Steam Summer Sale 2019

Howdy!

The summer is here, and the heat in Finland is immense. Seriously, I thought last year we had a fantastic summer up here in the Far North, but now it's been even crazier. During midsummer, last weekend that is, I witnessed huge thunder storms and sunshine during one day.

This year has been incredible so far, and a lot of stuff has happened. In February we released an RPG on the mobile called Crypts of Death, and its reception has been great! I've also been helping out on an unannounced horror shooter project, doing character art and additional code for it.





In March I created this prototype demo for a story-oriented action-adventure game, called Hybrid Children. I applied for a grant of 5000 euros (approximately 5680 dollars), but sadly wasn't able to get the funding to develop this prototype further. What do you guys think, should we do an Indiegogo campaign on the game, to get the funding necessary to finish the project?

The screenshot above and the ones below are from that prototype. It was created in Unity, and is fully 3D as you can see. I also did a couple of test with a more Kalaban style perspective in addition to these.







To celebrate this Steam Summer Sale, I have decided to share a few screenshots uploaded by the community on Steam. It's always great to hear feedback and reviews on the game, and it's especially nice to see user-created content and / or fan art.

We spent two years slaving away on the game, and I don't think many people realize how long it took to implement all the open world elements and the story into it. Let alone all the unique background art that we created! After the release I have been updating the game, ironing out all the bugs reported by the community.



Some user in our community went into the game's ini file and gave himself loads of vitality and ammunition. It's always great to mess around with data files and see what happens.




Tyler, a user in the Kalaban community, uploaded several screenshots with his own captions drawn on them. I remember taking screen grabs and making my own modifications into them, like drawing a new first person weapon in Duke 3D.



"Sometimes a Small WC just isn't enough." Ain't that the truth?


Okay that's it for the screenshot review! Kalaban is on discount on Steam, Itch, Humble Store and Gamejolt.








If you haven't bought Kalaban yet, or have not tried the Horde mode demo, you can try it out beforehand:


Download Kalaban - Horde mode - Indie DB

Spring Sale 88% !

Hello there!

My birthday is coming up, and I wanted to put Kalaban on sale to celebrate it! The game is available on 88% sale on itch.io, Gamejolt and HumbleBundle store and will be coming on sale on Steam.

The game was recently updated to a new 1.1.9 version, so there will be new stuff to see even for previous players. Many of the fixes in the new version were requested by our community.

Now is the best time to get the game, if you don't own it already.

Spring Sale -50%!

 

Hello there!

The spring is here and our game Kalaban is now available with a 50% discount on Steam. If you still haven't grabbed your copy of the game, then now is the perfect chance!

We've recently updated the game and fixed some of the UI issues that we've had. During these past few months, we've read user reviews and feedback, and have fixed the bugs and glitches that have been listed.

Recent fixes include tweaking the loot drops from the enemies, adding destructible crates and barrels, and adjusting the player's movement speed. We've also fixed the brightness slider, and fixed its save game value.

So, if you haven't tried the game in a while, or you have not yet played through the game, now might be a good time to give the game a revisit. The game does feature a three-hour long story campaign with lots of NPC encounters and unique places to explore.

The campaign was beefed up in January, when we released the larger content patch, which added more detail into the Kalaban backstory, and revealed some of the mysteries related to the cultists. All of this is of course found in-game through exploration and discovering the clues in the environment.

To accompany the new discount, we put together a new short trailer for the game. You can find the video from below, and you can visit our Steam page here. Enjoy!

Kalaban finally released!

We've finally published the game to the Steam store! It's been a wonderful journey so far, and we're just getting started. From now on, the players define the path of our future actions, and we are responsible for delivering further patches and fixes to the game.

We'll be adding a hotfix tomorrow or the day after, which will add all the remaining player animations. The game also has a few minor tweaks, which us developers personally feel should be added to it in the near future.

 That's me, just a moment before our game hit the online store. It's been one long week.

To all of those who have bought the game already: a very special thank you from all the developers! We went live a little over hour ago, and we got our first review:

Needless to say, that this is all super exciting and new to us, since it's our first commercial release and our first game on Steam. We'll be posting an in-depth making of from the game after a couple of days. Stay tuned!

Friday diaries: Main quest completed

Hello there, readers! Folks, we've finally got to the point in our development where you can actually complete the main quest! The ending is still placeholder at the moment, as we haven't created the final artwork for it yet. Second piece of news: on November 15, 2014 we conceived the first concept for Kalaban. So we're officially two years into development, yay!

Bob takes a hit from a canine mutant.

We're going for this comic book (or rather motion comic) style cinematic, instead of a fully animated movie. We have received a lot of feedback from the silly cinematic that we did for our Steam Greenlight trailer a while back, and we won't be making a prerendered cinematic for the ending. The trailer really split viewers, and people have clearly expressed that they want to see something less cheesy, and more polished, so we'll respond to that demand.

We might do a small treat for those of you who actually enjoyed the prerendered cinematic. But more on that later. Right now we're focusing on the core game, and putting all our time and effort into that.

Attempting to sneak past the enemy. Unsuccessfully.

So, all the key NPCs are now fully implemented in the game, and you can interact with them. We haven't added the feature to kill any NPCs yet, because that would give us a ton of headache right now.

Making the NPCs die, and stay that way, is easy of course, but we're constantly testing the game and playing with it while developing the other features. So, you would have to mess with the save games, and restore earlier state every time you've killed one off. So, NPC killing will be one of the very last things to be added into the game, just a heads up if you're one of our Early Access testers.

Mini-puzzle: Discovering the key and unlocking the house.

On that matter, we've decided to move out of Early Access at the end of November, and focus fully on the development of the final game. Those who have bought the Early Access version will still be able to play it, and will receive the Steam key for the finished game, once it's in the store.

We just want to give our 100% for the final parts of the development, and prepare a really kick-ass experience for all of you to enjoy. Right now we're implementing a bunch of beauty fixes, and stuff that we haven't got time to implement before. We wanted to have all the scenes finished, before we got into the fine detail and adding those finishing touches.

 We recently revised the drag & drop system in the inventory.

A few things in the UI will get revised, and we will look at the writing in the game. We will also go through all the scenes and add story flavor, items and bunch of visual stuff, that isn't there yet.

Our estimated release date is December 20th, and that's what we're still aiming for. We've been reluctant to give out a confirmed date, because as you know, software development is quite tricky and full of surprises. But we'll let you guys know the date, as soon as it's confirmed.

Bob exploring and discovering clues at the junkyard.

 

So, if you haven't tested out our Early Access and want to do so, head over to GameJolt and get yourself a copy. It costs 6 dollars at the moment, which is around 30% less than the price on the finished game. After the end of this month, you will have to wait for the finished game to pop up on the Steam store page with the actual retail price.

That's it for this week, thanks for reading everybody!

Friday diaries: The Road to Greenlight

Hello there! This Friday I decided we could have a general look at the project and where it's going. As many of you know, we're launching Kalaban on Steam Greenlight on Halloween 2016. We're all really excited to finally get this project to public knowledge, but it demands a lot of hard work.

The promotional picture for our Greenlight launch.

I've been adding new features to the game like crazy over the past couple of weeks. One of these include the new lumber mill scene, where you can meet your former employer, Keijo. Changes and updates have also been made into the user interface. You can now instantly check your enemies' health by hovering your mouse over them.

 Showcasing the enemy health bar. 

We've finally added a couple of bigger boss encounters into the game. These characters will appear at the high points of the story. Both of them can be approached in the way that player chooses, by trying to avoid them entirely, or facing them head on.  

You encounter a huge, wobbling monstrosity near the purification plant.

I've also added lots of story stuff into the game, most of which I cannot show you without spoilers. Keijo now has full dialogue, and many of the quest events have now been fleshed out. This week I added one silly piece of interaction into the game: you can access a computer terminal and write text on it. I think little things like these make the environment seem more alive. 

 The very retro terminal screen at the purification plant.

We currently have Kalaban in early access at GameJolt. This really is the current development version of the game. So if you're really curious to see what the game looks in motion, then head over to GameJolt and get your hands on that version. 

 The first scene of the story currently in game.

Next week we'll publish the last 'Games that inspire us' article. It will tangle one of the most important games for us during the development of Kalaban. We're gonna wrap up with the nostalgia pieces after this and crank up the crunch factor to get this game actually finished. 

We're constantly looking back and reviewing how our vision and scope has transformed during the project. This is necessary so that the big picture doesn't get lost in the bug-fixing, details and new features.

One of the recent props which I've designed. It's this sort of an eighties, early nineties slot machine, done with (almost) historical detail. 

Most of the really important stuff has survived the process, plus the mood and feel which we envisioned for the game to have from the beginning. The game still is an adventure game, with lots of detail, and it has open-ended gameplay. With one of the most important elements: player choice matters. That's the stuff we're pushing towards.

Brawling against the mutated locals.

We also value depicting the mid-nineties Finland, and all the flavor that comes with it. We're not aiming for absolute historical detail, because after all, we're creating an alternate history game. Kalaban is pretty much a dream project for us. But creating your dream game also means that you have a huge pressure to deliver both to yourself, and also to your audience. 

That's all for this week. Thank you all for tuning in, and farewell!