we present you today with a little bit pride our 2018 Halloween Edition of "Father's Island" - or, as we called it in earlier announcements,


Why?

Because it is based on the DirectX11 upgrade of the underlying Gamemaker "GameGuru", and it mitigates or entirely eliminates all problems you might have had with our original release.

- IMPORTANT: If you have problems updating to this version, please uninstall and reinstall Father`s Island. Actually, we recommend uninstalling and a fresh install anyway! -

Changes:

• DirectX11 based
  
• Loading times reduced by 30 - 75%, depending on the system
  
• Load only once per session: Smart respawn system
  
• 2 new video scenes
  
• 3 new posters
  
• 2 new side stories in letters
  
• Full PBR support
  
• 37 assets converted to true PBR
  
• Multi-Level vertex painted terrain
  
• Advanced atmosphere light scattering
  
• Fixed some minor bugs and logic issues
  
• Fixed the summoning of the Dragon

Possible Troubleshooting:

• After you hit the "Start Game" button, just leave your system loading. Even if the game seems unresponsive, it will load (don`t cancel or quit)
  
• If the level fails to load (or an error message appears), open the setup.ini in the installation folder and set
  dividetexturesize=1
  to
  dividetexturesize=4
  
• If Steam keeps reinstalling /or verifying over and over again, please uninstall and reinstall
  
• If you find it too dark / bright / red / whatever, you can adjust ALL rendering options by editing the visuals.ini file

Enjoy!

Hello everyone,

Just a heads up that



is in development and scheduled for release within the next weeks.

What to expect?

• Converted to DirectX 11
  
• +30% FPS on average
  
• Loading times cut down by 30-50%
  
• Autosaves in key moments, no reload on death
  
• PBR support
  
• PBR surfaces on selected models (where it makes sense)
  
• Improved global illumination
  
• Various bugfixes
  
• 2 new locations
  
• 4 new notes
  
• Overhauled sounds and videos

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/960838140983563133/2F88B7C42EEC3FBC884ABACEAE22E154378C703D/

Hi there!

While we are still working on the next version of Father's Island (including a nice drop of loading time by ~ 75%), we are now here to state the obvious:

It's summer sale!

Get Father's Island

http://store.steampowered.com/app/460940/

for 33% less and

Into the Dark

http://store.steampowered.com/app/266050/Into_the_Dark_Ultimate_Trash_Edition/

for even 66% less than regular!

So, if you are a friend of sinister stories, trash, b-movies and unexpected strange bugs, join the Homegrown Club now!

Hi all!

The final days (or almost hours) of our Weeklong Deal are almost over, so read our disclaimer from the begin of the week

http://steamcommunity.com/games/460940/announcements/detail/254856417464923398

and then, if you can accept those terms, jump in and start playing Father's Island!

We are in the meantime working on both the patches for Father's Island and Into the Dark (which is also on sale now)....

http://store.steampowered.com/app/266050/

...., and of course on "Into the Ice", where we hope to present the official Steam Store Page soon!

Additionally, we have done some R & D on incorporating PBR (or better PBR-inspired) materials into GameGuru. While it is still a long way to go and we won't trade in performance or loading time for that, the first results are visually quite pleasing.

Dont't get us wrong, we were quite happy with a visual appearance like that

we can do better on the details now:


A detail level like that will be the guideline for Into the Ice, but perhaps it will also find it's way into one of the next versions of Father's Island.


Meanwhile, our fellow Austrian Indies from Unique Games need your support for something totally different (hehe, no competition for Homegrown Stuff), and it would be totally awesome if you can cast your YES vote to them:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=868228798

THank you very much and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

As you might have seen already - Father's Island is on sale!

But please do not rush in, do not buy blindly.


While we have improved the game heavily over the last 9 months, it still suffers from long loading times. Water still kills you (ok, that's explained pretty well throughout the game) and flying the dragon is still a pain in the A.

So, before you purchase Father's Island and later regret it (in worst case, after the refund timeout), please take you time and read the description, the discussion board, watch some video.

Yes, want customers, yes, we need money to pay our bills, but we rather have few happy customers than a horde of dissapointed ones.

You can also play the free demo! This was done with a now ancient codebase. It runs much slower, looks much uglier and behaves much much more buggier than the game does now. So, if you find the demo "ok", there is a good chance you find Father's Island great.

Oh yes, and don't buy the game if you get offended easily.

Otherwise - enjoy the show!

All the best,

Homegrown Games

PS: ETA next patch - Mid of April

Dear Fans, Friends and Foes!

In an attempt to make our development procedures and priorities more transparent, we have decided to make our roadmap for 2017 public, so that you know what you are getting into when owning one of our games or planning to buy one of those.

Let's start with "Into the Dark":

http://store.steampowered.com/app/266050/

We will roll out a next (and, as we always say, LAST patch for our oldie in the first half 2017. the target is to apply our new post processing pipeline we have tested, clean up some scripts, implement more HD / PBR-based materials and remastered sound effects / voice overs.

However, the triggering of the voice overs is an important topic we have to give more thought.

Currently, we freeze the player whenever an important dialogue or monologue takes place. This was a design decision that not everyone of you liked, but it prevented us from triggering two narrations at once - something that gets remarked quite often as "con" in

http://store.steampowered.com/app/460940/

Of course, Father's Island will also receive patches and upgrades as we move on. The next most likely by end of march. Currently we are also working on a system that allows basic subtitles / written narration to accompany the voice overs. This doesnt't change the fact that it is very likely you will trigger more than one narration at least sometime during your journey.

The easiest solution would be a freeze as in Into the Dark - but obviously, this is not welcomed. If anyone has a better idea, please drop us some lines!

Of course, you can also write us if you want to test or participate in the production of Into the Ice, the direct sequel to Into the Dark. We prefer in semiclosed alpha and beta testing of course people who played, or, even better, have beaten Into the Dark before.

The release of Into the Ice is scheduled for late 2017.

And while it isn't a Homegrown Game, we would love to see also Unique Games Mars explorer to be here on Steam in 2017, so, please give them some Greenlight love:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814644485

All the best and a productive 2017 to you, too!

Your friendly maniacs from Homegrown Games.

Dear friends, followers, fans and haters,

we want to wish you a merry X-Mas and what could be better than taking a vacation and visit a remote island?

Father's Island is 50% off during the holidays, meaning you can jump ship as cheap as $ 2,49!

And of course you get all the benefits of the most recent 1.09(A) version!

THE SHEEP has never looked more attractive than now!

https://youtu.be/EbwryJ-hW14


As some of you may have already noticed, we removed the start option for the Halloween Edition for now. Don't panic, physically it's still on your Hard Drive and if you really want, you can start it manually (if you find it). But this has two reasons:

1. We are currently working on moving the 1.09(A) improvements over to the halloween edition, which is a little bit tricky.

2. In the spirit of X-Mas, the nonviolent original game is in the focus.

Have fun!

PS:

You can also get our previous Trash feast "Into the Dark" for 60% off! Or the entire bundle for less than 5$!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/266050/

A good week for you, a bad one for sheep all over the world!

Father's Island runs a weeklong-deal, allowing you to get our latest bizarre creation even cheaper (or sheeper?) !

Don't miss the surreal story of John Richards looking into his dark past and origins, travel to the shores of New England and discover the shocking truth of the experiments conducted there during the Cold War!

Of course, the Halloween edition is still included and will stay there until the next major patch.

When it comes to ratings, Father's Island is the most successful game we ever made, with 90+% here on Steam and 93% on IndieDB. We already have won some magazine / blogs awards and are running in several GOTY competitions all over the world.

Traditionally, we love the IOTY awards, so we would really, really love getting your vote there, too:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/fathers-island

And, as you can vote more than one game in the first rounds, please switch over to

http://www.indiedb.com/games/into-the-ice

and hit the green button, too!

Thanks a lot for all your support, we keep providing ours! :commie:

If you noticed a small update being installed, then you are perfectly right.


It delivers additional 5 - 10 % FPS to the gloryious new visuals we have...

...but, even more important:

Save / Load now works flawlessly and you don't lose FPS when loading your savegame. Even better, it is fully compatible with savegames from 1.09!

Enjoy the show!

And, a friendly reminder - please nominate us for the "best usage of farm animal" awaard. Our sheep deserves that!

Why?

Well, play the game or look up the re-recorded sheep encounter 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbwryJ-hW14

All the best,

Homegrown Games