It is that time of year again. The time when game developers in our part of the world swap hoodies for knitted jumpers and coffee mugs for… slightly different coffee mugs. What we are trying to say is that Lavapotion will soon close the office for our winter holiday and return in early January.

There may still be some activity on our social channels and Steam during this time, but things will certainly move at a slower pace. It’s time for us to take a short break, spend time with our families, and work through the never-ending list of Steam games we've bought but never quite found the time to play!

You would think that is a gif from Songs, but it's just the view from the office

Looking back, it has been an eventful year for Songs of Conquest. We released the Roots faction on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. We introduced Simultaneous Battles, improved co-op play, and made meaningful changes to random maps. Along the way, we passed 750,000 copies sold, and work on our next faction continues steadily behind the scenes. All in all, we are very proud of what the year has brought.

It is still surreal to see how far this small HOMMage has come. What began as a love letter to a genre we grew up with has become something much bigger, and that is entirely thanks to you. Your support, feedback, and enthusiasm made all of this possible. We know we say this often, but it remains just as true.

We will not go too deep into what lies ahead. We only recently shared our PC roadmap, and repeating ourselves would take some of the fun out of it. Soon, we will release the Steam page for Yulan, and after that, it will be time for my personal favorite Kastus Maal and Rise Eternal to take the stage and put the death back in undeath.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2977430/Songs_of_Conquest__Rise_Eternal/Before we power down our workstations and head into the break, we do have a small Christmas gift for you. We are sharing a short scene featuring some of the art assets for Yulan, our upcoming faction. Please keep in mind that this is still a work in progress, but it is already shaping up as a unique addition to the varied biomes of Songs of Conquest.

We can't wait to see what you create from this and all the things still under production!

And with that, we want to wish you all the best in the weeks ahead, wherever you are and however you choose to spend your time. We look forward to continuing the journey together in the new year.

/ Anders and the rest of the Lavapotion team

P.S.One final note. We recently sent out the first rough demo of Wielders of the Essence to colleagues and friends, and the feedback so far is very promising! We are looking forward to sharing it with you early next year. It may be a smaller project, but the team working on it is deeply invested. Wishlist it to stay up to date with development and future updates.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3546610

• Added “Disable Find the Object victory condition” lobby map setting (note: the Tear of the Tree Mother winning artifact will not spawn on the map)
  
• Fixed issue on Grow map on Worthy difficulty where a gang of friendly troops were unintentionally unavailable
  
• Fixed issue with wrong troops being chosen for dialogue on first map of Mehry’s tale
  
• Made map generation respect selected faction for randomized hostile even if playing using Mixed Factions (randomized hostile set to “Random” faction will still have mixed factions)