Darkest greetings, directors/cleaners/underlords! Quite an eccentric resume, there.
We’re still up to our elbows in Kaiju guts, and the next War for the Overworld game remains in early pre-production, but when we realised it’s been a bit since we’ve had an update for you, we knew we couldn’t let a year go by without a little content update from us.
We also realised that Masters of Albion, the upcoming god game from our Peter Molyneux-led pals at 22cans, was just about to release. We thought, “wow, what a coincidence! Maybe we can do something about both of these things at the same time.” More on that below!
Hands! Pickaxes! Bundles! Games! Vegetables! It’s all happening right now!
Patch 2.1.4: Enough Hands to Clap With
Patch Highlights
Full release notes at the bottom of the post.
Free Content: Two New Hands of “Evil”
This update’s free content is two brand-slapping new Hands of Evil in the style of the good and evil god hands from 22cans’ Masters of Albion. We even built some swanky new pickaxes with which to hew the earth below ground.
These new hands are available for free to all our valued underlords. You can access them from the gameplay options menu.
Furthermore all of your devilish hands can now be scaled up to 200% size, if you feel your hand is too small to adequately slap your minions
Visual Updates
We’re continuing our work in improving the visuals of some of the older content in the game, time permitting. The latest rooms to receive a lighting & shadow update are the Spirit Chamber and Arena.
The Spirit Chamber becomes much more mysterious and moody, casting long shadows from the Witch Doctor as they forget to finish their sentences.
Meanwhile the arena is filled with shadows (literally) as spectators yell and jeer at the brutal fighting below.
Several units have also received a bit of a visual pass as we deploy a new shader developed for the Wizened Imp a few years ago. Just check out how swish the Witch Doctor looks when he's not 5x brighter than his environment.
Side by Side of the Witch Doctor. Old Material (Left) vs New (Right)
Meanwhile all your ghostly minions have been treated to a new shader. This shader reduces their rendering overhead (better for performance) while maintaining much of what we all love about them. Their spectral visage!
Side by side of a Spirit Dwarven Worker. Old (Left) vs New (Right)
Previously ghosts would receive lighting from sources around them, defining much of the surface with extra detail that is lost in dark environments. Now Ghosts are self-lit and do not receive light from external sources. Making them more consistently ghostly.
War for the Overworld x Masters of Albion Bundle
Along with the Masters of Albion-themed hand skins, we've also teamed up with 22cans to release a special bundle featuring both games!
Masters of Albion is a return to form for the studio, an attempt to reignite and redefine the god game genre from those who helped to give it life in the first place. It’s a god game with city-building, siege defense, unit possession and so much more. Your choices will shape the fate of your people and that of Albion.
Also you can give everyone the middle finger with your godly extremity, which is just utterly charming.
Why bundle with Masters of Albion?
Peter is oft-credited as the father of the god game genre, a serious pedigree, and many of the beloved games from our childhood were shaped by his deft hand. Populous, Dungeon Keeper, Black and White, Fable. Legendary games which formed the basis of a genre of gameplay which is rarely emulated.
It’s safe to say that his work has been a huge inspiration to us. Just read our 20 Years of Dungeon Keeper post from a few years ago! Cut to 2026 and we’re now bundled alongside Dungeon Keeper on Steam!
But the history is even more personal.
When we first started our journey, we were fortunate enough to meet Peter and the folks at 22cans. This was when we first set out with a dream to make WFTO, and were building our Kickstarter pitch.
Peter was all too happy to support us in that pitch, giving us his support and blessing in the form of a video legitimising our efforts.
Truthfully this is one of the gifts given to us that helped us bring War for the Overworld to life. If not for Peter’s support we may well have fallen at the first hurdle and never have broken out into the industry and delivered WFTO to all of you.
This camaraderie shown to us is why we’re eager to team up now, to help share an awesome new god-game from the man who made it all possible, and we genuinely think you’ll love this new game if you’re a fan of this genre.
So, be sure to check out Masters of Albion, from 22cans, releasing on the 22nd of April. If I was an apopheniac, I’d be having a conniption right now.
Brightrock News & Open Positions
As for ourselves here at Brightrock? We’re pretty much all hands on deck on our upcoming game Kaiju Cleanup.
It’s had an incredibly strong reception, and has only continued gaining momentum as we announced co-op. We also had a good laugh with an April Fools as we announced the Vegan Edition.
We’ve continued to expand our team, and we’re now at the largest we’ve ever been - but we still need more diligent development imps. If you happen to be a Senior Environment Artist or a Senior Producer, then we’ll have positions open very soon. If either of those are of interest to you, be sure to sign up to the careers newsletter on our website.
Patch 2.1.4 Release Notes
Content Updates
Albion Hands of Evil
Two New Hands of Evil are available to select in the gameplay options menu. These are available for free to all players.
Improvements & Changes
Visuals & Art
The following units have received shader and material updates:
Gnarling
Cultist
Witch Doctor
Spectral Worker
Soulbond Worker
Defiled Heroes
Wraiths
Spirits
The following rooms have received a lighting & shadows pass:
Spirit Chamber
Arena
Performance
Ghostly units such as Spectral & Soulbond workers, Wraiths etc. have received shader optimisations, reducing their rendering overhead by ~33-50%
Dirt Tiles are slightly more performant to render when shadows are enabled
Several Rooms have received slight performance uplifts due to rendering improvements
UI & UX
It is now possible to increase the scale of the Hand of Evil via the Hand Scale option in the gameplay options menu
Miscellaneous
The debug screenshot tool will now scale based on resolution to target 8k rather than linearly, no longer blowing up your PC if you try to take a high resolution screenshot at 4k.
The debug screenshot tool will now generate two screenshots, one with the UI and one without.