Five Days to the Demo

Five Days to the Demo

Hello, sellswords. The Free Company demo releases on October 7th. This week was all about polish, bug hunting and getting it ready, and that's how I'll spend every day until launch.

Co-op is in the demo

For a while I wasn't sure co-op should be in the demo at all. Two players sharing one campaign across the internet is a lot that can go wrong, and I didn't want your first impression to be a dropped connection. After this week's testing, I'm happy with it. Co-op is going in, labelled experimental, but it's been stable in our tests. Here's what changed:

• A join code you can read out loud. Instead of a 17-digit Steam ID, you share four words.
• The host is in charge. The host's game is now the one record of the campaign and settles every roll and result, so the two players' games no longer drift out of sync.
• Both players have a real role. The guest deploys their own bands before battle, and if someone drops out, their bands wait for a decision instead of disappearing.

If you try it and something breaks, please tell me. Those reports are exactly what I need.

Steam Deck and controllers

• Controllers that dropped out (for example, when entering the tutorial) are now detected again automatically.
• Menus that ignored the gamepad now work with it, including the end-of-demo screen.

Polish and accessibility

• New accessibility options, including one switch that calms the screen's movement and animation.
• A new loading animation using the game's own sword, so you can tell a load is still progressing.
• Music levels evened out, so no track is suddenly much louder than the last.
• Thousands of leftover hidden objects cleared out of the battle maps, for smoother loading.

What's next

More bug hunting, more playtesting, and the demo on October 7th. Thanks for following along, and see you on the road.