Children of the Eclipse 
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An important announcement about the state of the game.Oct 26, 2021 - Community Announcements{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35894959/78cfeb4c4eba0e3472244e502c28460cd68e1132.png Hello, folks! An important announcement for all the people that have been waiting for the release of Children of the Eclipse in the near future. As some of you know we struggled to find funding for Children of the Eclipse. It’s not easy being a first-time indie developer. Out of necessity, and because we just straight up ran out of money, we had to put the development of the game on hold for the time being. We will continue development of the O-Universe (the world the game is set in) as the humor, environmental ideas and general vibes have received so much positive feedback. This does not mean that Children of the Eclipse “will never be released”. The story and the characters we have written for it are pretty cool, and the game was planned as the first episode of 4 “prologue games” that would culminate in the epic finale, which would be the fifth game in the series. The whole vision is just too awesome to totally give up… In the meantime, we’ve just released a small party game called Exploding Babies - there’s a cool release discount available right now so grab a few friends, a few drinks and celebrate the old school vibes together! Go check it out! We would love for all the people reading this and seeing potential in what we’re building to come together on our Discord server and freely discuss how we should go forward with Children of the Eclipse, the O-Universe and all our future titles, whatever they may be. Even though it sounds like a cliché, it’s the community that we’re building these games for. It’s not just us. Let’s talk soon! Cheers, NutfarmPlaytest applications closed - info on the next steps!Dec 1, 2020 - Community Announcements{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35894959/c28c33f1ee08d7f17a07ac65d2462f198f6d66d0.jpg Alright! We had a pretty exciting weekend with almost four times the amount of test applications we planned for! Right now we're not accepting any more testers for this first round, but don't worry... there will be more to come. For the people that got in, we would really appreciate it if you took the time to fill out the feedback form we made. It will greatly help us make decision on the next steps to take in development - whether we should focus more on UI, on player direction, or on core gameplay elements like combat and movement. These are all important in their own right, but we want YOU to enjoy the game. That's why we are doing these early playtests. You're also very welcome to join our Discord server for live chats with us and the rest of the community. We're a small bunch right now, so it's easy for you to get heard and actually take part in building something awesome. So here's the link to the feedback form: CotE playtest #1 feedback form And an invite link to our Discord: Nutfarm Discord Server Hope to hear from you soon! Have FUN & stay healthy! Cheers, Ari / NutfarmChildren of the Eclipse playtesting is LIVE!Nov 25, 2020 - Community Announcements{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35894959/4b2cf7b58b282a90a840c2cb6086a82fb8c72f8b.jpg Hello! THIS is an exciting day! And it came (almost) out of nowhere! We opened the signups for the FIRST EVER playtest session for Children of the Eclipse. This is your chance to try out the game SUPER early, give us priceless feedback on how the game plays, talk directly with Nutfarm people, and most importantly, with all the other cool kids that want to see more story-driven top down sci-fi mayhem come their way! For the first phase of testing, we'd like to get a small number of active "core testers" signed up and playing the game for a couple of weeks over the holiday season. We really want to get your feedback EARLY. It would also be awesome if these people would continue to hang with us for future playtests, that focus on specific core features of the game. There's a little over 30 minutes of gameplay in this test build, with some NPC interaction and a bunch of shooting. You get to play as 3 different characters in 2-player mode (AI controls the Flex units in single player mode), and try out unique weapons for each character, as well as the Merged Mode once you activate Flexbot. So sign up by clicking the playtest button on our Steam page and be amazing! In the meantime, join our Discord for important announcements and hang tight! The playtest will start in a few days from now! Yes! It's going to be epic!Nutfarm News!Nov 2, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsHello, people! Sorry for not posting much on Steam. I know there are at least a handful of people looking forward to these updates to see what's going on with the team and our games. SO! The stuff in the heading. Development is progressing steadily. We had to re-write some of our hastily written systems so that they wouldn't cause problems along the way, and that together with implementing a semi-sophisticated database system to handle all our progression and dialogue storage (so it will be easier to translate when we start the localisation process) took somewhat longer than expected. That together with the whole COVID-19 situation (I'll talk about it more later in the post) forced us to push the release of Children of the Eclipse well into 2021. Why push the release date? We were in the process of starting heavy pitching to investors at the exact moment COVID-19 hit, all physical events got cancelled and people started worrying about real stuff, like the health of friends and relatives. This slowed down EVERYTHING, as you know, and we started running out of money. In the summer we had to do some web/app design projects for clients to get money for development, which slowed us down more. So in short, we're not as far in development as we hoped to be when we made our original development budget (time&money) early this year. What has changed? Right now we are very close to having a playable ready for simultaneous alpha testing and pitching to a few select publishers & investors. Our initial idea was to pitch HEAVILY to investors to get our budget together and then make the game in one big push. Now we're kind of taking energy away from that approach, and focusing more on showing you what we've been doing, possibly doing a public alpha test and start posting more actively on social media platforms, as well as doing weekly streaming of gaming & development content, so we can connect with our audience better. Development is lonely work for a small team and we really need some human contact. So again, in short, expect to see more of us on Twitch, Youtube, Discord (you should join our server!) and here on Steam. Did you say Exploding Babies?! Yes. You remember that game. Or maybe you don't. But yes. It's coming. We recently played a bit of it on a stream, and remembered what an awesome casual couch competitive thing it is. We want to polish the gameplay and graphics and release it for everyone to enjoy. We have a bunch of ideas for DLC as well, if you guys want more levels, more gameplay modes and more... babies. If you'll act nice, we might even drop the price a bit... If we find an easy way to implement online matchmaking, it would be MEGA-AWESOME setting up a community tournament with leaderboards and rewards. Now that I think of it, Exploding Babies would be really cool as a testbed for DEEP community engagement. That could be a game we design together. Hmm... To recap... We'll do a separate announcement about the Twitch stuff, and also Discord once...Exciting times & happy 2020!Jan 27, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsIt's 2020! December went past pretty quickly with the long holidays and chill times. A bunch of progress was made with the core gameplay mechanics, as we finalized quest logic, storyline elements and a crapload of weapons for the players to utilize. Basically we're getting really close to shifting from developing gameplay mechanics to start building gameplay CONTENT, which will be a welcome change of pace for sure. We know it's still a small community, but there are a few of you that have wishlisted the game already, even at this early stage (THANKS!), and it would be really cool to know what kind of content would you like to see in the posts coming up in 2020. More general progress reports? Deep diving into the world of Children of the Eclipse, with some character or faction intros? More info about the core gameplay? The music? The team? Our business plan? The secret location of the drunken druid? A development roadmap? It's all on the table basically. Except the secret location of the drunken druid. We will never give that up. General announcement post for November!Nov 26, 2019 - Community Announcements{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/35894959/ef6ba49ac74c1bff139dc4940ea5ef20af028b5a.jpg Well hello, action adventurists / top down shootists / sci-fi fans, and everybody else we can and cannot think of! First of all, we updated the screenshots for our store page AND added a cool little gameplay teaser from our current development build. Still a lot of polish to do with the effects and animations, but we're getting there, definitely! So, development-wise, we've got the core mechanics down, which I'll briefly go through here: Player health and movement We've got a shared health system, where both players use the same health pool. It works surprisingly well and completely removes the need to wait for the other player to revive you or slowly fail the mission without your help. All player movement mechanics are in place: Players can dash, activate shields and merge into a single powerful tank unit. Enemy health Enemies can have one or several types of health: Organic, Robotic and Shield. The players need to use different weapons to effectively deal with different enemy types. There are also enemies that have several hit boxes and/or phases (sort of like mini-bosses). All these mechanics are in place and we're currently balancing them for maximum enjoyment. Enemy AI systems Our AI system consists of separate modules that can be easily combined to build awesomely simple or unbelieveably complex enemy & NPC behaviours. All the core AI modules are in place and we have built several enemy types to playtest with. There is a lot of balancing to do with these still, but the mechanics work well and give us a lot of freedom in designing interesting and challenging enemies. Weapon systems Our heroes always carry two basic weapons, plus a "megaweapon" that can be used at a cost of energy credits. The weapon system, like with enemy AI, is highly modular and lets us design a wide variety of different weapons ranging from machine guns and shotguns to crazy lightning guns, shield-homing rocket swarms and acid flamethrowers. Boss fights Boss fights are really a straight development from the modular core AI system, so we can apply all the same behaviors to bosses as well. There are certainly some unique attacks and reactions for every boss as well, but this again gives us a wide range of tools to work with. Hub worlds and side quests Hub worlds are places for chilling, talking to new interesting people, making friends, partying and doing increasingly strange side quests. These can range from simple item collection to eliminating Nasty Boys to traveling to a dream dimension, and are a big part of story telling and a way to earn some extra Energy Credits. The bulk of these mechanics are in place, and we are currently working on the data saving layer for quests, so you can actually continue where you left off. Music system Yes, we have a music system. Right now we're triggering parameters from level, so the music is dynamic and changes according to the mood of the level and player progr...Welcome to the Fringe Zone, children!Nov 1, 2019 - Community AnnouncementsFirst of all, nice to see people are already wishlisting CotE based on the small amount of content and info we've released. It really helps motivate the team along the way. What is Children of the Eclipse, then? Well! At it's core, it's a hardcore, old school top down shooter. On top of that, we're telling an action-filled sci-fi adventure story about a dude and his robot companion, crossing paths with cyborg zombies, scientist cats, talking rocks and horny, interplanetary aliens. We really want to merge a hardcore shooter with grand adventure and an actually fun, intelligent and engaging storyline. Don't ask us why, just enjoy the ride. That said, we are preparing some new gameplay footage for your viewing pleasure. We're going to mostly focus on a surface look at the core features of the game.. in the following weeks, we want to show a bit more about the world and the characters that inhabit it. There will also be some in-depth looks at the development of the game - it's been a pretty interesting journey so far and hopefully we get to share some of that fun with you, too! Let's try to generate some action on this community forum! You're the early adopters and the start of all good things for a small games studio (no audience, no studio!), so it would be awesome to engage in any kind of discussion with you guys. See you soon! Cheers, Ari The Nut
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