UPDATE: The game has passed the Steam review process, and it will be released on the 10th of January!
Happy New Year Everyone!
Hopefully only a few days left until the release of GemCraft Frostborn Wrath! When I write this, the game is under review by Steam, if they give the green light, the game can be out on in time.
The planned release date is still Friday, 10 January 2020, 07:00 PST / 10:00 ET / 16:00 CET, but as of now the Steam admin page also says: “Earliest possible release: Jan 11, 2020”, and it was “Jan 9” two days ago, so a few days’ delay is possible if this process takes longer than expected, but I hope this is only an automatic text and once the review process is over, the game can get out.
I will refresh the release date on the game’s Steam page as soon as I know more, and I’ll write an update post too.
GemCraft Frostborn Wrath will have a price tag of USD 12.99, or a similar amount converted to your local currency.
There will be no paid lootboxes or other microtransactions, only the one time price.
The game will be playable to the end and you can fight in Endurance mode on all the fields as well, but some of the content we wanted to get done will have to wait until after the release date. To-be-added content will include:
-Some additional sounds
-Some of the journey note pages
-Playing some of the fields in Trial mode (all fields will have a handcrafted challenging battle)
-Some quality of life features that came up during testing
-We will continue polishing and fine-tuning the game after release
I also admit I aimed too high with my plans for the amount of achievements, but still, the game will have 636 achievements to collect, and possibly more to come later.
Steam also has a 100 achievements limit I was unaware of and only bumped into while I was uploading the achi data to Steam. As it turned out, this limit is applied to new games automatically now and might be lifted once a game reaches some kind of a confidence metric. This is hopefully temporary and only affects Steam achievements, the game itself keeps track of your in-game achievements and rewards you with skill points for gathering them, and I hope I can steamify the rest of the achievements soon after release. Any achievements you earn in the game will be automatically unlocked on Steam when its Steam equivalent will become available and you load your saved game, no need to collect them twice.
The game will be officially available on Windows. I heard there is a Linux emulator that makes many Steam Windows games playable, and since this game doesn’t have any possibly problematic feature (3rd party server connection, DRM), it’s worth giving a try if you have Linux. I hope a similar option will be available for Mac as well.
In case of the game running into an error, a calming green screen will pop up with the “stack trace” of the code, telling which line I should have a look at. I’m sorry in advance for any errors that you might encounter, the coming weeks will be spent actively fixing errors so they should appear really rarely after a while. (If you still find an error, please copy the text and send me via e-mail as seen in the green screen. Thank you!)
There is no official age rating for the game, but if you are a parent with small kids, please note that the Steam store is for ages 13+ and that GemCraft Frostborn Wrath contains blood and demons.
It’s impossible to make the game equally comfortable or challenging for everyone. I think Frostborn Wrath is geared towards being harder than Chasing Shadows was. Here are a few tips if you get stuck:
-You can go back to previously beaten fields and enter Endurance mode or try Journey mode again for more xp, which gets you level up, which eventually gives you more skill points.
-Don’t spend all your skill points, as unspent points give you starter mana.
-As you play, you’ll find talisman fragments. Add them to your talisman to get their bonuses. Frags that give extra starter mana can help a lot, and they can be found from the beginning.
-It’s well worth playing fields in Trial mode. In this mode, you face the same challenge no matter how high your wizard level is. They are all beatable, and give you 9 skill points if you win.
-Open wizard stashes by firing or dropping gem bombs at them. You can get skill tomes and more. Wizard stashes can be found on every field, but some of them are hidden in Endurance or Journey mode.
-You can always pause the game and think about moving or combining your gems, or dropping a gem bomb in an emergency.
Thank you for your ever lasting support and patience, we hope you’ll enjoy exploring the game!
