Ruinarch News

We've got an overall really good reception so far! Thank you to all those who purchased early!

We've started working again on our Save System but had to squeeze some critical bug fixes and quick tweaks. There are other less critical bugs reported and we can get back to working on those as well as balance fixes after we complete our Save System.

BUG FIXES
- Opinion changes should now update properly
- trolls should now be able to correctly butcher their catch
- players cycling through living villagers can now find lycanthropes in wolf-form, clicking on their name will also navigate correctly to the wolf
- skeletons should no longer contract Zombie Virus
- fixed bright light when too many characters are huddled in one place
- fixed issue where locust swarm spawns at a different spot
- fixed missing visuals of seized burning characters
- fixed ArgumentException related to Villager Migration
- fixed NullReferenceException sometimes occurring related Meteor
- fixed NullReferenceException triggered sometimes when a character turns into meat while burning
- fixed NullReferenceException when the Pangat Loo undeads attempt to invade an already empty town
- fixed overlapping music during Divine Intervention
- fixed issue where Loadout menu can be dragged left or right from the tab buttons
- fixed some memory leak issues

TWEAKS
- your minions should no longer attack recently tortured and failed brainwashed victims until they manage to return home
- corpses should no longer pop out when your demonic structure destroys tombstones upon their placement
- cultists should now rarely report crimes of other cultists
- increased size of Icalawa region and reduced exploration parties there
- if a cultist manages to become a necromancer, the Undead faction will no longer be hostile towards the player
- slightly increased success rate of Brainwash of Evil and Treacherous villagers even when they are in Normal mood (NOTE: this can still be reduced by some positive Traits as well as being leaders of their faction)
- kleptomaniac trigger flaw should also be able to steal from acquaintances as well
- passive low mana gain reduced to 25 (NOTE: this feature is only a temporary stopgap until we properly balance mana generation)
- reduced costs of Brainwash, Torture and Snatch
- reduced costs and durations of some Afflictions
- updated some outdated tutorial texts

UI
- added VSync Option
- for players with their game crashing when hovering over spells or afflictions, turn off the Show Video Tooltip toggle at the Settings Menu

Hello everyone! Today, Ruinarch will be available as an Early Access game in about an hour. Early Access can mean different things to different people so we want to be as transparent as possible to maintain trust with the players. For us, it's important that there is enough gameplay and content available so that it already has entertainment value worthy of your early support. Then you can set it aside if you want while we continue developing it to the fullest and come back to it months or even a year later and find even better value from your initial purchase.

So with that said, I would like to give a clearer overview of what's already available in the game so you can have a more informed decision whether it has enough value for you:

1. I think the most important thing I should stress is the game's core concept. While scenarios end with the player wiping out the Villagers, it is not about doing it in the fastest or easiest way possible. The game is about creativity and storytelling and our focus will always be on giving you tools to enact your evil masterplan. We will still do our best to reduce options or combinations that would make the invasion process trivial and also introduce Villager responses that would counteract them, but I hope players can also gain equal entertainment from prolonged games while watching the Villagers struggle and survive, and occasionally nudging the story forward using their powers.

2. There is a tutorial scenario that includes a combination of various abilities from the three player archetypes. This walks you over most of the game's major features. The tutorial scenario is replayable enough that when it was available as a demo, there were players that logged in over 20 hours of gameplay!

We strongly recommend going through the tutorial scenario before doing Oona.



3. There are five custom scenarios with various unique features and challenges. We tried to make these as different as possible, ranging from 1 region maps up to a 4 region map. From this point on, you can choose to play using one of the three available Archetypes - which determines the abilities that you will have available. Each scenario has some small secrets you may only uncover after multiple sessions and they should have some replay value as there will be some differences each playthrough.



4. There are around 26 spells, 16 afflictions, 7 demon types, 5 demonic structures and about a dozen miscellaneous abilities. There are also over 20 monsters and 8 artifacts. On the Villagers side, there are 2 races, 13 character classes and 2 special classes. There are over 30 Traits, over 50 Status Effects and over 70 Actions and Jobs.



5. There is a Custom random world generator which has a few options to customize the experience. You have the option to turn on No Threat mode for a more relaxing invasion. You can also turn on Omnipotent mode so you won't have to worry about limited abilities and mana. This feature is in its early days and may not be as fun or stable as we'd like until more content in the game is added.



6. Progress during a scenario playthrough cannot be saved yet but this will be the first thing we're adding next. For the current scenarios available, smaller ones can typically last between 30 mins to over an hour while bigger ones may extend up to two hours.

7. The Villager AI I would say is serviceable but still needs significant work to be able to generate more varied and interesting stories comparable to that of RimWorld and Dwarf Fortress. This is the aspect of the game that we intend to focus on more intensely over the coming months. Over the course of our Early Access, expect them to be able to react better to your actions, and also have more meaningful and long lasting interactions with each other.



There is already a Living Roadmap at the store page for our long term milestones. But before that, I'd also like to inform everyone about our plans for the immediate future - starting immediately after we launch up to September. Before jumping into whole new systems, we first want to make what's already there better and finish the features that were already planned but we just weren't able to include at launch.

[h2]Save System[/h2]

As mentioned on our previous announcement, our first priority is to have a Save System within playthroughs. This will be our main focus right after launch and will work on it alongside any major issues reported during the launch week.

[h2]Villager AI[/h2]

It's a huge undertaking to develop fully independent Villager AIs that can survive on their own against a powerful overlord player, and also have fully-realized lives with believable relationships and interactions. Please excuse us for our shortcomings but we're working very hard to keep on improving them over time.

It will take the entire Early Access phase to get it all right but we want to resolve as many of the smaller issues as soon as possible - including Pathfinding and Avoidance problems, Villager Party Coordination, Combat and Fleeing and missing reactions to events around them. Please help us by pointing out any that you may have noticed during your time with the game. We have a feedback form for this, which is accessible from the game so you can report concerns while playing.

[h2]Village Expansions[/h2]

Another priority is for Villagers to be able to repair completely destroyed structures and also expand further when certain criteria are met.

We also want to allow some Villagers to be able to start up a new Village. Ideally, we'd like to finish this alongside the Village Expansion feature but this will be lower priority compared to other features listed here.

[h2]What Happened?[/h2]

Sometimes, important events may occur away from player eyes and the only thing you'll discover is the aftermath. We're trying to figure out how to introduce some sort of "What Happened?" button to give you a summarized version of the chain of events that caused some major incidents (why was someone imprisoned? how did this villager die? why did they declare war? why did he attack?). Hopefully, this helps the players easily know more about what's going on in the scenario.

This feature is harder to implement than it might appear. We're not yet exactly sure how long it would take but it's something I will start digging into right after launch while the developers are working on the Save System.

[h2]Menu Rework[/h2]

Villagers list will be combined with Factions UI to organize and present them better. We'll also group up Demon and Monster lists together. We've already started work on the updated Log tab as part of our Menu Rework and improvements. You can see a screenshot of the draft on our previous post.

Another feature we want to add is some way for the player to bookmark particular Villagers. This way they can keep track of what's going on with favorite Villagers even when not directly looking at them.

[h2]Balance Tweaks and Bug Fixes[/h2]

As we've been with the game for a very long time, our concept of the game's balance may be skewed. That's why we'll listen closely to what players say regarding what's overpowered, or what's lacking in these Archetypes. We will address minor issues as we are able to, but there are also scheduled tasks over the coming months solely reserved for giving each Archetype some needed tweaks and additions.

At the same time, we also want to emphasize that this isn't top priority for us. The game is intended as a story generator, so moving forward, we really want to provide you with as many tools as possible to "create your story". Ideally, we should just leave it up to the player and their own creativity how they want their playthrough to progress - but we are also aware that there is a chunk of our players that need an appropriate amount of challenge to enjoy the game, so we now we should always allocate effort to address this.

Thank you for reading and we hope we can accomplish our goals quickly and make your early support worthwhile!

This last week was hectic but also extremely gamechanging for Ruinarch. We've been included in Yogscast's TinyTeams event and several popular youtubers have uploaded positive playthroughs of the game. This sudden increase in visibility has increased our Wishlists to over 16k and propelled the game from near unknown to Steam's Popular Upcoming! Thank you everyone! Wishlists actually secretly tell Steam's Algo about how popular a game is, and in return they will show it to even more people. So please tell more of your friends to Wishlist us :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTZTnhvh3m0

We are happy with the reception so far but are also aware that a large part of it is because of the game's perceived potential in the future. We know that there is still a long way to go before it becomes what we can personally consider a great game. For now, our ideal goal for the Early Access Launch is for you to have your money's worth already even if the game is still a work in progress. We want players to get enough hours of entertaining playthroughs right from the start. And then when you go back to the game a few milestones later, we want you to get many more new and equally entertaining experiences.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JV26WYkoxg

[h2]Difficulty[/h2]

We have noted player concern regarding the game's difficulty. We will be tweaking what we can prior to launch, and future features related to villager AI and options will improve on this further. Your input during Early Access will also help us further tweak Villager behavior.

[h2]Crimes[/h2]

The way crime works at this point is a bit off. Someone can just be accused of a crime and people will apprehend them with no questions asked. It's also a bit hard to track which crimes a Villager has committed.

To fix this, a Crime status will now go through phases - from accused to wanted to judged. A witness must report a crime to an authority first (typically a Faction Leader or Settlement Ruler) and that authority will decide whether to apprehend the Criminal or let it go. Technically, a criminal can eliminate witnesses and his crime can go unreported.

The "Criminal" on-hover tooltip will also give further details about the Crimes.

[h2]Logs[/h2]

We know the Logs can get cluttered and hard to sift through so we are working on ways to improve its usability. Here is a rough draft of our progress:


[h2]Save/Load System[/h2]

Early on, we decided not to include playthrough Saving available immediately during the Early Access launch as we know we are starting with smaller worlds with sessions that should go by rather quickly (usually less than an hour, and very rarely over two hours). We would then introduce it later on once the worlds get bigger, and the playthroughs are expected to last way longer. The time-savings we then spent on putting more features into the game.

We have noticed from player behavior during the Steam Summer Festival and also TinyTeams that players may already have longer playthroughs than we originally anticipated. We now feel it's important to have playthrough Saving asap and we tried squeezing it in during these last two weeks but there is just a lot of data to serialize and it's cutting through other fixes and improvements we feel we really need to include.

We've made the hard decision to stop working on it for now to focus on making the game more stable by launch time. We will be working extra hard after launch to complete it. I hope you guys can be patient and we'll make it available asap right after launch.

*this is an embarrassing tiny team problem and we apologize for the lack of manpower*

[h2]Random World Generator[/h2]

I'd also like to set expectations regarding the random world generator. It is already working but may feel undercooked. There's not enough variety yet in terms of content and that can only be addressed over time. This is why we refocused some of our efforts on 5 custom scenarios with unique and entertaining setups that fully utilizes all content we have available. This way, we can assure that you have enjoyable experiences while the random world generator is still developing. More scenarios will be added continually during Early Access. We will also occasionally add tweaks and changes to existing ones to keep them fresh.

[h2]Scenarios[/h2]

Here's a quick overview of the scenarios we are currently working on (details subject to change):

[h3]Oona[/h3]
A single desert region with a burgeoning human town. Unknown to these residents, the surrounding caves are filled with danger. There is a hibernating dragon in one of the nearby caves. And dangerous trolls lurk in some of the others. Rumors also abound of women seeing doppelgangers of themselves, and wolves can sometimes be seen hunting. Finally, there is a strange artifact of unknown origin somewhere nearby - is it connected to the dozens of various crystals scattered around the place?
[h3] [/h3]


[h3]Icalawa[/h3]
A single snow region home to a small but powerful elven tribe. Somehow, most of them are Blessed. Those who are not are unfortunately Robust. There is however one lone Evil elf among them that can be the key to shattering the peace.

A legendary sword can be found in the middle of the place but it is stuck in stone and it doesn't look like it can be taken out easily. And on the other side of the map are ruined structures housing various creatures. An abandoned zoo, perhaps?

[h3]Pangat Loo[/h3]
This is a 2 region scenario for our undead loving overlords. There is a huge human town on one region, while the other region is a haunted desert full of elven tombstones, skeletons and ghosts. The Necronomicon makes a repeat appearance here.

[h3]Affatt[/h3]
A 3 region scenario. All three regions are claimed by a sprawling elven kingdom. There is also a small human town on one region and they are fighting for survival. For some strange reason, there are no monsters in this world but there are plenty of various artifacts to work with.

[h3]Zenko[/h3]
Four regions, each one a different biome and home to a different faction. The snow region is the residence of 10 Cold Blooded elves. The grassland region is home to 10 Electric humans. The forest region is where 10 Venomous elves reside. The desert region houses 10 Fireproof humans. They are all at peace with each other... for now.
[h3] [/h3]


Based on how much replayability some players got for the demo tutorial scenario, we expect that many of you could spend plenty of enjoyable hours comparable to that of similarly priced games. And the good news is that for Ruinarch, this is only just the beginning. More interesting features and improvements are coming later!

If you are interested in supporting the game's development, we hope you consider purchasing the game during our Early Access Launch on August 25. It will have a 10% discount. If we have a successful launch week, we can use the funds to expand the team soon and ramp up development. Thank you for reading!

We just recently pushed another update! These are the last few bug fixes and tweaks that we managed to squeeze in while working on our Save-Load System.

• [TWEAK] reduced spider reproduction rate
  
• [BUG FIX] fixed critical error triggered sometimes when villagers obtain food for their home table
  
• [BUG FIX] fixed rare issue where villagers starve to death even with food access
  
• [BUG FIX] fixed issue with tornadoes sometimes not showing up or not dealing damage
  
• [BUG FIX] fixed text issue displaying %112%
  
• [BUG FIX] dead monsters can no longer be agitated
  
• [BUG FIX] vampires should no longer be able to drink blood from tombstones and corpses
  
• [UI FIX] fixed situations where sometimes action text overlap with villager nametag
  

We'll have another quick fix uploaded in a few hours for some issues reported since last update:

• BUG FIX: Villagers will no longer flirt with corpses (NOTE: Flirting with demons is intended behavior if they are not hostile with each other.)
  
• BUG FIX: Threat should increase properly when you skip tutorial
  
• BUG FIX: Starving vampires will no longer cancel their Drink Blood job after seeing a Table or other food sources.
  
• BUG FIX: Berserked villagers will no longer flee from crimes after successfully escaping apprehension.
  
• BUG FIX: When a target screams while someone is attempting to feed it, it will no longer cancel the Feed job.
  
• BALANCE: Significantly increased Threat values of certain abilities, including Seize.
  
• BALANCE: Angels have been buffed up.
  
• BALANCE: Plague spread rate significantly reduced.
  
• UX: Keyboard shortcuts for zooming in and out (Z and X).
  
• Various other bug fixes.
  

The demo will be deactivated in a few days when the TinyTeams event ends so I hope you guys can have your fill by then! The wait for the full early access launch won't be long though as it will be available on August 25! If you enjoyed the demo, please consider supporting the product as we go through our Early Access phase.