[h3]Hi everyone,[/h3] We hope you had wonderful holidays so far! [b]With 2024 coming to an end, it's time for a quick look back and a glimpse into the future of Backpack Battles.[/b] For the development team (meaning Doro and Mario), this year was without a doubt one of the most exciting and wild ones ever. We entered Early Access in early March and it was without exaggeration an overwhelming once-in-a-lifetime success. Collectively, all Backpack Battles players have a total of [b]30 million hours[/b] (or around 3500 years), which is mindboggling. [b]Thank you so much, everybody![/b] Since then, we did everything in our power to make this game as good as it can be. We added many features, many of which were planned and part of the roadmap - and many of which came up over the last nine months. So here are some highlights of things we added during the year: [list] [*] We had the honor to work with the devs of other indie games we know and love on [b]crossover[/b] content, such as Balatro, Claws & Chaos, Magicraft, and Wildfrost! [*] We added [b]class badges[/b], so accessing the items of multiple classes at once became possible [*] We added [b]loadouts[/b], enabling more playstyles for each class as well as the option to start with a random selection of items [*] We added a [b]history[/b] where you can see your previous runs and do more fights with them! [*] We added [b]skills[/b] to make runs more varied and dynamic [*] And just now, we added [b]lobbies[/b] so you can play with your friends and [b]Custom rules[/b] (both for lobbies and unranked games) for whacky fun runs. [*] …And of course there also were the Rainbow Goobert and Ranger plushies :) [/list] With the 0.9 update and during Early Access, we added a total of [b]173[/b] different items! (15 of them being Treasure uniques) - [b]90[/b] of them coming with the 28 major updates during the EA. [h2]…Towards the launch[/h2] Originally, we planned to leave early access within 3-6 months. Looking back - well, we didn't. As it typically goes, cool ideas pop up during development. And after checking back with you guys on Discord, we decided that taking our time and not closing ourselves off to cool stuff is the better way. This allowed us to implement features like the [b]History[/b], [b]Skills[/b], and [b]Loadout options[/b] that we would not want to miss from the game anymore. One thing you can be sure of is that we are going to fully release in 2025 though! (Stay tuned for an actual announcement) We have been working on both the [b]Mage[/b] and the [b]Adventurer[/b] in the background the whole time, and lot of progress has been made. There is also one thing from the original roadmap that is still untouched: At the start of 2025, we plan to check back with y’all to find out what you want from a [b]ranking system[/b] as well as some improvements we have in the back of our heads. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44182194/2d7145c40b2f3d636e0d8f9a6c36c03d7eac3861.jpg[/img] [h2]So, everybody…[/h2] [h2][b]Thanks again for everything - for recommending Backpack Battles to friends and streamers or streaming it yourself, for leaving reviews, reporting bugs, making our plushies a reality, and simply enjoying the game! ❤[/b][/h2] [h2]We wish you a Happy New Year 2025! [/h2] We are now taking a short break and will be back with a very experimental balancing update on January 3rd. 😉 [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44182194/1be5b8d351eeec5dba9515b64126a419b561823d.jpg[/img]