HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NOWHERE PROPHET! Can you believe we've been travelling Soma and crossing the wastes for TWO WHOLE YEARS! It really has been a journey too, with new modes, new Prophets and a whole host of console versions bringing more players than we ever could have imagined into our broken world! We cannot BELIEVE what a fantastic time these last two years have been with Nowhere Prophet - we've achieved a great deal but we couldn't have done it without YOU, our Pilgrims and Players! Thank you to everyone who has supported Nowhere Prophet and a huge thank you to everyone who has played on the preview branch and sent us feedback through the discord! You've helped shape Nowhere Prophet into the game it is today, and it's one we're immeasurably proud of! As the game has changed SO MUCH over the last two years, we thought we'd highlight some of our favourite updates, just to see how far the game has come!
19th July 2019 Nowhere Prophet is OUT NOW! After a successful beta run and one of the most in-depth feedback rounds we've ever seen, Nowhere Prophet launched onto PC. We watched countless streams, YouTube videos and chatted to people on Twitter, though Martin also fixed 100s of bugs that weekend (he was a warrior). People were happy, but Nowhere Prophet still had a ways to go yet!
September 11th 2019 Custom Game Update A few months later came my favourite update, the Custom Game Update! After fixing up bugs and balancing out bosses, Martin really got to spread his wings a little and give the game something that both players and he had wanted for a long while. A Custom Mode that allowed players to play in their own style, and however they wanted with the power of modifiers! This update also introduced the Pioneers, a brand new convoy of Unionists looking to carve out their own path in Soma. Have you guided them to the end of the world yet?
28th October 2019 The Board/Control Update With this update, everyone had caught the new follower bug - there were OVER 40 NEW FOLLOWERS added in this update to bolster and introduce some new playstyles into the game. To go with them, two new keywords were added, including BRAWL (which is my absolute favourite) and a new mechanic that allowed you to recover some of the spoils left behind by your previous caravan if you could find them!
27th November 2019 The Big Steam Update By now, Nowhere Prophet had seen an incredible influx of players and new playstyles, thanks to the previous updates. That gave us time to look to Steam and see what we could improve there for everyone. Of course, it was perfect that the card game got its own trading cards, and everyone got Steam Cloud support to boot, so you'd never leave a convoy behind again!
12th December 2019 The Spider and The Seer Update At this point Nowhere Prophet had new cards, new convoys and new ways to play, so what better Christmas present could we give players than new Prophets! The Spider and The Seer brought with them new (and slightly sinister) ways of playing, which opened up even more doors throughout Soma!
February 17th 2020 The Big Perk Update This update brought the older convoys in line with the newer ones, and gave them all a unique perk that was intrinsic to them! This update took a while to get spot on, but we genuinely feel it gave each convoy some real personality and rewarded players who leaned into the playstyles of each convoy hugely! From Strength of the Pack to Fortune's Favors, each convoy now had a new, interesting twist, as well as some new perks to unlock and enjoy!
March 18th 2020 The Breaker and The Stalker Update Since Nowhere Prophet had started development 6 years prior, Martin had envisioned a specific group of Prophets. With The Breaker and The Stalker added to the game, that team was now complete! Both of these Prophets brought with them marking and bringing down enemies in their own ways, and so with them, new keywords and strategies. Marking quickly became a favourite, with The Breaker seeing a lot of play!
June 30th 2020 Progression Overhaul & Controller Update! In this update, controller support arrived, which meant lots of you knew EXACTLY what was coming next! A lot of the progression in the game was also reworked, with an emphasis on phasing out some of the things players had been finding cumbersome over the previous year! In addition to that, the RAIDERS stealthily made their way into the game!
July 31st 2020 Nowhere Prophet OUT NOW on consoles! We were so excited to bring everyone this update! Everyone had been asking for Nowhere Prophet to be portable and playable from the couch since launch, and after a lot of hard work, it was released on all consoles across the world!
And that brings us to our latest update, which introduced DRAFTING! You can read all about it here: https://steamcommunity.com/games/NowhereProphet/announcements/detail/2996564740809894852

It's been a long road, but Nowhere Prophet has really shone throughout the last two years! Thank you for playing, thank you for supporting and we'll see you at the end of the world <3 Lots of Love Martin & No More Robots

[ 2021-07-19 17:20:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's been pretty quiet for a while but I've still been working on things behind the scenes. And now that the game has almost hit its two year anniversary it's time for a surprise update! A number of smaller and mid-sized changes have finally congealed together into an update that adds things along multiple fronts:

New Modifiers

First off, there are three modifiers that are available via Custom or Daily games now. All of these provide some interesting tweak to the core game experience: Clairvoyance: See enemy hands This one is a fun little addition to the game: You can see the enemy's cards now peeking in face up and you can hover them at any time to fully reveal them. That way you know what they have in hand and can plan much better. Confiscation: Steal an enemy leader card As a little variant you will be granted one enemy leader card after fighting an Elite or a Boss enemy. The card will be picked randomly but in exchange you'll be given an extra Focus point when you level up. Conscription: Draft your deck at the start of the game This is the big one! With this modifier active you still select a convoy but you don't use its convoy cards. Instead when you start the run you pick from a random selection of cards to create a unique deck each time you play. People have consistently been asking for a Draft mode and I really wanted to include one. I was thinking to make it its own game mode at first but it felt more at home as a modifier because it would then allow you to combine it with others more freely, and it would sometimes show up in the daily challenge. I hope you'll enjoy it!

Control Equipment

Apart from that I've also added two pieces of equipment that help support slower, more control-focused playstyles. Thought Disruptor This unnerving weapon uses technopathic principles to unleash a broadband mental attack on everyone caught in its radius. It gives access to this power: Thought Fracture: All followers suffer -3/-3. Ennui Engine A small dose of detatchment in the right place can increase combat performance by reducing concern for survival. Ethically highly questionable, unfortunately still effective. It grants the following status effect: Unmoved: When a wounded follower joins your side: They gain Taunt and Stoic but can no longer attack.

Other Changes

Apart from that there have been a bunch of smaller stability and quality of life fixes as well as balancing tweaks. Also notable is that the community effort for a Portugese translation has come very far along that I decided to add it to the game. There's still some work to be done, so if you want to help polish it, you can do so at Localizor.io, Without further ado, here's the assorted smaller changes: Balancing Faithful convoy: Replaced one Stalwart with a Steward Faithful convoy: Replaced Steadfast Ox with Shiram Crusader Added two new items to strengthen control builds Outcastes and Pioneers travel perk switched Zealous Frevor (Torchbearer) status effect only reduces convoy card cost by 1 (was 2) Torchbearer has one more trigger of Zealous Fervor on Chosen and Burdened Bandit Executioner has one fewer trigger of Pain is Wisdom on Doomed Fear Campaign now discards a convoy AND a leader card on kill Interface Added Draft screen to the game Modifier selector buttons + text larger Added convoy deck size to always show in conflict prep screen Convoy deck size counter now turns red if deck is empty Added popup when trying to start combat with an empty convoy deck Added missing keyword tooltips to some units Improved VFX on Marauder to distinguish the two triggers Changed Loyal Canine and Recall wording to be clearer Experimental support for Portugese added Bugfix If both leaders die in the same action, you no longer win the combat Hitting pause in the frame when the victory screen appears no longer locks the game Starting a non-draft new game directly after drafting will no longer reuse the draft Furious Offense buff now triggers correctly Peaceful convoy perk now correctly grants Stoic and not Stealth Pioneers now get the right perk discounting luxury items, not food Can no longer hover the card the enemy played during big preview Added and glyphs to font Loyalty Shift properly removes cards from enemy deck in all cases And that's it! Take care and stay safe! - Martin

[ 2021-07-05 17:22:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hi there, fellow pilgrim! Today Nowhere Prophet is finally available on all current generation consoles! That means you can now grab your (hopefully) favorite dustpunk deck-builder for the Nintendo Switch, XBOX One or PS Four. And on both Nintendo and XBOX the game launches with a wonderful launch discount, so the ideal time to grab it is RIGHT NOW!
Also if you're an XBOX GamePass member, Nowhere Prophet is part of that so you can grab your complimentary copy for both Windows and XBOX One that way instead! Here's all the store links!

• Microsoft XBOX One
• Microsoft Windows Store
• Nintendo Switch
• Sony Playstation 4

It's been a lot of work to get the game ready for consoles, since it has such a specific interface. I think we've managed to make the game fun to play, even providing two different control schemes for you to use: A virtual cursor or a more common button-based navigation. Let me know which one you prefer! Anyway, that's it from me. Thank you so much for supporting the game. I hope that you're safe, wherever you are on your journey. And as always: Stay hydrated, - Martin Oh. And also please note that I'm tracking all the current known issues on the new platforms over in this reddit thread. Let me know if you encounter any issues and I'll at them.

[ 2020-08-03 10:54:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're so excited to announce that Nowhere Prophet is out now on consoles! We know lots of people have been asking about being able to play from their couches and take it with them wherever they go, and finally, that's possible! You can now play on Xbox One (and through Gamepass!), PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch! Xbox One: bit.ly/NWPxbox PlayStation 4: bit.ly/NWPps4 Nintendo Switch: bit.ly/NWPswitch Armed with a brand new control scheme developed specifically for consoles, we hope you enjoy crossing the wastes and leading your people from the comfort of your own homes! We're excited to hear what you think about it, so make sure you let us know all about your adventures! We'll meet you at the Crypt!

[ 2020-07-31 16:43:03 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello fellow pilgrims, time for another new update. Let's start with the big one:

Console versions coming!

Today I can officially announce the release date of the console version of Nowhere Prophet! You will finally be able to lean back and play with a controller on your favorite platform starting, because the game launches on the 30th of July!
In just a few weeks you can get your favorite dust-punk deck-builder on SWITCH, XBOX ONE and PLAYSTATION 4. And you can PRE-ORDER STARTING NOW! I'm terribly excited to finally see the game hit the consoles. But that's not all! I've updated the PC version again and here's what's in it this time:

Spanish translation

Thanks to the wonderful Andrs Moreno Garca Nowhere Prophet is now available in Spanish! All interface texts, cards and events have been translated. With the amount of words in the game each language is a major undertaking and Andrs has been hard at work for a while. So both of us are very happy to finally present it to you!

Unlocks update, again

With the last update I changed the unlocks requirements for convoys and classes, adding an end-of-game unlock condition. This version was in testing for a while to collect feedback and seemed fine when I released it. However your feedback quickly showed me that the conditions are still a bit too opaque and confusing. Simply put: It's too much of a feelbad to complete the game with the right prerequisites only to pick the wrong ending. This update removes the "right ending" part and adds some resource minimums instead. So here are the new end-conditions: The Banshee: complete the game as the Echo. The Breaker: complete the game as the Tower. The Tower: complete the game as the Spider. The Seer: complete the game as the Stalker. The Stalker: complete the game as the Banshee. The Spider: complete the game as the Firebrand. The Faithful: complete the game with the Traders and 20 Believer. The Forgotten: complete the game with the Horde and 50 Hope. The Horde: complete the game with the Nomads and 100 Food. The Raiders: complete the game with the Pioneers and as Slaver. The Swarm: complete the game with the Wanderers and 20 Scholar. The Traders: complete the game with the Explorers and 150 Batteries. The Pioneers: complete the game with the Swarm and 30 Altruism.

Bugfixes

As always there's been some bugfixes along the way that have made it in this build. A big thank you to everyone that sent a bugreport my way. Feel free to use the Steam forums or preferably the Nowhere Prophet Discord to get in touch.

a small secret

I've also put in some time to add a tiny secret to the game for the truly hardcore among you. If you find it let me know :)

Changelog

And lastly, here's the changelog: Spanish added Spanish translations for all texts, cards and events have been added! You can now select the language from the options menu Translator is courtesy of Andrs Moreno Garca (twitter: @amgtraductor) Unlocks changed The unlock requirements for the end-game options are a lot simpler and clearer now No longer need to select a specific ending, simply complete the game with a class or convoy And in some cases possess a certain amount of a specific resource (like 100 or more food) Also added in a tiny little extra to reward the truly hardcore pilgrims out there Balancing Added a new Locate card (Patient Watch) to the game and some equipment Tweaked enemy convoy decks to be a little softer on Chosen Reduced number of Robust and Charge enemies a tad on low levels and difficulties Reduced changes of First Strike + Rage coinciding in the enemy deck Reduced occurrences of Savage Sibhana on low levels and difficulties Optional boss locations now appear one map later to prevent frustration Interface Increased warning for optional bosses on event buttons Bugfix Fixed an AI issue with Helpful Hazards card Fixed description on Machine Guard to refer to Autogun not Autocannon Fixed broken mulligan after repeated "start combat" button presses Wanderers are no longer stuck in combat setup music Various minor stability fixes And that's it for today. Take care and stay hydrated, - Martin

[ 2020-07-16 13:59:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Time for another update! This one features a lot of changes under the hood but a few more visible things too. Versions of it have been tested in PREVIEW for a while, but here's the rundown:

Unlock changes

(Almost) all convoys and classes now have two different ways to unlock them. One linked to your choices at the end of the game and one linked to objectives you can complete during play, such as defeating an optional boss or uncovering the secrets of a location. I hope that this helps those of you that struggled with the somewhat esoteric unlock conditions that were in place so far. Let me know how it goes!

Stealker tweaks

Stalker was a bit too weak compared to the other classes so a number of tweaks were done to improve his power a bit. One thing is that a First Strike theme was added to his starting deck and level up cards. First Strike plays well with Stealth and Marking, two of his other themes, so it felt really appropriate. Also some of the basic Marking cards (Mark Target & Volatile Mark) were improved. Mark Target now draws you a leader card when you play it. And Volatile Mark makes the target suffer Blackout before it is Marked.

New Convoy: The Raiders

A bit of new stuff has been added too! A brand new convoy centered around Stealth and the bandits. It should play well with the Stalker. However the downside of the Raiders is that they start out as Slavers and are unable to earn any Altruism during your playthrough.

Controller support

In preparation for the upcoming console release I've added controller support to the game. You can now play it on your couch, leaning back. This brings some accessibility options with it, such as the ability to control the size of tooltip elements to make reading easier, even if you're leaned back. This also adds a more extensive hotkey suite to the game, so check that out if you want to speed up your play a bit. Please let me know if you experience any trouble with this!

Other Changes

There's a host of other, smaller tweaks, as always. Take a look at the changelog for a rundown:

Changelog

Controller compatible Updated the interface to be fully compatible with controllers Support for keyboard input on PC also included Changed unlocks Almost all unlockable classes and convoys now have two ways to unlock them Either a quest-based condition that requires you to do something during a run Or an ending-based condition that requires a specific class or convoy and final option All unlock hints have been changed to be clearer and more direct Added a new convoy: The Raiders. Stealth-based bandits Balancing Stalker starting deck and level up cards adjusted: More focus on First Strike Corsair gained Stealth, increased Life to 6 (was 5) Burning Brand cost reduced to 2 (was 3) Mark Target and Volatile Mark have been improved by drawing a leader card and blacking out the target respectively AI now properly evaluates obstacles that suffered blackout Added new Quartz modifier: Blessed followers don't take a wound but lose their blessing first Interface While click-targeting, hitting the end turn button no longer ends the turn Added feedback when dismantling an item from the popup Displaying the intrinsic perk of convoys in the cargo stats screen now Added hint in the conflict prep screen if you have an empty convoy deck Bugfix Explorers free row perk fixed Zealot no longer destroys itself Smoke Screeen only buffs followers oe glyph in french added to the font Pregnancy and Cannibal events cleaned up Ruined settlement now makes you lose Altruism on threaten Wrecker no longer trickers at the end of EACH turn Janwar Silverback now properly counts followers, not units Selecting a deck while click-targeting no longer throws a no-save error Events that deal leader damage no longer heal you up if you're very low on hp Cards and powers queued on dead targets no longer execute Added push/pull tooltips to some cards Automarker no longer marks itself Pulling a wounded or dead unit back via Gravewalking and getting it blessed no longer kills it after combat No cards after closing the game during combat setup for Wanderers fixed Loading progress more robust Restarting a custom game now keeps the mutators intact Fixed issues with some event loss numbers not being correct Fixed display of wounds during combat sometimes being off Fog of War card no longer triggers on obstacles And that's it! Take care and stay safe! - Martin

[ 2020-06-30 15:28:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

If you've been paying attention to development - or just snooped around the BETAs setting on Steam - you may have noticed the PREVIEW branch. This is a way for you to try out in-progress versions. These are stable but contain some still unfinished or untested things.
The preview branch was recently updated with controller and keyboard setting. And now it also features a reworked progression system. There are now two ways to unlock most convoys or classes: Either a quest-based one that can be encountered during a run, or an ending-based one that requires you to complete the game with a specific class or convoy and to pick a specific kind of ending. Here's a look at my internal sheet where I planned these changes:
If you have been frustrated with the speed of unlocking new content after a while this update mit help with that. As always I'd love to get some thoughts and feedback before this version is rolled out to everyone on Steam. If you have any comments, drop them in Discord or in the Steam forums! And as always, stay hydrated and stay safe! - Martin

[ 2020-05-14 14:44:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

If you've been paying attention to development - or just snooped around the BETAs setting on Steam - you may have noticed the PREVIEW branch. This is a way for you to try out in-progress versions. These are stable but contain some still unfinished or untested things.
Starting today you can check out a new version in PREVIEW. It contains full keyboard and controller support. As a side-effect of working on the console version support for joypads was added and this version is now available on Steam as part of the PREVIEW branch. If you install this version and launch it, all you need to do is hit a button on your keyboard on controller to switch to the appropriate controls. You can also change between control modes: NAVIGATION and CURSOR using the options screen in the main menu. NAVIGATION simply has you move between the different buttons, items or elements on the screen. It's what's most common on consoles. It's simpler to use, and quicker to pick up. CURSOR instead gives you a virtual cursor that you can move with your controller. This may need some getting used to but it allows you to get hover-based information more intuitively. And that's it. I'd love to get some thoughts and feedback before this version is rolled out to everyone on Steam. If you have any comments, drop them in Discord or in the Steam forums! And as always, stay hydrated and stay safe! - Martin

[ 2020-04-08 11:23:42 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another huge update! I'm excited to finally round out the classes to the full set I envisioned years ago. With the Breaker and the Stalker two brand new prophets enter the fray, so let's look at what they can do!

The Breaker

The Breaker is a former operative of the Union of Five Fingers. Disillusioned with their egotistical he has left them behind and found a new purpose with the fallen star. His playstyle is generally slow and methodical, with access to defensive effects (via armor and taunt) and a few build pillars available to him: Marking groups + AOE damage Marked is a new keyword that increases the damage a unit takes. The breaker is good at spreading out marked on groups of enemy targets and then to follow up with area of effect damage (Blast and other cards) to capitalize on their vulnerability. Obstacles Putting down cover, throwing explosive barrels onto the enemy battlefield or just blocking off a column entirely. The Breaker knows how to handle and shape terrain. Single, strong units The Breaker is good at fortifying individual units. Giving them stat boosts and other benefits to build up true juggernauts.

The Stalker

The Stalker ist a child of the wild places of Soma. Living out with the hilltribes in the ranges they took good care of their clan, hiding away from the eyes of strangers. The Stalker's playstyle is more aggressive than the Breaker. It focuses on taking out key enemy units, disrupting their means of attack and going for the kill. Marking individuals + Double tap The Stalker also uses Marked but specifically to target individuals, to either make them more vulnerable or to disable their defensive capabilities. This combined with a new pair of attack cards that hit a single target multiple times allows them to really capitalize on that. This also makes these cards really good against Robust targets. Beasts Like many members of the hilltribes, the Stalker has become a friend to beasts. They can bring them into battle to bolster their own ranks or to directly slam into the enemy. A number of cards feature strong Beast synergies. Stealth Staying hidden is a part of the Stalkers strategy. A number of cards grant Stealth to their followers or capitalize on the units that are already in Stealth. And to make Stealth a bit more reliable, the keyword has been changed to only pop when taking damage from a follower or unit, not from the leader. This is usually going to be retaliation damage and it helps make Stealth a more robust investment during a battle. Positioning With their knowledge of battlefield tactics the Stalker is an expert at pushing and pulling people around. The Stalker has a few cards that either harm or help units when they are moved around, combine this with cheap access to movement cards and interesting strategies come together.

New Keyword: Marked

As mentioned above there's a new keyword in town. Marked. Marked can be put on units or obstacles and it makes them vulnerable. They can now be attacked regardless of their position and they take 2 extra points of damage, whenever they are damaged. This means you could mark a unit to get rid of it more quickly, to trade upwards or to get rid of some pesky sniper or construct that's hiding away in the back somewhere. But not only that, with this update Marked, Taunt and Stealth are exclusive. So you can mark a unit to pop it out of Taunt. Put Stealth on a marked unit to prevent extra damage. Or put Taunt on a Stealth unit to pull it out of hiding.

Balancing changes

Of course there's a number of additional tweaks and changes in this version. Some of the new cards related to Marking or the two new classes have been added to enemies or pieces of equipment. And there's been some balancing changes: Stealth is now only lost on unit or obstacle damage, not from leader-based damage Shadow Trail only triggers once each turn Bandit outfit a tad rarer Added a new item: The Machinepistol Changed the power on the Machinegun to more column damage Savage Sibhana was upgraded to Legendary (and is rarer in enemies now) Shadow Banjha was downgraded to Rare to compensate Coordinated Swarm status effect was changed to be more interesting Smoke Screen leader card upgraded to Rare Mercy Kill upgraded to 3-cost (was 2-cost) And that's it! I hope you enjoy this update. Let me know which one of the new classes is your favorite! And stay hydrated, - Martin

[ 2020-03-18 14:03:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

You may have noticed the small Localizor logo in the main menu that appeared in the latest update. For a bit now Nowhere Prophet has been available on the great community localization site Localizor.io. It's a great platform where anyone can submit and rate translations for the game. And once a language is completed I can export it back into the game and make it available to everyone! And a number of languages are already pretty far along!
If you're interested in helping out, check out the Nowhere Prophet page on Localizor. And if you've got any questions, need another language to be enabled or just wanna hang out, join the Nowhere Prophet Discord!

Vagrus: The Riven Realms

And while I have you here I wanna point you to a great project from some friends of mine. Vagrus is a story about a caravan set in a post-apocalyptic world. Sounds familiar? Maybe, but where Nowhere Prophet is a colorful sci-fi planet, Vagrus is set in the dark and dangerous ruins after a magical cataclysm. [previewyoutube=jQuSl7sHbmM;full][/previewyoutube] The game looks great with immense production value and a deep world and story. Check out their campaign on Fig to learn more or head on over to their Steam page and wishlist directly! And that's it for today! See you soon for another big update on the Stalker and Breaker! - Martin

[ 2020-03-09 10:32:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another content update! This one is all about making the most of the Convoys in the game. You may have noticed that in the past a few of the convoys had a unique, always unlocked fourth perk. For example: the youngest convoy, the Pioneers and the very unique convoy the Hermit.
Now with this update, ALL CONVOYS have a UNIQUE INTRINSIC PERK! This means the different convoys play much more differently, even beyond the cards they bring.

Intrinsic Perks

Here's a look at all the intrinsic perks! Can you figure out what convoy they go with?

• Open Path: Your side of the battlefield always has at least one empty row. Can not gain Believer points.
• Devoted to the Faith: Blessed units gain +0/+1 instead. You take no damage from an empty leader deck. Any drones added to the convoy are demolished.
• Lost Legion: Start combat with 1 extra convoy card. Followers with an Energy cost of 4 or higher cost 4 extra batteries to recruit.
• Stand Alone: Swap your starting and maximum hand count of both decks. Reduce the maximum convoy deck size by 12 cards. You take no damage from an empty convoy deck.
• Strength of the Pack: Each recruiting location has at least 3 beasts. Non-beast followers in your convoy deck count as 4 cards.
• Hunter-Gatherers: Gain 4 food whenever you reach a node in difficult terrain. Your leader heals 2 fewer damage each rest.
• Hardened Outsiders: Heal 1 additional damage on your prophet or 1 additional follower wound when resting.
• Battlefield Engineers: Fill rows with obstacles on both sides. You have a 50% chance to go second in combat
• Fortune's Favors: Start combat with 1 extra convoy card and 1 extra leader card. You have no mulligan phase.
• Mechanized Life: Each recruiting location has at least 3 drones. Healing followers costs 5 batteries instead.
• Crafty & Stingy: Each market has 1 extra piece of equipment. Hope gain from shared luxury items is reduced by 4.

More Perks

But that's not all. Beyond the new intrinsic perk, all other perks have been overhauled and tweaked to be a lot more interesting, diverse and interactive. There's a perk that grants a unique status effect in combat available on most convoys now! And there's different ways that the starting situation of the convoys can improve! But, how do you get these perks?

Unlocking Extras

In the past, each perk was unlocked by completing the same target but using a different convoy. This was pretty repetitive, but also took a very long time. To make the process more fun this update also tweaks unlocks: Each convoy has their own targets for unlocks now! And the target numbers should mean that unlocks are generally enabled much quicker now! For example, one Convoy will have you dismantle items to progress, while another needs to destroy obstacles or play followers of a specific type. And that's mostly it! Of course this update features a bunch of other minor improvements and bugfixes, which you can find in the changelog! Stay hydrated, - Martin

[ 2020-02-17 12:20:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just a quick update to the PREVIEW branch: I've been working on an overhaul of all convoy perks for a while now and it's ready to release. But before I push it out to the masses I wanted to get it into the PREVIEW branch to gather some feedback.

Convoy Perks

If you've taken a look at the Pioneers or the Hermit you might have noticed that these have a fourth perk, something that is unique and specific to them and starts unlocked. This always felt like a great chance to make the different convoy more distinct and unique. After a lot of deliberation I decided to overhaul the convoy perks for all convoys to add such a unique perk. It wasn't that easy to find one for every convoy but I'm pretty happy with the result. Here's a few examples, can you guess which convoy they belong to? Devoted to the Faith Blessed units gain +0/+1 instead. You take no damage from an empty leader deck. Any drones added to the convoy are demolished. Strength of the Pack Each recruiting location has at least 3 beasts. Non-beast followers in your convoy deck count as 5 cards. Hunter-Gatherers Gain 4 food whenever you reach a node in difficult terrain. Your leader heals 2 fewer damage each rest.

Speedy Unlocks

And while I was it, I wanted to take a closer look at the unlock conditions for the perks. It took a lot longer to unlock a perk than I planned so these changes to the perk also feature new (and unique for each perk) unlock conditions and targets. They should be quicker to unlock now. However note that with this update, I had to make some changes to the save game to account for these features. Any unlocked convoys and classes are retained, as are unlocked perks. HOWEVER any partial convoy perk progress you had made is lost.

Preview Branch

If you don't know what the preview branch is: You can use the Steam Beta feature to switch from the regular release to the preview releases. This will automatically update the game and provide access to the occasional stable cutting edge builds. Below's a screenshot of how this looks like:
So if you want to give it a try and have some feedback, I'd love to hear it! There's still some room to tweak things before it goes live for everyone! Stay hydrated, Martin

[ 2020-02-05 17:00:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

This winter on Soma brings and early present for everyone: Two brand new prophet classes to unlock and play! And of course these come with a set of brand new leader cards. And then there's a host of other tweaks and changes to the cards and game! Read on to find out more!

The Seer

Quiet and introspective, the seer has the talent of sight. A seer can glance through space and time to stay one step ahead. A gift and a burden at once. Mechanically the Seer's give of sight is done with Locate. Locate is a brand new mechanic that allows you to select a card from up to three presented to you. By default these cards are pulled from your deck and allow you to get what you need, when you need it. Precognition is a simple card that allows you to locate a card from among your next three leader cards. However the Seer also has a more sinister mechanic: Sacrifice. By sacrificing your own units (which will not wound them) you can get even more value out of your people. Eye for an Eye, which was changed in this update, is one such card. By sacrificing one of your followers you can destroy a random enemy follower. This can set up quite favorable traits, if you manage to control the battlefield enough. To unlock the Seer, all you need to do is meet the hermit Shree Kha in his cave and get him to join you.

The Spider

A friend to machines, the spider has mastered speaking to the things made of metal. This makes him an excellent ally, if a tad unpredictable. The spider is a strange recluse that works well with the machines of Soma. He combines well with the drone keyword followers. Crash Protocol which was updated and now buffs a drone for +2/+0 and makes it fight against a random enemy target. That's great for just one Energy but since the drones are unpredictable, you can never know what it'll go up against. This unpredictability also makes his way into the Spider's mind and actions. Many of his effects have random targets and effects, like: Mind Shredder, which deals 2 damage to a random unit. And it does that for a total of 8 times. Note that it is truly random and might hit your units as well! To unlock the Spider you need to leave a follower behind at the fallen star's sibling.

Class tweaks

Apart from that a number of the other classes got slight tweaks to their starting decks and level up cards. Here's some of those: Firebrand No big changes necessary Legendary: Replacing Bury with Bold Strike (was an Echo card) Echo Strengthening the debuff (-x/-x) presence in the echo's cards Common: Replacing Quick Reflexes with Infect Rare: Replacing Crippling Strike (was Mind Break) Improving the Stun combos in Echo Rare: Point Blank replaced by Slash Rare: Slam adjusted to kill targets if they are already wounded Legendary: Bold Strike replaced by Stun Symbol Starting Deck more in line with changes Blackout changed to Infect Mind Seize replaced by Slice Slash replaced by Choking Fog Banshee No big changes ncessary Legendary: Coordinated Tactics replaced by new card Loyalty Shift Starting deck adjusted to strengthen discard Infect replaced by Bolder Rally replaced by Riot (changed to sometimes force discard) Tower Strengthened control through mass damage cards Rare: Unstable Weaponry replaced by Mind Seize Legendary: Battlefield Trance replaced by Mind Break Starting deck adjusted accordingly Blessed Strength replaced by Static Charge Decoy replaced by Guard Unstable Weaponry replaced by Secure White Noise replaced by Mind Seize

The small stuff

And here's the various smaller changes, taken straight from the changelog: Tweaking leader cards A number of leader cards were changed and twewaked to harmonize with the new classes Riot: Now discards and draws cards Eye for an Eye: Ssacrifice a follower to destroy a random enemy follower Desperate Action: Only does two damage and draws a leader c ard Heavy Slug: No longer draws a leader card for the enemy Juggernaut: Now refreshes the target Crash Protocol: Targeted drone now fights a random enemy target All sacrifice effects now no longer deal a wound More stats tracking A larger number of interesting gameplay stats are now being tracked by the game Your current and overall stats are now be visible in the collections stats and cargo screens Balancing Reduced requirements for convoy perk unlocks to 20 fights (was 50), 5 milestones (was 15) and 8 bosses (was 25) All classes had their level up and starting decks tweaked slightly Feral Guide to 5/3 (was 6/3) The Tempest to 6/7 (was 6/6) Hired Gun to 3/4 (was 4/3) Sweeper to 5/4 (was 5/3) Chatri Matriarch to 5/5 (was 5/4) Rabid Lizard to 3/5 (was 3/4) Reclycer to 4/6 (was 6/4) Berserker to 4/4 (was 3/3) Caste Overseer to 5/7 (was 6/6) Matyr reduced to 4-cost 4/3 (was 5-cost 5/3) Company Agent reduced to 4 5-cost 4/5 (was 6-cost 4/7) Anointed inquisitor reduced to 7-cost and 3/8 (was 8-cost 7/6) Strategist reduced to 4-cost 2/2 and gained Stealth (was 7-cost 7/7) Shadow to 2/3 and gained Stealth (was 5/3) Lumbering Chambal to 3/6 (was 2/6) but only gains +3/+0 on Fury (was +4/+0) Savage Aibhana gained Brawl Protector now adds armor on revenge Deceiver now steals followers permanently Siege Breaker was set to rare by mistake, has been corrected to legendary Interface Fixing a large number typos in UI text and events (Thanks to Ophidian for the event checks and everyone for the reports!) Can now click on the deck piles to look into the decks (only your own) and discard piles (all) Bugfix Tea luxury item now heals properly again Ruster Lifter now heals over his starting HP again AI can now properly play Brawl followers Removed a few erroneous Attack tags from cards Can no longer spend two Focus points on one card by double clicking Wild shot can now also target obstacles as intended

[ 2019-12-12 13:44:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alright everyone! It's time for another update. This is all about the Steam support. The cloud, the cards and some other changes!
This update finally enables steam cloud support. This means your save files will be saved on Steam's servers and you can synchronize your data between different machines. Now you're able to continue your run from one machine, and your overall progress will also carry over. Since this had not been enabled previously you might get a "conflict" popup the first time you run on your second machine. Steam will ask you whether you want to use your current cloud date or whether to overwrite it with the local machine. It is recommended that you keep the save files from the machine that has more overall progress. Runs can be restarted more easily than unlocks can be regained. So if you choose something in that popup make sure you're picking the right option! Also, if you had steam running during this update you might have to close and restart the steam client for it to work properly!
And alongside the cloud we'll have some cards. The Nowhere Prophet trading card content contains 6 badges, with a total of 7 collectible cards, 8 unlockable backgrounds and 9 steam emoticons! Here's some previews of the content!

And lastly there's some minor changes to the game, mostly some interface and balance tweaks and some small bugfixes.

Changelog

Balancing Reduced required days for the wilderness wanderer achievement from 14.600 to 7.300 Crippling Strike tweaked to deal -2/-1 and -4/-2 respectively (was -2/-0 and -4/-0) Slight tweak to available follower factions in recruiting locations Increased battery gains on Doomed (now equal to Burdened difficulty) Interface Updating French translation in parts Added bomb visual FX to Crash Geneer (replacing Knife) Added changes to save game system to prepare for Steam Cloud Build Bugfix Fixing an issue with an option within the tower event of the botanical dome location Brigand description now correctly says (4/2) in all languages AI now better handles enemy obstacles with Taunt Time descriptions in options menu now update when language is changed Aaand that's it for today! - Martin

[ 2019-11-27 12:43:19 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Steam Awards are here, and what better time to look back at the amazing year Nowhere Prophet has had! From a wonderful beta-run through to all the new updates (with one right around the corner) we've had a tremendously busy year, and we couldn't have done any of it without you! This Awards season, we needed to pick an award to suggest to you, and right from the very start, you've always talked about how much style the game has. Every card, leader and effect is brimming with it, and you've made sure we know which have been your favourites along the way! There's no better feeling than sharing some content only to have folks enthuse about it, so that's the category we've gone for!
Of course, it hasn't only been your favourites you've talked about all year. Your feedback from first-access through to the latest updates has been crucial to making Nowhere Prophet the game it is today - you've talked through strategies, posted videos and constructed essays(!!) that have helped us build and grow, and for that, we cannot thank you enough. We were especially glad that so many of you joined us during the Discord meta-game, and crossed Soma with us on the run-up to the game's launch. Some of you were even lucky enough to be entered into some of the game's events, and created some new cards and convoys, which was an amazing experience to be a part of! We're always in awe of how passionate folks are at launch time, and this was no different!
We're constantly floored by your energy and enthusiasm for Nowhere Prophet, and undoubtedly we're carrying that forward with us to a bright future - we've got an update for you that's JUST around the corner as well as some other secrets and topics that we're actively investigating, so there's plenty more to come - We hope you love them as much as we do! Thank you for an amazing year, it's been wonderful travelling with you <3 Martin, Mike, Dan, Arwyn & Pip xoxo

[ 2019-11-26 18:00:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's time for the cloud!

I've finally had time to step back and take a look at Steam Cloud Saves and I managed to get it to work. That's the good news. The bad news is that it requires some changes to the save game system. But any tweaks to the save system are dangerous business. Your progress is important and should never be lost or deleted by the game. This is - in my opinion - one of the biggest sins a game can make. That's why I tested these changes on Windows, OS X and Linux and found them to work.
However this is something I want to handle with care so I will first roll out these changes in PREVIEW. If you are playing in PREVIEW and want to be extra careful, do make a backup of your save game files before you launch the updated game.
You can find your save files here:

• Windows: %USERPROFILE%/AppData/LocalLow/Sharkbomb Studios/Nowhere Prophet/
• OS X: ~/Library/Application Support/Sharkbomb Studios/Nowhere Prophet/
• Linux: ~/.config/unity3d/Sharkbomb Studios/Nowhere Prophet/

Also note that this does NOT enable cloud save. It is simply the changes made in preparation for steam remote storage. Also, if you've played in the PREVIEW branch without any strange or unusual behavior, then please do let me know, preferably via Discord! The more people tell me it works the sooner I can roll it out to everyone and enable cloud syncing!

The Nitty Gritty

If you're interested in the behind the scenes code stuff, here's what I had to change and why: There's two types of Steam Cloud: Automatic and Manual. Manual cloud gives me more control but also needs to put the save files in a folder relative to Steam. That's a problem because we already have a save file elsewhere. So either we convert all files with a lot of work or we keep two sets of save games at all times which is unreasonably finicky. Automatic cloud on the other hand works great, but it has the issue that it only downloads files to your local drive, it never deletes them, even if the game did so. So if you play, some files got deleted. It syncs to the cloud. You play on your other system, it syncs but the last version of those deleted files still exists on this machine. That causes trouble. As it stands the game deletes the save for your current run when it's over and it checks for deleted files to see if you have an active run. That's obviously not playing well with Steam Auto Cloud. So the change I made is that on Steam it doesn't delete the files but instead overwrites them with very simple files that only contain one letter ("X") and then not only checks for missing files but, even if there is a file it makes sure that if it contains only "X" that it's considered to be nonexistent for the purposes of the Main Menu "continue" button and other things. This change is to the game itself. However "enabling auto cloud" is a steam-wide feature that is either disabled, enabled for developers or enabled for everyone. But before I can enable it for everyone without causing deleted-file weirdness, everyone needs to have a build with the save game changes. And that needs to be tested first. It was tested internally and is now moved to Preview testing before it rolls out to everyone. And then finally, can I enable cloud saves. And that's the full story. - Martin Oh, and by the way: If you've read this far and haven't yet written a Steam Review, I'd really appreciate it if you'd take the time to do so now! Reviews are very important to Nowhere Prophet being visible on Steam and thus to the game's sales!

[ 2019-11-14 14:52:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

I've been busy working on this update for a while. Some of you might have played around with it in the PREVIEW branch but I finally have all the artwork here and in place so it's time to roll this out to everyone! So, what's in it?

Fancy New Followers

This is the big one! Over 40 new units have been added to the game. Four for each faction (1 common, 2 rares, 1 legendary) plus two unique spawnables.... And just in time for halloween, some of these boys, girls, beasts and drones are of the creepy and spooky variety! Check out the thornhide skulker, a massive spider-like creature sporting a carapace reinforced with razor sharp quills. Or the wretched sadhu, a cultist that prowls burial grounds and wears the ashes of the cremated as decoration. And then there's the pious feeder. The devoted caretaker of his horrific master, the accumulator drone! This tentacled monstrosity consumes biomass of the living and the dead to steadily grow in strength, size and ferocity. The goal was to add a set of units that enable and improve a number of different deck builds and playstyles. Give them a whirl and see what you can come up with!

New Keyword: Brawl

Brawl says: If this unit enters battle in a position from which it can attack, then it will fight the first target in the opposing row. This is a pretty useful keyword, especially if you're behind in terms of board control. It's not quite as powerful as Charge, that lets you decide who to attack. And Brawl doesn't allow you to attack the leader, but it is very useful to set up some quick trades or get in that extra blow to break the enemies hold on the battlefield. If you check out the new units you will see that it is very present with the Hilltribes, the Beasts and the Cultists.

New Keyword: Stoic

Our second new keyword is Stoic. It reads: If a unit with stoic is destroyed it suffers no wound. This is great to create some more resilient units, make more judicious use of Revenge effect and to mitigate some of that damage you take in slower strategies and builds. Note that no unit has unconditional Stoic in all cases, but there are a few units that gain (or lose) Stoic under certain conditions. And there's a few ways to bestow Stoic upon units otherwise. Stoic can be found primarily on Union soldiers, lepers, Shiram crusaders and drones.

Recover Your Remains

Another big new feature is the ability to discover and salvage the remains of your previous run. If you played a campaign game and died, then some of your followers and items can be recovered on your next campaign run. More will remain based on how far you made it and what you were using in your deck when you met you grisly end. Can you make it to the quest node and recover some of what you lost?

The Big Balancing

A number of elements of the game were improved and rebalanced. Chiefly among them the enemy decks: On lower levels enemy decks are less synergistic and they increase in strength more evenly as their level increases. Also some new cards have been added to the game and to the leaders to provide interesting threats that the player can play around. Watch out for traps, mines, automated weaponry and the occasional well-aimed boulder!
Besides enemies the cost of travel was also tweaked. General costs have been increased a tad across the board, while hope gain from luxury items has been reduced a tad. To make up for that reaching a milestone now grants a sizeable hope boost. This makes for more focused and interesting decisions when it comes to travel without making travel to the next milestone harder. Together with that the chance for fights on the road has been dramatically reduced. Both these factors also help keep the length of sessions a bit more focused. And lastly the chances for enemy surrenders were tweaked to make it a lot more manageable to force enemies into surrender if you can control the battlefield. This should make getting some of these unlocks a lot easier.

The Small Stuff

Of course there's also a lot of smaller changes to cards and effects. See the changelog for the full list but here's some of the more interesting tweaks: The maximum size of the convoy deck was reduced to 24 cards (from 30). This change was made because 30 cards is usually an inefficient deck. Most fights can be won with a 10-15 card deck, only on long matches against bosses will you need more. To help players build a tad more effective and consistent decks the maximum was reduced. If you continue a game where you exceed this new maximum, then you will only be able to remove cards until you are below the new maximum. The essential charge units (Cultist and Janwar Bear) were both tweaked down a tad by having their Strength reduced by 1 (to 2/2 and 4/2 respectively). This gets them a bit more in line with the other units while still keeping them strong and useful. And that's it for this update! If you have any thoughts and feedback on the changes, please join the Nowhere Prophet Discord and let me know! And now: Have fun! - Martin

[ 2019-10-28 15:46:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! It's been a quiet few weeks over here as I've been hard at work at the next big update for the game! This one coming with new cards, new features and lots of other tweaks.

Contribute in the Discord!

It not only took some time to build but was then extensively tested and refined in beta. This was only possible thanks to the help, testing and feedback of the Nowhere Prophet Discord members. If you are interested in contributing to the further development of the game (and in playing early beta versions of updates), do join the Discord! Specifically I'll soon be asking around for cool "entry lines" for the new legendary followers in this update. If you want to contribute, the Discord is the way to go! And even beyond this update, I'm already thinking about and discussing the next things (new class!) in there, so do join in!

The Preview update

Before I get started, the usual preview disclaimer: This is a PREVIEW build and it is obviously not polished. There's bound to be temporary artwork, untranslated text and other rough edges. Do be aware of that. That said, if you're interested you can simply go to your game's properties on Steam and select the PREVIEW from the betas dropdown. It has no password so you're free to give it a try! Now, what's the update all about?

• Making more playstyles and strategies viable/possible
• Making the difficulty curve more smooth and fun

And how are we getting there? Here's the big changes:

New Followers

Check out this glorious temporary artwork! This is the heart of it all: 40 brand new followers, for for each of the ten faction for a total of 10 commons, 20 rares and 10 legendary dudes. Some of them doing brand new things like partially healing your leader or making use of the brand new keywords! Stoic: If a unit with stoic is destroyed it suffers no wound Brawl: If this unit enters battle in a position from which it can attack, then it will fight the first target in the opposing row There's also a few new leader cards to discover!

Convoy Recovery

The convoy recovery event on the map A big new feature is the fact that if your run fails you can now find the remains of your convoy in the second run. It will be a quest visible on the first map. If you make it there you can try and win back some of your old followers and items! There's much more to the update but since the list of changes has gotten so big I'll just leave it to you to read up on the details via the in game changelog! So, what are you waiting for? Give it a try! And let me know what you think! And while I have you here: It'd be great if you could leave a review for the game if you haven't already. Plus if you have some time on your hands: it would be very helpful for people to find the game if you could use the Steam Store tags feature to apply the tags you think appropriate! Thanks so much! And in the meantime I'll be busy getting this thing rounded out and polished so it can go live for everyone soon! - Martin

[ 2019-10-09 13:24:13 CET ] [ Original post ]

I've sneakily updated the PREVIEW branch last week with the first half of this change (convoy decks only) but now, with everything done, I wanted to let you all know and hear your feedback! So, I've spent a few days tweaking the enemy decks (both leader and convoy). My goal was to make enemies a little easier on the lower levels, making them easier overall on Chosen but without taking too much bite away on Burdened and Doomed. [url=https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images/29887900/07f57bdd727feba977924757b4bd8bfe41c20fe8.png]
To that end I built some new tools to better visualize enemy decks, and I improved the control I have over their deveopment across difficulties and levels a bit. I've also added 5 brand new leader cards to the enemies: 3 constructs and 2 other cards. And you may find some enemy decks now playing hazards and other obstacles! In any case: I've just updated the PREVIEW branch on Steam that allows you to test out some changes. If you want to give it a try, simply right click on the game in your steam library, go to beta and select PREVIEW. Please note that on the new cards and effects, the texts are only available in english and some artwork may be temporary. Also be aware that the addition of new cards may make the savegame of a run in PREVIEW incompatible with non PREVIEW versions! Basically: Work in progress, pardon the dust :)

[ 2019-09-17 15:41:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! Welcome back to Soma! I've been pretty busy and a few things have been changed, improved and added for Version 1.02! I'm excited to talk about the big changes:

Custom Game Mode

This brand new game mode (and the six new modifiers) will allow you to play the game the way you want to. Want to start with more resources? Change the rules of attacking? Stop your followers from taking wounds? Or maybe you just want them to die instantly. Simply select up to four modifiers to change your game! Note that some modifiers are mutually exclusive and can not be active at the same time.
And this game mode is available to all players for free. All you need to do is to unlock it. And how? Simply complete three games - you don't even need to win. If you've already completed that many games, just completing one more will trigger the unlock. Modifiers So, if you have the game mode unlocked, what are the new modifiers?

• Diamond Followers destroyed in combat do not take wounds. Followers are more expensive and less common to compensate.
• Chased You can not travel towards nodes that lay behind you.
• Affluent Your journey starts with +200 batteries.
• Cornucopia Your journey starts with +200 food.
• Unwavering Your journey starts with +200 hope.
• Cramped You always bring all followers in your convoy into combat. (You can still put some in your deck for priority healing and protection from the wilderness)
• Sloth In combat your prophet acts second by default.

The Pioneers convoy

They follow the ideals of the Union, no longer its leaders. Solidarity, equality and liberty lead them on their search for a new home.
They have three unlockable perks, which you can see above, and one unique always-on fourth perk (similar to the Hermit): Battlefield Engineering Each side of the battlefield has at least one row filled with obstacles. These obstacles are appropriate to the environment and make the battlefield tighter for both parties. This means that decks that work with a lot of cheap cards to try and flood the board have a bit of a problem. This also ensures that there's always obstacles to destroy if you have any synergistic effects... So how can you get the Pioneers? When you're in Pit Nine, don't simply follow the instructions of the Agents mindlessly, maybe try to listen to the rebel cell and support their cause...

Six new leader cards

And lastly the new leader cards. These have been added to help round out some items and as a start to strengthen comeback mechanics and slower tactics, something I'm thinking about a lot. Anyway, without further ado, here are the cards:

• Decoy Phalanx Fill a row on your side with Decoy constructs (0/2) with Taunt.
• Blistering Blow Push target unit. It suffers -3/-0.
• Blinding Beam Stun all followers
• Surprise Attack Each friendly unit with Stealth deals its attack damage to the first target in the opposing row and loses Stealth.
• Black Hole Trap When an enemy follower with active card text enters battle: That unit suffers blackout. (Construct)
• Gear Up Increase the cost of target friendly convoy card by 1. It gains +2/+2.

And that's the big stuff. There's still a bunch of smaller changes. Check out the changelog below for more details. [quote=changelog]Custom Game mode added

• Finish three games to unlock the game mode
• Select up to four game modifiers before you start your game
• Six new modifiers added: Diamond, Chased, Affluent, Cornucopia, Unwavering, Cramped and Sloth!

Six new leader cards

• Added Decoy Phalanx, Blistering Blow, Blinding Beam, Surprise Attack, Black Hole Trap and Gear Up
• Added Blinding Beam and Decoy Phalanx to Banshee (replacing Crippling Mudra and Sabotage)
• Leader cards added to items

New pioneers convoy

• Added a new convoy focused on Obstacles and Armor
• To unlock them you need to assist the rebel cell in Pit Nine

Balancing

• Warden changed to 3-cost 3/6 (was 2-cost 3/4)
• Added Warden to Traders convoy
• Bandit Executioner buff change: Now only triggers if you have no Energy left
• Signalbearer is now Rare and triggers for +1/+1 at the end of each turn
• Ordnance Runner is now Common and 2-cost 1/1 with Stealth, Blast (instead of 3/4)
• Union Sapper is now 3-cost 2/4 (was 2-cost 2/2)
• Expert Slinger is now 4/4 Sniper, Blast (was 4/2 First Strike, Blast)
• Zealot changed to 5/2 that destroys a random follower on Fury
• Demolitions expert changed to 1/4 that sets the health of all other followers to 1
• Deplete cost is now 2 (was 3)
• Janwar Bear changed to 4/2 (was 5/2)
• Cultist changed to 2/2 (was 3/2)
• Reduced cost of Arc Overload power to 1

Interface

• Fixed text on Scratch cards to refer to enemy "targets" in the frontline (not "units")
• Added new "thrown Bomb" visual effect
• Added new logo intro animation

Bugfixes

• Hand card sorting issue fixed
• Strain Chain & Buried Knowledge no longer waste triggers
• Strain Chain only triggers once each turn
• Fixed some faction-based fights using the right faction
• Rage no longer triggers on non-killing Robust units
• Disabled all hotkeys while using convoy cards text filter
• Coordinated Swarm status effect can properly target enemy leader again

[/quote] And that's it! Thank you for reading and thank you for playing. Do join me in the Nowhere Prophet discord and please leave a Steam review if you enjoy the game! And as always: Stay hydrated! - Martin

[ 2019-09-11 15:05:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's been a tad quiet around here while I was busy getting a nice update together for everyone. The upcoming version 1.02 comes with a new game mode, a new convoy and more! If you're eager to play that before it's publically released then check out the PREVIEW channel and give these changes a spin. But for now, let's have a peek:

Custom Game mode

This brand new game mode can be unlocked by playing three games. You don't need to complete them, you just need to make it to the final screen. If you have already played that many games, simply finishing one more will unlock it! And what is Custom Game? Well, it allows you to select up to 4 modifiers to activate for your run. This means you can tweak your difficulty and flavor how ever you want it. And to make that even mroe fun I've added a few new modifiers, some of which will also be available in the Daily Challenge! More details on these new modifiers soon!

The Pioneers convoy

Another new piece of content is a brand new convoy. The Pioneers are ex-members of the Union of the Five Fingers that have split off to build a new home free from the oppressive regime. This convoy is all about armor and obstacles and will even feature a UNIQUE fourth perk that you do not need to unlock and that will influence every fight!

Six new cards

Aside from that there's also been 6 new cards added to the game, a lot of balancing changes and other tweaks. The final change log will become available on Wednesday and feature some more details! Until then, - Martin

[ 2019-09-09 16:35:26 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just a quick patch addressing some small issues: Missing Worker text added back in "Fury: Gain 1 armor" Spaceport "looking for work" follow up events show up again Targeting issue when dragging cards that are too expensive resolved

[ 2019-08-21 15:21:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another update for everyone! Nowhere Prophet hits 1.01.001 and here's what's new and different!

Equipment Power energy costs

The active powers granted by some pieces of equipment now can have an energy cost associated with them. Many still cost 0 Energy to play but the overly strong ones now have a cost ranging up to 3 energy. This also makes it possible to make some of the existing powers stronger and more interesting. For example: The column, row and neighbor attack powers now all do more damage! This has been done to make balancing easier, but also to make it possible to expand the game with a wider variety of powers in the future. Much stronger and thus more expensive ones are now a possibility.
There's also a bunch of other tweaks to balancing and interface and a number of bugfixes.

Changelog

[quote=Changelog]Equipment Power Energy Cost Equipment powers now have an Energy Cost (ranging from 0-3) Row and neighbor attack powers now deal 3 damage (was 1) Row attack power also damages enemy leader Wild Blaze now discards a leader card and no longer deals damage to you Balancing Worker is now (1/1) but generates 1 armor on Fury Choking Fog changed cost to 3 (was 4) Drone Batallion changed cost to 3 (was 5) Storm Signal changed cost to 1 (was 3) and stats to 0/2 (was 0/4) Kaalrati broken has cheese protection "Backup Systems" buff added Interface Mutator Spite has a less ambiguous description Leader Deck during travel will no longer blink once player has seen level up hint once Added tooltip with enemy level and type in combat Changed label on loadout selection to make function of buttons clearer Unlocked convoy perks are clearer different from locked perks Show available Focus points in pre-combat screen Dismantling from combat and event rewards now possible Fixed buy/sell order in shop, again Cards in deck are less dark when shown in large card grid Bugfixes Custodian text now properly references the Leader not Convoy Deck Ensured that "no target" widget is never responsive when not visible Minor event typos in EN, DE and FR Hotkeys while filling in follower text filter are suppressed Blackout also now properly removes stun Favorite followers now heal with priority Fixed some non-beast fights in beast events Pinned down no longer triggers when 0 health units move Attack Drone no longer targets dead units If a follower is blocked by a follower, they can't attack a blocking obstacle through the blocking follower Enemy AI now properly interacts with the new obstacle blocking rules[/quote] And that's it for this update. Please keep the feedback coming! Best, - Martin

[ 2019-08-20 10:40:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Mornin' everyone. It's monday and I'm back at work. I've mostly made my way through being sick, coming out the other end, still sniffling but happy to be properly productive again. Still, this will be a smaller news post today with just one thing:

Preview Updated!

I've just updated the preview branch with a cleaned up version of the powers with energy costs (mostly translation stuff) and added a few minor improvements/bugfixes. The version number is now 1.01.000 and if nothing breaks this version will go live for everyone tomorrow. So in case you're playing and notice anything weird (or even if everything is fine), then do let me know! And I'm already cooking up a little surprise for later down the week! So stay tuned! - Martin

[ 2019-08-19 14:43:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

After languishing in preview (and a slight detour) for a few days this update is finally cooked all the way through and ready for deployment on the LIVE branch. It just went out to everyone on Steam! itch.io and GOG are coming in the next few minutes...

The changes

So what's in it? The big things are the follower filters which make building your deck easier. Then there's the change to the attack rules. You can now attack the obstacle directly blocking your follower. And lastly there's the in game rule book which should make getting into the game a bit easier.

Beyond that, let's take a peek at the changelog: [quote=changelog]Balancing Scion Instigator now 2/4 (was (4/3) Raj Guard Gladiator & Leper Alchemist enemies tweaked Obstacles directly in front of a unit can now be attacked, even by non-frontline units Drone Factory Shelter fortification event made a bit easier (less drones on board at start) Interface Followers filter system completely updated Renamed followers have their name highlighted in yellow Followers can now be renamed with an empty name giving them a shame name (thanks to the Discord for providing ideas and inspiration!) Increased the size of the Show Battlefield button during the mulligan phase Rulebook and tutorial updated to reflect new attacking rules Ingame rulebook added Nowhere Prophet (a game by me!) intro logo added Attack positioning tutorial extended (obstacle attack rule) and image updated Bugfixes Rock granted by custodian is a Leader card, as all other obstacles The first phase of Kaalrati is again marked as a Boss enemy Typos and corrections to some event text All valuables now sell properly without hiccups Fixed the order of the BUY and SELL tabs in the shop screen Union deserters event no longer is a fight against Machinists The order of triggers is no longer switched around every other time Suppressing buff triggers during mulligan draw phase now[/quote]

Preview Preview

With that out of the way, there will also be an update to the PREVIEW branch later today. It will feature all the changes above AND an iteration of equipment powers with energy costs. Check out the changelog in that version for some details. Also note that some of the texts within that version may not be translated yet. And, as usual, all your feedback is super appreciated!

5 steps ahead

And since I'm already thinking beyond the energy costs, I'm considering some changes to the content. To that end I'd love to get your input into which cards you think are very underwhelming. You can do so in this Steam Discussions Post! Also, if you haven't found time to write a steam review yet, please do so! It's the best way to help the game get positive attention :) And that's it for today! Stay hydrated, - Martin

[ 2019-08-13 14:09:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello from me on a Saturday! I came in to the office on Saturday to make a quick update to the game. In the PREVIEW branch you can now find 1.00.022 Arudha. It has a few minor changes to the last one, primarily a bunch of translation updates which make this version viable as a release for everyone sometime next week. Should nothing be broken, as usual. So, what's different in this one?

Ingame rule book

A few of you have requested an ingame rule book and this build includes one. Accessible via the pause menu you can now read the rule book at any time during gameplay. This required me to change some animation things since the pause menu is during paused gameplay so hopefully that broke nothing. Let me know if you encounter any issues!

Buff trigger sequencing fix?

Some of you have complained about inconsistent trigger sequencing. For example if the last unit in a row gains taunt and each unit with taunt gains +0/+2, then it would change the orders after each trigger so the sequence would only work every other time. This is obviously weird and wrong so I took a look at it and tweaked it. However all the trigger stuff is a bit fragile so this might cause some weirdness elsewhere. If you spot anything, please let me know!

Direct obstacle attacking

As mentioned last time: This version features a change to the attack rules: Units can now attack the obstacle that is directly blocking them, even if they are not in the frontline. This required some changes to the tutorial texts and images which are updated in this build too, as you can see above.

Changelog

Here's a brief look at the complete changelog: [quote=changelog]Balancing Scion Instigator now 2/4 (was (4/3) Raj Guard Gladiator & Leper Alchemist enemies tweaked Obstacles directly in front of a unit can now be attacked, even by non-frontline units Drone Factory Shelter fortification event made a bit easier (less drones on board at start) Interface Followers filter system completely updated Renamed followers have their name highlighted in yellow Followers can now be renamed with an empty name giving them a shame name (thanks to the Discord for providing ideas and inspiration!) Increased the size of the Show Battlefield button during the mulligan phase Rulebook and tutorial updated to reflect new attacking rules Ingame rulebook added Nowhere Prophet (a game by me!) intro logo added Attack positioning tutorial extended (obstacle attack rule) and image updated Bugfixes Rock granted by custodian is a Leader card, as all other obstacles The first phase of Kaalrati is again marked as a Boss enemy Typos and corrections to some event text All valuables now sell properly without hiccups Fixed the order of the BUY and SELL tabs in the shop screen Union deserters event no longer is a fight against Machinists The order of triggers is no longer switched around every other time Suppressing buff triggers during mulligan draw phase now[/quote] See you all next week! - Martin

[ 2019-08-10 16:45:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Just a quick note that the preview version received a small update just now. This includes just minor tweaks to some of the balancing, some bugfixes in the follower filter and some tutorial/rulebook changes. Scion Instigator now 2/4 (was (4/3) Raj Guard Gladiator & Leper Alchemist enemies tweaked Sorting by new works now Sorting by faction works now Units with 1 max health and Robust now work again Also please note that this (and the last) preview version contains the following change: Obstacles directly in front of a unit can now be attacked, even by non-frontline units
Any feedback on this change would be very much appreciated! - Martin

[ 2019-08-08 14:05:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Time for another update to the preview branch! I've spoken about the follower filters yesterday and this update makes them accessible to everyone who's playing in the preview branch on Steam!
This is me testing my German translation

What's in it?

Well, the obvious one is the follower filter system. But with that comes the follower naming feature AND the ability to attack obstacles, even if boxed in. Here's the changelog: [quote=changelog v1.00.020]Interface Followers filter system completely updated Renamed followers have their name highlighted in yellow Followers can now be renamed with an empty name giving them a shame name (thanks to the Discord for providing ideas and inspiration!) Increased the size of the Show Battlefield button during the mulligan phase Obstacles directly in front of a unit can now be attacked, even by non-frontline units Bugfixes Rock granted by custodian is a Leader card, as all other obstacles The first phase of Kaalrati is again marked as a Boss enemy Typos and corrections to some event text All valuables now sell properly without hiccups Fixed the order of the BUY and SELL tabs in the shop screen[/quote]

Obstacle attack changes?!

Yes, this is a little experiment. One of the downsides of the current system is that you can easily box the AI in with rocks, or the AI can do it to you (Sorry Frrrr).
If you do it, it's what I call "rock fun". Cleverly obstructing enemies and getting some cool wins in. If it happens to you though, it can end a perfect run if you're not drawing the right card to get yourself an opening. To that end I want to try something I originally tested way back when, but then decided against. However by now a lot of things have shifted and changed, so it might work better now. So in this PREVIEW: Non-frontline units can attack the obstacles in their row. This weakens the tactic to block lanes but it also weakens the power of push and pull cards. It might also need some adjustments to how the AI evaluates obstacles but that comes later. For now, give it a spin and let me know how it feels!

Some caveats

This is an in progress build and as such comes with a few notes and warnings:

• The new obstacle-attacking rules are not reflected in the text (tutorial or rule book) yet
• The new text labels for the filters are not translated to all languages yet
• This is just lightly tested so please report any issues you encounter!

Since the localization thing is something that takes a while it might be some time before this update makes its way to the live branch. And obviously, as always, please let me know how things play/feel/work! Especially in regards to the obstacle attack change.

The beyond

I'm already working on the things after the follower filter update. I've mentioned it before and I'm still looking at energy costs for powers, which seems very likely, potential keyword changes, some of which might make the cut, and maybe even a tiny bit of new content. All of these bits need some more testing (and localization!) so that is slowing them down right now. In the meantime, enjoy this preview! - Martin

[ 2019-08-07 16:01:04 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey y'all. I'm pretty tired and in the middle of a bunch of changes so this is a short one. I just wanted to chime in quickly and share the progress of the Follower Filter changes with everyone.
This popup is new and allows you to select more detailed filter options for your followers. Check out that brand spanking new (and finally usable) cost filter interface!

By this name

A little secret trick: We talked about "favoriting" some of your followers and in the Discord we came up with the idea of combining renaming with "favoriting". So if you rename a follower, his name is now displayed in yellow. And you can filter by "renamed" followers, thus using the renaming feature you can favorite some of your people. They have distinguished themselves and are given a new name within your community! And what if you someone no longer is one of the prophet's favorites? If they have fallen out of favor, simply strip them of their name within the brotherhood and they will have to go back to using a peasant's name. (simply give them an empty name in the rename popup)

Cards in Deck

So that's it but before I close out for today, I have a question for everyone: Do you use the "show all cards" feature in the Follower Screen? The checkbox that shows the darkened cards that are in your deck (those on the right hand side) also in the left hand side. I'm not sure if this is a feature that needs to remain because I fear it might just make things a bit more complicated. Your thoughts? - Martin

[ 2019-08-06 16:34:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Those of you that are tuned in to the PREVIEW channel of the game have had the chance to play with this update over the weekend. Now that Monday has rolled around and nothing significant broke, its time to make this one go live.

The changes

Here's an overview over the chances in the latest update. A lot of it is related to stability and balance. Plus some improvements to the interface to make it quicker to grasp. [quote=changelog]Balancing Improved states for opening the gate with follower count was reduced to 25/50 Armored enemies have a tad less armor AI now properly evaluates and targets obstacles with Taunt You gain Focus as normal on Doomed difficulty now Juggernaut cost increased to 5 (was 3) Decoy changed to 2/4 (was 1/4) Interface Followers in Combat now only show the "multiple effects" icon if they actually have multiple icons to display Critical enemy buffs are marked blue in pre-combat screens Event buildings leading to potential boss fights are marked red in locations Focus value display changed in edit deck screen Crypt Gate events split and put on the map and into the location Chance labels in event options adjusted to be more accurate Added visual effect to unsummoning of units Bugfixes Brain Drain can now target obstacles as expected Coordinated Swarm now also potentially targets the enemy leader Battlefield Sense no longer triggers if Energy is full Quickly unsummoning a unit with a fury effect no longer creates a stuck card Can no longer spam ESC to quit out of Mulligan while game is still setting up starting state Can no longer sneak illegal attacks in during animation (queueing an attack while kennel master is off the board and before his dog has appeared now leads to no action happening) Route Generator now no longer creates multiples of unique locations (gladiator camp, boss locations) Palanquin fortification event no longer picks non-follower but destroys follower [/quote]

This week

As mentioned on Friday, this week will be about tweaking the Powers (by adding Energy costs) and then improving the follower screen with better filters/sorting. I'm also looking at some of the more problematic keywords. I'm playing around with some changes right now, which might be ready for release next week (or they might not).

First Strike to Stun Strike?

One of the things I'm looking at is First Strike. Nowhere Prophet is a game where keeping control of the board is very important, and losing it can be very punishing. First Strike increases this issue since First Strike units if you are behind do nothing (since it only triggers on attack) and if you are in front they are real work horses when it comes to cleaning out the enemy side. So to that end I'm currently trying a drastic change: Stun Strike as a replacement. Stun Strike says that whenever this unit deals damage to another unit, that unit is stunned. This has some interesting ramification: It still provides access to a similar effect (no retaliation damage) but not for the Stun Strike unit directly, but rather for everyone else. It would also trigger when you're behind, so any unit attacking your Stun Strike unit would be stunned during your next turn. And lastly it gives more access to Stun, which is an interesting keyword. And yeah, that's it for today. If you enjoy these updates and the game, please consider leaving a Review! They are the best way to tell Steam (and other players) that this game is fun. Thanks for playing and for reading, - Martin

[ 2019-08-05 14:48:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

It's now exactly two weeks after the release of Nowhere Prophet and from where I stand it looks like I managed to deal with all the really big issues. A lot of bugs and problems are fixed (I'm sure there are more so please keep reporting what you find) and now it's time to look beyond simply repairing things and to making the gameplay experience better.

Coming Updates

So, what's foremost on my mind there? Equipment Powers A number of the equipment powers are clearly better than the others, skewing equipment and limiting the choices because some are clearly better. I'm looking at the unit spawn and refresh items for example. During prototyping I tried out a number of variants of the equipment system. One where items had a number of uses in each fight, or a general number of uses per item. A version where power use cost energy (different based on the power) but I removed all these things that to keep the system simple. Right now though it feels like the Tool Power design space would benefit from having Energy cost added back into it. Costs could be used to balance some of the powers of course, but this would also make a wider variety of powers possible in the future: Stronger powers for higher costs. In general I think this is something that will improve the play experience, so keep your eyes peeled for that. We're currently discussing the ramifications of this in the discord #workshop-chat channel. Come join us! Better Follower Filters This is the quality of life update the game needs the most right now. I'll ultimately have to see what makes the most sense but my current thoughts are: Remove all filter buttons on the screen directly. Only keep a button that opens up a filter menu and a simple text-box that allows you to search card names and text. The button opens a small overlay menu where you can select your filters:

• Show Wounded/Unwounded
• Show Common/Rare/Legendary/Mythic
• Show Factions

Maybe this overlay could provide detailed statistics on your current deck and thus free up the space of the stats area in the screen to be used for a "remove all wounded followers" button that turns into a "remove all" button when you have no wounded followers. I'm also thinking about the ability to make some of your followers as Favorites. You could then filter by Favorites, and they would always be sorted at the start of the list. Also when healing favorites in your deck and not in your deck would be prioritized before all others giving you some more control. Here's a (arguably VERY quick) mockup of what it could be like:
What do you think? Any good ideas on how to improve this? Am I missing anything vital or important? If so, join the discord and let me know! Comeback Content Another thing the game could do better is to allow players to come back from having lost board control. To that end I'm looking at maybe modifying some existing cards or adding new ones that make the game a bit more forgiving if you fall back. An example would be a card that stuns all followers. This isn't something you would ever want to use when you're leading, but when you're behind it can give you enough room to put some of your units down in a safe environment. This would allow me to put the price of the card down a bit, which means it doesn't eat up all your Energy budget for the turn. I have a few ideas for pieces of content like this but as always I'm curious to hear your thoughts!

Update Schedule

So with these changes coming up next, how will these roll out? Well the current plan is to keep the Preview branch active for this. Ideally I'd like to update Preview at the end of each week and then give you all time over the weekend to play and test. If nothing unforeseen catches fire or explodes then the update could go live to everyone after the weekend.

Preview Update: 1.00.014

And in line with that today marks a new update to the preview branch. This one is mostly bugfixes, some balancing and interface improvements. As usual: If it breaks nothing major it will go live early next week, so give it a whirl! [quote=changelog]Balancing Improved states for opening the gate with follower count was reduced to 25/50 Armored enemies have a tad less armor AI now properly evaluates and targets obstacles with Taunt You gain Focus as normal on Doomed difficulty now Juggernaut cost increased to 5 (was 3) Decoy changed to 2/4 (was 1/4) Interface Followers in Combat now only show the "multiple effects" icon if they actually have multiple icons to display Critical enemy buffs are marked blue in pre-combat screens Event buildings leading to potential boss fights are marked red in locations Focus value display changed in edit deck screen Crypt Gate events split and put on the map and into the location Chance labels in event options adjusted to be more accurate Added visual effect to unsummoning of units Bugfixes Brain Drain can now target obstacles as expected Coordinated Swarm now also potentially targets the enemy leader Battlefield Sense no longer triggers if Energy is full Quickly unsummoning a unit with a fury effect no longer creates a stuck card Can no longer spam ESC to quit out of Mulligan while game is still setting up starting state Can no longer sneak illegal attacks in during animation (queueing an attack while kennel master is off the board and before his dog has appeared now leads to no action happening) Route Generator now no longer creates multiples of unique locations (gladiator camp, boss locations)[/quote] Alright, and that's it for today! As always, thanks for reading, thanks for playing and thanks for speaking up! - Martin

[ 2019-08-02 14:52:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

A lot of bugfixes and tweaks to the AI and balance here we are with the first sizable update to the game outside the preview branch.

Version 1.00.011

After the initial hotfixes that just helped make the game more stable, this one will make it feel different. The AI has regained its smarts and the enemy decks have been tweaked to be more even across the different factions, and also to ramp up more smoothly without punishing you too much (it's still a dangerous world) in map 1. Thank you to everyone who played in the PREVIEW branch and helped me finetune this. Double thanks for those who filled out the form. Speaking of: I'd still love to hear your feedback on the difficulty changes. So if you play, wether in PREVIEW or not, please do take some time to fill out the difficulty form. Your collective experience will help me make the game play even better in the future.

Continuous balance

So now, with what feels like the first solid update out of the door, what's next? I'm obviously not naive enough to think the game is now perfectly balanced so I'm planning to spend more time on this, which is why the form will be really helpful. I've also already noted down a bunch of cards and effects that may be too strong (I'm looking at you Stim Set!) or too weak (Hello Sabotage), so if you have some thoughts, please let me know!

Next steps

And in the meantime I will finally have to the time to look at some of the pesky bugs that have been popping up. A number of people have experienced the game soft-locking: It stops responding and no longer works as it should. Usually quitting and loading the game solves that issue so these bugs weren't super high priority right away, but they are too annoying to not take a closer look. Then beyond those I'm looking at some quality of life improvements. Improved filter and sorting options in your follower screen for one. And I've also scoured the forums and my brain for more useful suggestions. And beyond that, I'm already thinking about new content for the game, possibly some new cards and convoys? I'm not making any promises yet, the stability and quality of the game comes first since anything new will disrupt the status quo so I want to be careful.
But there's more to come! So thank you everyone for playing! - Martin

Changelog

[quote=changelog]AI AI evaluation bug fixed: Later moves in a sequence had inflated scores, making even bad moves look useful AI decision system improved and more responsive to prioritization and unit positioning AI is less allergic to having obstacles in the front column position Enemy AI cleverness is affected by level (Ai is worse on lower levels) Balancing Enemies ... Enemy levels on map 1 changed to 1-2 (was 1-3) ... Enemy levels on last map changed to 7-10 (was 7-9) ... Enemy levels on crypt map changed to 10-12 (was 9-10) ... Enemy decks adjusted to be easier on lower levels ... Scion Bloodhand deck adjusted: Fewer charge followers in early maps ... Scion High Priest deck adjusted: Only one Bodhisattva, no more danger of cycling them constantly Cards ... Unconquered Ascetic: Lost Shielded keyword ... The Tireless changed to 4/3 (was 3/6) ... Mounting Pressure cost increased to 6 (was 5) ... Frazzle cost increased to 4 (was 3) ... Bold Strike cost increased to 4 (was 2) ... Shade cost increased to 3 (was 1) Miscellaneous ... Reduced number of nodes in later maps slightly ... Reduced rest at initial crash site to 3 uses (was 5) ... Finally added rest options to the Crypt Gate (3 uses). You can now take a breather before diving in. ... Battery rewards reduced slightly across the board Interface Improved visual quality of intro logos French translation updated Bugfixes Soothing Shadows no longer triggers on moved obstacles or constructs Coordinated swarm no longer triggers on dead drones moving and no longer hits dead targets Defy Death is depleted on trigger, not on turn start Hedgehog Drone is depleted on trigger, not on turn start Battery mutator no longer has second player start with 10 Energy Wounded followers on the enemy side now start with 1 damage Rest button no longer vanishes on 4K displays Restarting game after loading a game no longer throws save game error Crypt Knowledge follow up events can no show up in the Crypt (no stars crashed into the Crypt) Surrender events in combat are now properly loaded Various minor text and event issues fixed[/quote]

[ 2019-07-30 15:27:11 CET ] [ Original post ]

A new week has dawned, and there's still plenty of work to do!

New version, new balancing

Today starts with an update to the PREVIEW branch (Here's how to change to the preview branch) that includes a bunch of balancing and AI improvements. My changes last week made the AI smarter and the game harder, so now the game is moving down a bit. Since the AI is a frequent point of criticism I really want to update the main game, but since the AI and the balancing go hand in hand I want to make sure that it plays the way I want it to. A lot of the changes I did were to the enemy leader and convoy decks. My goal was to make the first map a tad easier while making the later maps a bit harder. But these changes are a lot more complex than simple HP adjustments so I need some help!

Feedback form

So to that end: If you play in preview, please let me know how your experience went! I've set up another Google Form since the last one was very useful! If you have any time to fill it out I'd be very grateful Oh, by the way, here's a look at the before/after stats of the boss form!
As you can see, the green "just right" sections grow larger compared to the length of the columns. While this is just a small sample of players it still is a good sign that these changes were a good start!

Changelog

In any case, let's get back to this new version. Here's an excerpt of the changelog: [Quote=Changelog v1.00.010 balancing] Enemies Enemy levels on map 1 changed to 1-2 (was 1-3) Enemy levels on last map changed to 7-10 (was 7-9) Enemy levels on crypt map changed to 10-12 (was 9-10) Enemy decks adjusted to be easier on lower levels Scion Bloodhand deck adjusted: Fewer charge followers in early maps Scion High Priest deck adjusted: Only one Bodhisattva, no more danger of cycling them constantly Cards Unconquered Ascetic: Lost Shielded keyword The Tireless changed to 4/3 (was 3/6) Mounting Pressure cost increased to 6 (was 5) Frazzle cost increased to 4 (was 3) Bold Strike cost increased to 4 (was 2) Shade cost increased to 3 (was 1) Miscellaneous Reduced number of nodes in later maps slightly Battery rewards reduced slightly across the board [/quote] And that's it for today. I hope you'll enjoy this new iteration of the game! And if everything works out it might go live for everyone in the next few days! Thanks for playing, - Martin

[ 2019-07-29 15:03:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

So I hope that by now a few of you found some time to play the PREVIEW build with the improved AI. As you may have noticed, this makes the game a bunch tougher.

The new normal

So I'm currently looking at the overall balancing to bring it back in line. CHOSEN still seems to be mostly fine, though could be a tad easier, while the change to the AI is felt more strongly in BURDENED and DOOMED, which makes me think that both of these need to be brought down a bit as well. I'd love to hear some feedback about your experience on whether you agree or disagree with me. That would help me a lot to zone in on an ideal curve.

Knobs to tweak

In the meantime, I am thinking about which levers to use to change things:

• Player Health (At start, increase per level)
• Enemy Health
• Enemy Decks
• Enemy Status effects (which, at what level, how strong)
• AI cleverness
• Fight Rewards (Resources, Followers & Items)
• Event Rewards (Resources, Followers & Items)
• Length of maps

All of these dials affect the game in different ways. The changed AI basically dialled up the difficulty of fights with the enemies playing more effectively. Tweaking health would be the easiest change but it would also make the game even more sensitive to alpha strikes as it already is in the non-elite non-boss fights.
Enemy decks are probably a better are to address but they are a bit finicky and hard to balance because there's so many things coming together, sometimes in unexpected ways. Enemy status effects are simpler (fewer moving parts) but the changes are less gradual. One fewer trigger can sometimes make a challenging fight trivial.

My plan for balance

So that said, my current thoughts are to make the enemy decks a bit less mean in Chosen and Burdened so that the decks start to synergize at higher levels. This would also help with making map 1 a bit less of a make or break moment. Also some tweaks to the status effects and then pulling down HP for the elites and bosses just a tad (on Burdened and Doomed). And lastly to make the AI in the early maps a little stupider again - not as much as it was but just a tad less optimized. I am also considering changing the length of the maps and how the enemy levels are spread out across them a bit. Currently the game ramps up quickly in Map 1, so maybe that should be a bit more gradual. In any case, expect an updated PREVIEW build Monday or Tuesday next week. With all that said, please keep the feedback coming! Specifically:

• How does the current PREVIEW difficulty feel to you?
• What do you think about my plan for rebalancing?

- Martin

[ 2019-07-26 14:35:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another day, another update.

Sharpening the AI

I've spent today tweaking the AI some more to make sure it makes better decision and plays more effectively again. The bug I fixed yesterday did a lot to un-stupid the AI and this one should help it find good plays more reliably and a tad quicker even. I might push up the number of iterations up a bit to make it slower again but give it more time to think in turn. So far I'm pretty happy with the improvements as the AI seems to make a lot, lot, LOT fewer ridiculous mistakes. However unfortunately that also makes the game a bunch harder which in turn invalidates a bunch of the balancing tweaks I did before the launch. So my next steps, before this update can roll out to all players, are to push the difficulty down a bit again. I'll have to think about how to best do that.

New version

In the meantime, here's the changes compared to yesterday's PREVIEW version: [quote=changelog] Balancing AI decision system improved and more responsive to prioritization and unit positioning Scion Bloodhand deck adjusted: Fewer charge followers in early maps Scion High Priest deck adjusted: Only one Bodhisattva, no more danger of cycling them constantly Bugfixes Restarting game after loading a game no longer throws save game error Crypt Knowledge follow up events can no show up in the Crypt (no stars crashed into the Crypt)[/quote] If you do play on PREVIEW, please provide feedback on the AI and difficulty in general. I'd love to hear about your experience!
< How to change to the Steam PREVIEW branch to play the new v1.00.008.

A tiny fix

Also, in regards to the AI bug from yesterday, here's the lines of code I had to change to fix it. Such a tiny change leading to a cascading issue in the evaluation and a clearly stupider AI.
I hope you're still enjoying the game. I'm looking forward to rolling out these changes to the wider player base! Thank you for reading and playing! See you all tomorrow, - Martin

[ 2019-07-25 12:48:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alright, let's start with the most important note: There's an updated build in the PREVIEW branch on Steam. It features some minor bugfixes and improvements to the AI. If you want to give that a try simply right click on the game in your library, select properties, then Betas and then use the dropdown to select the Preview beta. Here's how this looks:
With that out of the way, let's talk a little bit about today and this preview build...

How the enemies think

The AI in Nowhere Prophet works by simulating all manner of moves from its current point of view and then picking the best one (MCTS for the more technically inclined among you). This has a few ramifications: Since this takes time and each player in Nowhere Prophet has a lot of moves (move unit to tile a, b, c..., attack with unit to target a, b c... play card on target a, b, c... you get the drift) this means that I can't simulate all the moves but need to do some clever prioritization to determine which move has potential, before simulating a fixed number. Theoretically, if I players were willing to wait a few minutes for each of the AI's moves, then it could always play near optimally, but there's a compromise to be made between the depth of the simulation and the wait time. Also the AI needs some way to evaluate the game's current state after each move to understand if its actions made the situation better or worse.

AI Brain Scan

Both these things can be terribly opaque so I spent a lot of time today making the AI's thoughts and state evaluation more transparent. I need to understand what's happening to judge where it's going wrong and how to improve things. Here's a look at some of that debug information:
And just by doing that I found a little bug in the decision system. What was happening was when the AI was looking for possible moves, the game state was changed by mistake! When checking for all possible moves with cards it inadvertently put a reference to all the enemy's leader cards in its convoy hand. So for the first move in a simulated chain of moves, it had the right amount of cards. For the second move, the convoy hand was suddenly 7 because the 3 cards from the leader card were added to the convoy hand. Then 10, 13 etc. etc. This lead to the value of the game state improving continuously (more cards = better game state), which meant the AI evaluated a branch of actions a lot higher than it should have. Even useless actions produced value, simply by virtue of being a step in the chain of actions, they created cards out of thin air. This bug snuck in 6 weeks ago when I optimized the AI to run faster so I could run more iterations in the simulation. Unfortunately I made it faster, but also dumber. But that one's now fixed in the PREVIEW build. Let me know if you can feel the change. I believe that the AI should be doing less "obviously stupid blunders" now. This may make the game a bit harder too so let me know how that feels as well! Here's the changelog: [quote=changelog]Changelog Balancing Unconquered Ascetic: Lost Shielded keyword Scion Bloodhand deck adjusted: Fewer charge followers in early maps Reduced rest at initial crash site to 3 uses (was 5) Finally added rest options to the Crypt Gate (3 uses). You can now take a breather before diving in. Interface Improved visual quality of intro logos Bugfixes AI evaluation bug fixed: Later moves in a sequence had inflated scores, making even bad moves look useful Soothing Shadows no longer triggers on moved obstacles or constructs Defy Death is depleted on trigger, not on turn start Hedgehog Drone is depleted on trigger, not on turn start Battery mutator no longer has second player start with 10 Energy Wounded followers on the enemy side now start with 1 damage Rest button no longer vanishes on 4K displays[/quote] But that's not all. Beyond that I'm planning to make some more tweaks to the AI, specifically when it comes to pre-selecting and prioritizing AI moves since that allows me to get the best out of the simulation iterations I have available in the time given. But this is something for tomorrow and later in the week. Best, Martin

[ 2019-07-24 17:11:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Alrighty! Day 2 is over and I spent some time collecting your feedback, both the aggregated data from the online form and from the various other places. Thanks again everyone who joined in! Here's an overview over the results on the bosses:
Now I've used that to take a closer look at the boss effects and decks and spent some time today filing off the rough edges. You'll hopefully find that the difficulty of the bosses will be a lot more even but please let me know if anything still stands out. This is a first pass and it would be incredibly lucky if I hit all the issues with that one. Also note that for expediency this version is being released pretty untested. Nothing should break (in fact things should run more smoothly) but should is a dangerous word. So if you find anything out of the ordinary, please let me know ASAP so I can fix it - or roll back, if need be. That said, here's the changelog excerpt for the boss balancing changes in v1.00.005:

Changelog

Reduced strength of passive enemy effects: ... Leper Tormented: Now only provides +1/+0 (was +1/+1) ... King lizard: Now only triggers once each turn ... Raj Guard Gloryseeker: Now only triggers once each turn ... Union Bulwark: Now only provides 3 armor per kill (was 4) Limited or reduced number of effect triggers: ... King Lizard ... Ruster Lifter ... Feral Javelin ... Leper Tormented ... Raj Guard Gloryseeker ... Union Bulwark Reduced deck synergy (on lower levels and difficulties): ... King Lizard (fewer poison units) ... Shiram Torchbearer (fewer direct leader damage cards) ... Ruster Lifter (fewer regen units and self damage cards) ... Feral Javelin (fewer poison units) ... Leper Tormented (fewer regen units) ... Raj Guard Gloryseeker (fewer strong fury units) ... Union Bulwark (fewer Armor synergy cards) Ruster Lifter fight guaranteed to be 5 rows wide, gives you more room to build up for a strong alpha strike A fun side-effect of the "once each turn" change to the Gloryseeker and the King Lizard is that it not only makes things easier (hopefully not too much), it suddenly makes these into effects you can play around. Which one of your units is expendable and attacks the lizard first? Which one of the enemy units is least powerful if he gets it back to his hand and gets killed first? Next steps, after this are: More boss balancing based on your feedback and taking a closer look at the AI. So that it no longer shoots its own obstacles or pulls units that are already in the front column. However if the AI starts playing better this will also raise the difficulty again, so it probably will be a bit of a back and forth between the two. But's that's a topic for another day. Anyway, that's it for today. Keep playing and keep sending me that feedback! And most importantly: Stay hydrated, - Martin

[ 2019-07-23 16:12:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

After the madness of the launch weekend it's time for me to get back into a proper rhythm. And to that end I've scoured my emails, the forums and Discord today looking for bug reports. Many thanks to everyone that reported something with special mentions to anyone who provided screenshots or log files. This is the best way to help me quickly find, reproduce and fix a problem.

Patching the bugs

That said, there's already a patch in the works: Version 1.00.004 will address a number of issues I've seen crop up. Here's the changelog: CHANGELOG

• Game fails a bit more gracefully when a save game was corrupted: Now tries to load the backup save if it can.
• Stunned followers directly destroyed (cull the strong, neural shiv etc.) no longer trigger an error when trying to un-stun them
• Double clicking the "end combat" button in the combat results no longer causes a crash
• Pressing ESC while while in the "show battlefield" mode during Mulligan Phase no longer locks you out
• Putting units down quickly while a unit is auto-spawned could make one of the units vanish.
• "Stubborn" no longer triggers twice on units that are both damaged AND exhausted.
• "Bodhisattva" no longer shuffles enemy units into the deck but returns them to the hand, as expected, as well.
• "Dynamo" no longer triggers on Convoy cards as well
• "Quick Charge" status effect now triggers properly
• "Hard Impact" now properly uses Attack 6+ as condition (used to use Cost 6+ by mistake)
• Blackout properly resets CanAttack/CanMove states. Followers can attack and move. Obstacles and Constructs can not.
• "Stop Levelling" achievement now unlocks properly: Was erroneously limited to the Banshee class
• "Fatality" achivement now unlocks properly: Incidentally overkill damage is now also properly displayed on the enemy leader.
• Speaker's Circle Hope option now is properly accessible if you have enough hope
• Steam Leaderboards now displayed even if you have not submitted a score that day
• Steam Leaderboard also displays more scores at once now (top 100 if no score submitted, +/- 50 around your position if score submitted)
• Event: Convoy Thief, showing mercy no longer kills the follower
• Discord link from the "About the Game" popup works again
• Action Log text alignment fixed (vertically centered)
• Various typos and text issues addressed (for example the double colon in the boss hint on the map decision screen)

This is a pretty good list for a day, if you ask me. However this version is not yet available because I want it to see some testing before I put it live for everyone. Just to be sure it breaks nothing else. If you want to give it a spin though, you can right click on the game in your library and select the PREVIEW branch to get access. There's no password or anything so go right ahead. In fact this branch will come handy for the next steps:

Next Steps: Boss Balancing

So, I've mentioned yesterday that I will take a closer look at the bosses. I will start doing so right away tomorrow (unless something strange catches fire). My current plans are to make sure all the bosses are on a more event footing. A few of them are clear peaks in the difficulty curve, especially at the beginning of the game when you don't yet have a well-tuned deck. To that end I plan to restrict the status effects a bit and also reduce the synergy in the enemy decks, especially on the lower levels. My plan (as said, if nothing suddenly explodes) is to do the first draft of changes tomorrow and then also make those available into the above-mentioned PREVIEW branch so you folks can give them a spin right away. Also, if you haven't already, please fill out the online form! It will help me better gauge the difficutly of the bosses and my potential solutions!

[ 2019-07-22 14:59:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Wow! What a weekend! We launched Nowhere Prophet just over 48 hours ago, the game I've been working on for over 5 years! I'm thrilled and excited to see so many of you play and enjoy the game. And I'm deeply thankful for the wave of feedback from every one of you! I've been reading the forums, comments and scanning the discord to figure out what works for you and what doesn't.
And what I'm hearing from many of you is that the difficulty, especially the AI behavior and the bosses don't feel quite right. This is clearly the most pressing concern for me and you can expect an update to the game with improvements soon. I may have to do some bugfixes first (anything that prevents people from playing has top priority), but once that is out of the way, balancing the difficulty better will be the first thing on the docket. The Bosses should feel challenging and not unfair and the AI should feel like a worthy foe and not make stupid mistakes. I'm sorry that some of you had their experience with the game soured by that. I'll do my best to correct this as quickly as possible. In the meantime I'd love to get more of your feedback on the difficulty, bosses and the AI. I've set up an online form to collect your thoughts and feedback in one place. This will help me better understand what causes problems and will make it easier - and quicker - for me to improve things. If you have some time, please head over here an let me know what you think: Boss/AI Feedback Form Thank you again for your time, for your feedback and please keep it coming! - Martin

[ 2019-07-21 21:22:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, No More Robots is 2 years old, so we're celebrating by putting all of our games on sale! You can now pick up all the following games for cheap: https://store.steampowered.com/app/681280/Descenders/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/733790/Not_Tonight/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/844590/Hypnospace_Outlaw/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/681730/Nowhere_Prophet/ We hope you've enjoyed our games, and we can't wait to bring even more big titles to Steam in the future! Mike, Pip, Dan and Arwyn xxx

[ 2019-07-19 17:24:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone, it's finally here! Nowhere Prophet, our dustpunk deck-building game, is now available on Steam! There's a 10% discount during launch week to say thanks to anyone who is lovely enough to pick it up: https://store.steampowered.com/app/681730/Nowhere_Prophet/ We just wanted to say a massive thank you to everyone who has supported the game up to this point, and we really hope you enjoy it. Nowhere Prophet has been 5 years in the making -- and you can be sure you'll see more from the game in the coming weeks and months! Thanks all Martin, Mike and Pip <3

[ 2019-07-19 15:33:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey everyone! We're so excited to announce the launch date for Nowhere Prophet - 19th of July! In a just little over four weeks, you'll be able to head out into the wilderness of Soma with a convoy of cards and a dream of a promised land. In this world, your cards aren't just for throwing your weight around in combat -- they are your followers, looking to you for food, safety and most importantly, hope. As you recruit new followers (or lose people to the wilderness), your deck will constantly evolve with the action. You can grow bonds with your people... and feel genuine heartache when they are cut down.
Tactical battles won't be your only obstacle, as throughout your journey you'll make narrative decisions that will greatly affect you, filling your disciples with hope -- or draining the last bit of life from their tired bodies. Procedurally generated maps give you a new journey each time you play, while 10 different convoys and four Prophet classes that change how you play, along with more than 300 cards to discover, make Nowhere Prophet infinitely playable. We can't wait to get the game into your hands -- not long to wait now!

[ 2019-06-19 15:30:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey all! Thanks so much for playing in the Nowhere Prophet beta! We had over 5,000 people download the beta, and more than 80% of players gave it 4 or 5 stars, so we're happy to know that the game is moving in the right direction! We've put together the above image to showcase your feedback -- you'll want to open the image in a new tab to read it.

Here's what happens next:

• We take your feedback, and make the game even better
• After we've sorted out the issues, we do some final testing
• Then it's time to announce the release date, and get it out there!

In the meantime, we're about to start the new Nowhere Prophet Meta-Game on Discord -- feel free to join in, and maybe you'll get to make some big decisions about the final game :) Thanks all! No More Robots + Sharkbomb

[ 2019-05-28 15:27:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

The beta is here and the keys have been sent out - Check those inboxes! Grab your convoy and head out across the wastes to get a taste of the adventure to come. We've opened up a part of Soma for you to explore and some convoys to unlock (as well as a challenging foe for those who are brave enough!) Good luck, have fun and don't forget to let us know how you get on! If you're looking for somewhere to share feedback, swap decklists or report any bugs you might find, don't forget you can check in with our discord - discord.gg/nowhereprophet If you would like a key and you don't already have one, you can use this form to sign up and you'll receive your key within 24 hours - https://forms.gle/fhfEkEYPyJtQa8r27 Stay safe out there Sharkbomb Studios & No More Robots x

[ 2019-05-17 15:13:51 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey there everyone!

Are you ready to receive your message from the fallen star and head out across Soma? The Nowhere Prophet beta starts TOMORROW! Set out across the wastelands with the Forgotten, the Horde and the Explorers over the weekend and lead them to victory through tactical card-based combat. Make friends, vanquish foes and lead your convoy to greatness, just sign up here to receive your steam key tomorrow - https://forms.gle/fhfEkEYPyJtQa8r27 We'll see you in Soma, Sharkbomb Studios & No More Robots x

[ 2019-05-16 15:38:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

Nowhere Prophet is finally available in First Access! Head on over to the Nowhere Prophet store page on itch.io and check it out! There's some cool exclusive rewards available there.
In matter of fact this announcement is a bit late, as the game's been available for an entire week now. I've just been pretty busy catching up. But now there was some time to catch my breath and plan the next steps. https://youtu.be/5elSvs1LXL8 Check out the video above for an update on the development so far.

[ 2017-10-17 17:09:43 CET ] [ Original post ]

Nowhere Prophet is going to be in First Access starting October 10th! And what does that mean? Well, for one, it means that people will have access to the game while I’m still working on it. There’s still content to build, interfaces to tweak and systems to be balanced before I will call a wrap on this. Also since the game is still being built it gives you the opportunity to contribute. You can just follow development along or go for one of the crowdfunding-like rewards and get your face in the game, among other things. Starting October 10th the game will be available on the itch.io store. If you support us during the First Access you will of course get a Steam key once the game launches here. From then on there will be regular updates and, if all works out according to plan, a release in the first half of 2018. Stick around to stay up to date. And in the meantime: Stay hydrated, - Martin

[ 2017-09-12 13:10:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Game development certainly can be a roller coaster... When I started the very first prototypes for what would become Nowhere Prophet back in 2014 I thought I'd be done and released by now. But things change, features get added, systems don't work out and there's always a need for more iteration to make it as good as it can be. But looking back and forward from where I now stand, getting the game up on Steam definitely feels like a milestone of development. I've still got a way to go until the game is ready but the end is in sight.
And if everything pans out we'll even get to start something Early-Accessy still this year. Keep your fingers crossed! Until then, stay hydrated! - Martin

[ 2017-07-21 16:08:11 CET ] [ Original post ]