prophet being visible on Steam and thus to the game's sales!

I've been busy working on this update for a while. Some of you might have played around with it in the PREVIEW branch but I finally have all the artwork here and in place so it's time to roll this out to everyone!

So, what's in it?


This is the big one! Over 40 new units have been added to the game. Four for each faction (1 common, 2 rares, 1 legendary) plus two unique spawnables....

And just in time for halloween, some of these boys, girls, beasts and drones are of the creepy and spooky variety! Check out the thornhide skulker, a massive spider-like creature sporting a carapace reinforced with razor sharp quills. Or the wretched sadhu, a cultist that prowls burial grounds and wears the ashes of the cremated as decoration. And then there's the pious feeder. The devoted caretaker of his horrific master, the accumulator drone! This tentacled monstrosity consumes biomass of the living and the dead to steadily grow in strength, size and ferocity.

The goal was to add a set of units that enable and improve a number of different deck builds and playstyles. Give them a whirl and see what you can come up with!





Brawl says: If this unit enters battle in a position from which it can attack, then it will fight the first target in the opposing row.

This is a pretty useful keyword, especially if you're behind in terms of board control. It's not quite as powerful as Charge, that lets you decide who to attack. And Brawl doesn't allow you to attack the leader, but it is very useful to set up some quick trades or get in that extra blow to break the enemies hold on the battlefield.

If you check out the new units you will see that it is very present with the Hilltribes, the Beasts and the Cultists.




Our second new keyword is Stoic. It reads: If a unit with stoic is destroyed it suffers no wound.

This is great to create some more resilient units, make more judicious use of Revenge effect and to mitigate some of that damage you take in slower strategies and builds.

Note that no unit has unconditional Stoic in all cases, but there are a few units that gain (or lose) Stoic under certain conditions. And there's a few ways to bestow Stoic upon units otherwise.

Stoic can be found primarily on Union soldiers, lepers, Shiram crusaders and drones.




Another big new feature is the ability to discover and salvage the remains of your previous run. If you played a campaign game and died, then some of your followers and items can be recovered on your next campaign run.

More will remain based on how far you made it and what you were using in your deck when you met you grisly end.

Can you make it to the quest node and recover some of what you lost?




A number of elements of the game were improved and rebalanced. Chiefly among them the enemy decks:

On lower levels enemy decks are less synergistic and they increase in strength more evenly as their level increases. Also some new cards have been added to the game and to the leaders to provide interesting threats that the player can play around. Watch out for traps, mines, automated weaponry and the occasional well-aimed boulder!



Besides enemies the cost of travel was also tweaked. General costs have been increased a tad across the board, while hope gain from luxury items has been reduced a tad. To make up for that reaching a milestone now grants a sizeable hope boost.

This makes for more focused and interesting decisions when it comes to travel without making travel to the next milestone harder. Together with that the chance for fights on the road has been dramatically reduced. Both these factors also help keep the length of sessions a bit more focused.

And lastly the chances for enemy surrenders were tweaked to make it a lot more manageable to force enemies into surrender if you can control the battlefield. This should make getting some of these unlocks a lot easier.


Of course there's also a lot of smaller changes to cards and effects. See the changelog for the full list but here's some of the more interesting tweaks:

The maximum size of the convoy deck was reduced to 24 cards (from 30). This change was made because 30 cards is usually an inefficient deck. Most fights can be won with a 10-15 card deck, only on long matches against bosses will you need more. To help players build a tad more effective and consistent decks the maximum was reduced. If you continue a game where you exceed this new maximum, then you will only be able to remove cards until you are below the new maximum.

The essential charge units (Cultist and Janwar Bear) were both tweaked down a tad by having their Strength reduced by 1 (to 2/2 and 4/2 respectively). This gets them a bit more in line with the other units while still keeping them strong and useful.


And that's it for this update! If you have any thoughts and feedback on the changes, please join the Nowhere Prophet Discord and let me know!

And now: Have fun!

- Martin

Hey everyone! It's been a quiet few weeks over here as I've been hard at work at the next big update for the game! This one coming with new cards, new features and lots of other tweaks.


It not only took some time to build but was then extensively tested and refined in beta. This was only possible thanks to the help, testing and feedback of the Nowhere Prophet Discord members.

If you are interested in contributing to the further development of the game (and in playing early beta versions of updates), do join the Discord!

Specifically I'll soon be asking around for cool "entry lines" for the new legendary followers in this update. If you want to contribute, the Discord is the way to go! And even beyond this update, I'm already thinking about and discussing the next things (new class!) in there, so do join in!


Before I get started, the usual preview disclaimer: This is a PREVIEW build and it is obviously not polished. There's bound to be temporary artwork, untranslated text and other rough edges. Do be aware of that.

That said, if you're interested you can simply go to your game's properties on Steam and select the PREVIEW from the betas dropdown. It has no password so you're free to give it a try!

Now, what's the update all about?

• Making more playstyles and strategies viable/possible
• Making the difficulty curve more smooth and fun

And how are we getting there? Here's the big changes:

Check out this glorious temporary artwork!

This is the heart of it all: 40 brand new followers, for for each of the ten faction for a total of 10 commons, 20 rares and 10 legendary dudes. Some of them doing brand new things like partially healing your leader or making use of the brand new keywords!

Stoic: If a unit with stoic is destroyed it suffers no wound
Brawl: If this unit enters battle in a position from which it can attack, then it will fight the first target in the opposing row

There's also a few new leader cards to discover!

The convoy recovery event on the map

A big new feature is the fact that if your run fails you can now find the remains of your convoy in the second run. It will be a quest visible on the first map. If you make it there you can try and win back some of your old followers and items!

There's much more to the update but since the list of changes has gotten so big I'll just leave it to you to read up on the details via the in game changelog!


So, what are you waiting for? Give it a try! And let me know what you think!

And while I have you here: It'd be great if you could leave a review for the game if you haven't already. Plus if you have some time on your hands: it would be very helpful for people to find the game if you could use the Steam Store tags feature to apply the tags you think appropriate! Thanks so much!

And in the meantime I'll be busy getting this thing rounded out and polished so it can go live for everyone soon!

- Martin

I've sneakily updated the PREVIEW branch last week with the first half of this change (convoy decks only) but now, with everything done, I wanted to let you all know and hear your feedback!

So, I've spent a few days tweaking the enemy decks (both leader and convoy). My goal was to make enemies a little easier on the lower levels, making them easier overall on Chosen but without taking too much bite away on Burdened and Doomed.



To that end I built some new tools to better visualize enemy decks, and I improved the control I have over their deveopment across difficulties and levels a bit.

I've also added 5 brand new leader cards to the enemies: 3 constructs and 2 other cards. And you may find some enemy decks now playing hazards and other obstacles!

In any case:

I've just updated the PREVIEW branch on Steam that allows you to test out some changes. If you want to give it a try, simply right click on the game in your steam library, go to beta and select PREVIEW.

Please note that on the new cards and effects, the texts are only available in english and some artwork may be temporary. Also be aware that the addition of new cards may make the savegame of a run in PREVIEW incompatible with non PREVIEW versions!

Basically: Work in progress, pardon the dust :)