FREE DLC

• A single play campaign with all buildings unlockable from the get-go.
• A new 'darkness' feature and new weathers.
• New enemies to battle taken from 'DESKAPE'
• Hours of new content to play while watching, working, or browsing

DESKAPE

• A massive circular planet where enemies come from both directions.
• Enemy Hive mechanics.
• Upgradeable robots to battle against the darkness.
• Strange alien allies and enemies.
• A full idle mode.
• Beautiful colour and lighting systems all in eye-saving dark mode.
• Many and various resources to collect.
• All the special window features which make Desktopia great!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2390060/dEscape/ We, The Evergloom Team, are super pleased to show off the new trailer and Store Page for Desktopia's sister game 'dEskape' - Can you escape the deadly and dank planet from which you've crashed into?
From the team that made Desktopia comes 'dEscape': a new world to build, manage, and defend at the bottom of your desktop! At its core, 'dEscape' is a base-building game which sits across the bottom of your desktop allowing you to work, browse, or watch something else while you play. It's idle when you like and active when you want. Like any base-builder, you get to make the big decisions while taking control of your own laser shooting, resource-collecting character whose only objective is repairing their broken ship and getting off the dark and dreary rock onto which they've crashed.
THE GAME

• From nothing but the ruins of your ship: construct the infrastructure to escape the planet and build a truly massive base.
• Construct a range of facilities (factories, research labs, alien technology, mystical crops) and watch as storage creatures and aliens take up residence around your base.
• Wander away from the safety of your base to find resources and crashed resource pods.
• Research strange creatures and use them to create new and powerful resources.
• Construct droids, level them up, give them new skills, and take them out into the dark to collect resources, and destroy the dangerous blood hives that are attracted to your industry.
• Research new weapon types, and wield them against the dark creatures which try to steal your light.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2475840/Idle_Bloodlines/ I'd like to introduce my new game "Idle Bloodlines", coming on Steam in early August: a game that melds RPG mechanics, idle gaming principles, and a family generational narrative into a cohesive and engaging idle experience. In "Idle Bloodlines", players oversee a divinely chosen family tasked with combating a host of mythical chimeras. The narrative and mechanics task players with selecting and fostering the most vital members of their lineage, enhancing their abilities, equipping them with potent artefacts, and ensuring the passage of power to the succeeding generations. The hero undertakes quests that range from straightforward errands earning gold to more elaborate tasks unlocking lands, obtaining new weapons, and securing relics. These quests also present various events where the hero engages with monsters, puzzles, runes, and divine entities. A key feature of "Idle Bloodlines" is the dynamic family tree, where traits and stats are passed on, facilitating the growth of a potent lineage. Players can directly influence the trajectory of any member of their bloodline, pruning and expanding familial branches as they see fit.As players delve deeper into the game, they unlock time control to expedite their family's growth and auto-systems that automate nearly all gameplay aspects. "Idle Bloodlines" hopes to offer a fresh perspective on incremental gaming, combining disparate gameplay elements into a cohesive and engaging narrative. It was designed to represent an exciting exploration of the boundaries of this genre and has been a long labour of love. [previewyoutube=7tAfYdVdnFY;full][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube=BuwxaAJBpjM;full][/previewyoutube] In a world haunted by strange and vicious chimera, one family has been chosen by the gods as their ultimate rivals. As an omnipresent caretaker, your task is to breed the ultimate line of heroes: spend resources wisely, strategize, and guide your bloodline through countless generations in order to create heroes capable of taking on even the most dreaded of these creatures! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2475840/Idle_Bloodlines/

A simple update to add interesting and varied weather to the game for a more immersive experience. Don't forget to wishlist our upcoming game 'dEskape' a new Desktopia-style experience! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2390060/dEscape/

dEskape: the sister to Desktopia

What's different

Desktopia Updates (always free)

To gain access to all the new content, you're going to want to download the free DLC https://store.steampowered.com/app/2280100/DESKTOPIA_End_of_the_Road/ End of the Road offers a new game mode separate from the existing level-based system. It is designed with a host of new features, and with an absolutely massive map along which you can now grow a truly bustling metropolis.

FEATURES:

• A huge, 122,880-pixel road compared to the average 27,000 of the base game.
• A corrupted village, with lizard overlords that need to be obliterated.
• Twelve strongholds positioned along the road at intervals, each with their own stronghold boss and troops.
• All three groves on a single map.
• The ability to build up to 195 buildings, compared to the 55 average of base game maps.
• New enemies and a new boss to deal with.
• New, ruined portions of the road which cannot be built on.

BASE GAME IMPROVEMENTS:

• A new autosave feature that can be toggled on and off.
• A system for levelling up your character, and new bonus effects from building to make you stronger.
• A new, personal stats menu.
• More control over the way your soldiers and heroes act.
• New buildings, new troops and a new hero.
• Better A.I and smoother gameplay on larger maps.
• More use for redundant buildings.

WHY A FREE DLC?

WHY THIS DLC?

On top of the new End of the Road game mode, weve overhauled large portions of the basegame to bring you a more fun and streamlined experience. Before we release a full list of changs, Id like to show you some of the more interesting things that will have a visual impact on how you play the game.

Soldier Command

Character Menu

Levelling Up

Autosave

Your current saves:

[previewyoutube=Yb_ndv4prY4;full][/previewyoutube] Thanks for watching/playing. If you've enjoyed Desktopia, consider voting for us in the 'Game Dev World Championships' by liking our page!

With the New Year upon us, I thought it was time to update you on what was going on with Desktopia, and some of the plans we have for the future. Firstly, some sad news: our artist, Angela, has had to take a permanent break from game development. She's been in and out of hospital throughout the design process but is no longer able to continue, despite how much she wanted to. She has poured a lot of love into this game, and we love her for it, but her health must always come first! Her continued ill health has been upsetting, to say the least. She has insisted that we try to move on with updates without her, and so we plan to do this in the best way possible: by using her beautiful assets to bring a free, large update to Desktopia. The 'End of the Road Update' is planned for an early February release, and will include the following. - Two new levels for the standard game, with new monsters, bosses and challenges. - A new game mode (The End of the Road) with a map three times longer than any you've seen so far, with new ruins, multiple strongholds, mini-bosses, objectives, building requirements and other surprises. Thank you to all those who've sent well wishes to Angela, and to all those who've bought and played Desktopia.

Firstly, upon request, we've added trading badges, emoticons, and backgrounds for you collectors out there. Enjoy thebaker It's been a crazy few weeks here with us. beholdthis If you've read any of our posts you may know that our lead artist has been in hospital undergoing long term treatment, and on top of that the remaining two of us have been suffering with a nasty Covid variant over the last few weeks which left me in bed unable to move for some of it.
This has put us behind on our development of Tyranny!, but we're still here and plugging away and are still hoping for a November release (barring any other acts of fate!) TheTRex One thing I have been working on, is the new character stats menu. Once Tyranny! releases, you will be able to upgrade your character using either Gratitude points or Tyranny points, making them far more useful on later levels.
Anyway, thanks for playing, and for being patient as we recover. itsallbusiness

Firstly, thank you to everyone who's offered feedback, left reviews, and supported Desktopia so far. As you probably know, there are only three of us working on Desktopia so we're sorry if updates and responses take a little time. We always want to make sure we're doing our best and taking the game in the right direction. We're here for the long haul and we have plenty of ideas on how we can add content, and a bunch of updates already planned. With that, I'd like to talk a little about 'Tyranny!' , and show you some of the new -(still under construction)- assets!
These are just a few of the new buildings which will be included in the Tyranny! update. Alongside these, many of the existing building's uses will be overhauled or given new functions (the woodcutter for example will improve your character's axe haft, making it more deadly). The green portals you see are the base requirement for playing as a tyrannical overlord. Choose to build them instead of a barracks and outposts, and the Piglizards will pour through. Rather than helping you defeat the boss, like soldiers do, these Piglizards will go around collecting taxes and creating the new resource 'Tyranny!', which, with the construct of new buildings, you can spend on upgrading your character so you can play a major role in taking on the bosses yourself. Imagine yourself with the laser of Red the Plastic Trooper, with spells to summon ferocious monsters or rain down fire, and placeable turrets to help defend your town from attacks!

Other features:

ACHIEVEMENT UPDATE: - Added twelve level-complete achievements to the game. - Added 2 secret achievements! - Achievements should work with existing saves, just wait for the following, in-game, day! FIXED: - A small error that miscalculated chance to hit of lasers. - A small chance that the player would get stuck in the dog and be unable to move.

Creating art assets, for the current state of this game, is the most time consuming job. Despite their pixel simplicity, every character needs to be animated and every new asset has to match the others. So while we wait for the Tyranny assets to be created we have created a new female character who you can play, with three colour options, and two new colour options for the male character. We haven't been able to put them into the game yet, but if you're after a old-school reskin, and don't mind copying some files, you can get your hands on them early!

HOW TO:

CHANGES: - AI 'HOLD' rates have been adjusted for more responsive soldiers. - Various changes to AI sight ranges that make long ranged combat smoother. (including lower the sight ranges of some enemies) FIXES: - Troopers now gain a bonus from the rifle range. - Fixed a bug with enemies getting 'confused' after a kill. -

FIXES: - Fixed an issue where the Serfs menu wasn't showing on Linux. - Fixed an issue where Pete's or Lady D's expansion would cause a crash.

Continuing the theme of adding more information to the game. You are now able to check the exact health of your villagers by hovering over the HP bar. You can also now see their attack strength. The Coop, Smith, and Powdersmith and Rifle Range now state exactly how much they increase the attacks of Specific people, and you can now see this reflected in the villager's stats. Adding this update, may break your Serfs menu for your current level as it will be trying to display stats that don't exist. Next level or restart will fix the issue.

BALANCES

IMPROVEMENTS

FIXES

Our original design philosophy was to create a numberless game, which was accessible to everyone: and for the most part we succeeded. Understandably however, many of you wanted more details. How much food does a Bakery provide? How much Fun does Stan the Serf actually need? And why do some buildings seem to add things not mentioned in the text? To help you answer these questions we have added numbers back into the game, although you can still ignore them if you want to! We've created a whole bunch of changes to the games graphs and menus:

The Build Menu

The Stats Menu

The Villager Menu

- Clicking either of the volume buttons will now raise or lower the volume by increments instead of a simple on off. The button should gain/lose contrast with the volume.

[previewyoutube=eIQw2XayDZI;full][/previewyoutube] You still use 'F1' to unlock resize, but now the scaling is dynamic, allowing you to move the window to a second monitor, or just make it tiny for fun. The Window should also no longer reverts to original size on save. Linux and Windows builds updated!

IDLE MODE - Fires should no longer be a problem on Idle Mode - Enemies should no longer attack in groups on Idle Mode - Tunneller Spawn rates adjusted ALL MODES - Fire is now 50% less likely to spawn!

- Increased controller support - Bound water pistol to ALT as well as M2 (May require new game)

NEW: Prayers: A new way to spend gratitude: (accessible through Festival Menu) - Pray for magical shields for you and your soldiers - Summon a mighty elemental to help in battles. - Call forth Divine Light to cheer your villagers and banish dark weather. Added a reset button to the main menu which will delete all your saves and reset the game. FIXED: - A bug causing fires very occasionally not removing from map after being put out. - A small error in ranged combat causing some hits not to register. BALANCES: - Fixed inconsistencies in the Stronghold Bosses Health - Increased damage of Plastic troopers by 5% - On later levels: increased the minimum number of buildings required to trigger attacks from the Stronghold. - Mega-Nerf on end-level clones - health decreased by 50% and lowered fire rate by 33% ENGINE: - Upgraded NW.JS to 0.67

FIXES: - Mismatch in capitalisation caused crashes on some systems, fixed: EDITS: - Changes to the FESTIVAL MENU in preparation for Prayers to be added.

Now that the game is launched wed like to talk a little about our future development pipeline. We should start by saying that ALL future updates and DLC will be included with the base game. There will be NO PAID ADDONS and NO MICROTRANSACTIONS. If you own the base game then all future DLC will be included. We may, however, increase the price of the base game as more content is added. This way, we can thank you early adopters while still funding the expansion.
Tyranny!, our first large update is already in production. This update will add an entirely new way of playing Desktopia: as a tyrant! It will be a more active way to play, requiring more of your focus. It is also entirely optional. Tyranny! will give you the chance to level up your personal character with new skills and powers, enabling you to take on the games bosses and new enemies without the help of soldiers. What it will include: New Buildings: - The Dark Guards : To start the Tyranny tree, you build this instead of the Barracks, and rather than soldiers, you will get guards, who prowl your village: taxing your villagers and keeping them in line. This means that you wont have soldiers to fight the boss (though you can still build heroes) Instead, the rest of the buildings in the Tyranny! Tree will allow you to upgrade your character, so you can take on the boss yourself. New Resource: - Tyranny: like gratitude, you will be able to spend your tyranny orbs on game bonuses. New Skills: - Swap your pistol for a rifle, your axe for a mega axe, and learn spells like the Stronghold bosses. Kaiju: - Tyranny attracts monsters! The more tyrannical you become, the more frightening things will try to come and take your villages from you: including massive Kaiju which you can fight off with your new skills. New Levels: - 2 new, longer levels! New Heroes: - Some new, dark heroes! When will it release? We'd like to launch as early as November, but we won't launch until it's ready. What else is planned? Beyond this in another free DLC, which we are temporarily calling MoreTopia we are looking at introducing a new game mode, beyond the progressive level mode, which will allow for the creation of, random maps with various modifiers (such as locked buildings, random enemies, new bosses, mid level bosses, and other features). This new mode should extend dramatically the playability of the game and offer new and interesting challenges. Thanks for reading this, and for playing Desktopia! If youve enjoyed the game so far, please leave a review: they really help motivate us to work faster!! The Evergloom Team

BALANCES: - Further balanced fire on later levels. - Lessened the chance of strikes on easier difficulties. FIXES: - Fixed a bug where Tunnellers would spawn with 5* health - Fixed an issue where the dog could get stuck in a bush. NEW: - Added a overall building counter and max building number to the build menu so you can see how full your village is.

FIXES: - Fixed an error where bush collider refresh caused a crash moving between levels (thanks Max). - Addressed small balancing issue with water pistol and demons ADDED: - Functionality for AZERTY Keyboards

FIXES: - Minor issues with the help text. - Fixed a bug where arson was less likely on higher difficulties. NEW: - You asked for a counter to keep track of your buildings. Here it is, added to the building menu :) - Note: this will only start counting from your current point, and will not include already built buildings on our current level.

- Fixed an error with enemies not spawning when the boss has been overly assaulted with a water pistol. - Increased the width of the draggable area for issues with the window hiding on Ubuntu. - Fixed an issue where Demon Dogs were getting caught behind the demon portal. - Fixed an issue where taxes were not being collected when nobles visited the church. - Advanced: 'F1' will now unlock the window, so it can be resized. This is a temporary fix for certain Linux builds, mismatched monitor sizes, and interesting screen configurations. The window will revert to default on save/load (to avoid crashes) - a more permanent fix for these fringe cases in in the works.

Our release date had to be put back to the 11th because we weren't sure we could finish all the graphical assets in time due to our artist having to make an extended stay in hospital. Like a trooper, however, she continued to pixel art from her hospital bed and we are ready to launch back on our original date of August 5th! With the game ready, our team excited, and people waiting, we are now fully engaged in preparing for a today's launch! Thanks for all the support during the creation process, and we look forward to your feedback! Mike, Catherine, and Angela, The Evergloom Team

You've seen the cute industrialists in their little top hats, fancy dresses, and stern concrete houses... but what comes next? Cyberists... cyberpunkers... cyberfolk... whatever you want to call them, these colourful villagers are more at home with neon signs and electronic tech. While they may be needy little villagers, the bonuses of having a hightech village is all too obvious, especially when the aliens begin to invade and only your Robo-Hero can stop them! We've had a lot of requests asking to see some footage or screen-shots from these later stages, so here are a few. Don't look too closely if you don't want any spoilers!

[previewyoutube=ENTp_fNo6ic;full][/previewyoutube] If you can't watch right now: here is a page, detailing these interactions, from the Help Menu.

All the coding, and eventing is now completely finished, and all we have left to do is finish off and insert the artwork. A big job but one that the remaining two of us can certainly handle. Today I played through level one and most of level two. Here is a few minutes of a 2/3rds complete level two. Obviously there are spoilers. If you don't want to see the furious Blood King, then watch no further! [previewyoutube=Ju3biiZGVo0;full][/previewyoutube]

If youve read our store page or blog youll already know that we are a team of three developers. Unfortunately, our lead artist has had to go for an extended stay in hospital. Shell be fine, but because of this were pushing back the launch date from the 5th of August to the 11th of August, to make sure the remaining two of us have enough time to finish everything on our final-pre-launch-to-do-list. While we probably could finish by the fifth, we dont want to be in the position of launching anything that hasnt been 100% tested. Thank you for understanding :)

For lots of people seeing Desktopia, a concern is how it will affect the performance of their computer if they are doing other things (which of course is what the game is made for). Well we've worked hard at creating robust, simple code and when playing on a modern PC there is very little impact. Below I show the game running on a 2015 laptop, that was never top of the range, so you can see how little power it needs to run! Also, my cat's in the video, she's called buttercup and you can't have her!!! [previewyoutube=ETMEoR6u7ik;full][/previewyoutube]

As we draw closer to the launch, the work on the game becomes less interesting to show: we've spent the last week creating a main menu, tidying up code, and inputting many of the later tier buildings into the game. You can see a few of these below.
We also added, our most requested feature to the game - a quick hide button for those who intend to play Desktopia at work. With a single keyboard press the whole game disappears into the taskbar. I've included a small video below to showcase this small, but significant feature! [previewyoutube=sjWYc66QIjk;full][/previewyoutube]

This week has been fun: making moody villagers, exciting festivals, and adding a postman to the world. There is a lot of new stuff to cover so I'm going to jump right in. Each villager has a unique set of needs and filling these helps to make them happy, but it's not the only thing that affects their mood. Personal events, bad weather, recently being attacked, fires in the village, or interacting with your character can all influence it.
Using the stats menu, you can check on all your villagers at any time. They'll also let you know what they need in the form of thought bubbles.
Happy villagers, move faster and spend more money. Sad villagers will go on strike and may even turn to theft or arson. Happy villagers can also leave you gifts or drop gratitude, and that brings us to our latest infrastructure building... the post office!
Gratitude and gifts are literally dropped by villagers on the map, so need collecting. You can do this yourself, of course, but you can also choose to take up a village spot with the postman, who will go and collect these goodies for you! Once you've collected enough gratitude you can use them to throw 'need' themed festivals, which not only make your villagers happier for some time, but also increase a specific need. Holding a religious festival, for example, will provide the villagers with religion. They are also super cute and bedeck your village in festive colours, and each have a unique weather and screen tone.

We've really enjoyed adding all this to the world, it really helps make the villagers feel unique, and adds colour and vibrancy to the world.

'As idle as you want...' is the unofficial catchphrase for Desktopia amongst our team, but the opposite is also true. If you want to get involved in the world you're simulating, we want to provide all the means and tools to do so. That can mean jumping in with a sword or gun, or just digging into the statistics in order to build a more balanced village. Amongst a slew of changes and developments in the past week, I think the team ) are most excited about the implementation of visual information representation in the form of GRAPHS!! Exciting, dynamic, charts that give continuous and live updates on your villager's needs, earnings, moods, health with other data still being added.
Moving on from the nerd-porn.... We've also continued to develop a lot of the core features, with a day/night system being added, villager moods which affect their speed, spend, and reactions, and villager personality types. Up next, we have a LOT of sprite work to do. We need a completely new set of sprites for statues, and plaques, sixteen more buildings along with a unique villager for each, and whole new tier of technology! Wish us luck!

The last few days have been a struggle! While it's great that in Desktopia your villagers can expand down the road and destroy enemy buildings, it was less great that yours were imperishable. We set out to fix that with a 'fire' mechanic which simply allows building to catch fire, either through enemy attack or incompetent villagers, and get destroyed. We also wanted fire to be able to spread to neighbouring houses. and pose a real risk if left unchecked. That meant that we needed villagers to be able to out the flames (though with a risk of death), and a dedicated water-mage (fireman). Code-wise, this has been a real p.i.t.a to implement , and has given us lag problems, balancing issues, and general headaches., but we are pleased to say that it is done and works great... well, great if you love looking away for a moment and coming back to find your village in cinders. We may still have a little balancing to do! steammocking

[previewyoutube=Dv9_YRymxHE;full][/previewyoutube]

[previewyoutube=syJMSLgXay8;full][/previewyoutube]