I've been waiting to say this for FOUR HUNDRED YEARS:


https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1401730/

Cue the air horns! Release the doves! Fire the cannons! (But not at the doves!)

What a journey it's been. The original Crashlands came out in 2016 (9 years ago!), and we've spent nearly the last 5 years working on this sequel. We've put all of our blood (ow!), sweat (ew!), and tears (dew!) into this thing, and I'm incredibly proud of what we've made with our tiny little team of desiccated husks. I hope you love it as much as we do!

We've already got some great early reviews and previews. I'll just plop my favorites here:

• Vice[www.vice.com] calls it "a Crafting/Survival Masterclass" in a review that’s so glowing it made me blush!
  
• Hardcore Gamer[hardcoregamer.com] calls it "a crazy-fun adventure featuring a pair of ridiculously likable characters, set in a world that's usually bursting with humor but is smart enough to know when to take itself seriously"
  
• Wanderbots posted a charming preview video of the first hour of gameplay

We already knew we made something good, but it’s still a huge relief to hear other people agree!

As much as I'd love to spend a bunch of paragraphs bloviating about what it took to make this game and all the great things people are saying about it, I want to let you go actually play it. So I'll just leave you with some pro tips to streamline your first session:

• Explore! Try things! The game doesn't require you to do everything, but you'll have a lot more fun (and things will be better balanced) if you do more than just check off your quests. There are goodies and characters all over the map, so explore every nook and cranny.
  
• Harvest everything! Resources stay useful for quite a while, so you might as well harvest them as you run by. Then you'll already have them when you need them!
  
• Keep your research going! Return to your base often and talk to your Buddies to get your next Insights going. Each Buddy can only research one thing at a time, so returning to them often will let you get new stuff faster.
  
• You can change the difficulty at any time. If it's too hard, make it easier! If it's too easy, make it harder!
  
• You can continue your save across platforms if you get the game on Steam and mobile! Personally, I constantly bounce between my PC, my Android Phone, and the family Steam Deck.

If you run into trouble, there are a few places you can get help:

• Looking for guidance? Check out our help pages[www.bscotch.net], the subreddit, or join our Discord[discord.gg] to see if the community can give you some tips. Do some searches first!
  
• Found a bug (meaning something is BROKEN)? Report it to us[www.bscotch.net]!

I hope you have a blast!

💖,

Adam Coster

Webslinger @Butterscotch Shenanigans

P.S. Please drop a review! Those early reviews can really help a game be successful!

P.P.S. What happens next? Mostly we'll just have to see how the launch goes. But! We do have a couple of things in the pipe: Sam's working on an art book about the design and art of Crashlands 2, and we might even have... SURPRISE MERCH!?

Oh hey there, youngster!

People say that time moves faster and faster as you age. My last Ballyhoo marked 4 weeks to the Crashlands 2 launch, and I was so excited about how close that was. The blink of an eye! But 4 weeks was still an eternity for the youths, who only rolled their eyes and yelled, "That might as well be next century, old man!" as they vaped off into the sunset.

But now we're only 2 weeks away, which is truly Soon™ no matter how old you are! I think?

As the launch approaches, I've been feeling rather nostalgic about the original Crashlands and how far we've come with Crashlands 2. So this issue of the Ballyhoo is a little journey down memory lane.


Back in 2016 my two brothers and I launched the original Crashlands. It was our first game that paid any bills and is still the game we're best known for all these years later. It's been played by literally millions of people, which is both amazing and terrifying. Making Crashlands was a harrowing experience (there's a whole documentary about it), and honestly I'm still amazed we pulled it off!

(If you never played the original, or just want a refresher, someone did a delightfully-narrated 100% playthrough video edited down to a mere 2 hours!)

The success of Crashlands gave us all kinds of cool opportunities. From giving talks at the Game Developers Conference, to getting a tour of the Nintendo of America HQ, to being nominated for GOTY awards alongside juggernauts like Pokemon Go and Clash Royale.


We were super proud of what we'd made with the original game, but we were also quite aware that it wasn't the game we wished we could make. We'd only been making games for a couple of years when we started working on Crashlands, and we frankly didn't have the experience to make the game we imagined.

So we spent a few years retooling our studio, skilling up, expanding our team, and learning through launching another game (Levelhead[www.bscotch.net]). And then it was time to tackle Crashlands again, this time to make exactly the game we'd always wanted Crashlands to be. It still took a few years of research & development to become possible, and then another few years to finish the thing, but we did it!

You can get a sense of just how far we've come between the original and the sequel from some of the videos we put together over the past year:

- The release date announcement trailer shows off the benefits of changing from a procedural world to a hand-built one.
- Base-building probably has the most dramatic upgrade in Crashlands 2. Walls are tall! And buildings have roofs!
- Combat got the biggest experience upgrade. We made sure there's room for more casual play (my own preference) but the ceiling for just how interesting things can get is now a lot higher!
- Pets got more interesting, too!


Crashlands 2 is almost here, and the best thing you can do to support the game right now is to wishlist it ahead of time on your favorite platforms[bscotch.net] to let the stores know that they should be featuring it!

That's it for this Ballyhoo! As always, you can stay up to date with how things are going by listening to our podcast[podcast.bscotch.net] and hanging out in our Discord[discord.com].

💖,

Adam Coster
Webslinger @Butterscotch Getoffmylawnigans