This is a preview of all of the upcoming changes. The update itself will be released 11.02. IMPORTANT: due to significant internal changes in the code, saves that are made in the current version of the game won't be compatible with the new version of the game we apologize for the inconvenience. Dear players: We congratulate those of you who celebrate the Lunar New Year, and we wish everyone health and prosperity. May this year give you the strength, the resolve and the patience to change the world for the better, and to help those in need! Traditionally, around this time of the year we release a major update for Gremlins, Inc., and this year is not an exception: today's update is especially heavy with balancing changes that touch upon characters, cards, and even locations as well as with new features and quality of life improvements. Let's look at the changes one by one:

SPECIAL CONTENT DEDICATED TO LUNAR NEW YEAR

Commemorating the year of the Ox, we bring you:

• a special animated background for main menu
• a new original music track created by A.Fruit
• a new emoticon

All these items are granted for free to every owner of The Governor Edition (as a reminder, we now have two separate Governor Editions). The new melody and the new background are also available to every player in the game for 2 weeks following this update (once this period passes, these items will remain available only to the owners of The Governor's Edition).

NEW FEATURE: IN-GAME PAUSE

It is now possible to play private multiplayer sessions with a timer, but use the pause function if something outside of the game requires your attention. You can activate the pause at the beginning of your turn and the game (and your friends) will wait for your next action for as long as it takes. Please note that this feature is limited to private sessions only, in order to prevent delays in sessions with random opponents.

NEW FEATURE: MULLIGAN SYSTEM

The new mulligan system gives players much more control over their starting hands. At the start of the session, instead of receiving 6 cards with the ability to discard any of them and get random replacements, each player now gets 12 cards and chooses the 6 that they want to keep (the rest is discarded as usual). This way, you can tailor your starting hand much better for your first few turns in the session. This also makes early inspections and arrests more justifiable, since it is now easier for other players to get a hand of cards that can be used very efficiently from the very first round.

NEW CARD: "ADMISSION OF FAULT"

ADMISSION OF FAULT Location: Tribune Cost: votes 1 Move points: 4 Type: Normal Get: -malice 1 Special rule: Choose another player: they lose votes 4. If you use this card to move, lose votes 1 and malice 1. "No gremlin ever admits their fault, unless they find a way to hurt their competitor even more with such admission." This card hurts your popularity but it damages your opponent's popularity even more!

NEW CARD: "CORPORATE SCAM"

CORPORATE SCAM Location: Office Cost: free Move points: 3 Type: Secret, Permanent Copies in the deck: 2 Special rule: When all copies of this card are active simultaneously: players who dont own such cards lose score1 per copy; players who own such cards get score 1 per each copy that they own. All copies of this card are then discarded. "The most reliable protection from being cheated is to affiliate yourself with the cheaters."

CHANGES IN LOCATIONS

THE OFFICE
This simple change slightly reduces the effectiveness of the Office, and makes its effect less impactful on the money of players. THE CASINO
Over the years we got plenty of comments on the Casino's efficiency (or the lack of it). Here is the new Casino that doesn't limit your winnings, but will penalize you if you gamble for more than you can afford to lose. Just to elaborate and make it clear: you can now gamble in the Casino even without any money, and you still have a chance to win up to $100. But if you lose, your malice increases.

CHANGES IN SPECIAL CHARACTER ABILITIES

There are a lot of changes in the special abilities of characters that are based on server stats, discussions in the community and suggestions of top players: THE BANKER
This change is a necessity: while it was a cool idea to have this ability on the Bribe spot, we actually can't keep it there as it creates multiple issues with the internal logic, some of which aren't fixable. Thus we move this ability to the Risk spot. The numbers won't change for now, but we can always adjust them later if needed. THE THIEF
These changes should reduce the effectiveness of the Thief in session with multiple opponents while keeping the character potent in the duel format. THE COLLECTOR
These changes directly improve the character's performance, although one of them plays a bit different role. The change of "An Exhibition" adds to control of how much income the character can get from active permanent cards: now, if needed, we can change it so that every active permanent card increases the Collector's income by 30 which gives the character a much bigger boost in the early game but with the limit of 90, it does not become overpowered in the late game when the Collector might have a lot of active permanent cards (because only 3 of them provide the actual boost). THE POLITICIAN
Just as we have done with the Banker in the previous update, now it's time to bring in major changes of the Politician's abilities. The changes are meant to improve the character's ability to accumulate votes but provide fewer benefits during the Elections. Most importantly, the character no longer keeps votes after the Elections, which means that after each case of the Elections the Politician should work hard on re-gaining votes.

CHANGES IN CARDS

THE STASH
You can no longer use the Dump before you travel to the Treasure. Two reasons: (1) this effect wasn't in line with all the other effects of teleportation; (2) this effect wasn't very useful in the first place, but created additional delays. Thus we streamlined the card a bit now you go straight to the Treasure, without any delays. EASY GAMBLE
Considering the change that we made to the Casino, the old effect of this card wouldn't make sense as there is no limit to your winnings anyway. So instead, the card now protects you from getting malice when you lose too much money.

QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENTS

Thanks to player feedback, we identified two changes that can improve player experience: Firstly, when a spectator leaves the session that they watched, they are now redirected to the multiplayer lobby which makes navigation between different sessions that you want to spectate a bit easier. Secondly, the drop of a new chest during the session is slightly changed so that it no longer blocks the Plant location on the Clockwork Colony playing field.

FIXES

It is no longer possible to use "Cheating" to move from the Astral to the Bank for the player who does not have active "The Astral Elevator" permanent card. Earlier, there was a very rare and very specific set of circumstances that allowed to "cheat with "Cheating"" this way, but now it is fixed for good. Fixed a rare issue, where sometimes images of emoticons would have stuck on the screen if their hot-key was pressed while the emoticon is dragged with the mouse.

WHAT'S NEXT?

In a few weeks Gremlins, Inc. will celebrate its 5th anniversary on Steam (March 11, 2021). In our wildest dreams, we never imagined that this native digital board game created by a small studio will reach 700,000+ owners on Steam, and bring together a community from pretty much every country in the world! We'd like to use this opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to continue updating the game, bringing new content and new features throughout 2021. We closely follow player feedback and community discussions, and we will keep making the game better with every major update! A special "thank you" goes to the Japanese community of the game, and especially to our friend Standard of Ur, for providing early feedback on the upcoming DLC that is dedicated to the theme of Japanese Cyberpunk. This DLC is currently nearing the end of its production cycle, and will become available in the spring of this year.
Additionally, we are very close to finishing the custom modding tool that will allow players to extensively modify Gremlins, Inc. by changing the effects of cards, locations and general rules. The tool is now already in translation, we expect to release it around the game's anniversary in mid March. Thank you for being a part of this friendly community, and we wish you all the best! Team Charlie Oscar Vilnius Old Town, Republic of Lithuania

[ 2021-02-10 17:58:21 CET ] [ Original post ]