Through the Darkest of Times 
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The Darkest History BundleMar 25, 2025 - Community AnnouncementsThe newest title by Paintbucket Studios came out today, and we are celebrating this release with the "The Darkest History" bundle! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34276551/eaf146052cf5f6f2fe2b3a01be57bb34a19ca43b.png Experience the darkest chapter of modern German history from two different perspectives: In Through the Darkest of Times, you are the leader of a small resistance group in 1933’s Berlin, of ordinary people, from Jews to Catholics and Communists to Patriots who simply can’t stand aside. Your goal is to deal with small blows to the regime – dropping leaflets to spread awareness about what the Nazis are really up to among the people, painting messages on walls, sabotaging, gathering information and recruiting more followers. And all of that while staying undercover – if the regime’s forces learn about your group, the life of each member is in grave danger. The Darkest Files takes place after the war in 1956. The war is over, but justice is not served. Former Nazis walk free, while their victims lie in unmarked graves. As a prosecutor, you'll unearth long-buried evidence, confront witnesses and hunt down perpetrators. Will you have the courage to bring these "ordinary men" to court? https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/51448/The_Darkest_History/HandyGames Winter SaleDec 20, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsDark, cold, and snowy days are the perfect time to stay in and dive into great gaming experiences. So, fill up your library with amazing games for even more amazing prices! Embark on exciting adventures, defeat your enemies in action-packed shooters, solve puzzles, experience beautiful worlds in platformers, or have a great time with friends or family playing our party games. It does not matter how you want to spend your time. We will have something for you - now for up to 90% off! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34276551/d318b471143b3223442984b8d4da6e3ffdc06723.gifFLASH SALE: Epic 20-in-1 Bundle!Nov 25, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsGet ready for an incredible gaming deal! Starting today, November 25th, 2024, at 7:00 PM CET, dive into an amazing 20-in-1 Bundle featuring some of the most beloved titles across genres. Don’t miss your chance—this exclusive sale ends in a flash on November 27th, 2024, at 7:00 PM CET. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33811580/35acec11ad0dcc19fefa35f8bb94c0f01d75d4c6.jpg What’s Included? This bundle is packed with variety and excitement! Here’s what you’ll get: One Hand Clapping SCARF Giana Sisters: Twisted Dreams Through the Darkest of Times Thunder Wolves Sine Mora EX El Hijo Jagged Alliance: Rage! Aces of the Luftwaffe - Squadron Bang Bang Racing Nexus - The Jupiter Incident Rogue Stormers Lock's Quest Rad Rodgers SkyDrift Infinity Spitlings 1943 Deadly Desert Devils & Demons Clouds & Sheep 2 World of Zoo Don’t Miss Out! This is your chance to grab 20 games for one unbeatable price. Whether you love action, strategy, puzzles, or adventures, this bundle has it all! https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/45791/HandyGames AI-Powered Showcase 2024Aug 1, 2024 - Community AnnouncementsHandyGames is thrilled to announce the first-ever AI-powered HandyGames Showcase 2024, which will be part of the THQ Nordic Digital Showcase 2024. The event will kick off on August 2nd, 2024, at 8:45 PM CEST. Gaming enthusiasts can tune in to watch the full showcase on the THQ Nordic Showcase Page, YouTube, and Twitch, or view the HandyGames Showcase separately on the official HandyGames YouTube channel. Prepare for a showcase crafted with the precision of an AI-driven algorithm versus the creativity of a caffeinated game dev. Join us as we reveal more about our exciting titles and celebrate the creativity and innovation in gaming. We have programmed our AI to ensure it's an unforgettable experience. So, sit back, relax, and let our artificial intelligence entertain you like never before. Stay tuned for more updates and be prepared to welcome our new AI Overlords! German Flood Relief EventJul 28, 2021 - Community AnnouncementsWe are following the events in the flooded areas with sadness and deep sympathy and are shocked how many people have lost their lives, their livelihood, or their life's work. Our thoughts are with those affected and their families who are still - after the water slowly recedes - holding out in uncertainty and fighting for their belongings. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32976304/63bba9aaf4ca1507294280aa242a612f8e88d72a.jpg We are full of pride and admiration for the service of volunteers, farmers, firefighters, soldiers, police officers, and disaster services who are working day and night in the flooded areas and who are sacrificially working under the most adverse circumstances for the people in need. We do our part! Together with our studios Massive Miniteam (Spitlings), Paintbucket Games (Through The Darkest Of Times) and Honig Studios (El Hijo - A Wild West Tale), we started a Steam event - German Flood Relief - where 20% of every purchase will be donated to Aktion Deutschland Hilft. https://store.steampowered.com/publisher/HandyGames/sale/GermanFloodReliefEvent Separately, we are donating an additional 30,000 Euros to Aktion Deutschland Hilft! As part of Embracer Group and the THQ Nordic family, it's natural for us to stand united even in hard times, give back, and make the world a better place. The Steam event includes a total of 37 games and 5 DLCs - among them such hits as El Hijo - A Wild West Tale (Best German Family Game 2021, winner of the Goldener Spatz), Through The Darkest Of Times (multiple winner of the German Computer Game Award (DCP), German Developer Award (DEP) and Indie Award Nominee at Gamescom), Little Big Workshop, Clouds & Sheep 2, Spitlings, Aces of the Luftwaffe Squadrons or the Townsmen series. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32976304/2c74bbc4cd68086b1bad53b4289c9f4ef252b0e8.png Aktion Deutschland Hilft is an alliance of renowned German aid organizations that works together to help people who have lost everything due to major disasters. If you would like to help beyond German Flood Relief, or if you already have all of our games, you can do so quickly and easily on the site www.aktion-deutschland-hilft.de. The donations go directly to where they are needed. Thank you and stay safe The most intense story that can be played is a real one.Nov 25, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsOnly Real History is More Than Story Rich Remembering it is vital to move on to a better future. That's why we decided take part in the Steam Award nominations in the "Outstanding Story-Richt Game" category! We're very happy that so many of you appreciated Through the Darkest of Times for its grim but ever more relevant retelling of events from Europe's past. Now we're asking you to help us by voting for this unique game. The most intense experiences come from real stories and real people. 1933, the unforgettable announcement: "Hitler is Chancellor!" has changed the lives of ordinary people, from Jews to Catholics and Communists to Patriots who simply couldn’t stand aside. As we all know, this message brought hardship and injustice for many. In Through the Darkest of Times, every choice impacts your next steps. Buying paper is dangerously suspicious and painting anti-nazi paroles on walls could get you arrested or even cost your head. Face the odds, make a stand, make a difference! Lead your resistance group through the bleak dystopia that was the 3rd Reich and learn how they lived and fought for survival. Hear their voices, play their stories, and never forget! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34276551/d765d66d4e76bc22793b4f278e77dfe71080c475.png Through the Darkest of Times is the first game to legally depict swastikas in Germany. This is not only important for historical accuracy but also the recognition of video games as an art form like paintings or motion pictures. It is also one of the only games to truthfully depict the life of German resistance fighters before and during World War II. We are grateful that we’ve had the opportunity to share the message of this game and the significance therein with the world. It goes to show that a solid partnership between developers and publishers can lead to something impactful! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34276551/d51ebb1d44ac0818929d347f3966fc973bc1d246.pngIt's time to get serious!May 13, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsGiebelstadt/Berlin, April 28th, 2020: The dice have been cast, and the stars have aligned, Through the Darkest of Times is a winner, baby! Yesterday, we managed to beat 315 other games at the German Computer Games Awards 2020, which is one of the highest honors a videogame can achieve in Germany. A panel of 40 experts decided the winners through none other but a group video call, and we managed to snag a prize! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34276551/7be91e0d397c46fda4c2fd11d8a31f57a20cce78.jpg We could not be more proud of our awesome partners Paintbucket Games and our team at HandyGames. “Congrats to our friends at Paintbucket Games and our team at HandyGames! It is an honor to win this important award, and I am proud to have such a historic must-have indie-title in our portfolio. Now it is, our mission to reach as many gamers around the globe as possible with Through the Darkest of Times and we are working full-steam on delivering this German piece of art to all mobile, console, and streaming platforms.” (Markus Kassulke, CEO HandyGames) We would like to thank the panel of judges for recognizing the impact that Through the Darkest of Times has made on the German gaming scene. The narrative of the game is ever so important and that has been acknowledged not only by us but also by our nation. Through the Darkest of Times is the first game to legally depict swastikas and one of the only games to accurately depict the life of a resistance fighter in the times of World War II. We are grateful that we’ve had the opportunity to share the message of this game and the significance with the world. It goes to show that a solid partnership between developers and publishers can lead to something great! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/34276551/14e2d561902a403109c1b39b7a54b2eef566fa2c.png “We are so happy to see our work now honored with this award! This game wouldn't have been possible without the lovely people from HandyGames who have supported us and our vision the entire time. “ (Jörg Friedrich, CEO Paintbucket Games)The Flare Path: A2ZApr 3, 2020 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunA is for Alphabetised wargame and sim news. Every four weeks or so I hang up a streamer of industrial strength fly paper in The Flare Path water closet and see what wargame and simulation news items stick to it. Below is this month’s bag – 25 stories involving virtual vehicles and surrogate slaughter. If you’ve visited a transport museum or heritage railway in the past twelve months, or can put these battles – Bunker Hill, Bataan, Borodino – in chronological order, you probably won’t regret clicking where it says… (more…) THREE nominations at the "German Games Award"!Mar 30, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsThe nominees for the German Computer Game Award 2020 have been determined after 40 experts from the main jury conferred via video call. The jury determined the winners and nominees from a pool of 315 submissions. And now it's official! We are represented in the final round of 3 categories: Best German Game Best Serious Game Best Family Game "We know that this award is one of the most important in the German games industry and we are really proud of our team and our developers for having achieved this tremendous success. A big thanks to the jury that we are represented in the final selection for this renowned award! We can hardly believe that we are nominated in 3 categories with "Through the Darkest of Times" from our developer Paintbucket Games! Of course, we are happy and honored that this fantastic and sociopolitically relevant title is getting the attention it deserves." (HandyGames)Patch 1.0.4 releasedMar 18, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsWe released patch 1.04 with some small bug fixes and improvements ‘Political Dispute’: improved condition check, which now considers the political leanings of group members and the player Arrests: fixed a bug which occurred if a character was arrested for the third time in the last week of a chapter Tutorials: added Tutorial for Contacts, fixed minor visual issues Leader-Missions: 1-8 grand a Contact reward which is also visible on the planning screen Added member events for member dying on mission Patch 1.0.3 releasedMar 3, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsWe released patch 1.03 with some bug fixes, balancing changes and better wide screen support! Support Widescreen resolutions (21:9) Prevent the game to start in unsupported resolutions. Graphical and layout improvements of many scenes Drag & Drop: the mouse cursor sometimes didn’t reappear after dropping elements Epilogue: the last part of the epilogue is now also shown after the outro Member Events: fixed bugs with several conditions and follow ups Newspapers: replaced the German chapter newspapers from 1936 on with underground or smuggled foreign newspapers or flyers dropped by the allied forces - it is now more understandable that the weekly news are not Nazi propaganda or displayed in Nazi-Germany Disruptions: enforcing now increases the chance of all outcomes except fail, instead of only increasing the chance to be seen Disruptions: fixed bug which generally doubled the chance to be seen instead of other outcomes Epilogue: Fixed an issue where the epilogue for characters could include historical inaccuracies Added new Character parts Testimony missions aren't limited to three weeks anymore Heat reducing missions grant less morale Resistance Mode: normal contacts, buying regular items, collecting money and regular gain supporter missions grant less morale All Modes: free partner and free member missions grant less morale Districts: fixed issue with persisting thread levels between chapters Epilogues: fixed several issues in German and English texts Books: ‘Smuggle Books’ grants more books, ‘Distribute Books’ needs less Build Fire Device: now only needs two gasoline tanks Replaced & added new location pictures Patch 1.02 releasedFeb 17, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsWe released patch 1.02 with some more small bug fixes: Fixed an issue where choice option texts become invisible when changing the game resolution while they’re visible. Fixed an issue where you could open the mission lifetime tooltip through other UI elements Fixed an issue where missions are not locked properly when switching chapters Fixed an issue where a contact could be marked as "usable" even though the conditions are not met anymore after using a different contact Chapter 2 headquarter - fixed an issue that name tags are half covered in headquarter member events Now updating “settings.json” after using auto save to autosave the user settings. Fixed an issue where the player got wrong epilogue texts when he was imprisoned too often The Flare Path: Through the Darkest of TimesFeb 7, 2020 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunDeveloper: Paintbucket Games Publisher: HandyGames Release: Out now On: Windows From: Steam, GOG Price: 13.50 Happily, Kalypso’s squeamish attitude to WW2 isn’t shared by everyone in the games industry. While some go out of their way to remove references to the despicable regime that started the 20th Century’s bloodiest killathon, others, Paintbucket Games for example, work hard to ensure Nazism appears on our screens unedited and unvarnished. Thought-provoking Through the Darkest of Times deposits you in a city far more disturbing and dystopian than City 17 or Metropolis. 1930s Berlin. A history-rich story-wreathed TBS in which small acts of resistance can feel like major victories, it has, I was pleased to discover, considerably more to offer than an irreproachable educational agenda. (more…) Patch 1.01 releasedFeb 7, 2020 - Community AnnouncementsWe released patch 1.01 with a load of small bug fixes: Polished bombing scene: fixed sorting issues and fixed & added animations (bike animation takes longer now, boy’s head wiggles now and he is blinking now), edited and replaced the airraid boy’s head, fixed Peter’s head in explosion scene Replaced the old cafe background with a new one and fixed overlap issue Fixed an Issue, where when deleting Save Games, going into the folder view of a Story Save Game and then closing it again lead into some Save Games not being displayed in the Load Save Game Menu until the player re enters it again German: flipped delete save confirm texts Fixed historical error in the prologue of Chapter 3, where the text said the UK declared war on Germany after France was occupied, when in fact UK declared war on Germany after Poland was attacked Fixed getting coal instead of losing it in FATHER without Food event in Chapter 4 Fixed missing sentence in historical event The Camp Fixed an issue where selecting "Offer 50 marks.." would not remove any money during the Member Event: Got Fired Because Communist in Chapter 1 Fixed an issue where the tutorial deactivate toggle inside the tutorial screen is not getting updated properly when reenabling the tutorials inside the option menu. Moved member’s head in cafe scene, so the body does not lay over their head. Fixed 2 Mission markers in Chapter 4 which shouldn’t be visible without the corresponding member event happening before. Fixed an issue in the English localisation, where in the epilogue some sentences started with a lowercase he or she Option Screen now shows current Version’s Number First small patchFeb 3, 2020 - Community Announcements• English: fixed sentence in personal event "Winterhilfswerk" • Japanese: fixed token in news of 19. April 1933 • Audio Settings are now Stored in the Settings.json, and will be synced with SteamCloud • Fix an issue where no Settings.json will be created when Cloud Settings are disabled • Simplified Chinese: rebuild font atlas to include missing symbols from historical event Neighbors • Fixed macros in free spouse of member action tooltips • fixed chinese neighbors scene being in Japanese • fixed typo in Credits Scene founded > funded E3 2019 Wrap UpJun 17, 2019 - Community Announcementshttps://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/34276551/849742a35678c68f34bf3106c741484a23fa89d4.png What a week it was for „Through the Darkest of Times“ at the E3 2019 in Los Angeles. We are so grateful for the amount of positive feedback and coverage our game received. It was simply amazing. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/34276551/4b444d0c270124a564fcdfb506be930d14220b17.png Click the thumbnail above and check out Gamespot's own Lucy James and Mike Mahardy as they spend a full segment covering how Through the Darkest of Times takes a Stance in an interview with our PR Manager. He talks about the motivation to create a game such as this and how it can be turned into a game that is not only educational but also emotionally gripping as well as entertaining. Also, representatives from, VentureBeat, Polygon, Hardcore Gamer, Shack News, and ArsTechnica and many more got some hands-on playing time and wrote very nice articles about their experience with Through the Darkest of Times. Click the links to read the articles and see for yourselves what stood out to them. E3 2019 games every game confirmedJun 13, 2019 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunThey just keep coming don’t they? A lot of games were announced at E3 2019, things that we didn’t know about, as well as stuff that’s previously announced, or expansions to already released games. Now, to the casual outsider, what we’re doing might seem absolutely nuts, but we thought we’d put together an alphabetical list of all the PC games that have been confirmed to appear at this year’s E3 show. With well over a hundred of them now in the books, the next year or so looks packed. (more…) E3 2019 games every game confirmedJun 12, 2019 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunThey just keep coming don’t they? A lot of games were announced at E3 2019, things that we didn’t know about, as well as stuff that’s previously announced, or expansions to already released games. Now, to the casual outsider, what we’re doing might seem absolutely nuts, but we thought we’d put together an alphabetical list of all the PC games that have been confirmed to appear at this year’s E3 show. With well over a hundred of them now in the books, the next year or so looks packed. (more…) E3 2019 games every game confirmedJun 11, 2019 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunThey just keep coming don’t they? A lot of games were announced at E3 2019, things that we didn’t know about, as well as stuff that’s previously announced, or expansions to already released games. Now, to the casual outsider, what we’re doing might seem absolutely nuts, but we thought we’d put together an alphabetical list of all the PC games that have been confirmed to appear at this year’s E3 show. With well over a hundred of them now in the books, the next year or so looks packed. (more…) E3 2019 games every game confirmedJun 10, 2019 - Rock, Paper, ShotgunOh dear god, there’s a lot of games announced at E3 2019. A lot of new things that we didn’t know about as well, especially coming out of Microsoft’s conference. It might seem absolutely nuts, but we thought we’d put together an alphabetical list of games that have been confirmed to appear at this year’s E3 show. With well over a hundred of them now in the books, the next year or so looks packed. (more…)
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