Builders Of Egypt News

[h2]Hey Builders! [/h2]

Despite our best intentions, setting a release date will take some time and we'll have to wait with the champagne, but at this point Q2 2024 remains.

To sweeten the wait, it won't be long before Emi starts to systematically showcase the game on Twitch, during which she will go through much more advanced ones. The stream announcement will, as usual, appear earlier here.

We are partially done with the closed testing of the full version with the community. As usual, you have provided a huge amount of feedback to help us complete the game. We still have doubts about the difficulty level - as always, opinions are divided as to whether it is too difficult or whether the difficulty level is appropriate, no less we need additional verification that the latest changes after testing are satisfactory. So we will be extending the tests to include more people.


[hr][/hr]
We have also made a significant change to the game's content. At the very beginning of the game's development, we were going to add a sandbox mode, which was removed over time in favour of the 39 missions that were going to be available right from the start of the game. These are the same 39 missions that the player plays through in the campaign mode, which changes different parameters from mission to mission - there's no need to repeat it, everyone knows what it's about.

Well, the change is that we are bringing back the sandbox by adding a whole new mission where everything the game has to offer is available to you right away. So you'll be able to build all the buildings, you'll be able to get all the resources, you'll be able to import and export everything. You can also choose to play in peace mode. Everything will be available, except for the main events, because they are pointless here. So I present to you the first Sandbox mission, Horn of Plenty:



What about the other 39 missions? From now on, they will be unlocked as the player progresses through the campaign. In other words, each level completed during the campaign will unlock that level from the scenario menu. Does this mean that it will not be possible to bypass the first 4 missions and skip ahead? A special cheat will help all veteran builders to do just that.



In the meantime, as usual, we invite you to our Discord. That's it for now, we're waiting for the release date!

Take care!
Jacek

Builders of Egypt TikTok

[h2]Hey Builders! [/h2]

I'm looking at the calendar and I have a few questions....

Why has there been no update for so long? Have we forgotten the game? Nothing of the sort! Although I have to admit that time is passing more quickly than I would like, so let's not waste any more time and get on with the news!

We'll start with the most important one, which is how the QA testing of our long-awaited game is going. While minor bugs will probably be fixed before the game launches, the biggest ones are already behind us. And there is a lot to test because, in my subjective opinion, the content is very broad for such a game. Very! And everything has to be checked again to make sure that we do not make any bugs for the launch.


As for the launch itself, we are so close to finishing the game that we will set a final release date within 2 weeks and announce it on the next devblog!
This means that at this point we have a complete game that is playable and complete. All that remains to be done is to add a few or a dozen hints, improve some of the graphics and, most importantly....

...checking and possibly improving the mission balance!


As a reminder, there will be 39 missions in the game, the first three of which are available in the Prologue and will be familiar to most of you. The rest of the missions have been released for testing through playtests and other closed events, giving us a lot of great feedback that we have tried to incorporate into the game where possible. However, there are still a total of 34 missions that no one has seen because they have not been revealed in any way.

So a question to our most loyal community:
[h3]Are there any people who would like to test the full version?[/h3]

We are looking to assemble a group of people who, after signing the NDA, will have exclusive access to the game and will be able to share their thoughts on the difficulty, balance, difficulty of the random tasks, or any other comments that might influence the final game.
If you are interested, familiar with Builders of Egypt and have a good knowledge of how to play the game, then join our Discord and we will take care of the rest!

[h3] The deadline for submissions is 07 March 2024.[/h3]


As a thank you, you will receive a copy of Builders of Egypt and your nickname (or real name if you prefer) will be listed in the credits.
(The more veteran of our community you are, the better your chances).

If you're not interested in testing the game, I'd still like to invite you to our Discord, where we'll be running various competitions to celebrate the upcoming launch, with a chance to win your copy of the game, of course.
It's also worth following our profile on TikTok, which, due to the nature of the portal, requires us (or rather Emi) to adapt the videos we show. See for yourself what potential our Emi has :)

Builders of Egypt TikTok

[h3]The next devblog will be published at the end of March. By then I expect to have completed QA tests and closed player tests...and thus a fixed release date![/h3]

It is with great pleasure that I present to you an update to the Builders of Egypt game, bringing with it a number of expected changes, as well as some that no one expected, but were worth adding to the game.
[h3]
You'll be able to see all these changes for yourself:[/h3]

• this Saturday [16.12.2023] at 6:00 CET when the patch will be rolled out
  
• this Saturday [16.12.2023] at 3:00 CET on Steam and Twitch, where you'll be able to watch Emi once again as she takes on the new challenges!

Twitch -> official Twitch channel

If you want to know more about the full version and the expected release date of the game, scroll down. Without further ado, here is the presentation of the changes!

Note that I'm mainly comparing the changes to this year's [Playtest], which I'll refer to as such, but I'll also mention [Prologue], which I'll refer to as such, and for which the list of changes is particularly relevant.
[h3]
1. [Prologue] New map and major revisions to the 1st and 2nd maps.
[/h3]There is a new third map where you will face more challenges. There are new buildings and the ability to use them to satisfy parameters that did not affect the game in previous missions. You may also find that the police station finally has a sense of existence in this game.



[h3]2. [Playtest]&[Prologue] Scripted Events.[/h3]
Scripted main events have appeared in which there are various tasks to complete. Usually these will involve delivering or collecting products, but in later missions where more mechanics are revealed, things get a lot more interesting.

What do scripted events mean? Firstly, they will not always appear during the game. Sometimes the player has to "overdo it" [annoy Pharaoh and you'll quickly see what I'm writing about here] to trigger an event or reach the appropriate level of city development.

When such an event is triggered, it must be completed to complete the mission. Completed does not mean successful, an event can just as easily fail and then it is also completed. And what effect this has on the rest of the game you will find out in the full version!



[h3]3. [Playtest]&[Prologue] Side Quests.[/h3]
An all-new feature that makes waiting for various events or mission completion more polite. From time to time, a person in town will ask the player for the location of a person or item. As you progress through each mission, the variety of tasks increases significantly. In other words, almost every building has a quest associated with it, which can be triggered at different times. These tasks are not mandatory, but they can provide tangible benefits, sometimes disproportionate to the task at hand 😊



[h3]4. [Playtest]&[Prologue] UI changes.[/h3]
A big problem was understanding what was actually happening to the city and what was affecting the changing parameters. From now on, all parameters of the city will be additionally described, but most importantly they will have their own graph. On the basis of such a graph, it is possible to estimate the trend of changes in a particular parameter. Each resource also has a graph showing how much of the resource has been stored, bought and sold, so you can see what has happened to a particular resource over time.



The second major change to the interface is the ability to change important mission parameters. It is now possible to turn off fires completely, or to turn off Desirability - the rating of neighbouring buildings by houses. The latter feature has been a major point of contention in discussions about its legitimacy or how it works. It has been corrected and better presented in the House tab.

The same goes for the Sentiment parameter - it was previously presented in a very obvious way, which has now changed. Of course, in addition to the hints that appear, the house itself will tell you why it doesn't want to raise its level or why people are fleeing. The inhabitants themselves will also have more to say.

[h3]5. [Prologue] Advanced Tutorial.[/h3]
Most of you will already be familiar with this, but for Prologue players it will be something of a novelty - in Missions 2 and 3 you will be able to complete an additional tutorial that explains how to complete the mission and solve the problems that await the player in general. This tutorial, unlike what you saw in Mission 01, allows some freedom in planning the construction of individual buildings, while also explaining the super-important relationship between buildings, especially between Production Buildings and Stockpiles.



[h3]6. [Prologue] Adding voice actors.[/h3]
Seemingly nothing, and somehow it made loading missions more enjoyable. Still no matter that the huge text is assimilated faster, but reading the text is not mandatory and out of respect for the history of Ancient Egypt we could not write less there than you see yourself 😉
[h3]
7. [Playtest] Restoration of language versions. [/h3]
Some of you accidentally discovered that the blocked language versions can be bypassed using Prologue. Unfortunately, the effect of this was that the game then was partly in English and partly in the language of your choice. We are now restoring all languages. The quality of the translations has been improved but it is still not perfect, and sometimes probably far from the ideal we would like to achieve. Quite a few errors have been corrected, especially inconsistencies between building names and, for example, commands in the tutorial. No less professional translations and additional proofreading at a level we can find in AAA games is costing 1/3 of the total BoE budget, which, to say the least, we can't afford.

In view of this, if you see a glaring translation error - let us know! I now have a total content lock and a dedicated person to implement all corrections, so any corrections will go much faster than it was before.

[h3]8. Builders of Egypt release.[/h3]
A few words about the current state of Builders of Egypt and its expected release. After longer than planned testing of the Prologue update that this post is about, I'm left with a few tweaks to the code, and the whole game will be handed over to PlayWay QA for testing and tweaking. This means that realistically we are about 3 months away from release. This is subject to change as testing all 39 missions is difficult to estimate.

Take care!
Jacek


https://discord.gg/mhT7sqHKk3

Hello Builders!
I would like to give you an idea of what is in store for you in the near future, what changes will be made to the game, and what changes have already been made. But before we get to that, first a few words about the Playtest, which will be closed on Sunday 08.10.2023 at 6 pm CEST.

I am extremely grateful to everyone who took part in the playtest and left their feedback. Not only the good ones but mainly the bad ones, because the tests were not used to make me feel better, but to really improve the game. And without further ado - the conclusion is that we need change. And what kind of changes? A great deal of the feedback has been about the same thing, so let's discuss that below. Some of you have already seen part of this post on Discord, but here on Steam I'm throwing in some more screenshots.

First of all, the "Big Update"® for Prologue will show you the changes that have been implemented. This is expected to happen later this month. After further internal testing of all the changes I am implementing. So, what are we going to change?

1. Changes to the UI - displaying goods, displaying stocks, removing unnecessary information and adding new information, the lack of which made it difficult for many people to understand the game. I have also increased the interactivity of the information panels - now a click on something will usually trigger an effect, e.g. a re-display of the message that triggered the mission to a detailed graph for a particular stock.
   
   this is not the final look! Work in progress!
   
   This means that the player will have full information about what happens to a particular commodity over time. How much of the commodity has been harvested, how much has been exported and how much has been imported, with the cost or profit detailed. A seemingly insignificant change but very important for understanding the game economy.
   
   this is not the final look! Work in progress!
   
   
2. Adding random quests to complete during missions. While there are 3-4 main quests in each mission (which were disabled for the duration of the playtest, which was a mistake), there will now be various additional optional quests to increase immersion and reduce downtime, especially during monument building. It's a lot of extra stuff. The completion of these tasks will always result in some sort of reward in the form of resources, money and/or points at the end of the mission. If you do not undertake the quest, nothing will happen, but you will temporarily lose the opportunity to improve your score or to acquire raw materials that ->by some strange twist of fate
   
   
   
3. As you have often pointed out: There is a lack of visible people in buildings. And it's not just about static figures doing something in a place, but above all about a specific "representative" of the building doing something. In Pharaoh it was the case that almost every building had such a representative. And this representative actually fulfilled the function of the building. This was especially true for buildings such as the shrine, the temples, the post of the architect, and other similar buildings. These workers usually have no sense of existence in the game, as they do not perform any practical activities, due to the function of the buildings in their area.
   
   Now they will be restored/added to the game. They will circulate around their building not only as an additional visual effect, but also as mobile information and advice points for the player. When the player clicks on such a worker, they get comments, advice and recommendations on what to do to improve the function of the building that worker comes from.
   
   
4. Rebuild of the tutorial to include more of the stockpile, granary and bazaar, especially the upgrading of houses and neighbourhood ratings. This caused the most problems, which is not surprising as it was poorly explained. This arrangement of the production chain, in which the Stockpile is the main building but is partly interchangeable with the Granary, needs to be explained with examples, i.e. to create conditions in the missions so that these differences are definitely more visible.
   

That's all for today. The next devblog will appear just in time for the announced update to Prologue. Stay tuned!


https://discord.gg/mhT7sqHKk3

We have news for you straight from our ancient world. With the Steam Strategy Festival just around the corner, we've made a number of updates to our game demo.

Here are the main changes:

• We have removed a horde of bugs:
  Compared to the previous demo, we spent a lot of time fixing a lot of bugs. We are proud to announce that the game is now in a state that allows you to progress smoothly through the missions. You are no longer in danger of being held back by major bugs.
  
  Now you can focus on solving problems to win and not on discussing why something doesn't work on Discord :)
  
  
• Updated UI:
  
  A number of changes have been made to the user interface. Your valuable feedback, especially from the ongoing playtests, has been invaluable to us. The interface is now more intuitive and functional, making it much easier to manage your town.
  
  
• Improved Tutorial:
  
  Starting your adventure in Ancient Egypt is now even easier. We've improved the tutorial for Mission 01 and added a brand new tutorial for Mission 02. Now you'll feel more confident as an architect!
  
  
• More guidance:
  
  We know that sometimes everyone needs a little guidance to overcome challenges, especially in BoE. That's why we've added lots of hints and tips to make sure you never get stuck.
  
  
• Adjusted difficulty:
  
  Our work on the difficulty balance has borne fruit. Now the Easy mode is really for beginners, so you will not be overwhelmed by the game's difficulty.
  
  

And that's not all! You'll find more details on the changes in our upcoming devblog. If you liked our demo, we invite you to join the playtest now, where missions 03, 04 and the unusual mission 06, where you can build your own pyramid, are waiting for you!

Let the Steam Strategy Festival be your excuse to discover new possibilities in Builders of Egypt!