Ruinarch News

Thank you everyone for supporting Ruinarch during its Early Access phase! We're now at the point where there won't be any major revamp or additions to the game's core structure so we feel it's the perfect time to call this our 1.0. There's still plenty of space to introduce more content though, so while we intend to focus on developing our next game soon, we still intend to push some updates for Ruinarch over the coming months.

For now, here's what we've added for 1.0:


7 new Faction Ideologies have been added to the game. You may discover some Factions having one or more of these flavorful ideologies when certain conditions are met.

• Entkin - Nearby trees will randomly turn into Ents that will join and defend their villages.
  
• Blood Sacrifices - Leaders will occasionally sacrifice a Villager to gain temporary buffs for the entire Village
  
• Golem Makers - Occasionally produces Golems to defend their village.
  
• Mage Guild - All combatants are Mages.
  
• Necromantic - Allied with the Undead. Reanimates as Undead upon death.
  
• Beastmasters - All Villagers can tame beasts.
  
• Infested - Villagers spawn Abominations upon death.
  

Previously, the player has to consume charges to summon Lesser Demons and Minions inside their territory for defense. To improve the process, whenever the player gains a Lesser Demon or Minion charge, they are already automatically spawned inside their territory. They will roam around and defend the base until they are used for Raid or Snatch parties - making defense significantly simpler. This should also mean that all the player's minion charges automatically serve as defenders until they are used. Only Raid and Snatch parties will consume these charges.


The player can now instruct monsters spawned by Monster Spawners to perform a special action. The special action available depends on the Monster Spawner's Landmark type. These are fairly similar to the player's raid and snatch actions. The following are available:

• Snatch a Villager
  
• Kill a Villager
  
• Destroy Supplies of a Village
  
• Destroy Structures of a Village
  
• Harass Villagers
  
• Destroy Village Defenses
  

Added the following monsters to the pool:

• Goblin - snatches villagers and plants goblin seeds on them. the target will die after a few hours and spawn more goblins from their corpses.
  
• Splatter - a cat/reptile beast that explodes upon death
  
• Dwarf King - highly resistant to Normal and Mental attacks
  
• Dwarf Paladin - highly resistant to Normal and Mental attacks
  

If we have the time later, we'd like to give Dwarf characters expanded roles in the game.


This was supposed to be a part of our first post-launch update but we wanted to begin the process early and at least provide initial simple modding support on 1.0. For now, we had time to support the following:

• reskin existing monsters
  
• reskin existing villager classes
  
• rename monsters and adjust stat values
  
• rename villager class and adjust stat values
  
• replace monster portraits
  
• replace human and elven portraits pool
  

You may refer to this documentation for guidelines on how to create Mods for the game.

We still plan on having our next update focused on substantially expanding our modding support.


Controller support is now available for the game.



Portuguese translation is also now available!


- Portal progression for all 3 Archetypes have been significantly changed. The first few levels are now much quicker to reach. Also, more Powers are unlocked per level, giving the player an overall bigger repertoire than before.
- Removed Str and Int and turned it into a single attribute to represent a character's Base Damage. In the character Info tab, a Power field displays the character's relative strength as computed from its Base Damage and Attack Speed. It replaces Str, Int and Attack Speed.
- Paralyzed Villagers can now also choose to sing for to recover Fun.
- Paralyzed Villagers may now decide to just sleep on the floor when they are exhausted.
- Vampires no longer get full when they are fed normal food. They will also get Sick afterwards and will have resentment towards the person that fed them.
- Criminals trying to flee a Faction will usually no longer engage in combat. Apprehenders will attempt to run after a fleeing Criminal for only a short distance.
- Adjusted placement of Villages in the world. In general, this should mean Villages can spawn in more locations compared to before.
- Slightly increased chance that Humanoid and Demonic monsters would become Faction Leader successor even if there are other sapient Villagers available.
- Anxious villagers will now initiate non-lethal combat if they decide to fight. They previously used to enter lethal combat.
- Shock upon seeing someone have a Narcoleptic Attack will only occur once for that person.
- Shock upon seeing a demonic structure will only occur once per villager.
- Villagers now prioritize crafting clothing over weapon.
- Villagers may now build blueprints and chance classes outside work hours.
- Murder assumption will no longer occur if the dead character is a wanted criminal.
- Villagers that do not have Agoraphobia are now more likely to visit homes of Friends and Close Friends in the same Village.
- Agoraphobic characters will exclude their own pets from crowd count.
- Agoraphobic Necromancers will exclude all skeletons from crowd count.
- Villagers that are unable to return to their work structure for more than 2 days will automatically be "fired".
- Kleptomaniacs may now also steal from Friends. Previously, they exclude both Friends and Close Friends as steal targets.
- Demonic Walls and Decorations can now be built on adjacent non-corrupted tiles. This will also auto-build a corrupted tile.
- Significantly reduced chance of a villager dying from Overheating.
- Level 3 and 4 of Music Hater now causes the character to get Enraged when hearing music.
- Updated Expel cooldown values.
- Updated Seize Villager, Seize Monster and Seize Object upgrade values.
- Updated Protection upgrade values.
- Reduced Mana Costs of upgraded Tornado.
- Increased movement speed of Locust Swarm.
- Wisps are now Aggressive.
- During Vampire Hunt, villagers won't accuse each other after midnight if the village is currently in an Under Siege state.
- During Vampire Hunt, the likelihood of accusing others of being a vampire after midnight depends on the mood of the character.
- If a character is Hemophiliac, they will allow themself to be knocked out by a Vampire and fed upon even if they are Vigilant.
- A Hemophobic and Vigilant character will feel Enraged if a Vampire attempted to knock them out for feeding.
- Combatants will attempt to knockout Berserked characters. Non-combatants will react warily.
- Reduced the number required to complete some of the Goal Tasks.
- Reduced the Mana Cost of all Prism events to 500.
- Weapon and armor effects have been updated.
- Empty landmarks may now spawn more varied monster types.
- Increased damage of Tank Zombies, Revenants and Wyverns.
- Increased HP and damage of Ifrit.
- Slaves can now produce food from Forage structures if it is nearby.
- Starving villagers may now decide to eat Food they do not own. How likely this occurs depend on the character's traits and current mood. If somebody else owns it, this action will be considered as Theft.
- When a Villager flees a cave attached to their Village's Mine, they will post an Exterminate Quest so that the cave can be cleared of hostiles soon.
- Watcher Eye can now be spawned on tiles with unimportant objects such as trees, rocks, flowers and trash.
- Watcher Eye range has been increased.
- Parties may begin Exterminate Quest even if only 1 member joins the quest.
- Migration settings will now assume Portal is Level 4 if Omnipotent setting is On.
- Reduced Stone cost of Dwellings from 60 to 40.
- Reduced chance of characters stumbling badly due to Wet.
- Visit and Dig actions will no longer have log entries.
- Removed Beastmaster trait from Barbarian.
- Added various character Info tooltips.
- Performance and memory leak improvements.


- [FIXED] Landmarks can be generated right next to each other.
- [FIXED] Villagers that simultaneously want to purchase the same Food pile can take the object from each other and get accused of theft.
- [FIXED] Villagers may sometimes not travel to Forage spots for food even if they should be able to.
- [FIXED] Paralyzed characters do not enter the bed when they are dropped on it to sleep.
- [FIXED] A Kleptomaniac's steal action made due to Trigger Flaw is always caught by the victim.
- [FIXED] Locust Swarm slows down when cursor is nearby.
- [FIXED] Trigger Arousal only works when both of the couples involved have available beds.
- [FIXED] Incorrect Choose World Map Size setting tooltips.
- [FIXED] Non-combatants may sometimes ignore snatchers and raiders.
- [FIXED] Un-upgraded Music Hater does not get angry when hearing music.
- [FIXED] Vampires should not target pets and other monsters for Vampiric Embrace.
- [FIXED] Bandit Leader may get stuck building a Bandit Camp if it is located at the edge of the map.
- [FIXED] Logs window does not update if active character has no logs to show
- [FIXED] A Necromancer with Agoraphobia was scared of his own army of skeletons.
- [FIXED] Monsters sometimes change to Villager classes when they are in a Major Faction.
- [FIXED] Agitated monsters may target characters inside the player's Prison.
- [FIXED] Villagers are unable to do some urgent actions while socializing or visiting other villages.
- [FIXED] Unbuilt Ward Lights trigger Under Siege state of the Village.
- [FIXED] Ratmen get stuck because of erroneous Under Siege mechanics.
- [FIXED] Prism's Bandit Camp requirement criteria does not activate even if the condition has already been met.
- [FIXED] Dwelling structure walls looked burnt but were full of HP when the game started.
- [FIXED] Some elven homes cause pathfinding issues.
- [FIXED] NullError encountered if a monster starts working on a farm.

[h2]Known Issue[/h2]
We've discovered a strange pathfinding issue that only occurs on the live build of the game. Some cave walls may sometimes not update as passable even after it gets destroyed. We'll be working on a hotfix for this as soon as we figure out the root cause.

[h2]Looking Ahead[/h2]
We'll be spending the next few days on further bug fixing and smaller tweaks with a plan to do another small update at the end of the week. Afterwards, we'll allot time for more mod support and introduce some more interesting Villager interactions as part of our first post-launch update around the middle of June.

We're happy to announce that Ruinarch version 1.0 will be available on April 24th on Steam after nearly 3 years in Steam Early Access!



We're adding partial mod support, more faction ideologies, more monsters, performance improvement and some improved QoL changes.

We're thankful for all players who took a chance in us and purchased the game while it was in Early Access. We'll continue supporting the game for a while longer after 1.0 releases while also looking forward to showing you what's next from the team!

Hello everyone! This is our final update prior to our 1.0 launch in late April. I wanted to have a better thematic title to put for this update but can't come up with any since the update has a little bit of everything: some performance improvements, new power, QoL, balance tweaks, etc.

I just want to emphasize that this is the final update before 1.0 but we still intend to provide more updates even after we exit Early Access, just in a slower pace as we give more focus to our next game.


This is one of the biggest player concerns that we have to address. Due to the underlying simulation, character pathfinding and constant logging of events occurring per tick, the game suffers slowdown that becomes noticeable especially on larger maps and on longer playthroughs. Some of the performance improvement work we've done have been included in this update but more significant fixes are still in progress. We still expect some lag spikes and memory leaks but we intend to have most issues fully resolved when we launch 1.0.


Villagers in Critical Mood used to randomly trigger a Mental Break. This will no longer happen. Instead, a new Critical Break has been added so that it is up to the player to trigger it whenever they want to. Once activated, the player gets to choose from 3 Critical Break options.

The following are available:
- Break up with a lover
- Abandon faction
- Kill an enemy or rival
- Become a cannibal
- Trigger a lightning storm (magic users only)
- Expel an enemy or rival (faction leader only)
- Commit suicide
- Become a bandit
- Become evil
- Set building on fire (must not be pyrophobic)

This is intended to further reinforce the game's premise of giving the player more control over the miserable things that can happen to the Villagers.


In order to make Monster Spawners more useful, landmarks with Monster Spawners now have special actions that the player can activate. The action available depends on the landmark. The following are available:
- Kill Villager
- Snatch Villager
- Harass Villagers
- Destroy Structures
- Destroy Defenses
- Destroy Supplies


Players can now more quickly build demonic structures without first building the required corrupted tiles. It will still require the same amount of corrupted tiles but the game will place it automatically for the player.

It's also no longer necessary to have space between demonic structures. This should allow players to build more within the same corrupted tile limit.

Lastly, some of the bigger demonic structures have been resized smaller: Spire, Meddler and Maraud


- Non-combatant villagers harassed by demons or monsters will become Traumatized when they get knocked unconscious.
- Unconscious villagers will gain Injured once they wake up from Unconsciousness. This won't occur if someone else helps them out of unconsciousness.
- Damage dealt by an Injured character should be reduced by 50%.
- Frozen status may now add a new status effect: Frostbite
- Frostbite can cause death by Hypothermia
- An external tile on a Blizzard should have a 25% chance per tick to remove Burning on the tile and its objects
- Bad Weather status effect now only has 1 stack limit and can be gained from Blizzard, Heat Wave and Rain
- Ice Block should remove Burning on the tile
- An Ice Block should apply Wet to the tile
- All Ice Blocks have 25% to melt on adjacent tiles of a Burning tile or Burning object.


All player Powers that spawn Chaos Orbs now have limits to the total amount they can spawn. The caps are mostly lenient as the intention here is just to prevent players from exploiting some of the easier options too much. This probably requires further tweaking and we'll actively watch player feedback regarding this.


New autosaving feature has been added. The game will autosave at the start of each day.


- Village behavior has been tweaked to make them build important structures faster.
- When a Villager attempts to strangle self, they will now only choose nearby wilderness area to do it rather than any distant spot in the entire map.
- Players can now demolish unoccupied landmarks.
- Villagers attempting to steal because of Kleptomaniac Trigger Flaw will still proceed even if there are witnesses to the act.
- Removed Blizzard's separate additional Freezing chance. It should now simply apply Freezing through its Ice damage.
- Removed Drain Spirit from Kennels since Sacrifice already serves similar purpose.
- Criminals fleeing from their faction will now avoid combat. This should increase the likelihood of them escaping. Villagers attempting to apprehend them will drop it once they are far enough from the Village.
- Villagers will now more often place Fisheries closer to the Village Center.
- Cultist Dark Ritual will now only produce 3 Chaos Orbs instead of 4.
- Chaotic Energy gained from Chaos Orbs has been increased to 6.
- The Chaotic Energy costs of Portal's Release Power has been significantly reduced.
- Cultists can no longer change class to Stalker.
- Improved night lighting of some structures.
- Added a new log whenever a Ward Light detects hostiles.
- Updated world generation so landmarks will not spawn adjacent to each other.
- Work Structure can now be clickable from the Character Info UI.
- Log limit setting has now been turned into a slider that can be set between 1000 to 5000.
- Updated popup message when Trigger Flaw of Unfaithful did not work because the target has no lover.


- [FIXED] Laziness does not produce a Chaos Orb when the Villager refuses to do work.
- [FIXED] Building of Bandit Camp may sometimes fail and cause a loop.
- [FIXED] Game may get stuck if all three randomized Wildcard Powers chosen was already unlocked from previous Portal upgrades.
- [FIXED] Game cannot be saved while an object or villager is currently seized.
- [FIXED] Error when Villagers attempt to restrain an intruding Ent that already reverted back to a tree.
- [FIXED] In Polish, Portal UI button text does not fit in the button.
- [FIXED] Fixed Empowered tooltip.

Hello everyone! This update was supposed to be our 1.0 release. However, a few factors forced us to move our launch date to April.

The main issue is the Base Builder Sale which goes on for this entire week. As this coincides with our target launch week, our publisher recommended to reschedule as it's detrimental in terms of visibility to launch during a sale. Since we're already a part of the Base Builder Sale, the next time we could do a launch discount as per Steam's rule is 30 days later so around March 1st. However, a Steam rep informed us that it's not a good idea either to launch shortly before a regional sale. March 1st is unfortunately too close to the upcoming Spring Sale. So, that gives us late April as the next earliest window.

This does have some positives for Ruinarch's development. Instead of moving most of our development to our second project by February, we now have a few more months to add more milestone updates to this game! We also have more time to reach out to press and influencers which should be helpful for the launch's success.

Our update this month is not as big as usual due to the long holiday vacations around Christmas and New Year but there are a lot of small useful tweaks that most players should appreciate:


We've made Steam Achievements linked to our Side Goals! There are a total of 18 Achievements for the game.



The three Traps (Freezing Trap, Snare Trap, Landmines) serve as the introductory way to earn Chaos Orbs. Previously, the process was too slow as you only get 2 orbs on their initial trigger. We increased this to 5 Chaos Orbs to speed up the early game. However, this is going to be easy to exploit later on so our novel solution is to put a Chaos Orb cap to them - meaning that after producing a certain amount of Chaos Orbs, it will no longer produce any. We set the value to 25 for all 3 traps.

In addition, if you place traps on sight of a non-Cultist Villager, they will be able to avoid and remove them unless they were in combat at that time.


Our trailer has been updated to reflect the changes in gameplay and UI!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


- Whenever a Chaos Orb is spawned offscreen, a purple arrow icon will show up at the edge of the screen pointing to it. Clicking on it will center on the Chaos Orb. These arrows only last for 3 seconds.
- Special Cultist player instructions like Booby Trap and Poison now have increased priority over many other actions. This means they will prioritize this job over actions like eating, sleeping and entertainment.
- Added a World Gen Setting to adjust Corrupted Tile charges. Options include Normal, Double and Unlimited. This also affects the number of Demonic Walls and Decorations available.
- Only Resource Piles will have their personal ownership cleared when seized or snatched by the player. This should allow players again to frame other villagers of theft by transferring non-resource objects to another Villager's dwelling.
- Villagers will slay pets of wanted criminals on sight.
- Stalkers will no longer hunt Cultists, Lycans and Vampires that are already imprisoned by a faction if they are restrained inside that faction's Village.
- A Villager that has been wrongfully punished for a fabricated crime may gain a Grudge towards either the punisher or the one that reported the crime.
- A Villager that has been expelled from the faction or forced to leave due to an exclusive Ideology may gain a Grudge against the Faction Leader.
- If opened by a Villager, Treasure Chests may now drop Weapons.
- Moderately slowed down base Villager migration speed.
- Slightly reduced chance to stumble and get injured due to Accident Prone trait.
- Log related to injury sustained due to Accident Prone will now show the action that caused it.
- Witches and Clerics have a slightly increased chance to Preach.
- The time when the first Witch and Cleric will spawn in the world will now widely vary from game to game.
- Added a new bookmark entry that shows the player how many remaining Chaos Orbs are still needed to upgrade the Portal to the next level.
- A Villager always used to be accused of trespassing when it's passing through another faction's Dwelling. Since this is just a quirky limitation of our pathfinding, we adjusted what's considered as trespassing. If the Villager's starting and end points are both outside the dwelling they are passing through, they wouldn't be considered trespassing.
- Increased cooldown of Lightning to 5 hours.
- Bully a Villager task now requires 10 negative status effects to accomplish.
- Slightly lowered maximum factions and villages for all map sizes. Also adjusted world generation to reduce the likelihood of villages being too close together.
- Adjusted Villager's response text when the player shares an intel regarding a lover's infidelity.
- Removed Portal prefix.
- Updated texts on the Game Over screen.
- Added flavor text description for various objects.
- Some text related performance improvements.


- [FIXED] Game crash related to Spanish accented letters.
- [FIXED] Villagers cannot build blueprints when game is in Japanese.
- [FIXED] Migration may still sometimes occur even though it was already turned off in World Gen Settings.
- [FIXED] Players can spawn unlimited Skeletons from Tombstones using Raise Dead.
- [FIXED] Duplicate entries of Cowardice power on Ravager's upgrade path.
- [FIXED] Villagers still report crime to ex faction leader.
- [FIXED] A Villager may be accused of trespassing when moving through a landmark owned by another Faction.
- [FIXED] A friendly villager will not help if a Villager becomes Unconscious while they are within vision.
- [FIXED] Prism UI is not centered on Ultra Wide Screen.

A localization-related issue prevented villages from building some structure blueprints for some non-English players. This hotfix should fix the problem. We apologize for the error.