Celebrating Steam Early Access with free DLCs!

Before you rush off to wishlist it on Steam (which we would appreciate BTW!), you’re going to want to read on a little bit longer.

First off, thank’s so much for supporting us through this whole journey! A lot has happened since we last reached out to you (wow has it really been a few years?).

Our team has grown, we pushed out our first demo build last February (just in time for Next Fest), SplatterCat demoed Archmage Rises on his YouTube Channel, and we’ve been receiving incredible responses to the game so far:

All of the incredible responses, like the one above, have been such a great boost for us to get our first release build ready for all of you. Speaking of which, the official release date for Archmage Rises on Steam is April 24th, 2023! That’s just over a week away!

Now, to talk a bit about the elephant in the room: Steam Launch Discounts.

It’s fairly normal practice (and encouraged) by Valve that when a developer first releases their game on Steam, that developer launches their game with a small discount to encourage more gamers to buy the game on release.

We’ve decided to follow that tradition by offering a 15% launch discount, which means that some of you who have already purchased the game have actually paid a little bit more than those who will buy it during our launch week.

That didn’t sit well with us, because we really wanted to reward those of you who had supported us early on and continue to support us throughout the journey so far. So we’ve come up with a solution that we think you will like…

We’ve decided to give all of you who have already purchased the game the first two DLC packs free!

Part of the reasoning behind this perk is that these DLC packs contain some features that we wanted to include in the game when we first conceived of it. We have since realized that they were things that were too big in scope to develop for the core release, so we’ve decided to pull them out as expansions for after the core game has shipped.

Speaking of which, you can check out our whole new roadmap that will show our plans to release more features of the game from our Early Access Release to 1.0 (and beyond)!

Thanks so much again for sticking with us throughout this journey, and we wouldn’t be at this huge milestone if it weren’t for you!
If you haven’t bought the game yet, you can still pre-order it until April 21 to get in on the founder’s free DLC. Or you can add it to your Steam Wishlist and grab that 15% launch discount on April 24th!

Update #156: Save and Design Data Systems

Today we dive into our Save and Design Data Systems- two systems that are easily (and reasonably) taken for granted, but can take a lot to get working behind the scenes in a game as massive as Archmage Rises.

Learn more in the video above.

Update #154: Quest Designer (Early Look)

This week, we share the beginning of our quest designer. You might remember Thomas demonstrating the Bard tooling in an early video; we’re moving that tool forward to work with our latest systems and let designers create new quests rapidly that you’ll be able to come across in the game.

You can learn more in the video above.

Update #153: New Art for Seasons and Monsters

You can watch the seasons shift about you as time passes, both as an indication that the world is changing and to help you keep track of your own time in the world.

Learn more in the update video above.

Update #152: Editing spells, enemies, and the rest of the game

We’ve been working on tools for editing everything in the game so that we can give you updates and new content for Archmage Rises more often. It allows us to access and edit all data in the game that we specially mark in the code.

Learn more in the video below:

Update #151: Journal and Map Notes

As you make your way across the world, you’re likely to wish you could leave reminders for yourself along the way. You’ll now be able to both add notes to the your map and keep track of broader information in a personal player journal.