Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind news & patch notes

Working on the Six Ages games was amazing. It gave me a chance to revisit King of Dragon Pass’s genre of narrative strategy games. And another chance to explore Greg Stafford’s richly detailed world of Glorantha. To say nothing about working with a talented creative team. It’s also touching how many of you have enjoyed the games and would like another. We really appreciate it. So it wasn’t easy to step away, but I’m excited to try something different for my next project. Instead of a narrative strategy game set in Glorantha, it’s a tactical narrative game in a new setting. But a lot of the core elements will be the same, the ingredients that combine to make interesting stories. You’ll still direct a set of characters with their own personalities and goals. Mythology is still at the heart of the game, which will draw on some of our oldest epics. This will help give the stories layers of meaning. Procedural generation means that each playthrough will be different. And of course your choices matter. A big reason to set aside Six Ages was how long the games take to create. I had hoped that the second game would be much quicker to make, since all the infrastructure would be in place. That was true—I didn’t have to create a user interface or a scripting language or a system for automated testing—but it didn’t account for the fact that the story would be longer, and thus take longer to write, illustrate, and test. Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind took nearly 4 years to create. Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out took nearly 5 years. So I’m hoping that by switching gears I can get a game out before 2028. I should be able to share more in upcoming months. Sign up to our mailing list (hosted by our publisher) or follow A Sharp on Mastodon to find out. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32978489/4ff2b341f8536e607329a1a1db8330a1376953aa.png Map concept art Thanks for your support! David

We are excited to announce that Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out, will be releasing on August 21st on PC and Mac via Steam as well as iOS devices! Watch the latest trailer on Youtube: In Lights Going Out, you can continue a game you began in Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind, or start a new story in this Great Darkness. Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out is immensely replayable, with over 600(!) interactive scenes with multiple, system-driven outcomes. Short episodes and automatic saving mean you can play even when you only have a minute or two. The built-in saga records your story for you, while advisors help you track your promises, though their personalities will often judge your actions. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32978489/a3022d0f89ec07b0cc3e2dcbfec9e5a750fb09a5.jpg Miracles have always required sacrifice. Now, your people need them more than ever, but the costs are higher, too. Is it worth aiding the destructive gods of Chaos to ensure your own survival? For more information on Six Ages, visit https://www.sixages.com/ and follow the developers on Twitter Cheers, Alexandra

Kitfox Turns 10!

We are celebrating Kitfox Games’ 10th birthday with a special Steam sale featuring all our games, soundtracks and some special deals from our developer friends! (For the true Kitfoxhead, it’s true that technically the birthday is actually in June, but we were too excited and wanted to pounce on an opening in the calendar, so we’re here a little early.) Both Six Ages: Ride like the Wind and the soundtrack are on sale! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32978489/614a223b27dc2070077cd3cbaa37506aaf5c50c6.png You can start your journey to Glorantha with Six Ages: Ride like the Wind and even carry over some of your choices into Six Ages 2 when it releases. You can wishlist Six Ages 2 and play the demo here. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32978489/9912f626d7aa7be0d1a85c023eea64e9794d6bd4.png -Alexandra

From developer A Sharp, and published by us, this is the newest installment in the Six Ages series.

Managing your clan is complex, but may require you to:

• Explore the wilderness -trade with (or raid!) your neighbors
• settle disputes mundane, spiritual, or political
• improve livestock pastures
• Make Offerings
• Build Altars
• Travel to the Otherworld

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32978489/e033ee1a0f6b517bf4d9e8de1c5fc0734ad6a8d5.png Six Ages 2: Lights Going Out will be coming to Steam and iOS this summer. Make sure to follow Six Ages on Twitter and keep up with the Six Ages chatter on our Discord! Cheers, Alexandra

David from the Six Ages team will be joining us for a special livestream on Monday April 18th at 2pm Eastern! Single-player or co-op, horror or cute, romantic or funny, roguelike or mystery -- we have something for everyone! Starting from this very moment, the whole Kitfox catalogue is on sale to celebrate the company's founding, a whole nine years ago. We'll also be streaming schedule with our developers and special community guests, from today and going all week! Our plan is to stream most days at 2pm Eastern time, either here on Steam or on Twitch, with this schedule: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32978489/3c813a2fe5549761c30cc519630165f7d5613802.png So come with all your questions and pick up a few cool indies for your library! -Alexandra + Tanya

All weekend, LudoNarraCon is showcasing various games with interesting storytelling in their gameplay, including 3 Kitfox games: Lucifer Within Us, Six Ages, and Fit For a King! Tune in to the event to learn more about storytelling techniques and approaches from various cool games, from Darkest Dungeon to Dwarf Fortress. Check it out: {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32978489/28aece31ed3d4de3f45b00a9338b2e9fb0843d57.png Thanks for playing! Tanya & the Kitfox crew

Hey Riders! Hope you're all staying warm this winter. To aid with the festive cheer we've got a 25% discount going on right now so if you're looking to get friends and family a copy now's the time to do it. You're also welcome to come and chat with us over at our Kitfox Discord where we have our own dedicated channel for Six Ages: https://discord.gg/kitfoxgames Cheers, Chieftain Fiona

Heya! Ah yes, it's that time of the year again where some amazing games are at a hot hot hot hot discount. Hot! Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind is currently 20% off, which means you can immerse yourself in a land of old gods and magic at a lower cost than normal! Unfortunately cows are not accepted as currency on Steam... yet. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32978489/40d8fe536ae48ec5796a00fce1e860cb4beea90e.png And of course, if you are a lover of Glorantha, you can get both King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages as a bundle to save even more money! ☀️ Glorantha Bundle {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32978489/c2f9477012c04be439efeac68f65b37a0ee4224e.png Have a fun summer, riders~ Cheers, Victoria and the Kitfox Games team

In times of global uncertainty and change, the only way to get out of this tough situation is to go through it - together. Kitfox Games is partnering with the United Nations Foundation to raise money for the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 response. From April 10th - 13th, all of Kitfox’s profits from our game sales (85% off!) will go to the WHO COVID-19 Relief Fund. More info about it here. Any of these game purchases will contribute to the fund: Moon Hunters, The Shrouded Isle, Shattered Planet, Six Ages, and Fit For a King. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/32978489/88c69a370421c34ebee507fc22786fa0cba62b26.png While Kitfox’s financial surplus is minimal, we know we’re privileged to be in a position where we can work from home and get paid. And so we felt it was important to try and give back to those who are more vulnerable or are working towards keeping us safe. We hope you’ll join us, either with a purchase, directly donating to a local charity, or the WHO. Please share the sale or donation page, as every dollar will make a difference. Moments of togetherness are all the more important in times like these, and games have always been a powerful way to experience something together, but apart. We hope you can remember to socially distance, wash your hands, and reach out to loved ones. Additionally, here are some mental health resources. Thank you for your support and stay safe. <3 Victoria, David, and the Kitfox Games team (Tanya, Xin, Jongwoo, Marcelo, Alex, Thea, Mehrdad, and Kira)

Hey Riders! Happy new year! Hope you all had a nice holiday season - we just have a small update for you this time around. :) Release Notes for 1.0.12 • Choose emissary or trader doesn’t crash • Don’t ring Joyful Bell against a foe with no neighbors • Fixed display of Trade Wind magic Have a bug to report? Send it to bugza-sharp.com so that we can track it properly. Cheers, Chieftain Victoria

Hey Riders! We have a few patch notes ready for you. Hope you all are having a magnificent end of the year and will be blessed with many cows this holiday season! Release Notes for 1.0.11 • Fixed bug that could result in unwinnable game lacking many story lines • Fixed bug capturing horses • Fixed bug with Sword of Death usage • Shamans don’t technically worship • Fixed some advice and recommendations • Minor edits in Help screens • Fixed a few typos Have a bug to report? Send it to bugza-sharp.com so that we can track it properly. And if you'd like to give us an end-of-year present, Steam reviews help a lot. :) And thanks to those who nominated us for the Steam awards! It warmed our hearts. See you over on Discord, and looking forward to seeing y'all in 2020. Cheers, Chieftain Victoria

Hey Riders! Thanks for picking up Six Ages: Ride Like The Wind. :) We're thrilled a lot of you seem to be enjoying it so far. We've got some handy patch notes ready for you, and will have more fixes in the works. For version 1.0.10:

• Fixed a documentation glitch
• Clan chosen from map is actually the caravan destination
• Be sure concerns update promptly in the dashboard
• Ritual dialog shows the correct list of eligible questers
• Added keyboard equivalent for Help
• Better keyboard support for navigating manual and lore
• You can double-click to choose list items in interactive scenes
• You can explore the east edge of the map

Have a bug to report? Send it to bugza-sharp.com so that we can track it properly. And if you'd like some cool reading material, David Dunham did an AMA over at r/Games yesterday and talked about Six Ages (of course) and game design. Don't forget to write a Steam review by the way! It helps us indies out a lot. :) Alright, that's it for now. See you over on Discord or Twitter in the meantime. Chieftain Victoria

Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind has finally released! Design your clan, visit the gods, become respected, raid your neighbors' cows. This is life between myths. The spiritual successor to King of Dragon Pass is here. Hundreds of choices will unfurl into a multi-generational tale of your clan. Uncover the secrets of Glorantha, battle ancient monsters, befriend spirits, please the gods, trade cows, and make incredibly intricate decisions that may ultimately lead your clan to legend… or ruin. Want to chat about the game with the developer? David Dunham is on Twitter or Discord for all clan discussions! Want to help us out? You can help us retweet the announcement, tell your friends, and most of all leave a review! Seriously, Steam algorithms loooove reviews. Have fun, chieftains! Victoria

Hey riders! That's right, we've got big news for you today. Six Ages will officially release on Oct 17, 2019! That's less than a month away! *Sweats nervously* But finally, you can immerse yourself in a place of old gods and magic in this storybook strategy game. Make hundreds of decisions and watch it build into an epic, multi-generational tale of survival... or ruin. Make sure you wishlist the game on Steam so the algorithm spirits are appeased! And if you want to chatter amongst other clans, feel free to hop onto our Discord or Twitter. Cheers, Victoria

We're in the last stages of development and ready for fresh eyes to find fresh bugs! If you're interested, you can sign up now. Just join the Kitfox Discord and check the pinned note in the Six Ages channel to get started. We'll contact you in the coming days or weeks if you're selected (randomly). With your help, we hope we can finally settle on a launch date. Thanks in advance!

Hey chieftains! Progress rides like the wind~ We’ve started beta-testing the game, and our players (picked from the Discord) have found some great bugs. With their help, things are starting to feel pretty solid in terms of being able to play the game. It’s still going to take more time to polish everything and try to optimize for low-end machines, but we’re getting there.

PAX West & Demo

If you’d like to meet David, creator of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, *in real life*, you’ll be able to catch him at PAX West! On Sunday and Monday, he’ll be hanging around Booth 6120 (the Kitfox Booth) with… A PLAYABLE PC DEMO OF SIX AGES! For the first time ever! Yesss, you’ll be able to get your hands on it in real life, provided you’re at the con, of course. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32978489/e706454e50aa579642832de17ce10d2407bb7b4e.jpg You can also catch him and a bunch of other friendly designers (from Bay 12, Brace Yourself Games, Bungie, Subset Games) on a panel called “System Design, on Fire, All the Time: Controlling Chaos”. It’ll be happening on Monday, September 2nd, 11:30am. Can’t catch it in person? You’ll be able to catch the livestream here: https://www.twitch.tv/pax2 https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32978489/2456b4c541650c2cf8cde47fae31f9cdfeea5785.jpg That's it for now. Hope to see some of you around the show floor! Cheers, Victoria

Hi everyone, Many games can be brought to new platforms with some careful attention to the user interface on the new device. You may need new art assets, and certainly a bit of new coding. But most of the game code is identical. Back when I started working on Six Ages, this was my plan. Basic development was on iOS, in part because the tools were more reliable. I had experimented with two different solutions to bring that code to other platforms, and was optimistic that I’d be able to just rebuild the game. Then I’d be able to polish it, add support for platform-specific achievements, and start a new testing cycle. Things didn’t work out as I’d planned. Both of the porting libraries I had expected to use were discontinued (one formally, one not formally abandoned but clearly not viable). So instead of just recompiling, we were faced with rewriting. That’s a way bigger hurdle. And that’s why it’s taken longer than our original plan. https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32978489/f672726b31b0673061f174df2e13bc72e7bf9126.png I’ll discuss this in more detail in the future, but we’re pretty much at the point of adding support for platform-specific achievements. QA has been testing the port, and we hope to bring in outside beta testers soon. Our publisher has suggested that people interested in testing the game join us on Discord. If you’d rather wait until the last bugs are out, wishlist the game. - David Dunham, Six Ages Director and Designer https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32978489/66450e8c87de939e18d0485c193e73f6a6be21b9.png

Today we hit an important milestone: “Ride Like the Wind” for macOS and Windows is far enough along to be declared “Alpha.” Different studios use that term differently, but for us it means it’s essentially feature complete. The various tutorial elements are not implemented yet, and there are a number of known bugs and things to polish. But the interface is all there, and the game is playable. Rusto Games has done a great job adapting to a very different game engine. Our QA team has started taking a more thorough look at the port. Their available Windows machine had a smaller screen than I thought we could support, but it seemed to run well enough. That’s a good sign. It can also run on a 5120 x 2880 Retina display connected to a Mac. Once it’s had more testing, and the Guide and Tutorial are in, we plan on doing some beta testing with a small number of players. We’re still planning the particulars with our publisher, Kitfox Games. (Kitfox mentions: If you're interested in maybe taking a stab at it, the best thing to do is drop by the Discord.) Once we have beta feedback, we’ll be in a better position to know a release date. One reason this is hard to know in advance is that it can depend on other games. With a couple hundred games coming out each week, you obviously can’t avoid all conflicts, but there can be games you don’t want to release simultaneously with. Meanwhile, we’ve been working on the next game in the saga, “Lights Going Out.” The art style is defined and a reasonable amount is complete. It’s hard to know how much writing we’ll need until you can play the game from start to finish, but I think we’re close to having half the necessary scenes written and coded. “Lights Going Out” lets you continue a game of “Ride Like the Wind,” so you can determine the next chapter in your clan’s saga. As a practical matter, you might want to save any games you’ve completed. - David Dunham, Six Ages Director and Designer https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32978489/66450e8c87de939e18d0485c193e73f6a6be21b9.png

Last night, we revealed our newest title: Lucifer Within Us, from the creator of the Shrouded Isle. As a digital exorcist in Lucifer Within Us, you’re asked to solve murders, purify the possessed, and purge their daemons. Watch the trailer and add it to your wishlist now!

Investigate timelines.

Question your suspects. Watch their movements and testimonies closely, as the reconstruction may be based on lies. Use contradictions and clues to form your own hypothesis. Who is lying and why? Who is possessed? You must decide what is the truth for yourself, based on the evidence presented.

Real mystery-solving.

No hidden plot twists, no QTEs, no random puzzles or mini-games, just you and the information. Don’t just act like a detective -- BE a detective. Finding the murderer will require true understanding of the case, not just following the story.

Banish daemonic A.I.

Enter the minds of citizens to gain insight into what they don’t want you to know. Dig through their subconscious and accuse the guilty in order to cast out their daemons, for the good of the Inquisition. Any damage done to a citizen’s psyche as a result of quarantine, exorcism, or rehabilitation is a consequence of their own immorality.

Expose the False Utopia.

Through centuries of indoctrination, humanity is taught to think pure thoughts and speak true words, untainted by falsehoods and delusions. Yet beneath this facade of purity, you find dark desires stir deep within people’s hearts, yearning for release. If you want to keep tabs on the game's development, maybe check out our Discord and the Lucifer Within Us channel, where the devs sometimes hang out with other fans of digital exorcism. Ain Soph's blessings, Tanya and the Kitfox team

Hey Riders! Just a quick update to let everyone know how the Steam release has been going. Other than gathering enough cows for our next offering to the gods, we’ve also put all our warriors into progressing on the PC build. We’re happy to say it’s been chugging along nicely - the game content is on schedule, but there’s A LOT of interface to complete and polish. Fingers crossed, we’re hoping to have Six Ages ready around the end of spring of this year!

David at GDC

Meanwhile, if anyone is going to be at GDC (Game Developers Conference) in mid-March, David Dunham himself will be giving a talk about the distinctive design elements of Six Ages! An excerpt from the description: “He'll show how the pieces fit together to create a re-playable emergent narrative with an overall story arc, interesting and helpful advisors, and a strategic simulation of politics.” https://steamcdn-a.akamaihd.net/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/32978489/2ea46c3718a5e0ea94793b278a4b223e2b97ca93.jpg Plus, he’ll touch on how a text-based game achieves immersion, and describe the tools that let him and his small team create a game with as much text as the first four Harry Potter novels. (Wow!) You can grab all the info here. Meanwhile, feel free to chat with David on the Six Ages channel in the Kitfox Discord or on their Twitter! Cheers, Victoria and the Kitfox clan

Greetings riders! Six Ages is more than a myth or a legend -- it's going to be playable on Steam (hopefully)... but not as quickly as we'd initially planned. Unfortunately, the original programmer we contracted in the summer didn't work out, and although he had to visit the emergency room a couple of times, he's thankfully recovering now. But we have had to re-start the porting process with a new porting partner. We're happy to be working with Rusto Games, a small outfit in Finland (three cheers for Finland!) who are big fans of King of Dragon Pass and Six Ages, which makes us big fans of them in turn. We aren't sure exactly what the new release date is, but we're hoping to hit desktops (PC and Mac) spring or summer 2019. You'll be the first to know when we have more details. In the meantime, David and the team has been making lots of bugfixes, so it will be the most polished release of the game it can be. Thanks for your patience and support! <3 Victoria, Tanya, and the Kitfox clan

Hey riders! Our clansman Pete is working steadily on getting Six Ages ready for release as soon as we can. In the meantime... David Dunham, the primary force behind Six Ages and co-creator of King of Dragon Pass, will be hanging out at the Kitfox booth for the Saturday of PAX West (deep in the Indie MegaBooth area) in Seattle! If you're at the show, make sure to drop by and say hi, learn the secret handshake, etc. Look for our bright orange banner and looping Six Ages trailer! If you can't make it to PAX West, well, there's a good amount of chatter in the #sixages channel on the Kitfox discord. You'd be welcome to join us! In honor of all the gods, except the Raven, who totally messed up my last playthrough, Tanya & the Kitfox clan