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Hello, Antihero players - we're two weeks out from launch day, and are doing some housekeeping to get things in shape for 1.0.

This is a minor release. We've moved to new, beefier servers in anticipation of the billions of players we'll surely get on launch day. This necessitated a complete database wipe, which means you'll need to create a new account.

All in-progress games have been wiped as well. (This will happen a few more times before launch -- we really appreciate your patience!)

• Lots of little polish, especially in the audio department.
• AI's gotten a bit smarter.
• Sounds are muted when the game is backgrounded
• Re-enabled automatching for Live Matches
• Hotseat matches will autosave, and can be continued
• Can no longer add a trap to an inactive Guard Tower
• Thugs can no longer guard tiles that have stunned enemies

As always, we welcome your feedback!

Weird, something else must be going on. Do you mind emailing me a screenshot of the games list?

This should be fixed now - please let us know if it's still an issue!

Thanks, I'll look into this!

Great to hear :) -- Thanks, Pierrec!

Whoops! I slapped the server around a bit.

This is a major release with several new multiplayer features, and brings us very close to our 1.0 release.

All in-progress games have been wiped. (This will happen a few more times before launch -- as always, we really appreciate your patience and feedback.)

• LEADERBOARDS. Wins in automatch games are tracked on a leaderboard. (Invite games don't result in leaderboard changes.) When the game is launched, we will be tracking overall wins, as well as wins-per-month. We also have a "Skill" leaderboard that ranks players based on matchmaking skill. The UI is not quite ready for release, but we're tracking all this on the backend.
• CUSTOM GAME RULES. (Invite, Skirmish, and Hotseat games only.)
• SKILL-BASED AUTOMATCHING. This will slow down automatches a bit while our player pool is small, but will become very important on launch day. Your skill is tracked on the server and used to match you against opponents of similar skill.
• Strangefellows Lodge: losing control of a level 2 Lodge will result in your Gangs and Thugs losing one heart (unless they're already at one).
• Fancier Victory and Defeat screens.
• "Lantern Generator" upgrade is now called "Lamp Lighter".
• Lots of little UI improvements.

We're a month away from our 1.0 launch, which will include a story-driven singleplayer campaign! 

As always, we appreciate your feedback!

Can you email me - tim at antihero-game.com - and I'll get you set up with a new build to see if it fixes the issue?

Hey Luke - sorry about this! What a pain.

• Are you on Mac or Windows? Which version of the OS?
• Does restarting fix the problem?
• Is this your first time playing Antihero, or did you have an earlier version that worked?

Tim

This is fixed, and will be pushed out in the next patch soon.

Whoops! Thanks for the catch. This will be fixed in the next patch.

Yup, that's the intended behavior. Saboteur has been nerfed a few times, and _may_ get nerfed again in this particular respect - the jury's still out! But unless/until that happens: enjoy your additional burglary! (With the right upgrades, this means that a Saboteur can pay for himself...)

Thanks, Toastgeraet! Yep, the AI is particularly dumb on the Masquerade map, but it will be improved before launch.

Thanks, Eagleheart! This is certainly something on our radar. The game won't get support for > 2 players before its (imminent!) launch, but it's something I'll be experimenting with after version 1.0 is out!

Hi longgtran - you can use the link in the purchase email you received when you originally bought the game -- that link will always point to the most recent build. But the easier solution is to download the itch app which will automatically keep your itch games up to date!

Hey wait you're not allowed to tell everyone that you beat the dev :)

These are wonderful and hilarious. I really like The Gaol in particular.

Here's a preview of a map we're currently working on. Hint: you probably want to get whatever's in that gigantic palace in the center.

Hey vfabien, I really like these ideas - interesting tweaks on the game's core mechanics coupled with a tight integration to its theme are exactly what we're going for with map designs.

Thanks, Nyxiaus, and welcome to Antihero!

Yep - everyone who purchases the game on itch will receive a Steam key when we launch there.

Yep - the game will come to iOS and Android phones & tablets some time after the PC & Mac versions ship!

Hey vfabien, thanks for posting!

Yeah - a lot of the game's strategy is about properly reacting to what your opponent just did (and about predicting how they'll be able to react to what you're about to do). Double-turns is an interesting idea, but what Kenbutsu says is true - it's just not really compatible with the Antihero ruleset.

The "Live Games" feature is Antihero's answer to "let's make this move along faster!" ideas. Currently, because we have a small player base, Live Games are lobby-based. But when the game hits 1.0 and every man, woman, child, dog, and parakeet on earth buys a copy, we'll turn automatching on for Live Games as well. (Even if there are some parakeets that don't end up getting the game.)

Antihero Build 11 -- January 28, 2017

This patch contains a handful of minor but important balance changes, which necessitates wiping in-progress games. This will likely happen a few more times before launch. As always, we really appreciate your patience and feedback!

• Balance changes:
  • Masquerade mask burglaries give an additional gold
  • Wharf: Ships do not have a guard, and have a large burglary sack
  • Guarded buildings can be trapped by the Saboteur
  • Strangefellows Level 2 now properly gives newly-spawned Gangs an extra health
• AI is now better at the wharf level
• Several other improvements to AI cleverness
• Tutorial:
  • Reduced difficulty of level 2
  • Assassin is no longer available in level 2
• Fix: Server now sends email when your opponent resigns a match
• Polish-y bits:
  • Added some animation to the lantern in the HUD
  • Added a custom cursor

Don't discount the poor hard-working urchins! They're thieving for you every turn that they're embedded in a business! :)

It's persistent - though there's a bug in the current build where subsequent gangs won't get the health bonus when recruited. That is, when you get Strangefellows 2, all existing Thugs and Gangs get +1 health (and +1 to their max health as well), newly-recruited Thugs start with 2 health rather than 1, but newly-recruited Gangs do _not_ get the additional health that they should be. This will be fixed in the next build, which will come out later this week, once it's gone through QA!

I agree, and we'll be making changes to nerf this strategy soon. The suggestion about a skill that allows the master thief to bypass enemy obstacles is interesting. I think what we'll likely do - to start, at least - is just designate a set of protected tiles around each guild. Enemies will be able to pass through those tiles, but not stop on them.

Man, I'm stumped! I've recreated basically this exact map layout and situation, and I'm able to get my urchin in the church past my gang. I'll keep an eye on it. If you're able to reliably reproduce it please let me know!

Please do, thanks!

And to be clear, if you hire an Urchin here, you get a "blocked!" notification if you try to move him into Sudden Murmur? Can you see which tile flashes red when the notification shows?

No worries, glad you got it working!

Hey Tortoise - it sounds like you may have downloaded the Mac version of the game. Make sure you select the Windows version from the download page.

Can you post a screenshot of the map?

They are all masterpieces. Each is the pinnacle of craft and design. Ranking perfection is not possible.

Sadly unlikely - the game uses Adobe AIR, which isn't Linux friendly. Otherwise we'd love to support it.

Yep, this is on the list of things to fix. The (minor) trickiness is that, since you don't have a persistent connection to the server (that is, the game reconnects to the server each time you load a game or send a turn or fetch new games or whatever), the server doesn't "know" when you're actually in-game. But I think we can work around this by simply putting off sending "your turn!" emails until your account hasn't made a server request for X minutes or whatever.

Hey @bremg - sorry! What a pain.

The game automatically logs errors and sends them to the server - but a hard crash is an Adobe AIR bug, not a game bug, which means that the logic for capturing the error log isn't even getting a chance to fire, so these crashes are being lost to the ether. Which is frustrating!

I do wonder if that high resolution has something to do with the issue. If you run it in windowed mode (I understand that may make it unreasonably small for you...) does it help? (Currently windowed mode is locked to a 1024x768 window, but an upcoming patch will add adjustable window sizes.)

Hey kcovey - yeah, I hear you! We actually do have a "Synchronous mode" that we've played with internally. It changes the mechanics a bit: you see your opponent's moves play out in realtime, of course; but more interestingly, there's a turn timer (similar to Hearthstone), which puts a new twist on the core gameplay, as you really have to think on your feet.

From a business perspective, there are a couple things that give me pause about shipping with this mode. First, the game needs a much larger pool of active players in order to have automatching work well. If you hit the "Quick Match" button and you don't get an async game immediately, that's no big deal -- that suits the pacing of async games. But if you're trying to play a realtime match and it takes several minutes to find an opponent, you -- the proverbial you, i.e. most players -- are likely to just bail.

The second concern is a bit smaller, and has to do with mobile devices. Antihero will ship on tablets on phones several months after the PC version is complete, and async just makes so much sense on those devices. That said, Hearthstone has definitely demonstrated that large numbers of players are willing to do synchronous play from their iPhones and iPads... but Hearthstone has Blizzard behind it :).

Anyway, it's not an either-or thing. The game will definitely ship with the existing async mode, and it may _also_ ship with the synchronous mode; we just need to figure out what the best player experience will be.

ALL THAT SAID, the current plan is to release an update with Synchronous mode enabled - soon - and gather feedback from players! Hopefully this will happen in the next week or so.

The next update is basically ready to go, but we decided to hold off on pushing it over the holidays, as I have limited access to a computer till next week, so if anything had blown up I would be slow to respond this week. We'll push it out early next week!

The next update will contain important balance changes to Thugs, the Strangefellows Lodge, and Saboteurs, as well as some backend stuff that won't be terribly visible to players but will be laying the groundwork for important changes as we close in on launch. My major focus for a while will be the single player campaign and improved AI - our collective feeling is that a strong single player component is vital for getting more casual players into the multiplayer (and growing them into hardcore players!) which is necessary for the long-term viability of the game.

There's another multiplayer map in the works as well, though that's probably at least a couple updates down the line.

We've all been extremely gratified by the response to this first launch, and I'm really excited about growing this game into something big - thank you all for your feedback on this first update!

When a building is dark it just means that you haven't scouted it yet - which usually means there's still a burglary in it. (Unscouted/dark buildings also don't reveal whether they're guarded or have enemy urchins in them.)

If your opponent has gotten to the building first, you will get nothing (or 1 coin if they've only visited the building once). So, all dark buildings are guaranteed to have burglary rewards at the beginning of the game, but your opponents can change the playfield out from under you :)

(Also, it's possible that a dark building that doesn't have footprints next to it has still been burgled by an opponent saboteur.)

The game is saved after each move, so if you quit and resume, you won't be starting your turn over from the beginning.