July-August 2026 Broadcast
Dear Citizens of the Suzerainverse, Welcome to our July and August 2026 Broadcast. These two months marked a major step forward for The Conformist, with early development progressing across several areas. We began a new phase of exploration spanning concept art, music design, lor
Dear Citizens of the Suzerainverse,
Welcome to our July and August 2026 Broadcast. These two months marked a major step forward for The Conformist, with early development progressing across several areas. We began a new phase of exploration spanning concept art, music design, lore, and RPG-strategy systems.
We also have production updates on Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens, Wars of Suzerain, and the Socialist Republic of Galmland, alongside news on Chinese localization, continued live support for Suzerain, and photographs from the latest Conundrum LARP.
Announcements and Reception
In July, we finally revealed Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens, Wars of Suzerain, and Suzerain: Socialist Republic of Galmland. The response was bigger and broader than we expected.
The three official teasers have passed 215,000 views on YouTube combined. Wars of Suzerain accounts for around 140,000 of those, along with 6,200 likes. Our internal analytics make that even more interesting: around 80 percent of Wars viewers came from outside the existing Suzerain community. We are reaching strategy players who may never have encountered the Suzerain Universe before.
The community response has been just as fun to watch, and the reactions quickly produced everything from "MORNING HAS COME" and "OH BOY THREE CAKES" to people asking where the "ALL OF THEM" option was when choosing which project they were most excited about. Wars also started appearing independently in wider strategy communities, while community creators produced breakdowns of all three announcements that reached tens of thousands of viewers.
Thank you to everyone who watched, commented, filled out the survey, shared the announcements, made videos, argued about them, or immediately started theorizing about what comes next. July was the first time we showed how the Suzerain Universe could expand beyond a single kind of experience.
The Conformist Awarded German Federal Games Funding
We have been awarded €2.2 million through the German Federal Government's games funding programme for The Conformist. This funding supports the full production scale we envisioned for Torpor's second major flagship step.
The Conformist is a game about a fledgling democracy, political movements and the hope for a better future through elections. Players will walk the capital of Sordland in the 1930s, try to change the mind of the nation ahead of the coming elections and help lead a political campaign to victory. It is also the largest step Torpor Games has taken: a substantial 3D production with a semi-sandbox environment, a deeper RPG core and more room for strategic player expression than anything we have built before.
This is also a moment to recognize the people who have recently joined Torpor or strengthened the production.
Derek Patterson, Lead Producer, brings leadership experience from Ubisoft Berlin, CD Projekt Red and Rockstar Games, including work on Grand Theft Auto V and Cyberpunk 2077.
Brian Mitsoda, Senior Narrative Designer, has worked with Black Isle Studios, Troika Games and Obsidian Entertainment, with credits including Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Alpha Protocol, Torment: Tides of Numenera and Dead State.
Jeffrey "Jeff" Ho Shengfan, Senior Systems Designer, joins with experience from Rovio, Zynga and King.
Maria Gröhler, Senior HR Administrator, joins from Finiata and Etermax.
Konstantin Dimitrov, Lead Artist, joins from Wooga.
Arda Cevik, Lead Programmer, joins from Arvis Games and Etermax.
Emily Damgali, Producer, joins from Wooga.
Tung Thanh Cao, Technical Designer, joins from Cloud Imperium Games, with experience on Star Citizen and Squadron 42.
Ryan Wilson, Lead Writer, joins from Zhejiang University and Dragonwell Creative.
Dala Klimek, Technical Artist, joins from Paintbucket Games and The Darkest Files.
Alongside many others across Torpor, they are helping us build the team needed for this next phase. The journey will not be easy or perfect. No serious game production at this ambition scale is. We will make it happen together. The Conformist dream is finally becoming real.
Development Update from Ata
July and August have been about turning the newly announced slate into concrete production steps. The projects have deliberately different shapes. Stories offers a focused character perspective, Wars puts systems first, Galmland returns to country management from a new ideological, material, and regional position, and The Conformist expands our RPG and spatial design ambitions.
Veins: Our Own Tools
A new piece of news that matters to every project above. Torpor is building its own tools and tech stack. Veins is our in-house narrative and systems database engine, the place where writers, designers and everyone else creating content author dialogue, decisions, variables and story logic for Suzerain, Stories, Galmland and now Wars and The Conformist.
The point of a bespoke tool is simple: it lets our developers make content better, easier, and faster, and it lets us level up the thing Torpor does best. Branching political narrative at our scale needs tooling built for it. Owning that stack is part of the studio maturing from a single game into a shared universe with several productions running at once.
The Conformist
The Conformist is at an early stage. The team is building the foundations needed for full production to kick off next year while continuing targeted exploration in visual direction, music and RPG design. What follows is exploration, not a feature list.
We have a new visual concept exploring how Holsord's streets could look after recent tech-art iterations. Internally, we are still developing the feel of daily life, campaign activity, and other environmental elements, which we will share once they are ready.
The aim is to make the capital feel inhabited, distinct from district to district, and politically contested, rather than serving only as a visual backdrop for quests.
The music exploration is moving in parallel. We are testing how the score can move between personal tension, public momentum and the uneasy optimism of a young democracy. The excerpt is exploratory and does not represent a final track.
On the RPG side, we are exploring potential skill checks and deeper character customization. The current design question is how a player's build can create different ways to persuade, investigate, improvise or endure pressure without turning every conversation into a simple pass-or-fail gate. A failed check should create a different route, cost or consequence rather than stop the story.
We are also examining how customization can affect access, preparation and the way people respond to the protagonist. The next step is to test which combinations create meaningful role-playing choices without adding complexity that does not earn its place.
Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens
For The Neutral Lens, the first internal playtest of the integrated milestone is underway. Earlier tests looked at individual content and system slices; this one evaluates the connected experience, pacing and consequences as a whole. Thank you to the playtesters who have shared their opinions and ideas so far. That feedback is already shaping the next pass.
The team is adding the last-turn content and epilogue endings so the full arc can be assessed from opening to conclusion. The correspondent system design is also advancing, including the ratings model and the way editorial decisions feed into professional and political consequences.
Portrait work for the full cast is finalized. The writing team has completed a further depth pass across the characters, strengthening motivations, contradictions, relationships and the pressure each person brings into the newsroom.
The coming weeks go into polishing and expanding the experience so that Ilias Moris's life as a television host lands with the weight it deserves.
Wars of Suzerain
Wars of Suzerain deliberately flips the usual Suzerain formula. The country campaigns are narrative-led experiences expressed through systems. Wars is a systems-led strategy game supported by characters and narrative branches. It contains less story by volume, but the story that is present must respond clearly to strategic decisions.
The team is working on naval boarding and invasion, new unit abilities, improvements to enemy movement visibility, and more satisfying sounds on unit interactions. New systems are being implemented and refined for a battlefield across land, sea and air, where the political and human implications of war act as forces in tension. Work on narrative branches continues in parallel, and the core cast of characters is now complete, giving the narrative team a stable foundation for those choices and consequences.
A large amount of design and engineering work has also gone into the map-creation pipeline. The upgraded pipeline is intended to make maps faster to build, easier to revise and more consistent to test as the strategic rules evolve. This work is less visible than a finished battlefield, but it determines how quickly the team can create and improve the campaigns that players will eventually command.
Galmland
Galmland's production groundwork is now largely in place, and an overall storyline outline has been developed. The team is now beginning to work on the first parts of the game and settling into new writing rhythms.
Writing began in August and we made some progress on our first key scenes. The team has already developed several politically sharp and fun ideas for Galmland's story, characters and the countries exact place in the Contanan Security Pact. We are also developing the new key features and storylines of the experience. These include district-based economic planning and execution, ministerial task delegation, and trade between the socialist bloc and foreign markets.
We will share the Galmland vision document in the future. It will explain the project's design direction and pillars, its role in the Suzerain Universe and the areas we want to explore in this DLC.
Suzerain Patch 3.1.0
Suzerain version 3.1.0 (build 186) is live on Android. The iOS release and the update for all other platforms follow shortly as one combined patch. The notes:
Updated the Android target API version to meet current Google Play Store requirements.
Performance and stability fixes through optimized memory usage, and more reliable saving with crash-safe writes.
Fixed multiple gameplay and UI issues.
Fixed character and dialogue reference issues.
A standardized spelling pass across parts of the game toward consistent American English.
Various bug fixes.
Chinese Localization Update
Work on Chinese localization continues through bugs, testing, and database updates. A full-time programmer joining the team is taking on part of the remaining localization tasks. The internal QA branch is making progress as the team verifies text behavior, fixes implementation issues, and checks the underlying data needed for a reliable release.
We are also reaching out to all volunteer localization teams with collaboration agreements. The goal is to establish a clearer shared framework for communication, responsibilities, attribution and the path from community work into an internally tested build.
There is more work ahead, and we are not announcing a release date in this broadcast. We will share further progress once the current QA and collaboration steps are complete enough to support a dependable update.
The Suzerain LARP Conundrum Happened
The latest Conundrum LARP by Not Great, Not Terrible has taken place, and the photographs are ready to share. The event once again brought Suzerain Universe's politics, costumes, and difficult choices into a physical space shaped by its organizers, performers, volunteers, and players.
Thank you to everyone who helped create the event and to the photographers who captured it. You can view a selection below, then follow the event team for information about the 2027 edition, which moves from Belgium to Germany.
More information can be found here: https://notgreatnotterrible.de/practical
Location: Haus Annaberg (https://annaberg.de/) Bonn, Germany
Photo Credit: Jan Zelisko
FAQ - Questions from the Community
How large is Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens?
It is intentionally smaller than the Sordland or Rizia country campaigns. Stories is a bite-sized, character-led experience built to provide a fresh perspective rather than another full country-management campaign.
Can players change history in Stories?
Yes. Stories is designed to be flexible and open, and player choices can change historical outcomes within the experience.
Will save-game transfer work with Stories?
Save transfer will work in campaign country mode with compatible country campaigns and country DLCs. Stories mode is separate and will not use the country-campaign save-transfer chain.
Will mobile Lifetime Pass owners receive The Neutral Lens at no additional cost?
Yes. Mobile Lifetime Pass owners will receive Suzerain Stories: The Neutral Lens at no additional cost when it is released on mobile. The lifetime pass is primarily a support the devs pack and we thank our supporters!
Will mobile Lifetime Pass owners receive Galmland too?
Yes. Galmland will also be included for mobile Lifetime Pass owners when it is released on mobile.
Does the same answer apply to Wars of Suzerain?
This Lifetime Pass and save-transfer clarification concerns content released within Suzerain. Wars of Suzerain is a standalone and different game. Its platform and commercial details will be communicated separately.
That is all for July and August. Across the projects, the focus is moving from announcement into implementation: tests, writing, tools, systems, art, and sound that can be evaluated and improved.
Until next time, dear Citizens. Take care!
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The Who and The Why
After eight hours in the wilderness and temperatures reaching 23°C, it was finally time to head back into the city for a well-earned dinner and a few cold drinks. 
We’re also very happy to welcome back a previous designer from the original release of Suzerain, who has now rejoined the studio as a Technical Game Designer. Their experience with 3D scenes, quest implementation, and data structure building is incredibly valuable as the studio continues tackling larger and more technically demanding challenges. Alongside this, we’ve been outlining new characters, experimenting with new RPG interaction systems, and exploring ways to push certain boundaries in our own Torpor way. A lot of this work is still rough and foundational, similar to the very early days of Suzerain, so there isn’t much visually polished to show yet, but there are already some exciting surprises taking shape internally.
Political Actor Ranking
