This post is written by Mia, one of our gameplay designers. Hello there! As the year draws to a close, we wanted to take the opportunity to look back at how far The Hand of Merlin has grown and changed. Its not an overstatement to say that the game has matured significantly since its release into Early Access on March 17th this year. Out of curiosity we dug through our patch notes and prior dev blogs and have some interesting data to show off! Since the release in March there have been a total of 19 minor updates/patches, not counting today and not counting the 5 major content updates. Taking into consideration there have been a total of 39 weeks since, on average wed have a minor patch every other week and a major update every two months. Looking back we are pretty proud of what weve accomplished and all that weve added to the game itself. From the artists weve gotten hand drawn cutscenes, map variations, new vfx for spells, more encounter images, and their help in the realization of new enemies and heroes, visual improvements of skills, spells, and so much more. They made the game as beautiful as it is. The programmers have worked their magic to add so many new features, quality of life changes, polishing every aspect of the game to work as seamlessly as it could. They managed to make the most out of our engine to make new things possible. Gamepads, porting, dealing with the designers Theyre the backbone of The Hand of Merlin. The writers have built the story of HoM and fleshed it out to make it truly feel as if youre traversing the multiverse, helping these worlds which are all different no matter how similar they may look. Theyve added quests, additional variations, and more stories to be told. Your choices matter thanks to them. Mat and I as the designers have been doing our best to try and flesh out the direction for HoM to grow. Theres been a lot of balancing, reworking, and questioning old assumptions. From how to set up the different difficulties, making each hero feel unique, or simply adding more content (such as the new guardians, relics, enemies, etc.) to going through a complete skill overhaul. Weve kept ourselves (and others) busy! I cant speak for everyone, but personally Im very proud of what our team has accomplished this year. Especially for a small indie team, the Hand of Merlin has had a great year, and I hope itll continue to improve next year as well with its full release coming up soon. Also, this lovely little team of ours will also be taking a well deserved two weeks vacation over the holidays! Feel more than welcome to join our Discord server to tell us what you think, to chat, or ask questions if you have any! Or you know, just to hang out. Cheers! Mia