Shield Break Studios are happy to announce that their first game, Bierzerkers, will be launching on Steam Early Access today at 17:00 BST / 9:00 PDT. We hope everyone will be eager to share this news and shout it from your nearest sheep-filled hilltop. The game will be available for $9.99 / €9.99 / £6.99 during Early Access.
The entire team at Shield Break Studios are thrilled to open the game to players today. Vince Fennel, co-founder and producer of the game agrees, “We are extremely excited to give players Early Access to Bierzerkers today. Our small but scrappy team at Shield Break has poured everything we’ve got into this game.”
He added, “It’s the result of our blood, sweat and tears and we are hoping the community likes where we are headed. We’re looking forward to some amazing matches with our players, hearing their feedback, and continuing to develop new content for Bierzerkers.”
The Red Solstice breaks down details on their new single player mode in the full launch version of the game! The game will be 20% off during the first week.
Warlocks vs. Shadows players can now challenge themselves in the new Horde mode.
Especially if you finished the story mode already, feel strong and almighty. That means you and your Warlock are prepared to take up the new challenge. Try to achieve the best score, climb up on the leaderboards and become the most awesome and fearsome Warlock in the entire universe! Once this achievement is unlocked, call up your friends, combine of your warlocks’ skills and together beat other teams scores in up to 4 players co-op. Now how long do you think you’ll be able to survive?
THE NEW HORDE MODE FEATURES:
5 new arenas with endless waves of shadow monsters.
Leaderboards for local and on-line scores.
On-line and off-line co-operation mode up to 4 players.
Despite the new gameplay mode devs yet again delivered a whole bunch of fixes and improvements so if you’re curious to learn them all dive into the list below:
The look of Spirit Lord’s ghosts after the 4th upgrade of his Ethernall Leap skill was changed.
The Xbox One controller plug in has been updated. Controllers should work properly now.
The portal on the last stage (boss room) of the Shadow World was fixed.
A bug with online multiplayer which caused players to desync (connected with Jake’s C) was fixed.
A bug with multiple slows stacking causing you to run backwards was fixed.
Reviving one more time was fixed.
The potions bug was fixed.
Levels displayed in character selection screen were added.
Statistics screen after every level you beat in the Story Mode (both in single and multiplayer) was added.
The difficulty in the 4th world – Frozen Lake (stronger enemies and more of them) was increased.
The thin ranged monster from Frozen Lake has silence on his projectiles now.
Giant Ice Scarab from Frozen Lake has slow on his attack now.
The difficulty in the 5th world – Shadow World (stronger enemies) has been increased.
The silence to Assassin from Shadow World and slow to the ranged monster were added.
The 3rd boss (more HP and new shooting pattern) was buffed.
4th and 5th bosses’ HP was significantly increased.
Nerfed Jamal, Troll Warlord. His range of Axe Throw after the upgrade got significantly reduced and his cool-down on Avalanche got increased. Also his Bleeding effect on Axe Throw got nerfed along with Axe Throw’s cool-down.
The ability to bounce from enemies on Jamal’s upgraded Dodge was removed.
Nerfed Jake’s fireball’s range, reduced its cool-down after the upgrade from 1s to 0.8s.
Nerfed Lissy – increased the cool-down on Charge and on Overdrive, also reduced Overdrive’s duration (but increased the healing from it).
Buffed Raziel – increased his damage and damage bonus scaling on Sword Smash.
Iezabel’s minions HP, armor and damage were increased significantly.
Nerfed “of Ice” suffix from 80% slow to 65% on weapons and 70% on armors.
Trion Worlds’ voxel MMO adventure game, Trove, is available now on Steam and at TroveGame.com for both PC and Mac. Being a unique blend of action-adventure and builder, Trove is a one-of-a-kind world that allows players to create and explore unique fantasy environments in an endless universe of player-created voxel worlds. Trove is free to play and is rated E for Everyone by the Entertainment Software Ratings Board.
“Trove’s Beta opened our eyes to the amount of rampant creativity and talent that exists in the online gaming community,” said Scott Hartsman, CEO of Trion Worlds. “We’ve seen players create entire worlds, going above and beyond our expectations of capabilities. We can’t wait to see what players come up with next as we open Trove’s gates to the wider world.”
Trove invites players into a universe of endless possibility, where role-playing and crafting collide, opening the game to be shaped by the community. Offering players the power to explore, craft, and create their own adventures, Trove pushes the boundaries of community-created content, featuring procedurally generated worlds that are fully buildable and destructible.
At launch, Trove features 9 playable classes (including Boomeranger, Pirate Captain, and Candy Barbarian); challenging procedurally generated dungeons, landscapes, and lairs; a limitless supply of loot and a deep crafting system. Creators can quickly save designs for instant building and use the game’s unique Keystones to prevent their creations from being altered by other players on the same server.
Since open beta, Trove players have created over 160 dungeons, 2000 equipment styles, and 78,364 unique club worlds. To get a sense for Trove’s unique community, you can check out some of the amazing constructs and builds that have been created since the game’s open beta in November 2014 here. Players can download the game on Steam for free here.
On Thursday the 25th, I got the chance to sit down with a couple of developers from the Trove team. They gave me an overview of how far the game has come and some insight on where it’s heading. I believe you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who honestly feels that Trove is a bad game, which is a rarity in an MMO market saturated with dime-a-dozen Free-to-Play titles. Trion has managed to strike gold with Trove. It’s managed to attract a large player base, offer tons of unique content, a fully destructible environment… All while allowing thousands upon thousands of players to play together without being split up by servers. As it was said during the demo: Trove is, “like an MMO, but only fun.”
I have some experience with Trove, but not much. The last time I actively played was earlier this year, with my last excursion into the game being at the release of their Pirate content. This introduced a new biome, a new form of mount (ships, some with cannons), and a new ranged class: The Pirate Captain. Trove’s development is full of what would be considered large content updates in other MMOs. From the Candyland and Candy Barbarian to the Neon Ninja class. It seems that whenever I look at the game, something new and fantastic has been added.
The latest addition, though, is the introduction of Dragons. These are pets that can (for now) only be gained through hard work by participating in a special event. They start out as hatchlings, but through your efforts they can grow. So the tiny cute thing that followed you around can grow into a mighty mount, eventually gaining the ability to fly and breath flame. That, combined with the wings they recently added to the game gives you some hints as to how the game will be evolving in the future.
And you’ll need all the help flying you can get when you take on the Sky Realm. As the name suggests, this realm is full of floating islands and structures in the sky that you can visit and explore. Unlike other biomes, the only way to visit the Sky Realm is to take a portal directly to it. Also unlike other biomes, Sky Realm is a lot less violent, offering more “zen” activities to partake in. If you want to visit, you’ll need to join a well-established club or be prepared to work hard at gathering all the materials to construct the portal yourself, which can be quite difficult.
And speaking of clubs, the Trove devs have been hard at work adding lots of fun features for their very creative players. I was shown a couple of club worlds created by dedicated players and “impressed” doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt. First, there was a massive structure that was simply monolithic and awe inspiring. Then I was shown what some players had done with the magrails and music blocks available to them, constructing actual music that their fellow players can enjoy while riding down the rails.
And while Trove is heavy on social features, it also has a very intense action core that fans of hack-and-slash gameplay will enjoy. Having played in the past, I was already familiar with the basics of dungeons in Trove. You’ve got a number of different biomes, each spawning a number of different dungeons with a ton of interesting monsters specific to each biome. What I wasn’t familiar with was the fact that Trove’s devs had allowed players to design a lot of the dungeons. Also, each boss encounter is unique even if the boss looks the same. It might be minor differences or there may be some major changes, but it’s usually going to be a different experience each time.
Speaking of player created content, Trove has a ton of it. Trion has opened the floodgates and allowed players to submit designs in the hopes of getting them in-game. Almost similar to how Steam users can use the Steam workshop to get their content into some games. And speaking of Steam, Trove is releasing on that platform today, July 9th, along with the official release. This commitment to allowing their users what is essentially unlimited freedom within their game is stunning.
Something that has been a sore subject over the past couple of years has been free-to-play models. Most games seem to abuse the cash shop, enticing players by offering them power in exchange for cash. It sucks when you work hard to be good at a game, only to find yourself miles behind the guy who has a bigger paycheck than you simply because he could afford to spend more money on the game. Trove doesn’t have this issue, fortunately. The very nature of the game means that you can’t pay-to-win, as there is no real “winning” in the game. Also, players can trade the cash shop items, meaning that even if you don’t want to spend a penny on the game, you can still get your hands on cash shop benefits.
Now that we’ve discussed what’s already in the game, I’ll tell you what I was able to glean about the future of Trove. Most importantly, I was assured that development would continue well after Trove’s release. Nothing is more disappointing than a game that is abandoned after the release hype has died down, only receiving updates a few times a year. As I already mentioned, Trove will be getting its official release on July 9th (along with a Steam release). There is also a complete UI overhaul coming with release, some of the changes are already available for viewing in the game.
Probably the most interesting, at least for me, feature that is in-store for Trove has to be PVP. Obviously Trove already has a fantastic formula for great gameplay, so the PVP probably won’t factor too much in the grand scheme of things. However, the work-in-progress PVP mode that was described to me sounded amazing. The key words being “work-in-progress.” So what I describe could very well be completely different than what appears in the game.
You’ll travel to a realm that offers free-for-all combat amongst players, but there will also be PVE content to participate in as well. As you fight (and win) against NPCs and players, you will gain Bloodshards. As you gain these Bloodshards, you will grow in power but also become a target for other players who want your Shards. Eventually, you will feel yourself strong enough to take on the mega-boss at the center of the map, the Blood Dragon. However, your strife won’t end there. As you’re fighting the Blood Dragon, a message is sent out alerting other players to what you are trying to do, meaning that you will more than likely have to worry about players try to kill you, stealing your hard work in the process.
Conclusion
In case it isn’t obvious, I am impressed by how far Trove has come. It was already a fun game when I last played it, but it’s evolved so much in that time. I will definitely be coming back to the game at release – I’d be insane not to. What’s even better is that Trove can be played how you like it. You can spend either fifteen minutes or five hours in the game and still enjoy yourself, and on top of that, it’s one of the best games I’ve found to play with friends. If you haven’t already, I would say download the Glyph launcher or boot up your Steam. You won’t want to miss the initial player rush insanity! You won’t regret it, I promise.
