Hello everyone, friends! Pirozhok Studio is in touch. Today's patch has brought some new mechanics and significant improvements of the existing ones. Let's take a closer look!

New content.

• New threat.
  Rebuilding another area undreground, a player may run into cobolds, searching for ore and gems. After beating the cobolds, a player will be able to claim their treasures.
  
• Heroes rework.
  Heroes levelling up was reworked. The level cap was increased to 12, and every ability has 3 grades, affecting their effectiveness - spell damage, duration, cooldown, etc. Besides, after reaching a new level, heroes not get extra damage and health points. For example, on the first level of "Death call" spell the Death Knight summons one lesser skeleton, on the second - one skeleton warrior, and two skeleton warriors on the third.
• Resource carrying. This mechanics was also reworked. If a minion who carries resources changes his occupation, he drops a bag with the resources on the ground. The bag can be carried to the town hall by any free minion. Moreover, a new profession - carrier - was introduced. Carriers will pick bags and flay dead animals.
  
• End of the game. When a player goes through all chalengess, offered to him, he'll have a choice, either to leave, or to keep playing.
  

  Minor changes.

  
  
  • Now you can ask the ambassador to postpone the payment of tribute. After two days, he will request resources again, and there won't be such an option.
    
  • The size of the map has been increased.
  • Now there is a possibility to cut down a particular tree. Minions don't carry the wood to the town hall, a bag with resources apears next to the logging site.
    
  • Behaviour modes were added to heroes.
  • Heroes levels don't reset after death anymore.
  • Notification system was reworked.
  • Minions skills panel was reworked.
    
  • Heroes spell descriptions were rewritten.
  • Rations menu was reworked.
    
  • The ration menu and sacrifice menu indicate the current amount of food and the current god's grace.
  • The health bars of all units were aligned.
  • Control of a minion isn't removed after assigning him to job.
  • Minions automatically rebuild beams in the mine in the absence of resources in the accessible zone. After the construction of the beam minions continue their previous work.
  • Research points are given after the final construction of the town hall.
  • The term for hiring mercenaries, a priest and a jester can be extended to an indefinite number of days for money.
  • Minions breed automatically from time to time.
  • The northern citizens do not attack player units first.
  • Now, when taking damage from disease and cold, minions cough.
  • The spawn rate of animals has been reduced.
  • In winter, the subjects of the God of sun do not take damage from cold and move twice as fast as others.

  Bug fixes.

  
  The following bugs were fixed in this patch:
  • Units attack nearby enemy, even if you tell them to attack a different target.
  • Nord towers don't switch to the nearest target, while the first spotted one is in sight.
  • Hunters get stuck on the spot.
  • NPC workers get stuck on the spot.
  • Mage projectiles get stuck in the air.
  • Elves do not leave at the end of the Winter Solstice.
  • Villagers are running around on the spot after being kileedt.
  • Villagers do not receive damage from the "Killing touch" spell.
  • Fire elementals do not receive damage from the "Killing touch" spell.
  • Minion's disease icon appears to be too small sometimes.
  • Transparent buildings interface.
  • Incorrect display of the heros experience scale.
  • Incorrect display of text in the workshop.
  • Incorrect display of text in the dialogues of the hero.
  • Lack of text in the merchant's dialog window.
  • Bowmen at the gates trying to shoot themselves.
  • Mages get stuck on the spot if the distance to the attacked target is too little.
  • Hiring soldiers and mages causes lags and freezes.
  • The cursor disappears from time to time.
  • Minions appear in multiple slots on the people menu (T).
  That's all for now, folks! Leave your comments, share your opinion, as it helps me to improve the game!
  
  [ 2019-06-06 12:59:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! Just wanted to announce that I'm currently focused on bug fixing and thank you for your help. Together we've managed to fix about 30 bugs and small glitches in 10 days! I'm also working on new content - new gathering system and decorations are to appear really soon! If you want to help me in bug fixing, join our Discord: https://discord.gg/pirozhok Sincerely yours, Life is Hard dev.

Good day everyone! Pirozhok Studio is in touch. Today's patch affects the late game. Many players told us there was nothing left to do after beating the nords and the necromancer. Well, the time has come to change it.

Random events.

• First event that I proudly present to you is the undead scourge. All the world plunges into chaos and destruction during the event:
  • Weather. The sun is shrouded by the plague fumes that rise from the ground, and at night the bloodmoon shines:
    
    
  • Invasion of the undead. Numerous graves full of undead ready to massacre everyone alive appear all over the world. In this situation living beings unite in attempt to save their lives. The sun does not burn the undead armies down during the day, making it even more difficult to fight them off.
    
  • Refugees. Catastrophe like that will undoubly cause people from other settlements flee to cover behind the walls of your settlement. The player will have to choose either to let them stay or to drive them off (you don't need more eaters, do you?). Some of them will obediently go away, but others might try to take what's theirs by force.
    
  • Fallen peasants and soldiers will turn into undead, slaughtering their former brothers-in-arms, whatever the matter of death is.
    
  • The event ends in a few days but might happen again in the span of the next 15 days.
• The second event is the peasant uprising. Peasants that are displeased with your rule might start an uprising. You can distinguish them from the loyal ones by the masks and special icons above their heads.
  
• The third event is lycanthropy. Some of your subjects get sick with a strange disease. It might lead to irreversible consequences if you don't take care of them...
  
• Besides, many small random events were added, like crop diseases or hop weevil (Hi, Stronghold!)
  

  World map.

  
  
  • I've seriously reworked world generation in this patch. Now the world is created randomly from one of pre-packaged presets and gets filled with random ruins, towns and bandit camps. Such a way of world generation was chosen, as it allows to combine replayability with the advantages of manual level design.
    
    A nothern town may now spawn to the left of the player's settlement
  • A serious work on the minimap was done. Now it shows the current situation on the global map. Besides, the fog of war affects it too.
    

    New personal traits.

    
    Player's subjects now have 6 new traits:
    
    • Quick - this minion moves 10% faster than others.
    • Hesitant - this minion moves 10% slower than others.
    • Drunkard - this minion's mood can be increased only with booze.
    • Holy - this minion doesn't drink beer. At all.
    • Tireless - this minion's energy decreases twice slower.
    • Sleepyhead - this minion's energy decreases twice faster.

    Miscellaneous.

    
    
    • The "game over" window was also updated. There will be at least three types of it depending on the player's success during his reign and the end of it.
      
      
      
    • Leather armor was also redrawn. The old armor looked bad and didn't fit. The new armor looks like that:
      This peasant lost his head over himself
    • New northern raiders have arrived!
      
    • Many dialogues and descriptions were rewritten. Okri and Maxold had sunk into the abyss, meet Berthold the craftsman and Godric the fletcher instead:
      
      
    • New sounds were added to the game - 4 for each type of weapon and armor!
    • I'm also proud to introduce you to the new nordern raiders theme. This theme was heavily inspired with the northern folklore and culture. Vocal and drums are widely used in the Scandinavian music, so we used them in this soundtrack to make it sound authentic. Hope you'll like it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyK3kV-_35g

    Bug fixes.

    
    
    • Firing units from farms doesn't cause problems anymore
    • Minions don't get stuck at the hospital anymore
    • Minions don't get stuck after having a bath
    • Several sprites were shown incorrect at the necromancer's hideout
    • Northern citizens used to behavy incorrect after their defeat
    That's all for now, folks! Leave your comments and criticism. You help the game to get better! Yours, Life is Hard dev eitolstii ----------------------------- Some useful links: Discord: https://discord.gg/pirozhok Twitter: https://twitter.com/pirozhokstudio VK: https://vk.com/pekaclub
    
    
    [ 2019-04-29 00:22:39 CET ] [ Original post ]

For the last two months we've been working hard on the upcoming patch. I'm happy to announce that it will come out in the next few days. Important changes were made in sound design - there will be two new soundtracks and a plethora of new sound effects - 4 per weapon/armor type. So, I'm proud to introduce you to the new nordern raiders theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyK3kV-_35g This theme was heavily inspired with the northern folklore and culture. Vocal and drums are widely used in the Scandinavian music, so we used them in this soundtrack to make it sound authentic. It took a lot of effort to study the subject and compose this theme, so feel free to share your opinion, as it really helps Life is Hard to get better! P.S. This art is to become a cornerstone of a new cinematic trailer. All the artwork used in the cinematic will be available in-game as loading screens and on Steam as profile backgrounds.

Hello everyone! Pirozhok Studio is here. I'm glad to announce new mechanics for today's update. There are so many of them that I could hardly find where to start.

Gameplay changes:

• First of all, world map was changed. Eastern Kingdom, Islands and naga were removed from the game. World map looks like that now:
  Nord location's appearance was also changed - now it's a rocky sea shore:
  
  
• Different difficulty levels were finally implemented.
  
• Your subjects have learned to construct two new buildings! A school will help your minions to improve their skills in different professions. You'll need a minion with a "Teacher" trait or a master in one of professions to make it work:
  A market attracts trading caravans from other towns, bringing money to the settlement:
  
• Meat the mages! You can train mages in a wizard tower. Mages can wear robes and leather armor and use wands as weapons. Low armor is compensated with high damage and high effectiveness against heavy armored units. Mage without a wand:
  Mage with a fire wand:
  
• Shields were implemented. Soldiers can use one of three shield types -a round shields, kite shields and tower shields. Every one of them has advantages and disadvantages. Shields can be crafted in the workshop.
  
• Mercenaries were redesigned. Now you'll be able to hire those cutthroats instead of five similar units. Every one of them has their one weapon and armor types:
  Before:
  After:
  
• You'll be able to find treasure in the mine. Or ruins of an ancient settlements. Explore carefully!
  
• Two new weapons were added. Military picks effectively puncture heavy armor, and two-handed axes deal terrible damage to unarmored units:
  
  
• Two new effects were added. Some weapon types provoke bleeding, dealing periodic damage. Weapons of the undead might provoke poisoning, making your units miss with a 40% chance.
  
• New traits were added: 1) Undead slayer - your unit deals 25% more damage to the undead 2) Nords slayer - your unit deals 25% more damage to the nords 3) Fear of undead - your unit deals 25% less damage to the undead 4) Fear of nords - your unit deals 25% less damage to the nords
  

Control changes:

• Hero and soldiers can descend into the mine now.
  
• Workshop interface was noticeably changed. Items were divided into three types - "weapons", "armor" and "miscellaneous":
  
• Soldiers Control panel was also changed - now they have personal traits:
  
• Behaviour mode or attack move for all chosen units were implemented.
• Pressing Shift you'll move to a free minion now.
• Pressing Tab one chooses hero, pressing it twice will move the camera to him.

Graphic changes:

• Banners were redesigned:
  
• Loading screens were redesigned:
  
• Helmets were redesigned too. Ancient helmets might be dropped from the skeletons. They are slightly better that the leather ones, but are quite bulky to use, slowing your minions down:
  
• Names and appearance of the minions were redesigned:
  
• Iron armor and weapons were redesigned too.

Bug fixes:

• Incorrect hero behaviour in battles
• Impossibility to hire minions to farms using the control menu (T)
• Incorrect soldiers and mercenaries behaviour near hunting minions
• Incorrect rations pictures after loading the game
• Incorrect dialog texts after loading the game
• Incorrect villagers behaviour
• Massive dear migration
• Incorrect ore spawn in the mine
• Incorrect bears behaviour
• Incorrect fence length on the background
• Incorrect bakery sprite after loading the game
• Ore and stone amount that is gained from villages was slightly decreased
• Minions quit their job after bathing
• Minions bug out after hiring them into the mine using control panel
• Ammunition choice bugs out using control panel
• Goblin and dwarf traders bug out
• Incorrect expedition wagon behaviour
• Heroes ranged attacks bug out
• Quests are not loaded
• Towers are not loaded
• "No soap" icon bugs out
• Catapult armor type is not shown
• Incorrect skeletons behaviour during the daytime
• Incorrect underground skeletons behaviour
• Incorrect support beams sprites while building
• Buildings overlap
• Childrens' heads bug out
• "Fighter" and "Puny" bug out
• Forest background bugs out
• Nords bowmen' armor types bug out

Hello, ladies and fellas! It's been a long time since I wrote a post on Steam - much was changing in my life, so I had time only to support the project and fix the bugs you found. However, I'm in charge again, and I'm glad to announce some new features & mechanics for the next patch: UPD: it's not out yet, this post is just an announce!

• First of all, money is finally going to appear in Life is Hard. A player will be able to construct a new building - market - that attracts merchants and caravans from all over the tiny world. They will buy goods from your minions and pay with gold!
  Hiring mercenaries, monks, jesters etc. will require money from now on. No more barter!
• Secondly, mages will stand by your side. You'll be able to hire new units at the mage's tower. [strike] Seems legit, doesn't it?[/strike] Mages are equipped with light armor & wands. Soldiers will lose ability to use them.
  A "work in progress" mage's outfit
• To compensate for the loss, soldiers will be able to use shields. Shields have a chance to reflect hits/projectiles. The stronger the material is - the higher the chances are. I'm also considering giving secondary weapons to ranged units like archers, as using bow at close range seems illogical. Id love to hear your thoughts about it in the comments.
  A wooden shield
• In this regard, i've changed weapons system, making weapon & armor types more balanced. Here's a small table: [table] [tr] [th]Weapon type[/th] [th]Damage scale to unarmored units[/th] [th]Damage scale to light-armored units[/th] [th]Damage scale to medium-armored units[/th] [th]Damage scale to heavy-armored units[/th] [/tr] [tr] [td]Firsts, fangs, horns etc.[/td] [td]100%[/td] [td]100%[/td] [td]75%[/td] [td]75%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Cutting weapons[/td] [td]125%[/td] [td]100%[/td] [td]75%[/td] [td]75%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Piercing weapons[/td] [td]125%[/td] [td]75%[/td] [td]125%[/td] [td]125%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Blunt weapons[/td] [td]125%[/td] [td]100%[/td] [td]75%[/td] [td]50%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Ranged weapons[/td] [td]125%[/td] [td]100%[/td] [td]100%[/td] [td]75%[/td] [/tr] [tr] [td]Magic[/td] [td]125%[/td] [td]100%[/td] [td]100%[/td] [td]125%[/td] [/tr] [/table] I believe this system will make players to have a balanced army with light-armored bowmen and mages. I'm still working on it, so feel free to share your opinion.
• New mercenaries sprites have arrived to replace the old ones. Every one of them has unique attack & armor type according to the table above.
  
• The last updated mechanics in this patch is rations system. Players will be able to choose manually whether to use a resource in their minions' rations or to keep it for trading.
  That's all for now. There's still much work to do, but I hope to release this patch on New Year's holidays. As I already mentioned, I'd love to hear your opinion about the patch in the comments! Yours, Life is Hard dev

Check out a new interface mockup

Greetings! After a long pause caused by an absence of money we are ready to continue our development. Let’s start with a report about work we done. Recently we’ve added feudal villages, which can be built after reaching a certain level of a development. Agricultural, industrial, mining or blacksmithing villages can be founded. They will share some of their resources with a player once in a while.
In-game's fauna was also extended by adding birds, which tend to fly away to warm countries late summer. We hope it'll help to create the atmosphere of a passing summer.
Talking about in-game mechanics and controls, now you can switch between soldiers with arrow keys, which allows you to quickly select the desired unit. The TAB key brings player’s view to the battlefield and you can always check how much food your minions recently gained. We will also continue our work on the interface to make it more convenient and easier to interact with. After that, we’ll be ready to leave Steam Early Access at any time after fixing all the bugs (just like DayZ, me-he-he). However, we don’t want to release an unstable product, which Life is Hard is. So, please report any bug you found on our Steam Forum. Thank you for your support!

Hello! Life is Hard devs are on (the) line. As a minor patch, we've introduced unique spells for each god instead of "hand of vitality". This is how they look like now:
What would you like to see in Life is Hard? We've been thinking for a while about adding more wandering traders/caravans with different tools/improvements to sell, but we're unsure if this is what our game needs right now. Please respond thoughtfully, as it's very important for the game's further development

Hello! Life is Hard devs are on (the) line. As a minor patch, we've introduced unique spells for each god instead of "hand of vitality". This is how they look like now:
What would you like to see in Life is Hard? We've been thinking for a while about adding more wandering traders/caravans with different tools/improvements to sell, but we're unsure if this is what our game needs right now. Please respond thoughtfully, as it's very important for the game's further development

Hello, dear members of our community! The developers of "Life is Hard" are on line. It's been almost 3 months since the last documented update, and we think that it's time to shed a light on everything that happens behind the scenes of our production plant.

About what we have done

About what we are going to do

Hallo, dear members of our community! The developers of "Life is Hard" are on line. It's been almost 3 months since the last documented update, and we think that it's time to shed a light on everything that happens behind the scenes of our production plant.

About what we have done

About what we are going to do

Hi there! It's Life is Hard developers. We've been working on this patch for one month and a half and are glad to finally show it to you.

Graphics changes:

We've redrawn trees and the forest. We've also redrawn some flora & fauna animations. Now nature looks really alive!
Before:
After:

Now every god's temple looks really unique!
[/olist]

Gameplay changes:

We've just returned from DevGAMM Minsk 2017 conference. We took a lot of feedback from there and made some changes in gameplay mechanics according to it. [olist]

We've changed the reproduction system interface. Now a player can choose which minions to make to reproduce.

We've also implemented a new building area

Many of you said that there are too few types of weapons and equipment in general. We have begun working on this with the introduction of a spear - a weapon that will allow your soldiers to attack enemies from a long range.

Many of players complained that there are too few personal traits in the game, so we've decided to introduce some new traits:

• Callous - this minion won't regret his neighbours' death. Neither will he regret anything except lack of food in his belly.
• Responsive - this minion will overreact to everything - be it death of a villager or a butterfly.
• Glutton - this minions LOVES eating. Its health is increased.
• Light eater - this minion doesn't eat al all. Its health is decreased.
• Sociable - this minion loves chatting with everyone!
• Loner - this minion prefers staying silent while others talk.
• Teacher - other minions gain experience in different jobs while chatting with this guy.
• Bonehead - this minion doesn't improve their skills in jobs at all.
• Carnivore - this minion prefers meat. Unhappy when there's none in your settlement.
• Herbivore - this minion prefers vegetables and fruit. Unhappy when there's none in your settlement.

To increase replayability we've implemented a random spawn of some key objects: river, altar, bandit & mercenary camp.

Northern citizens. When enemies arrive, men take up arms and women hide in the town hall.
[/olist]

Bugs

As always, we've done a huge work on fixing the bugs. Thanks to everyone who report bugs on our Steam forum! That's all for today. Have a good weekend!

[ 2017-11-23 15:38:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there! It's Life is Hard developers. We've been working on this patch for one month and a half and are glad to finally show it to you.

Graphics changes:

We've redrawn trees and the forest. We've also redrawn some flora & fauna animations. Now nature looks really alive!
Before:
After:

Now every god's temple looks really unique!
[/olist]

Gameplay changes:

We've just returned from DevGAMM Minsk 2017 conference. We took a lot of feedback from there and made some changes in gameplay mechanics according to it. [olist]

We've changed the reproduction system interface. Now a player can choose which minions to make to reproduce.

We've also implemented a new building area

Many of you said that there are too few types of weapons and equipment in general. We have begun working on this with the introduction of a spear - a weapon that will allow your soldiers to attack enemies from a long range.

Many of players complained that there are too few personal traits in the game, so we've decided to introduce some new traits:

• Callous - this minion won't regret his neighbours' death. Neither will he regret anything except lack of food in his belly.
• Responsive - this minion will overreact to everything - be it death of a villager or a butterfly.
• Glutton - this minions LOVES eating. Its health is increased.
• Light eater - this minion doesn't eat al all. Its health is decreased.
• Sociable - this minion loves chatting with everyone!
• Loner - this minion prefers staying silent while others talk.
• Teacher - other minions gain experience in different jobs while chatting with this guy.
• Bonehead - this minion doesn't improve their skills in jobs at all.
• Carnivore - this minion prefers meat. Unhappy when there's none in your settlement.
• Herbivore - this minion prefers vegetables and fruit. Unhappy when there's none in your settlement.

To increase replayability we've implemented a random spawn of some key objects: river, altar, bandit & mercenary camp.

Northern citizens. When enemies arrive, men take up arms and women hide in the town hall.
[/olist]

Bugs

As always, we've done a huge work on fixing the bugs. Thanks to everyone who report bugs on our Steam forum! That's all for today. Have a good weekend!

[ 2017-11-23 15:38:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey, folks! I'm proud to tell you that our Discord channel is verified now! Join it and feel free to ask any questions, I'll help you out as soon as possible: https://discord.gg/pirozhok
P.S. The new patch is coming! Here are some sneak peeks:

P. P. S. I would like to express my appreciation to all of you awesome guys who report bugs on our Steam Forum, support me with kind words and keep playing. This is the very thing that inspires me to keep working on Life is Hard. Thank you, guys! steamhappy

Hey, folks! I'm proud to tell you that our Discord channel is verified now! Join it and feel free to ask any questions, I'll help you out as soon as possible: https://discord.gg/pirozhok
P.S. The new patch is coming! Here are some sneak peeks:

P. P. S. I would like to express my appreciation to all of you awesome guys who report bugs on our Steam Forum, support me with kind words and keep playing. This is the very thing that inspires me to keep working on Life is Hard. Thank you, guys! ːsteamhappyː

Game's logo is not as important as it's content and amount of bugs, but it represents the game. That's why I decided that a new brighter logo would be a good idea. What do you think about it?

Game's logo is not as important as it's content and amount of bugs, but it represents the game. That's why I decided that a new brighter logo would be a good idea. What do you think about it?

Life is Hard is on weeklong sale now. Get it with a 40% discount! The sale lasts till October 16.

Life is Hard is on weeklong sale now. Get it with a 40% discount! The sale lasts till October 16.

Hi there, guys, it's Life is Hard dev. I've been working on new content recently and I'm proud to show it to you. I've decided that the nordic town looks pretty ugly and outdated. That's why we've redrawn it. Here are some sketches and the final version:





We've also redrawn heroes' spells icons...:





... and farms:
Now wells have visual representation of their reach:
Talking about minor changes, I've added autosave and VSync support. You can switch them on/off in settings.
That's all for today. Stay hard!

Is there anyone who wants to translate Life is Hard into german language? Would be much appreciated (and payed).
UPD: Thank you so much for your support! Here goes the link, so anyone who wants to help can edit it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZNDDPREf78vQmFX0xpZ0mqe3pkGJJUlR-zsQXnC6gcc/edit Just change russian translation to the german one. And please be careful with all these comas, quotation marks and semicolons! Translation example: "English phrase" | "The same phrase in german";

We've been working on a new system quite long and are finally ready to present it to you. It's much more stable and works faster than the previous one. That doesn't mean that your previously saved games won't load anymore though - the new system works fine with the old files too. The update will become available for downloading later this day.

Hello everyone! We're glad to present you our next update. [olist]

Sidequests. We've come to the conclusion that there's absolutely nothing to do in the game's world, so these two month we have been working on the quests outside the village. Now you can talk to the ghost fisherman near the sea, save a child from the bandits' claws and expel nord deserters from the ancient ruins.

The world. Now exploring the world becomes even more interesting. The Necromancer got the ancient wizard collegium town, in-game world is full of ruins - the remnants of the ancient civilization. But the most interesting innovation is diffrerent appearance of the walls which depends on the chosen god.

Minions' skills. Now if a minion does the same job for the long time, his skill grows. The level of the skill is displayed in the minion management menu, beginning from a usual icon and finishing with a golden one.

Rye. A new crop for farming which you can get by declaring an alliance with the Nords or conquering them.

New heroes' animations. Paladin got a new emblem that represents his god better, and Death Knight learnt to gallop.

Well, probably the most important aspect is a huge bug fix. Thanks to the fact that you so actively report them on our forum, we have managed to fix more than two dozens of bugs. Together we can make the game better![/olist]

[ 2017-09-02 00:05:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello everyone! After about a month we're ready to present you a new update, which diversified the world outside your village. Numerous bugs were fixed, new landscapes, new enemies, outposts and many other things were added. Now let's have a closer look at these changes.
1. The overworld. We thought that the background had a lack of diversity, so now you can see a beautiful landscapes with beautiful mountains, dark forests, bandits' camps (by robbing these you will get a small amount of resources), border outposts of different states and an altar which helps you to reveal the divine powers.


2. Rations and cultures. After working a bit on the rations, we managed to make their usage more flexible and "pleasant". Now even having 2 units of each type of food you are able to feed 6 minions, so it’s way more convenient than it used to be. In addition, now you can grow a new culture - hops, which you can find by traveling. In the future, the variety will be increased.
3. Necromancer. Now the battle against the necromancer has become more epic. New music, new cursed biome, and a huge guard protecting his master.
4. Tutorial. Now the game has become more friendly to new players, updated tutorial is presented in a much more convenient way and explains some game mechanics that were not mentioned before.
5. Gods. New bonuses and abilities that are given by the deities. Now you need to take god selection seriously at the beginning of the game. 6. Bugs. About fifty different issues and bugs have been fixed. Please, if you find any - report them on our Steam Community forums or on our Discord server, instead of rushing to provide negative feedback. We will do our best to fix them as soon as possible! Well, that’s enough for today. Thanks a lot for your support, guys!

Greetings, community! After two months of hard work we are finally ready to present you a really HUGE update. So, let's begin. Interface:

• New production interface. Now a player will be able to choose how much production a building produces per day. You don't have to click the soap icon a million times per day anymore!
  
• New map. Now there are two maps in fact - a global map and a village map. Heroes, soldiers and workers are shown on the viillage map.
  
• New minion control menu. Now you can assign your minions to work in buildings from here.
  

• A new quest line from the North Kingdom has appeared. In case of alliance, the nords will share their weapons and armor with a player. After defeating the nords a player will be able to choose what to do with them - either to destroy or to make them pay tribute.
  
• Fire. If a building's health points are cricitically low, a fire breacks out. You can extinguish it by fixing the building with the help of your minions. If your village is developed enough, the firefighters will appear near the Town Hall.
  
• Now you are able to hire workers to work on your farms.
  

• New heroes' attack animation. Now every character has 5 different attack animations, that will make fights more entertaining.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• New well sprite.
  

• New Steam badges.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• New logo!
  
• New loading screen.

Greetings, community! We've released a major update which improves some user interfaces, basic gameplay mechanics and adds light infantry (berserkers) and new animations for nords.
New UI for workers. It can be seen clearly now that every minion has his own perks. Mood level is shown with different smiles. A player can understand whether a minion believes in god or not by the ankh.
Workshop. A player can improve workers' instruments and farm fertility here.
Upgrade menu, that has dramatically changed. Different technologies can be researched here - from outfitting an expedition to rabbit hunting and catapult building.
Sacred altar. You can revive and upgrade your hero here.
Blacksmith. And here come the nords:



Moreover, we've fixed plenty of bugs and made some minor balance changes. > Follow us on Twitter. > Join our Discord server and our Steam group. Yours sincerely, Pirozhok Studio.

Hello, community! Today we're pround to present you the new narrative trailer we had been working on last weeks. Soon we'll make a gameplay trailer, which will be uploaded on Steam. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WFl9sMzBDQ

Hello everyone. We're back from winter holidays and now we're ready to continue the development. As a matter of fact today's update has only a half of planned content as we wanted to release some major fixes. We've decided to update minions' animations by adding new variations and making them dependent on some game's events. Thus, walking animation of a tired minion will be different from the animation of a well-rested one:
Now gathering berries, plants and harvesting crops has different animations:


We've worked on synchronising animations with game events. Moreover, we've added two new minions, give it up for them!
If a boar or a deer is killed by a soldier or a hero, it leaves a corpse, which can be flayed to obtain resources:
Little things:

• In winter hygiene decreases more slowly.
• Reduced memory consumption when loading a save.
• Removed gnomes and goblins from the diplomacy menu because of the uselessness.

• Fixed loading savegames.
• Fixed bears and deers highlight.
• Fixed getting stuck in the mine.
• Fixed infinite spawn of bears in winter.
• Now soldiers remember their squad, minions remember their job.
• Fixed the bug with the cursor disappearence.
• Fixed the bug, when minion go to the bath, even if his hygiene is above 50.

I've just finished working on the New Year update. It adds the Winter Sun Circle Fair, where players can purchase various gifts and accessories for their Christmas trees.
For example, you can trade wood for sweets with Father Frost (it's cold in the north, so he needs to fill his fireplace with something). Those, in return, can be given to elves so that they would give you various gifts, be it weapons, gems or a cup full of beer.

Happy New Year, folks! Here's a present for you:

Greetings, community! We've just released a small update which adds dialogs between minions in their spare time.

Greetings, community! We're glad to share information with you about the latest update. All animations are synchronized with sounds and actions now. Dealt and received damage is showed during the battles.
The god selection menu was reworked. Much useful information was added, including spell descriptions and video-previews.
The font was also improved. Now it supports Spanish and Italian special characters.

Greetings, community!
We've done a painstaking work on "Life is Hard" and now we can say with confidence that it was a big step to the game's full release. Moreover, the list of changes appeared to be very huge, so we decided to break with tradition and write a changelog. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ A small notice for users of 64-bit Windows: we've recently updated the method of switching between builds, so we strongly recommend to make a full reinstallation (with manual directory clean up) of the game in order to clean up the space on the computer.

NEW:

• The tutorial has been updated.
• Most of the interface has been redrawn in the united style.
  
• A wagon's mechanics has been reworked. After upgrading a town hall to the third level, player receives an ability to send a group of minions (1-4) on the journey. Many different events may happen with the travelers, which will affect the amount of resources and people the wagon will bring back home.
  
• Now you can group your soldiers. When a squad is created, a button appears in the left lower corner. Pressing it once selects members of the group. Pressing it twice moves the camera on the standard-bearer of the squad.
  
• Icons above minions heads can now be pressed. Pressing one cancels current task of the minion.
• Pressing spacebar selects the hero. Double-press moves the camera on him.
• Now the camera smoothly moves to the target instead of teleportation.
• Buildings of nomads and their music have been renewed.
  
• Flora and fauna of different locations were added – camels, jerboas and camel-thorns in the desert, crabs on the tropical islands.
• The night sky was redrawn. Some stars have been animated.
  
• Most of industrial buildings got a decorative image on the background of the interface. The interface of the forge was redrawn.
  

MOST IMPORTANT BUGFIXES:

• Minions don't get stuck while gathering berries anymore.
• Fixed disappearance of the mill's vane during the rain.
• Fixed disappearance of minions' heads during the rain.
• Fixed minions getting stuck on the farm.
• Fixed length of progress bars above industrial buildings.
• Fixed dissapearance of the background in mines after loading a save file.
• Fixed disappearance of the barracks after loading a save file .
• Fixed the bug with the bathhouse after loading a save file.
• Fixed lack of the description of "Idle" command.
• Fixed an ability of attacking bears by champions.

OTHER CHANGES:

• Now the possibility of upgrading champion's abilities has a highlighted icon. Inactive abilities are highlighted with grey.
  
• "Hold the position" command is replaced by "Move to the point" one.
• Dead minions are now marked in the control panel.
• "New game" buttons are now highlighted with yellow when hovered.

Greetings, community! We've prepared graphics improvement and the continuation of the storyline in this update. We remind you that with the implementation of the storyline some old save files could work incorrectly. In this update we've replaced the English voice acting with a new, higher-quality one, to remove the accent. We're working hard on the plot of the game. This time the changes affected nomads and their enemies. Since we're working on the storyline, we've decided to update the map and replace swamp monsters with underwater ones (will be implementated later). Moreover, a quest panel was added. A quest panel:
A new map (before and after the update):

New story characters:

New enemies:

Moreover, we're working on new graphics for the desert.

A very important strategic component was added – an ability to create groups.
The player now can choose how many products will be produced by bakeries and farms. Also we've fixed some minor issues, including the situation, when minion "forgets" their job after sleep.

And know the news from Crowding.

Greetings, community! We're ready to present you the update we've been working on. As we mentioned before, we're starting to implement a storyline. This update contains the beginning of the story.

Now mercenaries have the same direct control system as soldiers.

We've reworked the balance. Now the basic damage of worker minions is reduced to 3 points. However, boars damage was slightly decreased too to make the hunting little easier. Trees can be harvested several times before falling down and disappearing, but give less resources per one cycle. In addition, we started updating English voice acting to remove the accent. This very update contains improved minions voice acting, other voices will be changed in following patches. Since we've changed most of the basic mechanics, saves from previous versions might NOT work properly beginning from this update.. Now a little planning for the future. We've started improving some animations and sprites: the islanders will get updated houses soon.

Dear community! We are now working on the storyline of our game. Translations to Chinese, French, German and Italian languages are almost complete. Unfortunately, no one in our team speaks these languages. That's why we are asking you to help us on Crowdin: https://crowdin.com/project/life-is-hard

Greetings, community! We'd like to share a really cool feature with you: we've uploaded some of the oldest (but stable) builds we have. Both of them were built long before the release on Steam.
You can find them in two branches:

• alpha – the oldest build of "Life is Hard" from our Boomstarter crowdfunding campaign. This is how the game looked like from June to August 2015.
• legacy – the symbolic one, which was released in October 2015. Then we decided to make the first graphics update and change the conception of the game.

Greetings, community! We've been working hard on this pretty huge update, and now we can finally present it to you. Let's start with the most interesting things. The New Year has already been in the game, but it hasn't been celebrated. We've decided to extend this celebration ([spoiler]or a massacre[/spoiler]) by adding a thematic quest.
We totally redrew the main menu and improved a settings' one.

What about fishing bears? Bears usually go in pairs and scare your minions, so they straight away run to the Town Hall. Be careful!
Moreover, we reworked some animations and fixed many issues.

Now a bit of technical information.

Just found out that people ask on forum for wallpapers in good quality, so here they are. P.S. We are working on quite big update that will add new animals and new events in winter

Hi, folks. We're glad to present you the new update. Firstly, we've added necromancer and corrupted lands. Now you can stop rise of the undead by piercing the heart of the dark mage:
Secondly, we've added river. You can build a hut nearby now and order a minion to go fishing:
River freezes when it's cold, so you can't fish in winter:
Thirdly, we've done a huge work on bug fixing, so it shall be much easier to play now. That's all for now, stay tuned! Follow @PirozhokStudio in Twitter!

Greetings! We are glad to present you new update. We've been working hard on dynamic weather. Thus, for example, we've added sunsents, fog, improved rain and snow backgrounds.


A week ago we've started to translate "Life is Hard" into other languages with help of the community. "Life is Hard" was available in English, Russian and Ukrainian languages. Today we're extending this list with Italian and French. Many thanks! You are the best!

The time has come! Dear players, now you have a chance to participate in the life of our project! We've launcher an open translating campaign, where everyone can help us to translate "Life is Hard" into their native (and/or favourite) language. https://crowdin.com/project/life-is-hard To begin you have to pass a simple and fast registration (for your convenience you can sign in via Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or Github).
Moreover, we've created a special sub-forum "Translations", where we will publish nicknames of people, who had participated in our translating campaign. Also, there will be a mark 'Community made translation' on the store page, if a translation would be made by the community.

Greetings! We've rolled out another awesome update for Life is Hard. Let's check it out. The main feature of this update is optimization of save process, which now takes about 5 seconds to save the game progress instead of 2 minutes. Another cool feature of this update is a reinterpretation of building process. Now minions build buildings themselves and, if necessary, can demolish them. Due to this a new specialization was added – builder.
We're trying to make the settlement look lively. Now porters with bags are walking between connected buildings. It's also possible now to hire monks who will try to make atheists believe in god; and jesters, who will be looking for minions, whose mood has fallen below 50 and try to raise it up by entertaining them. If you won't do anything with graves for a long time, a minion's ghost will appear, who will try to chop trees, scaring nearby minions. It can be expelled by monks.

We continue to optimize the user interface by removing unnecessary components. For example, collecting and hunting buttons were removed above bushes and animals.
Good news for everyone, who can hardly understand English. We're planning to run a translation campaign on Crowdin, where everyone can commit into his native language's translation, but we want to make sure that it's justified. Write below what do you think about this idea.
Don't forget to follow @PirozhokStudio on Twitter, where we regulary post things about future updates.

Greetings, community! We've rolled out another update and are eager to share it with you! Do you remember that very picture from Greenlight? Yes, that one which depicts the bloody fight between your settlers and nords. We've finally decorated fights a little by adding blood.
Now water is necessary for the most of buildings, so player has to build wells. The limit is five, so you should make wise decisions about their location.
Furthermore, we've added a control panel that greatly simplifies control over your minions. You can profile your minions' specialization, allowing and forbidding different actions.
Follow @PirozhokStudio on Twitter! We regulary post things about future updates there.

Greetings, community! We've rolled out another update and are eager to share it with you! Do you remember that very picture from Greenlight? Yes, that one which depicts the bloody fight between your settlers and nords. We've finally decorated fights a little by adding blood.
Now water is necessary for the most of buildings, so player has to build wells. The limit is five, so you should make wise decisions about their location. [img]http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/publ.. Furthermore, we've added a control panel that greatly simplifies control over your minions. You can profile your minions' specialization, allowing and forbidding different actions. [img]http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/publ.. Follow @PirozhokStudio on Twitter! We regularly post things about future updates there.

Good day, community! [strike](a new greetings, finally!)[/strike] We've prepared a major upgrade for you that changes the functionality of gods and diseases system, as well as adds new beautiful animations. Let's start from the beginning. Now each god has a wide range of different bonuses and special conditions under which you can raise the level of god's mercy.
Diseases system has been improved. Now there are three degrees of the disease: I degree: minion has increased fatigue and goes to sleep more often.
II degree: minion starts to loose his health points.
III degree: minion's health points maximum decreases.
We've added a warm underground baths, in which minions will often spend time. [strike]You know nothing, Jon Snow![/strike]
Moreover, this update extends the atmosphere and the grace in the game. Butterflies perch on bushes and occasionally fly around, а bird will fly from trees, when minion starts to chop it.
Also we've done another great job polishing the game and fixing the issues.

Dear players! We've added something new and would like to share it with you. Now the ability to make clothes appears only on the 2nd level of the workshop. The upgrade requires 5 wood and 5 stones.
"Barracks" (10 wood and 10 stones) had been added. This building allows you to train warriors. They have 3 modes: agressive, defensive and "hold the position". Warriors are under the full control of the player, they don't need food or sleep. Limit of warriors count equals 10. Warriors can be retrained back into workers, but don't forget to make sure that the limit of minions isn't reached.
Catapults were also added. They can be made from 10 wood, 5 stones, 3 copper ingots and have 150 health points. Catapult requires one warrior who controls it. You can create only 3 catapults.
Now if god's mercy is below 20 points, a meteor may fall to your village, crushing your buildings The last feature for today is new animations for trees. Many bugs were fixed too.

Dear players! We have some news for you. First of all, we've added an ability to customize flags, one of which you can select in the beginning of the game.
Now you have an ability to sacrifice food for your god. It increases a new charasteristics "God's mercy", which affects on faith points gain speed. God's mercy slowly decreases every day, and if it's critically low, wait for swarm of locust or meteor fall. There're three types of gifts: small (gives 15 points of mercy), medium (30 points) and large (50 points).
We've also added a new building - henhouse, where meat is produced every day for seeds.

UPDATE: We've released a small update, which enlarges an ability to zoom out.
Dear players! We have some news and plans to share with you. Let's start with the fact that the Town Hall now has 5 levels. The houses will be wooden until the third level of Town Hall.


In the beginning the player has only 2 minions and has to build the first house for them. It doesn't seem logical that at the arrival of the player his minions have already built a Town Hall and a wall, but haven't built anything else, so the familiar picture of a fence and stone houses, as well as the ability to build gates, appears only on the third level of the town hall. On the right top panel there will be displayed average levels of minions' mood and hygiene. Average mood level affects on working speed of your minions. Also, we've updated our website, check it out.

Dear players! We've found out that healing spell was too imbalanced as it was curing a disease with health points restoration, so now it can't cure a disease and only restores maximum health points. Now the health of every minion depends on a new characteristic – a level of hygiene, which can be restored with a new social-important building – a bath hut.

Dear players! We have prepared some awesome news for you! And our news begins with new wall mechanics. Now every wall can be upgraded independently from town hall and has 4 levels. The third level unlocks an archer, who attacks enemies from the top of the wall.
We've started to rework the diplomacy. We've added trading system with nords and nomads. Each nation has its own preferences - so Nords are in need of stone, and nomads are seeking for wood. Periodically fractions change their preferences. It is remarkable that you can trade with nations only if you have good relationships.
We concluded that the hospital is not popular because of the complexity of producting resources for it, so now drugs are made from herbs that can be grown on farms.
The chain of bread production was extended. Now the mill produces a flour from which bread can be made at the bakery.
Now you should attach minions to each building to make it work.
By the way, we've reworked the UI of bulding menu. Now buildings are divided into five categories: "social-important", "agricultural", "manufactural", "military", "traps".

Dear players! We've uploaded another update for 'Life is Hard'. Let's check out our introductions. First of all, we've added loading screens with progress bar and tips.
At the 12th night (on the verge between summer and autumn) the bloody moon rises and the Reaper comes to destroy your village.
Also we've fixed audio distortion, which used to appear sometimes.

Dear players, we've got some great news for you! We are working hard to fix bugs, and finally we've fixed that nasty issue with unpickable stones in the mine. We've decided to add new kinds of the undead. Now we've got three types of skeletons:

• Skeleton-soldier – the simpliest one with 50 health points.
• Skeleton-archer – skeleton-soldier with bow and 40 health points.
• Skeleton-shieldbearer – the heaviest one with 120 health points. Covers his mates with a huge shield.

Meet new interface buttons:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/474860/ Dear players! We're pleased to inform you that "Life is Hard Demo" is now available on Steam!
"Life is Hard Demo" contains only the tutorial for the game process, splited into 4 parts: "Manufacturing and building", "Rural economy", "Religion and magic" and "Battles". By the way, we've almost forgot to tell you about new tutorial! Recently we had released a small update, which brought a replacement for the the current tutorial into the game. We've completely reworked the tutorial, separated it from the main gameplay and, as we mentioned earlier, splitted it into four thematic parts.

Dear players! We have some great news for you and eager to share them! We've recently released an update, the main innovation of which are... hares! Currently they have only a decorative role. At night they're hiding into burrows and at winter and spring they're changing their skin. Aren't they cute? Also we've started to rework the voiceover as we found it not suitable for the current atmosphere. Many players asked to add an ability to speed up the time. In today's update this feature was introduced along with an ability to stop the time.
The results of recent optimization have appeared to be very good, but there're still some FPS freezes. We will fix them in futher updates.

Dear players! We're glad to inform you that we've updated our Steam Trading Cards with new beautiful artworks!
Fish day
None of my business
Wrong target
Friendly fire
Is anyone there?

We've started to optimize the game and the first stable build is now available in the main branch. You can expect freezes and FPS drops sometimes, but now the expected performance is 80-100 FPS. If there is something you don't like in this update please let us know about it in the comments. Also if you don't want surprises you should switch the beta branch to 'previous'.

Dear players! We've recently rolled out another intermediate update, which resolves a lot of issues of different aspects. Many problems of save & load system were fixed (fixed, not optimized) on some systems. Also the tutorial has extended for a bit, so now you can see appearance of messages, when you construct some buildings. As previously announced, it has been added an ability to automate the work of farms, so players can focus on the researches of game world. Very soon we expect the release of another update which increases game performance by 20-30% and allows you to play "Life is Hard" even on slow computers. We've also detected several bugs that we haven't fixed in this update, so if you found them — you are welcome on our forums.

Firstly, I'd like to thank you all for your amazing feedback. We apologize for the amount of bugs you had to deal with when playing. Please, report all the bugs you find. Now we are working hard on optimization to make Life is Hard have at least 60 frames per second performance. The bugfix will be available for downloading on the 15th of April or later. The save & load system shall become at least twice faster too. Secondly, we continue to add new content to the game. Our artists are currently working on new locations (work is still in progress):
I don't want to spoil everything, the only thing I may say is that horseback riding will become possible. Stay tuned! Sincerely yours, Pirozhok team

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AGb_3edJwA Dear players! We’re proud to announce that global graphics update 0.8 is now live in the public branch. Let’s have a look at the main changes:

• Graphics and user interface were fully redrawn.
  
• Tutorial is now much easier and understandable.
  
• Design of some windows was reworked and a huge number of bugs was fixed.
  

“Life is Hard” is going to have a major update soon. Let's check out, what changes the game has got during four months of development. Since the release of “Life is Hard” in Steam Early Access almost four months have passed. During this time, our team has visited many events, met many interesting people, got a huge amount of feedback from players. Within four months of development "Life is Hard" has got a great amount of updates, both large and small.
In this stage “Life is Hard” debuted in Steam Early Access.
On the next day we’ve received about a dozen of reviews and started to improve the game. We’ve also rebalanced some things and introduced Trading Cards for “Life is Hard”.
The next huge update has brought us new graphics with the parallax effect.

The third one has introduced two additional heroes, appearance and abilities of whose depend on your choice of god. Later two more heroes have joined the party.
We've started strengthening the role of each hero in the gameplay. Every hero has got a portrait and level system.
«And then has come autumn...». This is how the introduction of seasons in “Life is Hard” has started. Vitaly Ruzankin pleased all of us with the great Autumn theme, the artists decided to introduce the Halloween.
And recently “Life is Hard” has got a beautiful and lively main menu, as well as the long-awaited save & load system.   And once again, our team (and not only) is ready to please you again! Meet the...

Graphics 3.0 for “Life is Hard”

Dear players! We are glad to announce that 0.3 update for “Life is Hard" with save & load system is now available! This is the first stable version of this system, so we urge you to report any problems you found on our forums! Notice that save process may take some time, please be patient.

Hello everyone! We continue to improve user experience in “Life is Hard” and today we’re ready to announce two new things you might like. The first thing is updated main menu, which became more beautiful and more friendly to new players.
And the second one could become a main component of a next huge update. It's a save & load system. Yep, we’ve promised to release them before, but on each new stage new massive problems happen. It’s really delayed the progress. To this moment we’ve done a really big work on them, so we would be very happy to push them to the “beta” branch as soon as possible.
WIP screenshot. Stay tuned!

Hello everyone! After we’ve brought seasons of a year for “Life is Hard” huge opportunities of adding new content opened for us. Halloween is one of them. On each 15th day of a year a small group of traders, musicians and farmers arrives to you. You can buy some potions from traders and order a performance by musicians. Pumpkins are the main currency on the carnival, you can get them from the farmer and exchange them for wood. All these traders, along with decorations, Celtic music and pumpkinhead minions make a carnival atmosphere.
We are always open for suggestions on our forums.

Other news

Dear players! The global update called “Four seasons” is approaching. The update will add additional 2 seasons and those which have already been added will be reworked.

Winter

• Lots of skeletons.
• Your minions are freezing without warm clothes and may die without it.
• Temperature is lower than zero – your farms no longer work due the weather conditions, bushes also stop growing.
• Your people walk much more slowly than in summer.
• 
  

Spring

• Your people reproduce much more actively.
• Your people walk a bit slowly because of a slush.
• Plants spawn more often, farms start to work.

Summer

• Your people are less likely to get sick.

Autumn, the most favorable season of the year

• Skeletons don’t spawn.
• Rains go more often, which affects the crops.
• Minions get more vegetables and seeds for harvesting.
• Your people are more likely to get sick.

Dear friends! We are pleased to announce that the “Life is Hard” Beta 0.15 is now available for download!

New features

• Elements of RPG have been added. Now every hero has his own portrait, level and ability to equip amulets and rings. For more information, you can read in our previous announcement.
• Added new season – autumn. Just look at it! Ain’t it beautiful?