GemCraft Steam launch update

Hey Everyone,

Just wanted to give a quick summary of what’s happened since the Steam release, and a bit about the future of GemCraft – Chasing Shadows.

The release so far has been a great success, almost all of your reviews have been positive, and the game even got on Steam’s popular new releases list. Thank you again for being so supportive since the beginning. All your enthusiasm, altruism and help has made it possible to make the latest GemCraft a reality on Armor Games, and then make it through Greenlight to the Steam store!

As a special thanks, Armor Games has given a small amount of Steam keys to randomly selected players last week. More Steam keys will also be given away by AG, both in the ongoing “Guess which Chapter and Field is on the Piece of Screenshot” contest on Twitter, and the just launched “Draw a Gem” contest on Facebook.

Thank you for all the recent feedback you’ve been sending me, I’m trying to fix bugs as they come up and will upload a new build as soon as is possible. The Steam client should automatically update the game to the latest version. I’ll also be going through emails, comments, and forums when I can to answer your questions and feedback.

Steam trading cards will be added soon as well, I just need to finish some of the art.

Answers to Common Questions:

Q: What more will I get if I purchase the Steam version over Flash?

A: Here are the highlights of the Steam game:

• Lots of new fields
  
• The game’s native resolution has increased from 900×600 to 1088×612 (16:9 ratio)
  
• All fields became wider as the game got wide, they are 54×32 tiles instead of the old 44×32, which brought pleasant changes in many of the fields
  
• No in-game purchases, and of course you get access to all content that has been given by the Magician’s Pouch
  
• You don’t get the Chain hit skill and the Orblets trait on start, you have to find them in the wilderness
  
• Battle traits cost no shadow cores
  
• Higher shadow core drop rate, with which you can solely focus on getting and upgrading talisman fragments
  
• Many of the game’s graphics have been made in a higher resolution
  
• Full screen support, custom mouse pointer (can be disabled), saving to files (which are synced to the Steam cloud too)
  
• Iron Wizard mode: a game mode where you can’t rely on grinding for XP (no endurance), getting lots of skill points from achievements, or building a powerful talisman; you get +5 skill points for beating a field, and that’s all. No battle traits, except a special variant of the original Orblets trait. You can gather Orblets from locked wizard towers, and you also have to get your skills from the tome chambers.
  
• All achievements (plus one) can be unlocked as Steam achievements
  

Q: I have bought the Magician’s Pouch before, how come I don’t get a free Steam key?

A: First of all, Thank you for supporting us with your purchase! Without going into whether it’s fair to ask money “twice for the same stuff” (err.. see the list of new enhancements above), what’s the justifiable price tag or value (if any) of the Steam version, the AG version, or computer games in general, there is a simple technical constraint: I don’t have access to the database of Armor Games (just as I won’t get into Kongregate’s database either, and who knows what sites the web version will get on), so I can’t tell who bought what.

Q: Can I transfer my saved game from AG to Steam?

A: I don’t know if Valve (Steam) would be happy about it, but the two game versions are not compatible anyway, so no, sorry.

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I’m also working on the Kongregate release, it will be out as fast as possible, but I don’t think it can happen this week.

That’s all for now, I’ll write when we get some of the things listed above done, have a great time playing!