HOARD: Upcoming Patch Detailed, Free New Level

It’s been just over two weeks since HOARD released, and thousands of gamers have been getting their flame on while toasting villages, incinerating knights, crisping thieves, and kidnapping the occasional princess!

Reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, with many surprised at just how addictive and deep the dragon “stratecade” (strategy arcade) experience is. Ars Technica says HOARD “will keep you scorching villages for hours on end” while IGN boasts, “burninating the countryside is definitely a lot of fun.” Joystiq says it perhaps best of all: “There is a sparkling gem of gameplay here.”

However, the game was not entirely without its rough edges, and there are a few issues we’ve been monitoring which need a little tweaking. Your feedback at HOARDgame.com has been very important to us, and we’re happy to confirm that we’ll be addressing most of those issues in an upcoming patch!

The patch will include:

• Eye Strain Begone — We’ll be increasing tutorial and badge text size for less squintyness. 20/10 vision no longer required!
• Lasting Friendship — The multiplayer lobby will now be persistent. After finishing a game, you’ll return to the game setup lobby so you can easily play again with the same people. If you want to back out and de-friend them, that’s now on your conscience!
• Leaderboard Glitch No-More — Certain co-op games were not posting leaderboard scores correctly. This sometimes leads to improper scores being posted on the main HOARD Rank leaderboard. That will be fixed, and although the HOARD Rank leaderboard will be reset, you won’t lose any progress—the first time you play a new game of any type, your HOARD Rank will be reposted without delay!
• Anti-Royal Bias — This badge wasn’t reliably triggering. We fixed it. Yay!
• That One Exploit is Fixed — There was a certain little exploit involving a specific power-up that could be abused by some sneaky people, and it is now fixed! We’re not telling!
• Which Map? — During game setup, some people were getting confused about whether their map selection was confirmed or not. We modified to make it more obvious.
• A Little This, a Little That — Various tweaks and improvements throughout.

And because we love you, we’re throwing in a couple bonus goodies as well:

• Deathspin — A new HOARD map will be included, absolutely free. Try your hand at surviving in a terrible spiral of DOOOOOM! Check out Deathspiral in the video above.
• Purple Princesses — Princesses worth 3,000 gold or more will show up in a purple dress (instead of pink), so you can quickly assess which lady you’d like to pursue even in the heat of the battle.
• Friendly Competition — Sort leaderboards by your friends list, so you can always make sure you’re a step better than the rest of your social circle.

We’re finishing up the patch now and hope to see it go live within the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned, and thanks for HOARDing! Oh yeah—if you aren’t playing HOARD yet, what are you waiting for? In the words of Platform Nation, “Buy this game right now. Right. NOW.”

‘Nuff said!