[b]Hello people![/b] We are working hard to reach our internal deadlines and pushing onwards with the release of Early Access in Q2 this year. So much work in fact, that I haven't had the time to prepare a proper blog post in a while. But, we do share news on [url=https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtS8G-SVzYknbCSl8DyYk_g]Youtube[/url], [url=https://twitter.com/songsofconquest]Twitter [/url]and [url=https://discord.com/invite/soc]Discord [/url]every now and then. So, I'd though it would be cool to summarize the most important stuff in a Steam post. Do let me know if you think this is helpful or just redundant. First of all, let's just show a GIF of a new spell, called [b]Explosive Fungi[/b]. Don't step on the funny looking mushrooms people! [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//40723472/117ee86c9ae477cd91f8c654b4c09697f2fa1218.gif[/img] [i]This is one of those things where the Art Director (Anders) along with the artist (Kordian) have created nice pixel art which then has been worked over by our VFX artist (Mattias) and finalized in a lovely way by our head of the "Look n Feel" team (David).[/i] [i]It takes a lot of people and time to create great looking effects that mixes well with the pixel art.[/i] Furthermore, let's check out the latest Youtube video, where we explore new visual looks for the Path and something called "Frustum culling" which optimizes the games performance. [previewyoutube=ZHX11kYbrMw;full][/previewyoutube] We are also prototyping "team play". We are not sure if it will be in the Early Access release from day one, so we make no promises. But we have turned on this as an experimental feature for the Alpha testers right now. You can kind of see how it works in this video below: [previewyoutube=LN7740HseTs;full][/previewyoutube] Another thing that might interest you is the different troop abilities we are working on. Most troops in the game will have specific abilities that they can perform instead of attacking. In this video we explore a few of them and also take a look at who would win if the AI plays againt the AI with 30 militia units vs 30 rat units. [previewyoutube=PyyCJCKvE0U;full][/previewyoutube] We also recently showed the "Foundry" building from Barya on our Discord. We would love to hear what you think of it! [img]https://clan.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/images//40723472/a21d2bd24d10159e6f3f732f7e4c2add37458271.gif[/img] To round it all off, we have started publishing short videos (around a minute long) on Youtube and I'll post a summary below. If you like these type of videos, do subscribe to our Youtube account as you will be notified whenever we release more videos, of any kind. [previewyoutube=BsRRBcT7mxY;full][/previewyoutube] [previewyoutube=aH8MAbTIXhM;full][/previewyoutube] [previewyoutube=REWZ8ppX9L8;full][/previewyoutube] That's all for now. Take care and see you soon again! /Magnus and Team Lavapotion [i]PS. Did you notice that I teased a completely new troop for Loth in the banner? We'll tell you more about it soon, don't worry![/i]