Hey there, fellow adventurer!
Welcome to the latest edition of the Bscotch Ballyhoo Newsletter. This time it's all about the cozier side of Crashlands 2, plus an update to our release window.
Let's get into it.
Crashlands, but make it Cozy
While Crashlands is an action-adventure game at its core, it has all kinds of cozy/wholesome elements: pets, farming, fishing, home-building & decor, and a delightfully weird cast of characters to befriend.
In the sequel, we wanted to let players relax more deeply into the cozy side of the game, so we made all of those features more satisfying so that you can really lean into them. And we've got a new trailer to let you experience that vibe right now!
Yeah, there's still a lot of combat in Crashlands 2. But we've also expanded the combat styles so that you can stay a bit more removed from the action if that's your jam:
- Story Mode: Play on the lowest difficulty setting so that you can focus on the story and the cozy elements of the game with less combat stress.
- Environmental Mastery: The world is super dynamic, and you can use this to avoid direct combat by leading enemies into environmental hazards and tricking them into fighting each other.
- Sneaky Little Sneak: By turning yourself invisible, buffing your speed, using distance weapons and traps, letting your pet help you out, and other tricks, you can keep yourself quite out of harm's way.
Base-Building Deep Dive
Since a lot of the coziness of Crashlands 2 comes from the homestead you build for yourself (and your new friends!), we've put together another Ballyhoo Video to go with the cozy trailer. It's about how base-building works in Crashlands 2. Give it a watch: you'll see that things have come a long way since the original!
Release Window Update
Alright, let's rip the bandage off: Crashlands 2 will not be launching in 2024 like we planned.
When we announced the game in June 2023 we thought that "2024" was a wide enough, far-away-enough target that it was a safe timeline. Turns out it wasn't, but we were only off by a little bit: we'll be launching Crashlands 2 very early in 2025.
So at least it's a small delay. But why delay at all?
The short answer is that it's not really a delay, but a miscalculation. All timelines are just guesses, and we guessed wrong. The longer answer is that games have 3 levels of being "done", and we can't quite get Crashlands 2 through all three by the end of the year.
The Levels of Done-ness:
- Content-Complete: Everything we intend to be in the game is in there, in its finished state, and fully tested by our team.
- Player-Feedback-Adjusted: The Content-Complete game has been played by a bunch of people outside of our team and we've used their feedback to fix balance issues, make confusing stuff clear, and fix any bugs we missed. (We'll be enlisting a few dozen volunteers from the community for this; if you want to be involved in that, keep an eye on our Discord!)
- Launch-Ready: We've passed all checks from our publishing and store partners, the text has been fully translated into all target languages and checked for errors, and we have the green light to launch from everyone involved.
We'll be through the Content-Complete phase and will have made a lot of progress on the other two by the end of this year. The winter holidays and New Year throw a wrench into things, but it'll all get finished up pretty quickly in the new year!
FIN
And with that, it's time to close out this edition of the Bscotch Ballyhoo. Until next time, go wishlist Crashlands 2 on Steam if you haven't already!
💖 Your Freshly Baked Cookies,
Adam Coster
Webslinger @ Buttersnuggle Shenapigans
P.S. I've made those launch-delay panels available as a meme template, ready for your silly goofs!