Siberian Dawn News

[h2]Intro[/h2]

With the release of 5.0 getting very close I wanted to detail some of the things that it will be adding to Siberian Dawn, and also cover the 3 big content highlights of this update in a series of Final Approach news posts. So in this first part I will be giving some more information about the V Missions.


[h2]Brightness and Rounds[/h2]

Before getting on to the V Missions I want to first mention a couple of global features that will be added with 5.0 that might be of interest.

In the Options menu under Graphics you will find with 5.0 a new setting for Brightness control. If you found the game too dark or even too light you can now adjust it to your taste with a few simple clicks. 0 is the current setting but you will have 5 steps up and 5 down that can be used and this is a combined Brightness and Contrast adjustment to bring a bit more punch to the visuals of the game if required.

The other global addition that 5.0 will bring is the display of Rounds. Currently when we finish a mission and get the breakdown of our performance and how many stars we earned you may have seen how many rounds we took to complete the mission. The game will reward us a Star if we completed the mission 10 Rounds less than the average for that mission but we were not told what the average was and we could also not see during a mission what round we was on.

With 5.0 each mission briefing screen on the Mission Menu will now display the average number of Rounds to complete that mission, which will also help us see how long that mission will normally take to play, and show us what we need to aim for the get that time Star.

When playing a mission the current Round will be displayed on the Data Display at the start of each Phase and will also be shown at the top of the Data Display when no items are resolving or are selected, when we normally get the screen prompt text. At the end of a Round we will also get a message about Round X is complete. With 5.0 we will now always be able to see what the current Round is and the greater importance of this will become clearer when we cover Skirmish mode in the Final Approach Part 2.


[h2]The V Missions[/h2]

Now we move onto the main focus of this update the V Missions. With 5.0 the base game will be getting 3 new full missions comparable in size and complexity to the missions found in the 2 Mission Packs of Chapter 1. These 3 V Missions are a narrative prologue to Chapter 1 and presents the story of an attack on the research base of a Union scientific advisor and the following mission to discover who was behind it.

As with the missions in Chapter 1 each mission here will have its own unique set of objectives and challenges to give us a full set of missions that will require us to think about what we are doing and how we are going to handle the various stages of the story. And completing Mission V-3 on any skill level will also unlock the ARK, but more on that in the Final Approach Part 3.




The hostile units we will be going up against in these mission will be of 2 types. Firstly we have the familiar Vbots of the Training missions, now with the addition of a VBot Mob, which will also be added to the Training missions. And then we have the new corrupted units, who are familiar Union units that we have been using in the game now controlled by the VBot technology and turned against us.

These new corrupted units will have similar abilities to their Union originals but when they are killed we are freeing them of their VBot control and we will gain the Union version of that card. This is a new way to gain these Union units in the game but also provides us with the problem of getting rid of these cards if we don’t want to deploy them, so this gives a new resource management twist to these missions.




With the new corrupted hostile units and the other challenges presented in the V Missions these 3 missions will provide a fresh set of missions to the base game and help to show what Chapter 1 has to offer if you haven’t ventured beyond the Training Missions yet. They are not missions designed to be easier than those in Chapter 1 but are of an equal standing.

And so we have come to the end of part 1 of the Final Approach, I am currently very deep into adding content to the ARK, but in part 2 of the Final Approach we will be seeing what Skirmish mode is all about and what it will add to the base game.

Winterflood

"Are memories set in stone?"

- The Orphan


[h2]4 Years of Improvements
[/h2]
On the 20th September 2018 Siberian Dawn was released on Steam, so today we are celebrating the 4th anniversary of the game with a birthday sale and news about what is to come.

I have continued to develop the game over the last 4 years, adding a number of additions and improvements to make this original card game a more enjoyable experience and to expand the content on offer, and this will continue into its 5th year with the release of 5.0 soon.

Now some of you might be asking why is he still working on this game after 4 years, hasn’t he abandoned it yet and gone to work on something else that might make more money?

Well the most important reason for why I am continuing to work on the game is that I still enjoy Siberian Dawn, and prefer to play it over most of the other card games I own on Steam. And as I am developing it on my own, with no hired guns to help, it has taken a while to add all of the parts that I wanted to put in the game, and maybe the initial thoughts of it being a simple card game to make were an underestimation of what was involved for a single person working on it. So now 4 years later the base game is done and with 5.0 we are getting an addition of content that greatly expands Siberian Dawn in game and mythology.


[h2]5.0 News
[/h2]
Currently I am testing the 3 prologue V Missions, I mentioned previously in the news, that will be added to the base game. These are 3 full missions that will each have their own unique challenges and are comparable to the missions in the Mission Packs for difficulty. They will also include our cover star on this news post, a Grunt with a different greenish look who will also be bringing a few other familiar faces to these missions.

I am also busy testing the Skirmish mode, which had a bit of a change from my initial thoughts for it, but it is now a more defined, clearer challenge where you have to kill X Rank of Hostile units within a time limit. Skirmish missions will also contain Hostile Boss units that are higher Rank versions of some of the cards we have already faced. The Base game will get 3 Skirmish missions and each Mission Pack will get an extra Skirmish mission, with each Skirmish constructed from the Hostile units and events of the missions they are based on. One of the 3 Skirmish missions included in the base game, Skirmish 0, will be a combination of all the Missions that you own in one grand Skirmish.

And finally the Ark will also be unlocked in 5.0, and this is the part that brings together the meta game of Siberian Dawn. Using the Ark points you have been gaining through completing missions since the game launched you can unlock the mythology of the game and various other items that will modify a mission, like Echoes and the Nemesis.

So enjoy the birthday celebration and I hope you found the 5.0 news exciting. I will now return to testing and crafting more devious content for Siberian Dawn.

Winterflood

I noticed a review from a couple of weeks ago that I wanted to talk about but first...

...its story time with Winterflood, people!

The village of Pipville loved their apples, you wouldn’t believe how much they loved apples, in fact they considered themselves to be the experts on apples, apple connoisseurs. Then one day a man moved into town, for the sake of this story and to protect his identity we shall call him Mr W, and set up a shop selling oranges. He offered people a free orange with the possibility of then buying a Delightfully Lovely Container of more Oranges if they liked the free one. Now the Pipvillian saw these oranges and thought “hey, that is a round fruit, and I love round fruit” and several thousand oranges were given away for free by Mr W, and some even brought his DLC orange pack.

But quickly after opening his store some of the Apple connoisseurs voiced their opinions of these oranges. They told everyone they were experts on apples, they were connoisseurs after all, and these oranges were not right. They were much more complex than apples, much harder to understand with all this peel and lack of pips, and despite being free they had to warn people of the complex danger of this new round fruit and its clear apple inferiority. Now Mr W was confused he had never advertised the orange as a being an apple, sure he had said it was a round fruit, but these expert reviews seem to be looking for something else. So Mr W continued to improve his oranges as they were lacking with proper instructions on how to peel them and enjoy the fruit within, but the connoisseurs still wanted apples and until the day the orange became an apple they were not going to be happy.

Mr W continued for years to develop his oranges when he had time, adding more content, improving the flavour, and making them easier to peel, with little reward. Always in his mind was the thought that maybe he should just shut his store and go do something more rewarding as these people only wanted apples, but there were the few who did get that these were not apples and they enjoyed the complexity of the oranges, and some even told their fellow Pipvillians they enjoyed this new round fruit. And Mr W continued to improve the orange as he believed in it and that it wasn’t an apple, and he didn’t want it to be just another apple, as Pipville had plenty of them already.

Then one day Mr W came along with something new, he pulled out a banana and that just blew their pip minds completely away.

And the moral of this story is?



Now on to this review I just noticed from the 10th July. This was obviously another negative review by someone who does a lot of negative reviews, and yes I read the explanatory essay on their profile for why they do a lot of negative reviews. They seem to have spent more time writing the review than playing the game, and obviously they wanted a shiny apple and not an orange.

So the review is not aimed at me but the players, to tell them how bad my game is. As I am the only person working on this game any feedback is always going to be felt to be directed at me, I am not hired by a big company and can think “well I get paid by them to do this and it is just a job, and any negatives are aimed at my boss or whoever was in charge of developing this.” This is something I have worked on for several years so will always feel the negatives. And Steam has a refund policy where you can try it yourself with no risk, so can make your own mind up.

But back to the review and some of the things it says which will impact the potential player.

“It's deceptively out of Early Access despite being unfinished. The game is getting updates but it's firmly in development hell with no clear indications it will ever be finished.”

It was never in Early Access and it was finished on the day of launch, but with feedback I have updated the game and added content to improve the experience. I don’t believe I ever made claims on the store page about features that were not in the game and have always been open about what is going on with the game and things I want to add. The game is not in development hell and it was finished. I am adding 3 new missions as I changed it from free to paid but the full game is in there and anything else that is being added is extra.

“there's a lengthy English translated tutorial, and I mean, a serious investment of time just to try to learn how to play the game. It's very hard to make the argument that it's worth it.”

Not sure what “English translated tutorial” means but translated means it wasn’t originally in English, and I only speak English. The store page clearly shows what the game is with a video from the original release and the description so it should be obvious what you are getting before having to invest time or money.

“Resolution is locked and can't be changed, and there's no graphics tweaks, but given the simple 2D interface there's not much to impress PC gamers anyway.”
There are SD and HD resolutions but they seem to want 4K 3D graphics looking at their profile and feel there is no place for the type of graphics here. There are also several tweaks you can make to how things are displayed.
“There's a lot of confusion about the pricing of the game, originally I think this was a paid game, now it's got DLC you're expected to buy to unlock the full game... all this despite the game not even being finished. I don't think that in this case it's a deliberate attempt to mislead or scam gamers as many Early Access games do, rather it's just unclear marketing for this unfinished game.”

Originally it was free and had DLC at launch so players could see what the game was like but that didn’t seem to work and was changed recently also from player feedback. There is no confusion on pricing and no scam. The base game has training missions that give several hours of finished game play and the 3 missions I am adding are to add to that value and I am clear about these. So still it has never been early access and the game is not unfinished as it offers the full gameplay I would expect for the price.

If you got this far then well done, you could have learnt the game in less time. So why did I write this response to a review and not just ignore it as another negative to the pile? There were a lot of things said that I highlighted above that were not accurate of what I have done, and previously I would just take the punches and get on with it, but isn’t that saying you don’t care about what you are doing. As I am the only one working on this, and don’t have a legion of fans, I am the only one who is going to defend my work and they may say they are not aiming the review at me but of course it is aimed at me, and therefore I am going to defend my self and my work.

Winterflood

● Added modifiers screen showing all active modifiers for both Union and
Hostile units currently deployed on sites which can be opened by clicking
on the Modifiers button on the Data Display under the deployed card
● Added load mission warning to Mission Menu if you are trying to load a
a mission from the Training Menu so this now matches the warning in
Training Menu
● Added extra line hint for training 3 - such as the Influence ability of the
Scout, and the Subdue ability of the Core, Heavy, and Shield units.
● Added option on Android to stretch screen to fit device or to keep
aspect ratio locked

[h2]Summer Sale[/h2]

The Steam Summer Sale is here and both DLC Mission packs for Siberian Dawn are in the sale with a 20% discount, so now is a great time to pick up these packs if you haven’t already. Each comes with 3 unique missions and give several hours gameplay, along with the replay choice of which Guild you have a Bond with, and tells the story of the first chapter of Siberian Dawn.

[h2]Road to 5.0 Progress[/h2]

Busy designing the 3 new missions that will be added to the base game of Siberian Dawn. These missions are a prologue to the Siberian Dawn story that begins in Mission Packs 1 and 2, currently on sale if you missed that, so designing them as a link between the Training missions added recently and the Siberian Dawn story. They will each be a full mission comparable to the ones in the Mission Packs and use all units that were available in those and all the Guild Bonds. The titles for these missions will be, subject to design changes, The Red Code, Dawn Shadows, and Echoes of Stone. These will also establish a number of story elements that will unfold during the Siberian Dawn story. Not sure yet if I will release these one mission at a time or all at once, will see how this develops.

I am also working on a screen that shows all the bonus and penalty adjustments a deployed unit has on it, so you can see what all the glows and icons that are added on a card mean. When you click on a deployed card, Union or Hostile, a new “Modifiers” button will appear on the Data Display under the card, and if you click this it will bring up this new screen where the details of all the current modifiers will be displayed along with where they are coming from. This addition will be in the next update and adds another useful tool for all the successful Overseers out there.

Winterflood