Hello everyone!

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, either here or on Kickstarter, and I apologize for that.
The last few months have been a mental hell, and it’s been very difficult not to fall into depression. I owe you an explanation before getting into this patch.

The studio is almost dead; I am now officially “alone.” The legal battles are finally over (at last), and I’ll talk about them when I have the courage. Slowly, I’m climbing back up.

Regarding the studio and “upcoming games,” none of our public-fund requests have succeeded, and Noreya’s sales are not doing great, which doesn’t help.

The few remaining members of the studio have now left, leaving me alone.

Fortunately, Lune (pixel artist/animations) and Sarys (audio/music) are still working with me on our next games under a different type of contract. The important thing is that we will continue making things together, on a smaller scale!

Also, I never introduced him, even though he’s been active on the forums for a while. You might come across Thelvaën, who is my partner in my other company and has helped a lot with the Linux/Steamdeck version. He’s also working with me on the console port (an article is coming!). There’s also Zeksa, my other partner, who is working on UpRunner and occasionally helps me with specific points.

So, as you can tell, it’s a challenging period, and it doesn’t make creating new patches or finishing Kickstarter rewards any easier. But as I’ve promised many times, no one will be forgotten!

That’s it for the “studio updates”; now you know the essentials. Let’s move on to the fun part of this post!

I’ve wanted to release a patch to fix some lingering bugs for a while.
While working on that, one morning during a discussion with Lune, we came up with a funny idea (and we both needed a laugh): to create a small Christmas event featuring our favorite pet: the saussage (our nickname for the “Dark Frogs”).

Here’s the result, with this incredible video she made last week (it took her three hours, even though it doesn’t seem like it!).
Noreya now has its first “event” achievement, which will be active throughout December and January: The Saussig Hunt.

Objective: kill 100 Frogs wearing Christmas hats!

If you enjoy this event, we’ll consider adding more in the future ^-^

This is what I love about programming—there are always more improvements to be made, even when you think you’ve reached the end!

This time, I found two optimizations for the game.
The first one involved not loading certain types of data (that was never visible) into the graphics card… A simple solution that no one had noticed until now.

The second improvement is a bit trickier to explain, but essentially, I managed to “cheat” graphically to reduce the number of instances generated for the environment.
The impact is unnoticeable in smaller rooms, but in the larger ones, I’ve managed to save between 300 and 500 instances (an instance is a kind of object duplicated in memory) per room!
That’s no small thing ^-^ (and the console port will appreciate it).

It’s hard to explain and simplify with just a few images, but at least you know that I’ve optimized performance again. I hope players with modest machines will benefit from it!

(Sharing this image again because it makes me laugh)
That’s it for the updates! I wish you all happy holidays—take care of yourselves; it’s important!

The article about the console port will be published in early 2025 to kick off the new year on a positive note!

Now, let’s move on to the patch notes.

Patch 1.3.37
Add:

• christmas saussig
  
• Improve general performances
  
• Improve a bit performance in big rooms (b2_05, b2_23_1/2, giant worm)

Bugs

• remove “G” key which open a menu but is not configurable
  
• fix room b_3_16_L bad configuration in the wave, error that block the game
  
• if the boss die at the same time than you, you survive
  
• rework the exit for giant worm so player cannot skip the loot
  
• some monsters spawn in walls