About a year ago we were approached by a production assistant representing MGM Studios, asking for permission to use some footage from Perpetuum in an upcoming movie. According to them it was supposed to be the favorite game of the main character, used in two different scenes. Some extra visibility is always good, even if it's just some obscure indie movie - we thought back then. So we provided some high quality gameplay videos and didn't hear back since.

Well, imagine our surprise today.

The movie is called "Max", and it seems to be a full-fledged Hollywood movie, a good one even. The trailer has been released today - look for a stompy Gropho at the 29 second mark. Obviously the movie is not about our game and it probably only gets a few seconds of screen time, but needless to say we're very proud! :)

ps. Meanwhile the new assignment system is shaping up nicely, expect a new blog about it in the next few days.

Roboception!

As it happens, Perpetuum is officially 2 years old today. No, we didn’t forget about it, so you can now stop spamming the forum with it :)

I’m not really the sentimental type, so I hope you forgive me if I won’t start a tearful trip down memory lane. Fact is that we’re still here, and if it only depends on us, we don’t intend to go anywhere. Fact is that in these 2 years Perpetuum saw more than 60 patches, from small fixes to large content and feature updates, including two major expansions. And fact is that we couldn’t have done this without you, our faithful players. So thank you for sticking with us thus far, and here’s to many more years ahead!

Of course it wouldn’t be a proper anniversary without some fun events, so let’s see what we have in store for you.

Allow me to start with the bad news: there won’t be an official tournament this time. Last year it was really great and it provided us with a lot of experience, and we’d really love to do it again in the future. But the truth is that it takes away so much development resources and manpower that at this time we’d rather spend that on actual development. Hope that’s okay with you. *puppyeyes*

But without further ado, here’s what will happen on our 2nd anniversary weekend, starting on the 30th of November, and closing on the 4th of December:

Anniversary sparks

Niani combat spark

Again, you will have the opportunity to unlock the "golden" Niani sparks through the connected special assignments. For our new players this will be the first time to get their hands on one of these special sparks, and for our veterans this will mean that they can unlock the other one too, the one which they couldn’t last year (although I bet some of you managed to unlock both by various means).

Treasure hunt

Of course, the annual treasure hunt returns as well, but this time with a twist. Last year you had it simple, just had to search for artifacts and you got instant candy. To make it a bit challenging, the artifacts you have to look for will contain (beside random loot) a special distress beacon too. (Artifacts will be available on every island.)

I.C.E.

Activating one of these distress beacons will call forth a Guardian Commander of one of the three factions, who will not be very happy that you phoned him out of his lovely plasma bubble bath. However if you can beat him, he will drop an Alien Improbability Device for sure, and maybe, just maybe, a universal faction token.

This token can be used in the Syndicate Supplies to exchange it for an Integration Cycle Extender, or as you know it better, ICE. Stocks will be limited though, so don’t miss out.

P.A.Q.S.

It’s time for the Perpetuum Anniversary Quiz Show again, with yours truly. We had one a year ago and it was great fun, so I thought it’s high time that we did it again. What’s it about you ask?

Well, I go out in a robot and everyone gathers around me as if I would about to start a lovely tale. Instead of a tale though, I drop out a field container with something inside it, and ask a question. The answer to that question is always a four-digit number, which happens to be the code that opens said container. The fastest one to find the answer and loot the container will get to keep anything that’s inside it. Pretty straightforward stuff. This time there will be even a few cool items in them. (See what I did there?)

We’ll have a dedicated chat channel for the quiz, the name will be announced at a later time, but we’ll of course have server-wide messages right before the event too.

The event will happen on Sunday, December 2nd at 21:00 CET (server time), right outside of Truhold-Markson Alpha terminal. So make sure you get there in time, or place a spark teleport target beforehand! (Here is a link to figure your local time for the event.)

Last but not least, a little something aimed at those who can’t take part in these events for any reason: every account that has an active subscription at the time of the patch on Friday the 30th will receive a redeemable Alien Improbability Device. (And I’d like to state here that contrary to hearsay, it does not contain only T4 items.)

Well, that’s pretty much it. We hope you’ll have great time, wish you steady loot, and hope to see you in the game!

...I'll get me coat.

Anyway.

I don't think I have to introduce Steam Greenlight to anyone, but I'm happy to say that we took the chance as soon as we literally could and put the game up, so now you can express your desire to get the game up on Steam! Click here!

Gamma Frontier

Finally the day has come, when we unleash what we essentially consider as almost a rewrite of the game (considering there's barely anything left untouched in it), and open the Gamma Frontier. This has been a frankly unreasonable amount of work, but having seen some of the things already built on the test servers, I feel it was already well worth it.

A big big BIG thank you and massive respect goes to anyone who gave the test server a shot and systematically uncovered our occasional mishaps through numbers and lines of code; we hope the final product lives up to your expectations. (And if you didn't join the test server, now you know who to blame.)

The massive list of changes and upgrades are available here, the help pages are available here, and a fairly accurate representation of the dev-team can be found here.

And now, it's your turn: Last one on Gamma is a rotten Arkhe!