Progress Report December 2023

The year is coming to an end and we have a few things cooking for you as christmas present!

This report covers Crime Mails, CyberTD, Elemental War 2, Spine and Tri6: Infinite.

While the year is coming to an end we’re still busy as usual. We have a few updates, working hard on our new prototype and writing funding applications for next year.

Secret Project

In our new prototype we integrated all planned core mechanics so far. You can build your map, progress through it, upgrades towers, solve quests and more. Before we enter the christmas break we’ll tweak balancing because right now it’s either too easy or too hard, but almost never inbetween. And as you can guess that’s not that great.

As the mechanics are done now we started working on the graphics. It’s still all placeholders as we’re currently trying to find a good style that looks nice and is easy to read. So we’re checking what colors work well for different elements as you can see on some work in progress screenshot here:

We only have a small prototype right now, so we’re open to your suggestions. This doesn’t mean that we can implement all of your (and our) ideas and wishes. But now is the time to dream – and maybe your dreams will come true! Join our Discord to stay up-to-date and discuss the idea with us!

Crime Mails

In November we finalized the fourth case, „Der fliegende Schlitten“. It’s available since December 1st and, as you might have read already, is the last one for now. That’s because the Crime Mails sadly didn’t reach the amount of subscriptions needed to sustain them. As many of you still would like to continue with them, we’re considering a Kickstarter campaign. We’re currently in the planning phase, so stay tuned for an announcement soon.

We will still keep the demo version for the Crime Mails live and the already launched cases will stay available in the archive, so you can still buy missing ones for you as well for other people that might like them as gift.

CyberTD

In November we launched the first content update for CyberTD introducing two new games modes, the strategy and the endless mode.

The endless mode will be able to be played after finishing a wave 100 run. You then get your score and can decide to just continue playing until your integrity falls to 0 to see how long your build lasts.

The strategy mode will be for those of you that want to optimize their build. It will have pre-defined waves and paths, so you can plan your whole strategy and know exactly when what will happen.

Since then we’re working on the second content update which will increase the level cap to 50 and introduce 20 new unlockable upgrades. The new upgrades will then allow new strategies as well.

There is one new core mechanic now that allows to shuffle new cards into the deck. These can be some junk cards for good upgrades, so the junk cards are the downside of the good upgrade, or you unlock some new cards by playing special cards before (we call them quests). Completing quests can then for example yield a way better card. And of course you can also get rid of junk cards again or even build your strategy around them by other cards that rely on having many of them in your deck.

Besides a few small issues like the missiles on the missile launchers not being visible in the hub when it is already pre-selected, the two Nanite upgrades not being stackable we also improved some wording issues on upgrades, added more info to the filter screen and you can also open the deck screen ingame now. That’s important for some of the new upgrades.

The update will launch on December 20th so you get a nice christmas present from us.

And we also launched a new gameplay trailer that might better show off how CyberTD actually works. You can check it out here:

We aren’t sure what to do next for CyberTD. We have plenty of ideas, but would like to hear your opinions. What would YOU like to see most next? Join our Discord and share your thoughts with us.

Elemental War 2

During November we worked on a new patch for Elemental War 2 to address a few small issues we stumbled upon. This includes some wasted memory when selling barricades again, a quest not working properly in coop and the HP calculation for summons of the Demon Lord being wrong. Also the grass on most platforms got rendered twice which was an unnecessary performance bug. The impact of this fix might improve your framerate depending on the hardware you’re playing on. Usually should reduce your CPU usage at least a little. In general: the higher your grass distance and density, the bigger is the improvement now. It doesn’t affect the Switch version though.

And on Witch Forest we slightly improved the earth piles for the treasure chests. Those were hard to find on this map and we relocated some and added the blink functionality some collectible items already have. That way it should at least be a little easier to find them.

The update is complete and should go live this or next week, depending on how long the patch approval on all platforms will take.

Same as for our other games: if you run into any issues, let us know.

Spine

As for the last months sadly still no news to announce 🙁

As last times, at least mod additions and updates keep flowing. Big thanks here to all the devs managing their releases/updates on their own or at least informing me, when something new is available!

If you still miss mods or have problems, feel free to leave a comment or join our Discord.

Tri6: Infinite

Tri6: Infinite finally launched via ID@Xbox in November. We got a lot of new players thanks to it and hope you enjoy the game. Feel free to share your feedback with us!

We currently are working on the funding application for Tri6: Arena, to finally start work on the successor to Tri6: Infinite. We have so many ideas and hope you’ll enjoy it once we’re there.