Dear Steam Monster Keepers,

here's our monthly Progress Update for February. Apart from our game development progress, we also have two special announcements to make.

[h1]110k Stretch Goal Reached!
[/h1]We've been pleased to see that beyond our Kickstarter campaign, there has been a steady flow of late backers pledging through our Paypal Store ! That means that the game will feature the choice between a female and a male main character as well as character customization. We will present the exact details of those features in a future update.

[h1]1st Round of Community Monster Winners
[/h1]The Monster Designer backers have voted and the first Community Monster Contest has concluded.

• 1st place: Skorch by Pixelbit!
• 2nd/3rd place: A two-way tie for Caraglow by Azaliate and Aazerach by Aurora - meaning that both of them will make it into the game!
• And our Developers' Pick: For design and an outstanding amount of effort, Aurumtail by Penumbra! We like some of the new skill ideas, and we have decided to include mountable Monsters in the game. This means Aurumtail will be one of several Monsters that you will be able to ride to move faster from one area to another - so Aurumtail fit into our overall design for the game as well.
  

To all other Monster Designers, we hope that you don't feel discouraged! Keep in mind that this is the first of five contests, so if your design hasn't made it in yet, we encourage you to keep trying. And the next contest is just on the horizon: We plan to start the second submission period shortly after our beta launch! Remember that this is only the first of five contests with 3 winners each.


[h1]February Progress Update
[/h1]
Onto the regular part of our Progress Update:

• New area: Stronghold Dungeon. This area can be entered through the Keeper's Stronghold once the player has reached the Keeper Novice rank and has progressed the story far enough. It's connected to the Ancient Woods and there's a path leading back to the Blue Caves. The entirety of the Stronghold Dungeon will feature a dynamic lighting effect with some darker areas.
  

• New Monsters: Glowfly, Crackle Knight, Mad Eye, Nightwing
  

• We have reconsidered our original stance on traditional evolution and we have decided to feature an evolution mechanic in the game. In the beta, two of the Monsters from the demo version will be able to evolve into a different form - one of them being Magmapillar. However, the evolved form of a Monster isn't supposed to be strictly better than their first form. The evolved form usually features very different skill trees and higher stats overall, but it might have some of its stats decreased on evolution.
  

• Most of the mapping has been concluded for the two new areas for beta (Ancient Woods and Stronghold Dungeon).
  

• Many of the exploration skills in the game have been revamped or changed and new types of obstacles have been added. Some of the older areas have been changed. Blue Caves have received some new rooms.
  

• The new areas and rooms also feature dark rooms, which have to be illuminated by using certain Monsters.
  

That's it for this month's Progress Update! As we're closing in on our planned release schedule for the backer beta (late March), we hope that our backers will be enjoying all the new content we have in store for them. Also, we've got another big announcement coming end of march, stay tuned!

If you would like to back our project, you can still do so (even though the Kickstarter is over). Back with Paypal here: Paypal Shop . Please note that the upcoming beta for Monster Sanctuary will only be available to people who have backed the game at the 25 tier or higher. The first "public" version will be the Early Access version which is planned to be released in late summer.

Also, feel free to join our Discord server if you haven't done that already. That's where we share all of our updates first usually, and you can give us feedback and suggestions there.

[ 2019-02-28 21:46:30 CET ] [Original Post]