• You can now create custom difficulty settings in the difficulty settings option menu
  
• This option is unlocked after you complete research
  
• Minor bug fixes

That's pretty much the end of planned updates. There will probably still be bug fixes/patches in the future.
If you run any issues don't hesitate to contact me.

• After completing all research, all islands will be endless (it will still notify you that you've completed the island but you'll be given the option to continue)
  
• Endless mode high score is tracked
  
• Enemy path is now indicated with an orange trail - you can see the effect your walls will have now on enemy pathfinding.
  
• Dragons now spawn properly
  
• You can toggle between fullscreen and windowed mode in the main menu (you still can't change resolution - I'm working on that)
  
• Enemy likelihood for each type (mammoth, fire enemy, etc) is now determined by the wave and not the level - difficulty should not be as spiky going between levels

Coming in future updates:

• Resolution settings
  
• Custom difficulty settings
  
• Improved AI pathfinding

If you run into any issues, don't hesitate to contact me.

In this update:

• Three difficulty options: easy, normal, and hard. These are accessed by clicking the hammer next to the Next Island button in the research menu
  
• Reset button - you can now reset your research. If you want to beat the game again on hard difficulty, now you can.
  
• The reset button is in the settings in the main menu (not in the research menu though).
  
• Difficulty curve: the game should have a slightly more normal difficulty curve now, where earlier waves/phases are easier and they get harder over time.
  
• Normal mode is also substantially more difficult now.
  
• New enemy: dragon, unlocked after the 11th research. Very slow but has very high health.
  
• New enemy: shaman, unlocked after the 10th research. Very resistant to magic damage.

Those are the more major changes in the update.

I've also updated my unity version, which I'm hoping will improve stability.
I was planning on doing endless mode as well in this update but I'd made so many changes already I decided it's better to split it up.

I'm interested to hear your feedback on the difficulty. It's definitely something I want to continue working on.

Future updates:

• Endless mode
  
• In depth difficulty settings + custom difficulty settings
  
• QoL: resolution/windowed/fullscreen settings + page to view controls

• The game should now scale properly to pretty much any aspect ratio
  
• I've enabled unity cloud diagnostics which hopefully will help me find the source of the crashes

Edit: Oh, this is an important note: if you used the launch options workaround to launch the game in 16:9, for some reason removing the launch options doesn't reset them. Instead, just set the launch options to the true resolution of your monitor and that should work.

If you still have any UI scaling issues/other bugs, please use the feedback tab in game or email me at archipelagogame6@gmail.com. Also it'd help if you included screenshots.

I think that's the last kind of "fire extinguisher" update. I'm going to start working on the gameplay again. Sometime next week I hope to add endless mode as well as better difficulty scaling - i.e., the later levels and waves will be made harder.

See you then,
- Isaac

Now that I've gotten some player feedback about the game, I'd like to post a roadmap of where I'm planning on taking it over the next few updates.

My first priority is supporting non-16:9 monitors. Currently the game is completely unplayable on monitors that are not 16:9. I'm hoping to put out an update that fixes this in a few days, depending on how difficult it ends up being.

Anyway, here's a roadmap of more regular updates:

• Reset button - this is surprisingly highly requested
  
• Better island generation - there's a relatively high percentage of islands that are not well balanced
  
• Choosing between multiple charms rather than a random drop - this isn't guaranteed but I'll try it
  
• Potentially more units / research
  
• Some type of endless mode or some way to extend the game past unlocking everything

So, for the endless mode, I'm considering two options:

1. Standard endless mode after you unlock the game - just see how far you can get + difficulty options

2. Prestige system - when you beat the game, you have the option to "prestige", which resets all your research, increases your prestige level, gives you some kind of permanent bonus (XP earned?), and also increases difficulty.

That's pretty much it for what I wanted to say for this announcement. If you have any ideas of some kind of endless mode or some way to keep the game going after all unlocks I'd be interested in hearing them.

Cheers,
- Isaac

I'm releasing a patch with a few changes.

• You can now view the letters you've gotten with the letter button in the bottom left of the research menu.
  
• It should no longer be possible to not receive a letter you should have gotten based on your research
  
• Increased XP requirements for the two top rows.

I'm going to go into a little more detail about the last change: about two days before release, I modified the game to make it substantially easier (if you played the demo, you'll notice the difference). However I never increased XP requirements for research to compensate for the increased amount of average XP per island. I'm correcting this now.
Research already completed will not need to be completed again.

If anyone thinks this change is unfair, email me at archipelagogame6@gmail.com and I'll consider your argument.

Anyway, I'd also like to announce that Archipelago has sold over 100 copies. Thanks to everyone for making this a successful launch!

I was just made of aware of an issue with the game: some letters that increase difficulty or change gameplay are not being shown or applied properly.

The affected changes (as far as I know):
- Increasing island length to 6
- Increasing miner price based on income at the end of every wave

Both should be applied after 8 researches are unlocked.

The issue with this is that if you restart the game the gameplay changes will be applied but you will never be shown the letter, which is obviously very confusing.

I'm going to add a way to view your applied letters later tonight or tomorrow. In the meantime, if gameplay changes in some way after you close the game and restart it, know that this is the cause.

Apologies for any confusion.

I'm excited to release my first game on steam! I hope you like it!


Here's some recent changes I've made (in response to Wanderbots recent video and stream as well as feedback from other sources):

• Previously gold was only able to spawn close to the enemy ships. Now it is randomly distributed.
  
• Gold and silver now give more money per wave.
  
• Units will now "snap" to their correct position when you click Start Next Wave. You no longer need to wait for them to get there.
  
• If the game crashes it will now save the XP you earned before the game crashed
  
• Letters that increase difficulty (i.e., incrementing prices) are now applied based on your total number of unlocked research and not just the number of islands you've played.
  
• Miners give money for the most valuable adjacent ore tile, not the sum of all the surrounding ore tiles.

I have not been able to reproduce the crash that happened to Wanderbots, and I've also never had a crash occur while testing. I made some changes related to how enemies take damage and how fire spreads that hopefully fixed the issue but I'm not sure.

If you experience a crash, please email me your player log file and crash.dmp file found in %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\DefaultCompany\Summoner Game\
Do not relaunch the game before sending the file because the log file for the crash will be overwritten.

Email it to archipelagogame6@gmail.com and I'll try to resolve the issue so it doesn't affect anyone in the future.


These are features that are not present in release but I plan to implement them, roughly in order of priority:

• Widescreen support
  
• A way to view the letters you've gotten
  
• Better island generation
  
• Choosing between several randomly selected charms rather than a completely random drop
  
• 3 more units - fill out the top row of research
  
• Late game balancing

- Hid building popups when a blueprint is selected, as heavily requested

- Made several graphical changes to UI
- Changed main menu
- Changed you win/lose panel
- Changed progression menu background