Hello all,

We're very excited to announce the next step in the Shoppe Keep universe: a brand new game called Craftlands Workshoppe[www.excalibur-games.net]!

Craftlands Workshoppe will launch in the first half of 2020.

Get ready for a new adventure in the Shoppe Keep universe!

Become an alchemist, a blacksmith or a chef as you’re handed the role of running Allcraft’s Workshoppe in a new fantasy world amongst the clouds.

• Strangefire Studios’ next game takes the Shoppe Keep universe in a bold new direction
  
• Craft and sell potions, weapons and meals
  
• Train and hire employees to expand your fantasy Shoppe
  
• Explore a brand new world amongst the clouds and get to know the locals

As you'll notice from the name and the logo, this is a brand new game, with a hint of Shoppe Keep. The game is a fantasy business sim of sorts, and is developed by the lead developer of the Shoppe Keep games: Arvydas Žemaitis.

That said, this is a brand new game which stands apart from Shoppe Keep in a lot of ways - it's isometric, for instance. It revolves not so much around running a Shoppe yourself but instead hiring, training and managing employees. The game allows you to choose from three routes/classes at the beginning of the game: alchemist, blacksmith or chef.

Don't expect a Shoppe Keep 3, because that's not what this game is. Craftlands Workshoppe is a brand new game, with a hint of Shoppe Keep.

To keep up to date, you can sign up for the Craftlands Workshoppe mailing list towards the bottom of this page[www.excalibur-games.net], like us on Facebook[www.facebook.com], follow us on Twitter or join the official Craftlands Workshoppe Discord[discord.gg].

Hello Shoppe Keepers,

The time has come to open up your Shoppe once again, as Shoppe Keep 2 is now available!

As a loyal Shoppe Keep fan, you should have already received a 33% off coupon voucher via Steam. This is a thank you from us to you for supporting us by playing an earlier Shoppe Keep franchise entry.

In addition, we also have some free bonus legacy items in Shoppe Keep 2 that will be gifted to you when you play the new game.

Shoppe Keep 1 owners will receive the Keepsake Hat:

Craft Keep VR owners will receive the Cavallo Visor:

For more information on Shoppe Keep 2, please visit the Shoppe Keep 2 Steam page!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/684580

Hi everyone.

There is a new patch to download on the public branch! Generally it fixes a couple of bugs spotted by the community and added a meter to Chapter 4 so that players could understand how much progression was made in that particular mission.

• annoyance meter added to Chapter 4
  
• Wood logs wont clog the furnace anymore
  
• Orders that require weird unobtainable items removed

If you discover any other issues, do let us know!

Hello everyone,

Today Craft Keep VR enters its full release. With it comes some new chapters and support for a new platform, the Oculus Touch. We would like to thank everyone who has purchased the game during its early access period and hope that any new players will enjoy the game too!

To celebrate there is a 25% launch discount and we have created this spiffing trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L9xaDhUSQQ

If you come across any issues in this update, do let us know!

It’s always a difficult transition when moving from Early Access to Full Release and I wanted to talk about some of the development and obstacles we faced to be a little open with how the game had progressed. Initially I wanted to cover the very questions that were asked on Craft Keep VR’s store page, and see if we had hit them.

We still believe that Virtual Reality is still in its infancy, there are three major players in the VR world. However, we had chosen to go full on with virtual reality with room scale and this meant that the only technology available to us was the HTC Vive as it was able to fully replicate hand movements. Later on Oculus Touch support had been added too. We wanted to grow a community, however we did struggle to gain some traction with this as the audience is still pretty small and reaching out to those who have VR is quite difficult.

We had approached both Vive and Oculus before the game had released in Early Access to see if there was a way to further communicate with those who own VR, but was not successful. We also launched at a time when Steam’s discovery system had been going through a few changes which could have meant some visibility was lost and impactful traffic meant that we ended up not targeting core VR users. I don’t think we had a large enough community to shape the game, those that were with us, we are truly grateful for, but I wish we could have built that.

We did discover some interesting things from watching people play and had chosen to implement a few subtle changes to try to make the game feel better. Some of them included feedback on how the teleportation system worked and introducing a brand new tutorial to help players learn to play.

We are about 5 and a half months in development for Craft Keep VR so we did hit the intended release date. Today we are releasing all seven chapters which have progressed the story and have added some new gameplay mechanics like teleportation, some new recipes to create, Sushi to eat, hats to wear.

We had increased the number of swords with the inclusion of daggers, gold ingots, fire bomb arrows and a few chapter specific crafting recipes like flame oil. There is also a shooting range and the story now has an end with an unlockable item within the hub area (I won’t tell you what it is!)

This was the original Craft Keep VR.

We were considering increasing the price with some chapters, however I must admit that we did not hit an audience and gain enough traction to input into development to add major features that would warrant a price increase. Therefore, the game stayed at $14.99 indefinitely.

We had some great involvement during the first few weeks of Craft keep VR and had a lot of engagement and ideas, however we did see quite a large drop in activity and we had some trouble reaching new players. We did spend a lot of time trying to gain new players and feedback by attending a few exhibitions and contacting several press and media. However we did struggle with Valves new discovery system as it changed some of the algorithms which made things a little difficult. But overall, we did have some trouble reaching players to help support the game and allow us to spend more than we anticipated on the project. I wish that we were better at that!


So today, while we are adding new chapters, adding support for a completely new VR platform and entering a full release, it is at the same time quite a sad day too. While we anticipated a 4-6-month development time as a worst-case scenario, something that we could guarantee. We found it difficult to reach the audience needed for it to be sustainable and allow us to continue development even further.

We have had more fun developing in VR than we have had developing many other titles. We are strong believers of the importance of VR in gaming and see a lot of great promise in the technology. However, if I’m being honest, the audience is not yet there to become sustainable and we’ve seen a lot of VR games release in such a short time span, many of these being free technical demos.

With around 175 million players using Steam, much less than 1% of those are VR users. Consider that 1% may not even want a blacksmithing game, this is an example of segmentation and means that the further we refine our game, the fewer the number of people are interested in it. That number will surely grow in time and as the kit becomes more affordable and accessible we’re going to see some truly awesome VR games. But to create a sustainable development you need to make sure that people can see and want to play your game.

There are some awesome VR experiences that do not compromise their potential player base like Resident Evil 7. Sure, it’s not designed to be a full room scale motion controlled title, but what it does is offer a fully playable VR game with hours of entertainment! It’s tough to get people invested in a VR game for hours, and Resident Evil 7 is one of the few VR games that hits it. If they had added Motion controls, I could very well say it would be the ultimate VR experience. However, what Resident Evil 7 has done is not water down their audience. Anyone can play it, no matter whether you have a VR headset or not.

This is incredibly important for VR developers because if you create a VR game that can be played without VR, it means that you can reach those 170 million players who don’t have the space or budget for VR technology.
VR’s success relies not only on the players who support VR by purchasing the technology, but also by those who don’t want VR. There is room for VR only games, in fact it is important that these types of games continue to exist because there are things you can do in VR that cannot be done without it. In fact we could not make a non VR version of Craft Keep, as the game relies so heavily on motion controls.

We are pleased with some of the feedback we’ve received in making a VR game and are particularly pleased with this endorsement from Turps of Yogscast!

https://twitter.com/The_T/status/847459628996636672

While exhibiting the game at several shows we were looking for some feedback from players, but we had nothing but praise from many players. We do feel that this also might be due to the players experiencing VR for the very first time.

Those who make these VR only experiences should continue to do so, there’s so many things you can only experience in VR. But we couldn’t quite make it work, we couldn’t hit the audience we needed but now have a better understanding of the technology and some plans to make VR more sustainable for developers like ourselves.

So, what do I think of the Future of VR? I think it’s looking promising. There are some truly awesome games coming out which we can’t wait to play. Even though we didn’t hit what we wanted, we loved working on VR and we still want to make another VR game because we had a lot of fun developing Craft keep VR. However, it’s not sustainable for us right now… But we are not giving up on VR.

We are in the process of prototyping other projects and while we are not planning to make a VR game where VR is the core focus, we will make sure that the game also has some VR functions. As a small developer, we must target as wide a net as possible for development to be sustainable and VR right now for us is a tough one to crack. So, the next game we develop will be completely playable without VR, but to continue to support this awesome technology, the game will include VR functions.

We want VR to succeed, it has brought a completely new life to gaming and it is truly a new way to play. We will not give up on VR technology, but until the audience and install base are there to make this a less risky proposition for developers, we must consider Non VR and VR to become a single install base than separating it and reaching fewer players.

I do hope that this lengthy announcement tackles some of the core discussions with our Early Access promises, our thoughts on VR and some of the difficulties that we may have faced. I do once again thank everyone who purchased Craft Keep VR and for supporting us and do stay tuned for the future as we do intend to visit VR for our next game too.

Hello everyone,

Chris here, I'm the Product Manager for Excalibur Games. Craft Keep has undergone several changes within the public beta build and I hope that we can share some more details soon. Right now we're working out some of the kinks and if you'd like to play the patch build and give us some thoughts, please do.

Just a little heads up that the developer of Craft Keep VR (Arvydas) will be exhibiting at EGX Rezzed this week. We will be inside the VR area so if you are attending and don't have a VR kit at home you could well give Craft Keep a shot! Arvydas will be on hand to answer questions at the show so come over and say hi!

More info on EGX rezzed can be found in the link below:

https://www.egx.net/rezzed

Craft Keep VR will join just a few other developers that work with Excalibur Games. Check them out below:

http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/452920/

http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/446020/

http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/524250/

http://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/390870/

There will also be a new game called Floatlands which will debut at the show

www.floatlands.net

We hope to see you there if you plan on attending!

Good day old and new crafters!

The Last month has been very hectic for us, but we overcame any and all issues, and finally can release another update to Craft Keep! As usual the short change log is at the end of the post. Following this update we are going to take a week or so off development to celebrate Christmas with out families and welcome new Years, as a personal promise, development on CK will continue on January the 2nd straight away!

With the help of Moira the druid from Chapter 2, you arrived near Dave's Discount Dungeon in the Mountain Range adventure, filled with warriors and this DJ Hu5ky cult characters (For whatever reason) you will be helping them in their raids of the dungeon by crafting weapons and potions, but Gurf the Special warrior has found the airship ticket that cost too much back in Chapter 2, and is willing to trade it for a big rock sword, how to craft it? That is for you to find out *cough* explosive arrows to cracked boulders *cough* Chapter 4 is in the works and will arrive in January, even maybe bundled with Chapter 5!
Christmas has arrived in Craft Keep's world, and as such a few changes came with it. Firstly snow has covered all 3 Chapters and where there is snow, there are snowballs! Just grab a pile of snow beneath your feet and sling it at customers who annoy you! As well a decorative christmas hilt is available to order in Free Mode for your own needs.
Chapter 3 introduces a new kind of arrow head, an explosive one! Free mode can order it for a price, while Chapter 3 requires a unique order to come around and is vital in progressing! Hope all of you will have some fun with this one!
Do not forget to visit Shoppe Keep update page for it's Christmas patch! It's the same world after all!
Click here!


ChangeLog:

[ADDITION]Chapter 3 WIP version
[ADDITION]DJ Hu5ky is spawning in Chapter 3
[ADDITION]New explosive arrow head
[ADDITION]Chrismified visuals
[ADDITION]New sword hilt
[FIX]"Real world" variant of the shelf has an additional shelf for collisions
[FIX]Arrow head meshes fixed


And as always - Stay Tuned!

Good day crafters! Another update rolls out today into the live branch. As usual the full changelog is at the bottom!

Sorry this took a bit longer than usual, as you know I have been moving homes and because the new place did not have a desk, I was developing with the PC on the ground, during that time I stepped by mistake on the external HDD that had the project on, at that point it failed, thank god I was able to retrieve the project folder out, so we are cool, here is a picture of me the moment I understood that the HDD has failed:
Chapter 2 stars off in a familiar Forest Pick setting, as you were thrown out of your stall during Chapter 1, you need to start off fresh, fulfilling low cost orders for miners at the Moira mines within the forest. Moira the druid has been hard at work keeping the mines free of the Kobs infestation, so many miners want to help out and will ask for swords as replacements for their pickaxes. Because the mines are at a dissaray, you will be tasked to mine Iron and Silver for your orders on your own.
But first you need to give a sword to a miner so he gives you his pickaxe for mining. Once that is complete you can Right hand teleport to the veins and get as much ore as you want! At times Kobs will venture out of the mines and you are able to throw items or shoot arrows at them!
Once sufficent gold is earned (About 300 total gold in pocket) Moira will show up and ask for a unique dagger which is made by receiving an enchanting gem, unique blade and unique hilt from random customers, keep your eye out for Sur Blade, Ancient enchant gem, Zim hilt rewards from them! Enchant the blade, connect the hilt and Moira will open up the foundations for Chapter 3: Mountain Range!

Enchanted blades now emit particles tainted with the enchantment color, and more enchant types as well as FX will be introduced!
Why? Why not. Say thank you to Crunchy Tuna an awesome twitch streamer for the idea!

We started adding in some haptic feedback into controllers such as hitting a mold or a hot blade, atatching blades to hilts, shooting an arrow etc, so there is some sort of physical feedback on interactions while in VR.

As always - Stay tuned! Thank you for your support!

[ADDITION]Haptic feedback on lots of actions
[ADDITION]Chapter 2 upgrades
[ADDITION]Music volume modifying at the main scene
[ADDITION]Empty canisters can be burned in the forge
[ADDITION]Watch emits sound when put close to the ear
[ADDITION]Particle Enchantment
[ADDITION]New random sounds added
[ADDITION]Kill notifications
[ADDITION]Kobs infest Chapter 2 phase 2
[ADDITION]New cauldron recipe Fire Oil
[ADDITION]Moira introduced
[ADDITION]Hat beard accesory
[ADDITION]Sushi
[CHANGE]New range gun sounds
[CHANGE]Barbarian kills no longer yield bags, but instantly add up gold
[FIX]Enchant gems turn off particles when not using
[FIX]Gem charges fixed
[FIX]Performance a tad updated on Free Mode
[FIX]Start gold text fixed
[FIX]Teleport does not modify Y axis
[FIX]Shopkeeper is invincible

First off the bat - I will be moving homes for the next few days, as such I will be sluggish in replying to community posts and reviews and issuing hotfixes. The second my PC turns on in the new place - I will be working on Craft Keep again.

Let's move on to some changes, as usual the full changelog can be seen at the end of the post!

DISCLAIMER: Chapter 2 test now contains a set available order items, as well as objects unlocked, it is not advised to try and enjoy Craft Keep in the test environment, it should only be used to try out mining Iron and Silver from the veins and give feedback how that feels and works.

The tutorial scene now has a NO button near the YES, you can turn away customers in case you see that you will fail an order. Don't worry another chap will ran up with the same order, basically resetting it.

The story text in the Main scene was a bit threatening and daunting, now we added a few scroll buttons so you can read it at your leisure if you are interesting in the Lore and story of Craft Keep. If not, just hit the new START button once the pad is in the holder.

2 new mage hats added for your character, and more to come! Can anyone say TF2?

Now when teleporting you will be shown which zones you can teleport to and as well outline the room you have outlined in SteamVR, so you can plan ahead where exactly you will be situated after a teleport

We've updated the Laser retrieval code. lasers should now be more precise. Check out a couple of examples below of the laser retrieval

We have added snap handles to the following items, cross bow, hammer, pickaxe, etching knife, all hilts and the range gun. This means that wherever you pick up an item it will snap to a set position. You can see evidence of it in action below as we try to pick up an upside down crossbow.

As we said at the top of the announcement, The developer Arvydas will be away for the next week as he is moving home. But you can bet that the moment his PC gets some power, he'll hop straight into some code.

As always, do get in touch with us in the forums or using the contact email address to get in touch to report any issues or offer any suggestions.


[ADDITION]Silver Ore mining vein added to the Chapter 2 test
[ADDITION]Added No button to tutorial to send away customer if order is failing.
[ADDITION]Scroll buttons for bigger text in the main menu scene (Middle down is the launch one, side ones for up and down)
[ADDITION]2 New hats
[ADDITION]Chapter 2 pad story update
[CHANGE]Teleport shows your room layout
[CHANGE]Right hand teleportation lights up where you can aim
[CHANGE]Right hand teleportation does not show zone icons
[CHANGE]Random customer speech bubbles increased in size
[CHANGE]Throwing strength increased
[CHANGE]Arrow heads have a late release after being popped, so as not to fly all around
[CHANGE]Order clipboard slight size increase
[CHANGE]Main menu glitch timer increased (Rarer, randomly each 45-65 seconds)
[CHANGE]Crossbow, hammer, pickaxe, etching knife, all hilts, range gun have snap handles
[CHANGE]Clearer text where to attach the blade in the beginning scene while holding the trigger
[FIX]Grip toggle variable setting saves
[FIX]Arrows dont get stuck to fingers
[FIX]Pathfinding in Tutorial scene modified
[FIX]Updated retrieval laser code, more precise
[FIX]50% reduction in force required to pop mold
[FIX]Modified crossbow spawn
[FIX]Gender select saving issues addressed
[FIX]Unneeded molds locked in tutorial chapter
[FIX]Modified available objects and order items in Chapter 2

As always - Stay tuned!

Today a new patch has been uploaded to the public branch. Our main priority first of all is teaching players how to play and making everyone feel comfortable, so this patch will be mainly about that, and the begining of Chapter 2.
Minor changes to item collisions, especially arrows and small vials, as to not have them roll so frequently.Broken blades heat up faster, and require less heat to be hit by the hammer for a fix.

The "VR Settings" or as we like to call it "Beginning scene" (it's that white matrix like construct scene yada yada) Has a few changes.The text is more defined by a background image, as well all controllers that highlight which buttons have to be pressed are way bigger! The Room selection has been removed as we will allow teleportation to be used by any room scale.We allow the player to choose which grip option best suits them - either to hold the grip to hold the item, or grip once to pick up and grip again to drop. With both of the grip options this accuracy is possible!
In the zone where we teach players that some items have uses, for example hilts need to be activated before they accept blades, but the hilts and blades spawn far away - out of reach, this way we introduce the Item retrieve feature allowing items to be retrieved even when out of bounds or rolled away
The crossbow zone teaches players that items can be connected and only then used, but we expanded it a bit to introduce to the player how to teleport between zones.
Chapter 2 pad was added to the main menu scene.In it you will be greeted by a familiar place that you grew to love in the free mode, with some slight changes, the endless druid sword quest is gone, as well as Ol'Dragonclaw (No worries, we will meet him yet as the story progresses), but you have an ore vein on the left side of the workbench, using newly found teleportation you can go to that vein, pick up a pickaxe and hack away at exposed ores for some free iron ore. This will tie in into the story of Chapter 2, so let's get some feedback how mining ore yourself feels!
Remember latest builds will be available in the patch_test branch before me announcing about them with such announcements.
As always - stay tuned!

P.S. sorry for the low quality GIF images, will have to replace current software as it is causing issues lately. Still - fun gifs are fun gifs!








Cavallo only knows profit. Cavallo owns you, Cavallo is progress.