It’s been a year since my last post of sign of life. Many of you inquired about my health, and I appreciate your messages. The liver I received is working fine; I continue to take my medications and see my doctor every three months. I’m sorry but I still haven’t progressed enough to bring you screenshots of the next game. My main disadvantage is that I am a black belt procrastinator; I need to work on that in addition to working on the game itself. I could come up with a variety of justifications, such as chronic fatigue or microplastics. In the interim, I wish you all a happy holiday season. Season’s Greetings Posted on December 24, 2022 by Peter
Hello, everyone! I just wanted to wish everyone a peaceful and happy holiday season and the upcoming year. I’ll write as soon as I have something ready to show about the next game. Apologies for the slew of unanswered emails.
Update on Life Posted on January 31, 2022 by Peter
Apologies for the lengthy absence. I was in hospital for 3 months over the last year. In a nutshell, I needed a liver transplant because I had PSC. It appears that I will survive, and I will be able to continue creating games.
Before returning to the series and possibly including remakes of previous chapters, my priorities remain the development of a game other than GemCraft. I’ll try to respond to the numerous unanswered emails as well. I’ll write again when I have something worth showing.
Keep safe, Peter
Iron Update for GemCraft Frostborn Wrath
Peter posted this on March 10, 2021. Hello, everyone! GemCraft Frostborn Wrath has received a new major update after another long wait! The Iron mode, which was present in the previous GemCraft as well, has been added, providing veteran wizards with a novel playthrough with challenging rules. For the Frostborn and Chilling game modes, all of the trial fields that had been missing have also been added. The full list of bug fixes and quality of life updates can be found in the main menu. Play with joy and safety always in mind! Summer Steam Sale and GOG release! Peter posted this on June 25, 2020. Hey Everyone!
GemCraft Frostborn Wrath is now available for purchase on GOG.com! Additionally, the Steam Summer Sale has begun! You can get GCFW on both GOG and Steam with a 25% discount!
GOG:
https://www.gog.com/game/gemcraft_frostborn_wrath
Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1106530/GemCraft__Frostborn_Wrath/
More updates are on the way, including the Iron Wizard mode update, please stay tuned, stay safe, and have a great summer!
Chilling Update for GemCraft Frostborn Wrath
Peter posted this on May 2, 2020. Hello, everyone! The chilling GemCraft Frostborn Wrath update has finally arrived after a long absence! Additionally, as part of the Tower Defense save event, the game will be discounted by 15% for a few days on Steam. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1106530/GemCraft__Frostborn_Wrath/
And if you’re waiting for a GOG release, there might be good news for you too, the game might get on GOG as well soon!
Chilling Update details:
The initial difficulty of the game got a mixed reception, even after many smaller attempts to make the game’s overall feeling less unforgiving. So now, in addition to the original “Frostborn” difficulty, a new “Chilling” Game mode has been added for those players who just want to smash through the monsters and feel the mana flowing through their veins.
Existing Frostborn saved games can be switched to Chilling mode, so you don’t need to start over again for a monster-shredding freezing-edge experience. (Returning to Frostborn is, however, impossible.) Chilling Mode features:
Freeze spell is given at start
+3 gem damage in the first grade (significantly increases damage in subsequent grades). 3 free buildings (except walls) can be built in every battle
+300 mana when a battle starts
3x shadow cores drop from monsters
2x xp for every monster kill in Journey battles. reduced hit points for the first wave on later game fields (where the first wave would have more than 70 HP) Other adjustments and corrections have also been made: Added many formerly missing trial fields
Range can be decreased for lanterns and pylons
Power of vital link traits decreased by 3% per level from 10% to 3%. For all endurance fields, the HP multiplier per wave is set to 1.1 (it was between 1.1 and 1.11). Getting different slow rate gem hits works properly now
When the resolution is higher than 1920 x 1080, the new option displays larger information panels. Weather effects can be disabled right now. Hatred and Awakening battle traits have been severely nerfed
In the later waves, random special enemies have less health. Decreased strike spells’ skill level charge time decrement bonus by half
reduced the percentage of HP lost by shrine strikes by half. Gems surpass 1.000 hits sooner than hit milestones. Changed the redundant talfrag property to ‘extra hp taken by ice shards’
The pylon placement aid now includes a range circle. In the talisman summary list, the missing lines were fixed. Added all previously unobtainable travel note illustrations Numerous other minor adjustments Have a wonderful time and remain safe! GemCraft Frostborn Wrath is now available! Peter posted this on January 18, 2020. Hello, everyone! Although GemCraft Frostborn Wrath has been available for a week now, I didn’t have time to write a full review because I was so caught up in the madness.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1106530/GemCraft__Frostborn_Wrath/
The game has received 11 updates with numerous enhancements, bug fixes, and difficulty adjustments thus far. More content and tweaking is on the way. I hope you will give the game a shot and enjoy it! Pre-release notes for GemCraft Frostborn Wrath in the last minute Peter posted this on January 6, 2020. UPDATE: The game will be released on January 10 after passing the Steam review process! Everyone, a happy new year! Hopefully only a few days remain until GemCraft Frostborn Wrath’s release! As I write this, Steam is reviewing the game; if they approve, the game could be released in time. The planned release date is still Friday, 10 January 2020, 07:00 PST / 10:00 ET / 16:00 CET, but as of now the Steam admin page also says: “Earliest possible release: Jan 11, 2020”, and it was “Jan 9” two days ago, so a few days’ delay is possible if this process takes longer than expected, but I hope this is only an automatic text and once the review process is over, the game can get out.
As soon as I learn more, I will update the release date on the game’s Steam page and write an update post. GemCraft Frostborn Wrath will cost USD 12.99, or a price that is comparable when converted into your country’s currency. There will only be a one-time fee, no paid lootboxes or other microtransactions. You will be able to play the game until the very end, and you will also be able to fight in Endurance mode on all of the fields. However, some of the content that we had hoped to finish will have to wait until after the release date. To-be-added content will include:
-Additional sound effects -Some of the pages in the journey note – Participating in some of the fields in Trial mode (each field will feature a challenging handcrafted battle) -Some quality of life features that came up during testing
-After the game is released, we will continue polishing and fine-tuning it. I also admit I aimed too high with my plans for the amount of achievements, but still, the game will have 636 achievements to collect, and possibly more to come later.
I was unaware that Steam also has a limit of 100 achievements until I was uploading the achi data to Steam. As it turned out, this limit is applied to new games automatically now and might be lifted once a game reaches some kind of a confidence metric. This is hopefully temporary and only affects Steam achievements, the game itself keeps track of your in-game achievements and rewards you with skill points for gathering them, and I hope I can steamify the rest of the achievements soon after release. Any achievements you earn in the game will be automatically unlocked on Steam when its Steam equivalent will become available and you load your saved game, no need to collect them twice.
The game will be officially available on Windows. Since this game does not have any potentially problematic features (third-party server connection, DRM), it is worth giving a try if you have Linux. I have heard that there is a Linux emulator that makes many Steam Windows games playable. I hope a similar option will be available for Mac as well.
A calming green screen with the code’s “stack trace” will appear in the event that the game encounters an error, indicating which line I should examine. I apologize ahead of time if there are any errors; the next few weeks will be spent actively fixing errors, so they should come up very rarely after a while. (Please copy the text and send it to me via email as seen on the green screen if you still find an error. Many thanks!) There is no official age rating for the game, but if you are a parent with small kids, please note that the Steam store is for ages 13+ and that GemCraft Frostborn Wrath contains blood and demons.
It’s impossible to make the game equally comfortable or challenging for everyone. I think Frostborn Wrath is geared towards being harder than Chasing Shadows was. If you are stuck, here are some suggestions: -You can go back to previously beaten fields and enter Endurance mode or try Journey mode again for more xp, which gets you level up, which eventually gives you more skill points.
-Don’t spend all your skill points, as unspent points give you starter mana.
-As you play, you’ll find talisman fragments. For access to their bonuses, include them in your talisman. Frags that give extra starter mana can help a lot, and they can be found from the beginning.
-It’s well worth playing fields in Trial mode. In this mode, you face the same challenge no matter how high your wizard level is. They can all be defeated, and if you win, you get nine skill points. – Fire or drop gem bombs at wizard stashes to open them. You can get skill tomes and more. Every field contains wizard stashes, but some
