Ruinarch News

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.

Hello everyone. Our last update of the year is here. There is a lot of variables that could cause one's game to vary widely from another so it's definitely tough to have a game balance that would be consistent for everyone. When we tweak internal values, our aim is to make a smoother game progression for most players - but there will still be game sessions that could go vastly in favor or against the player.


In addition to the main Victory related Goals, we've introduced simple Side Goals that hints to new players what options are or would be available to them. Accomplishing these mini-goals provide extra Chaotic or Spirit Energy.

When we launch 1.0, these Side Goals will also serve as Steam Achievements.


- Further adjusted Portal Upgrade powers for all three Archetypes. All will now unlock more Powers per level compared to previous version.
- Players now immediately have to choose their Wildcard Powers once the Portal upgrade completes rather than needing to go to the Portal UI first.
- Adjusted HP of most Villager combat classes, lesser demons and some monsters.
- Increased damage of most of the player's direct-damage Spells.
- Characters within the player's own faction will no longer be damaged by the player's direct-damage Spells.
- Reduced experience gained by Villagers training at the Barracks or Magic Academy.
- Reduced experience gained by Villagers from combat.
- Slightly reduced stat increase gained by Villagers from Talent level up.
- Reduced cost of Reveal Villager Info from 4 to 3 Chaotic Energy.
- Reduced cost of Reveal Faction Info from 40 to 30 Chaotic Energy.


The Prism UI has now been updated to show more details about how to trigger the events.


- Griefstricken Mood efffect changed to -20.
- When a Lover dies or disappears, the Villager now instantly becomes Griefstricken but only if their Opinion is Acquaintance-level or higher. If Opinion is Rival-level, they gain Catharsis instead.
- When an Affair dies or disappears, the Villager now instantly becomes Heartbroken only if their Opinion is Acquaintance-level or higher. If Opinion is Rival-level, they become Cheery instead.
- Added a log when Villager feels Griefstricken, Catharsis, Heartbroken, or Cheery from the loss of a Lover or Affair.
- Villagers can no longer develop new Lover or Affair relationships while Griefstricken or Heartbroken.
- Villagers will no longer seduce or flirt while Griefstricken or Heartbroken, except when Trigger Arousal is used by the player.
- Villagers will no longer respond positively to other's flirtation while Griefstricken or Heartbroken.


- A Villager gains Arousal if their flirtation gets a positive response.
- An aroused Villager may seduce their target of arousal.
- Anytime a new villager joins a Village, Compatibility will now be generated with other residents that they do not have Compatibility with yet.
- Fixed an issue where Level 4 Unfaithful characters still do not flirt with Beasts and Undead.
- Beasts and Undead will always react to flirtation and seduction with confusion.
- Flirt will only be initiated if a Villager is in normal or better mood.
- Villagers will be much less likely to flirt with other characters if they already have a Lover, except if Unfaithful.
- Villagers will now much less likely respond positively to flirtation and seduction of another character if their Lover is on sight.


- When Wet is added on a Poisoned object, Poisoned will be removed.
- When Poisoned is added to a Wet object, Wet will be removed.
- Some wilderness tiles now have a chance to spawn new Trees while they are Wet.
- Poisoned Trees may eventually die.
- Characters may stumble badly and get unconscious if they are Wet or move through Wet tiles.
- Crop growth rate will now be sped up if it is Wet.
- Crop growth rate is reduced if it is Poisoned.
- Crop growth rate is now affected by the Biome.
- Food created by harvesting from Poisoned crops will also have Poisoned.
- Farmers with Level 3 Food Talent can now remove Poisoned from crops.


- The player can now create a Captive Intel when right-clicking on a restrained Villager. This can now be shared to other Villagers.
- If a Captive Intel is shared to other concerned Villagers, they may attempt to rescue the captive or post a Rescue Party quest.
- If a Captive Intel is shared to the restrained Villager's Settlement Ruler of Faction Leader, they may declare war with the captor faction depending on various factors.
- Introduced various reactions for when a Villager sees another Villager belonging to a different non-hostile faction who is Restrained, Ensnared, Frozen, Unconscious. Factors include personal relationship and traits as well as Faction Ideologies.
- A Villager now has a small chance of becoming obsessed with a Villager that rescues them from Restrained, Ensnared, Frozen or Unconscious.


- Before placing a Monster Spawner on a wilderness tile, the player will now see a red square showing the size of structure that will be built.
- Shamans will now only perform their Rituals outside of Work hours.
- The player can now use Trigger Grudge to turn a character Evil.
- Vampires and Werewolves will no longer attack fellow Vampires or Werewolves that they don't know even when they see them in bat or wolf form.
- Villagers that become Unconscious will now produce 1 Chaos Orb if they are not allied with the player.
- Demon Cult Leader will revert back to its previous class when cleansed by a Stalker.
- Demon Cultist will no longer conduct Reconciliation Ritual for non-Cultists.
- Demon Cultists will no longer cleanse Corrupted Tiles.
- Characters that disapprove of a Preach action will no longer stop it from completing.
- If a character attacks a fully resistant target, they will no longer flee from it but will switch target if there are other less resistant hostiles in range.
- Revamped Share Intel response to Crime related Intels.
- When an object has been moved, its personal ownership will be cleared. This will prevent Villagers from automatically knowing the location of their owned object if someone steals it or the player seizes it.
- Opinions of Villagers towards humanoids and demonic characters may now change through normal interactions.
- Tombstones in landmark structures will no longer pop out the bodies when the structure crumbles.
- Jinx will now only drain 20 Chaotic Energy when it enters Critical Mood. It no longer drains on Bad Mood.
- Reduced chance of occurrence of Vampire Hunts and Werewolf Hunts.
- Reduced assumption chance that a wandering Villager at night might be a Vampire during a Vampire Hunt.
- Slightly reduced negative Mood effect of Despairing and Dolorous.
- An obsessed Villager may gain a Grudge if they become aware that their target of obsession makes love with a different Villager.
- Psychopaths now feel Approval when informed about Murder.
- Psychopaths will no longer feel typical negative emotions when becoming aware of Cultists, Vampires and Lycans.
- Added more monster types to the spawn list of Monster Spawners placed in Wilderness tiles.
- Monster Spawners can now be spawned on tiles with a tree. The Spawner will replace the tree.
- Threatened Villagers are now more likely to flee rather than attack if the target is a Friend or Close Friend.
- Monsters will no longer gain Newcomer trait when joining a Village.
- Snatch UI drop off location will now auto-update while still open when the player stores a new target.
- Ephemeral characters will no longer be shown nor counted in the Faction Info UI.
- Elven Kingdoms no longer include Animal Killing as a crime.
- Added Tile Dimensions to Demonic Structure tooltips.


- [FIXED] In German or French versions, game may crash after unsummoning Demonic defender.
- [FIXED] Sometimes, Fisheries may prevent a Village from building new food producing structure.
- [FIXED] Villagers that don't live in Dwellings are sometimes unable to eat.
- [FIXED] Characters immediately go home when it switches home location.
- [FIXED] Trigger Arousal sometimes do nothing.
- [FIXED] Imp can become a Demon Cult Leader.
- [FIXED] Omnipotent mode is stuck at only having 3 defender slots.
- [FIXED] When a Villager becomes a bandit, its pet no longer follows it around.
- [FIXED] Corrupted tile and demonic wall charges are not unlimited in Omnipotent setting.
- [FIXED] A raiding Dragon may flee from a Dragon in the same party.
- [FIXED] A Bandit may sometimes not help another Restrained Bandit near them.
- [FIXED] Wrong emotion text in Share Intel for Despair.
- [FIXED] Characters may get stuck in some sections of the Mage Tower.
- [FIXED] Monster Spawners may sometimes spawn monsters above its max count.
- [FIXED] Opening the Cultist tab and pressing Esc does not close the cultist tab unlike other tabs.
- [FIXED] Wolves are still called "Ravagers".
- [FIXED] Bone Golem has Cultist-related actions.
- [FIXED] Incorrect reaction log after seeing another character transform into bat form.
- [FIXED] Some essential Settlement Jobs get erroneously dropped.
- [FIXED] Recharge pop-up notification overlaps with the Top Bar UI.
- [FIXED] Summons list showing Monsters with no more charges on load.
- [FIXED] Top Bar UI is blocking the topmost portion of the map.
- [FIXED] Primordial Pool's tile placement is inconsistent with its graphic asset's position.