Darkest greetings Underlords,

Yesterday, your cultists brought word of an astounding new development in the War for the Overworld multiverse which, as many of you no doubt surmised, was a most ingenious and clever ruse in honour of a special day in which we get to make stupid jokes.

Read all about it here!

Unfortunately the chatlog is not a work of parody, people actually talk like this to each other.

Indeed there is no WFTO MMO, which would be a singularly foolhardy idea as a follow up to a popular cult dungeon management game – almost as ill-fated as a perhaps overly-greedy mobile entry into such a franchise. But you needn’t be told that, do you, Underlord?

In any case, what follows April Fools day every year is a day even more special to us: War for the Overworld’s birthday, April 2nd; the day the game released from early access in 2015. There’s a lot to get through, including a small War for the Overworld patch, what’s next for us at Brightrock, the return of the pen & paper RPG, and finally, an announcement regarding our latest game – Galacticare.

Read on Underlord!


That’s right: War for the Overworld turns ten today! Technically it’s even older if you consider the two and a half years of Early Access before that, but who’s counting? (Us. Unfortunately, we’re now 10 years older and no longer bright faced youths but grizzled game developers in our own right!)

The Archive, the oldest screenshot on the Steam Community which haunts us to this day.

What followed release was three years of active development, endless patches, expansions, free content, imps, the works – all to try and build a dungeon management game that would leave our fans and customers satisfied that WFTO, in the end, reached its potential.

We hope that those of you reading this feel that, despite the pitfalls and stumbling blocks that first ol’ game of ours went through, it ultimately filled a space that’d been left empty in your libraries – and even in the genre – and provided many hours of entertainment.

An Archive for the Modern Era, with distinctly less cultists smashing their heads into bookcases

We’re celebrating this marvelous milestone with a new patch. It brings a new worker skin; the opportunity to unlock the most exclusive skins in the game, including the dev only skin; several more visual upgrades; performance enhancements; and more. You can find the summary for that and the release notes below!

When we first started on this journey, we couldn’t have imagined we’d still be sharing our love of dungeon management with you all these years later. WFTO has been a journey and a half – and one we’re all very proud of. We hope you’ve had a blast with us along the way… and that you’ll join us for the next decade of Brightrock’s story!

We’re sure you’re all wondering what’s next for Brightrock now that Galacticare and its first expansion (more on that below) are out of the door.

Despite the wider turmoil and uncertainty in the industry, things are going well for us at Brightrock. We’re expanding the studio to increase our capacity, bringing on new coders, designers, and more, with the goal of boosting our ability to make more great games – and get them out to you more often.

The team in Warsaw shortly after the release of Galacticare, gathered to celebrate and discuss future plans

We’ve also partnered up with Mythwright, who will be taking over publishing responsibilities for War for the Overworld and several upcoming projects. These new games are quite varied in their size, scope, and genre… and one of them does involve returning to the underworld (but it’ll likely be a few years before we have much to share on that one).

For War for the Overworld, Mythwright will be polishing up the store pages and making a few other minor changes behind the scenes (with the overall aim of allowing us to focus on development instead). This has included price drops in a few currencies, as well as tweaking the bundling options (the Ultimate Edition now includes the Seasonal Worker Skins and has a higher bundle discount percentage).

We’re extremely excited about our partnership with Mythwright and the future of Brightock. We can’t wait to share more details about our upcoming projects with you!

To celebrate War for the Overworld’s 10th anniversary, we did the most evil thing we could think of – cancelling our remote-work arrangement and calling Stumpy the Blood Imp back into the dungeon. He’s been with us since the beginning, and there are no insipid “retirement plans” in the Underworld! We must admit that he is getting on a bit, though…

He now joins your dungeon, world-travelled, world-weary, and suffering from an other-worldly case of scoliosis. He says it’s due to carrying the results of his labours in his backpack for a decade. We say he’s trying to squeeze us for work injury-related compensation.

Whatever the case may be, Underlord, simply launch War for the Overworld at any time to unlock this Wizened Worker for your own collection – for free and in dark perpetuity.


One of the community’s most prevalent wishes since the game wrapped has been to complete your skin collections – imp skins, we’re hoping – which was impossible due to several exclusive skins which have become unobtainable over the years:

These skins are:

• The Yogscast Worker, given out as a special code as part of the Yogscast Jingle Jam event in 2017
  
• The Golden Worker, given out to select community members who made great contributions via map creation, fan art, QA volunteering, and more
  
• The Silver Worker, given out only to developers of War for the Overworld.

We’ve heard you, and we’re giving you the opportunity to earn these fancy, exclusive imps!

We want to somewhat retain their rarity so that snagging them is an accomplishment, rather than simply giving them out. Firstly, we’ll ask for a donation to charity; as such, you’ll need to own any tier of the Cynical Imp Charity Bundles. Then, to unlock each skin, you’ll need to complete a specific selection of achievements as detailed in the unlocks menu in-game.

You asked for it, Underlord – now prove you truly want to earn these precious skins. We look forward to the first player who shows off their new, formerly developer–exclusive Silver Skin for completing practically the whole game!

This patch includes more visual updates across the game, with several rooms receiving a lighting & materials pass.

We’ve also rolled out the new character shader to the Skarg, which needed a little bit of an uplift.

Of course, there’s more than that – including some performance improvements, a fix here and there, and more general stuff. See the full patch notes below!

Per yearly tradition, the Oni Ashigaru worker has returned for you to claim. Simply log in before the end of April and he will join your collection permanently!

Don’t miss out – for if you fail to catch the wandering warrior, he will be gone for another year!

We’re pleased to announce that the War for the Overworld supplement for Wicked Ones, which allows you and some friends to conspire and build your dark lair as faithful servants to your Underlord (a combined GM/Player character) is now completely free!

It’s an innovative take on both Pen and Paper roleplaying and the Wicked Ones system. If you haven’t given this a go, and fancy something new to try out, grab your free copy today!

Wicked Ones itself entered the public domain last year so is available to download for free. So we’re also releasing the supplemental book as a free download.

Download the War for the Overworld Wicked Ones Campaign Supplement[drive.google.com]

Download Wicked Ones via this link![drive.google.com]

Note: The paid/charity version of the WFTO Campaign Supplement originally included the Dungeoneer’s Guide to the Underworld. As the supplement is now free and under particular licence terms that allow redistribution we have removed the Dungeoneer’s Guide from these files. The Dungeoneer’s Guide is available in the Underlord Edition of War for the Overworld.

Finally, if you love the art in this gorgeous book as much as we do, please give the artist - Victor Costa[victor-costa.art] - a vigorous applause with your single, massive, evil hand.

Looking beyond the borders of your dungeon walls, we also have news from the far reaches of space - our new game Galacticare has released its first story expansion!

Galacticare: The Voice Beyond features an all-new story campaign which picks up shortly after the events of the original game. The galaxy is aflame – and an invasion of vicious machines from beyond the galaxy’s edge is ripping through known space.

Galacticare jumps into action aiding the victims of the invasion, but must fend off attacks from robotic saboteurs seeking to undermine their every effort. Equipped with new security Craftech, and faced with an array of deadly new conditions, Galacticare must quickly adapt – and unravel the mysteries of the ancient CABAL.

Galacticare: The Voice Beyond is available now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3334930/Galacticare__The_Voice_Beyond/

Not yet grabbed Galacticare? There’s no better time than the present! For the next few weeks it’s available at its lowest ever price as part of the Steam daily deal! Get ready to save the galaxy, one patient at a time.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/494730/Galacticare/

• The Wizened Worker, a new worker skin is available for free in non-campaign modes and features unique animations, VO and a high-detail mesh and texture.
  
• The once exclusive Yogscast, Golden and Silver workers are now able to be earned via achievements if you own any of the Cynical Imp charity bundles

• Several rooms have received an art update, enabling shadow casting and revised lighting:
  
  • Foundry
    
  • Empire Foundry
    
  • Alchemy Lab
    
  • Empire Alchemy Lab
    
  • Crypt
• Several room props are now classified as important for shadow casting, and will now render on shadow settings important or higher:
  
  • Archive Workbenches
    
  • Beast Den Portal
    
  • Crypt Pyres
    
  • Alchemy Lab Cauldrons
    
  • Foundry Anvils
• The Following Units have received shader and material updates:
  
  • Skarg
• Increased the default brightness from 30 to 35
  
• Decreased the effects of cosmetic darkening game-wide slightly for readability improvements
  
• The Evil Hand now illuminates a greater radius
  
• Improved Worker Run animations

• Decreased the Medium shadow distance value
  
• Significantly decreased the rendering overhead of the following objects:
  
  • Natural Lava Tiles
    
  • Gold Piles (Vault & Dropped)
    
  • Founder’s Theme Walls, Floors, Ownership Indicators, Connectors
• Optimised rendering of the Sovereign theme slightly, especially when shadows are enabled
  
• Slightly reduced the performance cost of Shadows being enabled

• Added an option which allows the player to select non-recommended shadow settings, this is disabled by default. If you were previously using non-recommended shadow settings then your shadow settings will be disabled by default.

• Fixed an issue in Level 2 of the Heart of Gold campaign where the artefacts would become invisible after loading a save
  
• Fixed Empire Theme lights being so intensely bright they’ll burn the eyes out of anyone who wanders in the dungeon

Until next time Underlord,

Brightrock Games

Darkest Greetings Underlords,

Emerging from our dormancy, we blink, raising our arthritic hands to block out the invading light carried by the gnarled imp that appears at our door.

“Master”, it gurgles from its awful, malformed gullet, “the Underlords, they summons us!” The goblin-thing holds out a scabby hand. Clutched within a rotting roll of parchment, marked with an incomprehensible repeating message of “+1”, repeated again and again by different voices, overlapping in cacophonic disorder – perhaps in some sinister, evil ritual that causes a monkey paw to curl somewhere.

Well, your demands have been heeded Underlords; after a brief foray into SPACE, our next game in the War for the Overworld franchise is just around the proverbial dungeon corner – and in a form you might not expect.

We’re proud to finally introduce WORLD OF THE WAR FOR THE OVERWORLD: ONLINE! That’s right Underlord, we’re making the next logical leap for a real-time strategy game, the inevitable, inexorable march towards the MMORPG genre!

Grab your Wizard robe and hat, open your wallet, sign up for our game time subscription, and create your Underavatar.

Select from your favourite evil races; Gnarlings, Augres, Chunders, Imp, Humans and, of course, Bards, who – let’s be honest – are more monster than man. Pick from a range of classes and strike out into the depths of the Underworld!

Some of the available race/class combinations in our upcoming Alpha Test

Team up with your fellow Underlords in a massively multiplayer role playing experience. Loot and pillage the vast caves of forgotten ruins, face deadly foes and answer the quests of dungeon delvers and denizens.

Stumpy the Imp has aged in the intervening years, and now serves as an important character in the story

Should you survive your perilous journeys beyond your walls, you can return to your own personal home realm, and use your newfound treasures to build up your dungeon in familiar dungeon-building gameplay. Build vaults to store your loot, lairs to house your guardian minions, and workshops to build deadly traps for any who may dare wander in – for indeed no dungeon is truly safe from external threats, both PVE and PVP based!

When you're done outside in the Wolrd of the War for the Overworld you can return to your dungeon and shape it with your winnings in a totally new, original game

This unique, two-tier gameplay of RPG and Strategy is how we’re bringing everything you know and love and hammering it into an unrecognisable shape until all the charm is gone, and what remains is an indistinguishable mush of flesh and bone that all gamers are sure to enjoy! At least, that’s what our marketing analytics say.

We’ve been watching developments in the MMO space closely these last few years – and especially the rise of “Hardcore” experiences. We want to take the tension, the pressure, and the immersion even further!

So we’re introducing Hardcore Absolutely Real Death Mode or HARD Mode. For the low price of £2,100 a month (and a signed waiver by you) our in-house specialist, Geoff, will come to live with you with the explicit goal of linking your fate to your characters.

If you eat in the game, Geoff force feeds you coffee biscuits. Get stabbed by a goblin? Geoff cuts you with an actual knife. Fall off a cliff? Geoff breaks your legs. Die in the game? Geoff snaps your neck like a carrot!

Better yet, while playing HARD Mode, your character never truly logs out, so the peril never stops! Find a safe space for your character, eat when they do, sleep when they do. Geoff is always there, all seeing, all knowing. Geoff is there for your immersion. Trust Geoff.

One artist’s (Henry Fuseli) impression of Geoff just doing his job

This new commitment to the hardcore experience is sure to provide hours of entertainment to the five viewers of your twitch stream!

*Producer’s Note: FOR INTERNAL REVIEW ONLY DO NOT INCLUDE IN PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT!!!*

There’s a bunch of awesome ways we can monetise this shit on top of the subscription and make some EZ DOSH. People will buy anything these days y’know? Suckers. Anyway if you figure out a way to make this fit into the announcement in a way that gets people hyped it’s here for you. JUST MAKE SURE IT’S NEVER SEEN!

• Mounts! - You seen those suckers paying £50 for a goddamn horse these days? That’s more than the whole game! Get in! While you’re at it, throw some VFX on it in an afternoon, and we can probably make a premium version cost a bit more. Cha-ching baby!
  
• Convenience! - Everyone’s getting older and busier plus, we’ve harnessed the power of dark design to make it so everything just feels a bit more like a slog, but you can never put your finger on why. That’s great because it means we can sell people stuff like character boosts, reputation boosters or other useful consumables so they don’t have to play the game or talk to anyone. Win-win I’d say!
  
• Seasons, Seasons, Seasons! - You gotta keep people playing man! No matter what the cost, have an arbitrary system that hands out piecemeal rewards which we’d have previously given out in bigger batches. We can get more playtime out of the same work on our part, and more playtime means more sunk cost! Keep them in the net like the minnows they are!
  
• In-Game Money - Goldsellers are a plague – getting all that fake money in our game, and making real money by selling it to people. But I’ve got a great idea – instead of banning these suckers and their customers as the cheats they are, we can just become gold sellers ourselves. Just abstract it out to give the option to get game time for in-game money and vice versa, then bob’s your uncle – we’ll outcompete the gold sellers AND make a tidy profit. What’s that? Concerned about the integrity of the game economy? Truly don’t give a toss.
  
• Geoff Customisations - Geoff has insisted, as part of his contract, he gets all sorts of “swish human cloth” sent to him. Listen, I don’t want to fuck with this guy – he scares me, and if we don’t do it he might eat my appendix. Let’s just add a bunch of micro transactions and call them customisation for the player’s personal Geoff. As long as it keeps him busy, we’re good. Just get it done, for Christ's sakes.
  
• The Billionaire Special! - Why stop at letting people buy gold and levels? For our biggest whales, let’s offer a service where some cheap labour plays the game for them, getting them the best gear while they sleep; all so our most venerable whales can feel a sense of true accomplishment and “earn” the admiration and respect that their joyless, empty, money golem heart truly desires. Just make sure it’s not too obvious. We don’t want people upsetting our biggest cash cows by rightfully claiming they’re frauds, or something.

That’s just a few of the things, I’ve got more of these than I can shake a stick at. Let’s book a powwow on Thursday to go over it! Thanks! - CFO

The fun doesn’t stop there, Underlord; we already have a comprehensive roadmap for what comes after release.

Of course, this’ll take the form of seasons, which we’re sure so many of you are familiar with now. It’s a great system that can’t ever be shaped into something that makes something actively less enjoyable for you! Gone are the days of exploring at a pace that suits you – now we’re going to roll out semi-content so quickly that you’ll always have something to keep you in the game, and earning amazing, unique rewards!

You'll need to team up with the Underavatars of other Underlords if you want to take on the hardest challenges

We also know what you’re thinking; “do we actually get to war in the overworld in The World of The War for the Overworld Online?” Well, we’re pleased to say that our Season 4 update is already penned to add The Overworld as a playable Overworld to The World of The War for the Overworld: Online, in a season we’ll be calling The World of War for the Overworld: Online Season 4 – The War Over the Underworld in the Overworld.

In the meantime keep a keen eye out our future dev diaries in coming weeks as invitations to our first public alpha start as early as TOMORROW!

See you warring in The World of The War for The Overworld Online Underlord,

- Brightrock Games

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