What's next for Northgard? A sneak peek into what the future holds for our favorite vikings...Ohoi! We're working hard on Northgard and you can expect a ton of new changes this year. Keep in mind this roadmap is mostly tentative, hence why no dates will be revealed as of today. But enough talk, here is what you came for...

The near future
Our next update is the annual major balancing patch. It is coming in the next month or so but it is not exclusively balancing that it will be bringing to the game. Before expanding the game further, it was important for us to focus on some of the more pressing matters that have been brought to our attention over the last few months.

Subject 106 breaks free from his chains to unleash mayhem - June 21st on Steam! It's time to break the cycle. Trepang2 features high-octane, first-person gun-fu gunplay and puts players in the shoes of a newly enhanced super soldier on a mission of death, destruction, and revenge.

Broken out from a government black site by unknown allies and removed of their memories, they'll be hunted by their captives and an even more otherworldly foe, and will have to arm themselves with an arsenal of devastating weapons and learn how to handle their newfound superhuman abilities to survive the onslaught, all the while unravelling a deadly conspiracy.

D-Pad Studio, creators of the critically acclaimed Owlboy, are delighted to reveal their new title, Vikings on Trampolines. Coming to PC and consoles, Vikings on Trampolines is a 1-4 player co-op adventure where you and your friends will master the art of trampolining to keep your colourful cast of vikings bouncing safely in the air across a range of fun modes and minigames, all rendered in the characteristically-stunning pixel-art of D-Pad Studio's Simon S. Andersen.

Featuring a Story Mode that sets you on a quest to stop the gaseous villain Balloonie, as well as a head-to-head Versus Mode, Vikings on Trampolines is packed with minigames, battles, mind-blowing bosses, balloon-soccer and more. All of this can be played with a single thumbstick, opening the game to players of all ages and ensuring that you can become a master of air-time in no-time! Vicious balloons attack! They're turning sweet animalis into huge monsters! Vikings on Trampolines' Story Mode tasks you with rescuing King VI and reversing the Balloonie's curse! You must learn the way of the trampoline and use your bouncy techniques as you square off against Balloonie's brigade, including a roster of intimidating and unforgettable bosses full of personality.

Indie publisher Digerati is delighted to announce it's teaming up with developer Charge Games to bring clone sacrificing puzzle-platformer, Overloop, to PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S. Overloop will launch first on PC, arriving 26th August on Steam, Epic, GOG, Humble, and other storefronts. The console versions will follow in Q4 2022 (exact release date TBC). Created by Charge Games - a development duo of George Kobyakov (programmer, game design, artist) and Charles Bardin (narrative design, sound design) - Overloop is a light-hearted adventure set in a dark future where big brain scientists create a cloning gun - the Quantum Matter Replication Device - and their profit-hungry paymasters sell it to the masses, with disastrous consequences.

"We are a small team, but we are huge game fanatics. We're especially crazy about fun gameplay, atmosphere, and humor. And story. And music," explains Kobyakov. "Our goal was to successfully combine all these elements into a game, and we think we've achieved that with Overloop. It's the game we've always wanted to create and we can't wait to share it with the world!"

Star Valor is a Space Action RPG game that puts you in control of your own spaceship and destiny. Explore a vast open-world procedurally generated galaxy as you make your way from a nobody to the biggest name in the galaxy. But be warned, in a universe where the last of humanity is ruled by the alien beings that nearly made them extinct, wealth and power don't come easy.

Carefully choose which factions you join or go independent and make your own friends and foes along the way. Earn credits through a variety of activities such as mining asteroids for valuable materials and minerals, completing various missions, trading goods, salvaging shipwrecks, crafting weapons, claiming bounties on pirates, or becoming a pirate yourself. Gain experience and level up your skills while unlocking new options for subsequent playthroughs.

Valve's popular "Upcoming Release list" within Steam has become a bit of a hot button topic as the abuse of the feature becomes more widespread. As pointed out by Mike Rose, founder of indie game publisher No More Robots, on Twitter, the system behind the upcoming release list can be easily rigged by developers themselves. For context, the release list is created by Steam when it checks the release date for each title set in the Steam back end. Once it has verified the release date, the system then lists all titles that have been found on a fair number of wish lists, and displays them in the order they will be released. At this time, developers can continuously change the back end release date, thus keeping their games at the top of the list. This makes it easy for already popular titles to remain at the top, soaking up even more views. Meanwhile, if you take a gander at the games store page, you will see the proper release date which differs from the back end date the system currently uses.

Worse yet, there are currently no consequences for developers that are partaking in this practice. While in some ways I can appreciate the devs noticing these loopholes and taking advantage, the fact remains that it hurts the general user base. It also shows another flaw in Valve's various systems, showing how vulnerable they have become in recent years as their omnipotence has been steadily fading. For now, Tom Giardino from Valve's business team has made it clear that they are looking to fix and or resolve the problem, but do not wish to give an ETA for when a said fix would come. This is likely because they don't want to mess with the developers' ability to control their games release timing. It seems Valve can't catch a break between this, the Epic Games Store, and other problems. You can check the thread linked below for a full look into Mike's findings and thoughts on the issue.

After EA shuttered Visceral Studios, who where working on a new, linear, single-player Star Wars videogame, Amy Hennig's situation never was cleared up by the publisher. Doubts remained on whether the developer, best known for her work at Naughty Dog with the Uncharted series, was still attached, in any capacity, to the newly-pivoted development of the aforementioned Star Wars videogame in EA Vancouver. Now, at the Gamelab conference in Barcelone, the air has been cleared: Amy Hennig has confirmed she hasn't been working with EA since January of this year. And the linear, single-player experience she was developing has been shelved by EA.

Hennig says that she is staying independent, now, and is in the process of setting up her own indie studio - and is likely taking a VR spin with her next creations. We wish her all the best, and hope that the indie liberty gives her enough room - and funds - to develop that dying breed of videogames that is the solo kind. Meanwhile, Henig's also confirmed that EA Vancouver's pivoting of the Star Wars videogame is reworking it into a - can you guess? - open world approach that is barely recognizable from her own work - so it does seem a game in the likes of Destiny and Anthem will be the end product.