Project update

Hi folks! Gosh, it's been quite a while: time flies when you're locked down, as they say. I could say that we've had bigger fish to fry than Soul Harvest during Covid, and indeed we have, but the truth is we've been losing momentum for some years now. It is brought home to me that all projects have an invisible deadline, even pet projects, because one's motivation is not a limitless resource: even if a project is your "baby", your interest in it will gradually fade and new babies will be born, sometimes literal ones. After a few years people will want to work on something new and will have more and more trouble staying motivated, especially when they aren't being paid for their work. We're extremely grateful to those who supported the game during development, but the sad fact is that we only ever sold a few hundred copies in total. We've never made enough money from Soul Harvest for any of us to even consider quitting our day jobs, and these day jobs (and our lives) have gotten in the way of the project at various times since 2014. It has been a stupidly long development cycle, and I think we all badly need some closure. As such, after much deliberation, we have decided to put the project out as-is for free on Itch and Steam (if Valve will allow it), as a sort of Halloween present to the world. It's pretty clear we're never going to break even, so we might focus on just getting the game played by as many people as possible! For this final build then we've done a last few tweaks, fixes and optimisations, and have gotten the Bitterness campaign missions up and running, bringing us to a total of 12 solo missions. However the other two campaigns aren't finished yet, nor are the faction editor, the additional game modes or the Celestial faction. We might do the odd update post-release, but I don't want to commit to finishing any of these features: we really do need to move on. I hope those of you who bought into the EA understand where we're coming from, and don't feel too betrayed. I would mention that the game is playable online these days using Parsec and similar tools, so maybe we can have a match some time, wherever you are. Till then, remember- Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe!

Changes

1.0.1 - 31/10/2022

• bugs
  • fixed bug in Cruelty mission 3 where player victory was sometimes not detected
  • you can no longer change team colour while in the story mode hub
  • it is no possible to navigate to the Bitterness missions from the main hub via portals
  • added missing localisation data

1.0.0 - 29/10/2022

• gameplay
  • burrowed units can no longer be hit by towers and ranged minions
  • units hiding in smoke can no longer be hit by towers and ranged minions
• bugs
  • move preview is now properly displayed for units spawned in the editor

0.9.7 - 28/10/2022

• campaign
  • implemented Bitterness faction campaign
  • implemented "Faceland" terrain tileset
  • rehauled 5th Cruelty mission so that it teaches you about fireballs
• gameplay
  • Banes are now stronger against buildings
• editor
  • It is now possible to spawn minions already burrowed in story missions.
  • It is possible to specify player team-colour in the editor.
• bugs
  • corpses no longer decay in the level editor
  • Log file is now only opened once on launch to further improve performance and decrease load times
  • Ashworms' eating minion spawned when mission starts no longer causes crash

0.9.6 - 29/03/2020

• bugs
  • fixed a bug where losing a campaign level would prevent subsequent victories and defeats from triggering
  • fixed a crash that occured when losing a citadel in story mode
  • the advisor 'hobo' demon can now be moved in the editor
  • fixed a crash that occured when delete plants in the editor
  • fixed a bug where defeat was triggered if testing a story map while controlling the nemesis (purple) avatar

0.9.5 - 26/03/2020

• gameplay
  • significant performance improvements, notably for AI
  • the body collider of avatars now deal damage when attacking
  • to prevent players from accidentally skipping the end game recap, input is ignored for the first 0.75 seconds following game over
  • reduced damage of lurks and lechers
  • numerous tweaks to the story missions
  • reduced the hitpoints value of Gateways
• bugs
  • fixed crash caused when ejecting avatars from the game while in the menu
  • fixed bug where the title of levels would no appear correctly
  • fixed flickering of ashland lava
  • fixed crash when returning to the level select before avatar spawn in story mode
  • lava no longer animates while the game is paused
  • technology icons now appear correctly in story mode for the bad guys
• other
  • ported to love 11
  • added localisation for fleshland levels
  • tweak the volume of certain sound effects
  • reduced the speed of the level select treadmill
  • bots can be added in the main hub
  • defensive code to help catch issues with intro video streaming