Siralim Ultimate is part of the "FUNgeon Crawlers" Humble Bundle, featuring 7 great RPGs!
As mentioned in my previous post, the Siralim Ultimate backer shop is now open for business! Ever wanted to add your own ideas to the game? Now is your chance!
Thanks to everyone who participated in our survey! With over 500 responses, your insights will pave the way toward a new future for Siralim Ultimate, as well as our other games. Many of the responses took me by surprise, but let's jump to the part you probably care about the most: more content for Siralim Ultimate!
Backer Shop
Over one-third of respondents (far, far more than expected) expressed interest in the return of the backer shop. So, we're bringing it back, improved and streamlined based on past experiences.
Here's what to expect:
To be clear, this content will be made available for all players, so even if you don't want to pay for anything, you can still look forward to a huge new batch of creatures, spells, decorations, and much more - absolutely free of charge.
New Game Content
Unsurprisingly, most respondents were interested in new content - particularly, extra game modes (chosen when you start a new save file).
Here are a few examples of some new game modes, but please remember these are all in the "ideas phase" and are subject to change, or might not even make it into the final game at all:
These modes can be mixed and matched for a personalized gaming experience. We're also planning to unlock some new content through "stretch goals" in our backer shop, akin to Kickstarter campaigns.
Patch Timeline
The difficult part about updating Siralim Ultimate is that so many players (roughly 60%, judging by the survey results) use our cloud storage feature to access their save files on multiple platforms. Unfortunately, this means that if I add content to one platform, you won't be able to play that save file on another platform until that platform receives the new content as well. For that reason, I will keep this patch on our Steam beta branch for a pretty long time.
The patch will include the promised localizations, bug fixes, suggestions, backer content, and much more. It will be an enormous patch that will take months of testing on the beta branch, but this will ensure that 1) your cloud storage service isn't interrupted and 2) backers can see their new content added to the game as soon as possible.
The Next Game
I want to be very clear that everything I mentioned in this post will have minimal impact on the development of our next game. I have a lot of help behind the scenes these days, and I am confident that I have the time and resources available to devote to both games and give them both the attention they deserve. I enjoy game development so much that working on one game feels like a nice break from working on the other.
This year is going to be a massive one for us, and I can't wait to share more information very soon! Stay tuned for more updates and reveals.
I hope everyone had a great 2023! While it has been quiet on my end for some time, a lot has been happening behind the scenes. In this post, I want to discuss what you can expect from Thylacine Studios in 2024 and beyond.
Siralim Ultimate Patch
Over two years after its full launch, Siralim Ultimate is more popular than ever. This is highly unusual for a video game, and it's all thanks to our amazing playerbase spreading the word about Siralim. A huge thanks to everyone for spreading the word!
I'm working on a big Siralim Ultimate patch. It doesn't add any new content to the game, but it fixes almost all known bugs and includes some small quality of life improvements that have been requested by the community.
In addition, this patch will enable the game to be translated into different languages. This is a massive undertaking, but I'm making good progress on it so far. Community members will be able to translate the game themselves, but I am also hoping to work with some publishers to add official translations for some languages as well (prioritizing Japanese and Chinese to start). Please note that the translation files are very far off from being ready, so I can't provide them to you just yet.
There's still a lot of work to be done on this patch, so I have no ETA for when it will be ready. It will also probably spend at least a few months on our Steam beta branch before it is fully released and available on other platforms because there are so many changes behind the scenes.
I know many of you have been waiting a long time for a patch like this, and I apologize for the delay, but I've needed to put the bulk of my focus on other things while I work on this patch on the side.
I am also aware that there are still a few outstanding issues on Android as a result of the most recent update. I have a new patch ready to go to solve these issues, but unfortunately, I am waiting on the Gamemaker developers (what a surprise...) to fix some things on their end that is causing the game to run at an abnormal frame rate on some devices. There are a lot of frustrated developers pushing them to fix this because it affects *all* Android games made with Gamemaker, so hopefully, they'll have a fix ready soon.
The Next Game
I wanted to reveal the new game I'm working on in this post, but it's not quite ready to show off yet and I don't want to spoil anything prematurely. I'm planning to announce it in the first quarter of 2024, and I hope to make regular blog posts after that to reveal all the game's mechanics. Here's what I can say about the game for now:
- It's a massive, turn-based RPG, and will probably release with more content than Siralim Ultimate. The budget is roughly 4x all the Siralim games combined, and it shows.
- To best summarize the game's mechanics, I'd say it's a cross between Siralim, Path of Exile, and something very new and unique altogether.
- It's meant to be an infinite game like Siralim, but also highly replayable like an ARPG (Diablo 2, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, etc). Both the long-term playability and the replayability work together for a complete experience. It is not a roguelite or anything like that.
- The art is 2D, but instead of using pixel art, it uses skeletal animations. This means that the art will be much more animated and less static than Siralim.
- JC Malapit (who worked on parts of all the Siralim games) will handle all the art. He's not shackled by low-resolution pixel art anymore, and I'm constantly amazed at how great everything looks. You're going to be pleasantly surprised. I can't wait to show off some screenshots soon.
- Joshua Queen (who worked on Siralim 3 and Siralim Ultimate) will once again handle all the music and sound effects for the game. The music is already finished, and it's unbelievably good.
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I'm excited to reveal more details in the coming months!
My Communication
Currently, my communication is spread across several social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Discord, YouTube, and the Steam forums. Moving forward, I've decided to primarily focus on Discord, supplemented by Twitter and the Steam forums. As part of this shift, I will no longer post updates on Facebook.
Additionally, I'm considering transferring administrative rights for our subreddit (r/siralim) to community members in the near future. If you're an active member of the r/siralim community, please reach out to me on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/user/thylacinestudios) and let me know your interest. Please don't be offended if I don't respond to you - I anticipate a lot of interest in this position, so it may be difficult to reply to everyone.
Moving forward, Discord will be our primary channel for updates and interactions. I'm excited about enhancing our Discord experience and exploring new ways to [optionally] integrate it into our upcoming games.
I realize I've been very quiet over the last year, and that is a personal choice I've decided to make for a number of reasons I won't bore you with here. In the future, I am going to work on increasing communication at a macro level (blog posts, Discord announcements, etc). I have big plans for improving communication at a micro level (forum responses, casual Discord chatting, etc), and you'll learn the details about that soon enough.
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That's all for now. I want to thank everyone for their continued support, and I look forward to revealing more about our next game in early 2024! I wish everyone Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
Zack
Siralim Ultimate is on sale at 25% off for Nintendo Switch this week! This is the first time the game has ever been discounted on Switch.
And remember, you can transfer your save file between the mobile, Steam, and Switch versions of the game at any time!
Siralim Ultimate is on sale at 40% off for Android and iOS this week! This is the first time the game has ever been discounted on these platforms.
And remember, you can transfer your save file between the mobile, Steam, and Switch versions of the game at any time!
For almost all of 2022, I've been working on the Switch, Playstation, and Xbox ports for Siralim Ultimate. As you know, the Switch port was released earlier this month. While I've been chipping away at all three consoles simultaneously, Switch took up most of my time since this console had the highest demand by our backers. Once Switch development started to wrap up, I shifted my full focus to the Playstation port. Initially, the game ran very smoothly on Playstation and didn't have any major issues. At some point in the last couple of months, however, Sony updated their technical requirements for games to be submitted to their store. This forced me to upgrade Gamemaker (the engine used to create the game) to a new version. That's when some severe issues started to happen.
I've been in a constant battle over the last few months finding major issues with the game, fixing them, then finding new ones over and over again. Until the last couple of weeks, I was very confident I'd be able to fix everything and release the PS4 version soon. Gamemaker has continued to receive new updates to fix some of the issues I've been finding, but each new update also brings a whole new set of issues. Recently, I've reached a point where I can say this port is simply not in a state I'd ever dare to release it in. It takes up to 10 minutes to load a save file, several minutes to save a file, and the performance of the game is all over the place - sometimes it's relatively smooth, and other times it slows to a crawl. I've done some serious digging to figure out what might be causing it, and I genuinely think the game is too big for its own good, and Gamemaker can't handle it when it comes to the Playstation side of things. To be clear, there is nothing to blame on the PS4 hardware itself - this is a problem with Gamemaker.
I was hoping to dig deeper into the Xbox port after Playstation was finished, but that has its share of issues as well. After Xbox accepted Thylacine Studios (and Siralim Ultimate) to their store, I signed the necessary documents to gain access to development kits and the software required to build the game. I was told I'd hear back from someone to finalize details about mailing the dev kits to me, as well as information on how to access the software. For some unknown reason, this hasn't happened yet, and my attempts to contact someone at Microsoft have been unsuccessful so far. So, there's absolutely no way for me to know how long this process will take, and I find it unacceptable to make our backers wait any longer.
While the issues with both of these consoles may someday be resolved, there is no way for me to know how long it will take, and I think our backers have waited long enough now. In short, I have no choice but to cancel the Playstation and Xbox ports of Siralim Ultimate. I cannot apologize enough to the people who've been waiting patiently for their Playstation and Xbox keys. Canceling these ports is the last thing I ever wanted to do, so please know that I've tried everything I can to make it happen, and if there was some other way to make things work out, I'd do it.
As compensation to our backers, I'm going to send out e-mails to everyone who chose a Playstation or Xbox key on their backer surveys. You will receive a free Steam key as an apology for the long wait and the disappointing news. In addition, you have the option to choose an additional key for another platform or to simply receive a refund.
Siralim Ultimate is now available on Nintendo Switch in the North American, European, and Australian regions. Enjoy!