Thanks for understanding. I know this is not the news you wanted to read. Not the one I wanted to have to write, either. Sorry.

The next combat unit is the Overlord. It commands and coordinates your other troops during battle, improving their health and attack power. The Overlord, and the next few combat zones where you’ll both fight against Overlords and unlock them for your own use, are ready - but they’re not yet visible. Their first appearance will be in War Swarms’ first temporary league.

Action RPG fans might already be familiar with the idea of temporary leagues. Here’s how they’ll work:

• Once the league begins, create a new character/swarm and select the new league. Existing swarms cannot change their league - everyone starts from the beginning.
• Enjoy playing the new league, with its new features and empty leaderboards.
• When the temporary league ends - date to be announced; probably in about a month - its swarms will move to the permanent Standard League. Your progress during the temporary league will not be lost.
• If the developer feels the temporary league’s new rules/features went well, they’ll be permanently added to the game. After Overlord League ends, you’ll probably be able to build Overlords in the permanent Standard League and in all future temporary leagues.

“Why?” Temporary leagues allow the developer to experiment with new features and game balance changes, with far less danger of a bad idea impacting your permanent characters’ progress. Temporary leagues also give everyone a fair chance at the leaderboards - whether you’ve played the game for three minutes or three years, everyone in a temporary league starts from the same place.

Overlord League will begin 12/15/2017, 12:00:00 AM UTC - click for your time zone.

Countdown.

Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: at the time Overlord League starts, I’ll create a new post in /r/warswarms with some beta invites up for grabs. The game is still very incomplete, but temporary leagues are a big milestone, and I could use some more feedback. First come, first served; set your alarms now.

I usually aim to make at least one news post a month. It’s typically at the start of each month, but there won’t be one at the start of January. Expect the next major news post to be mid-January; a short mid-December update might (or might not) happen too. Happy holidays!

Since my last update a month ago, a known bug, which hadn’t caused much trouble before now, suddenly started to cause lots of trouble. It took a while to solve. Other behind-the-scenes stuff was happening too, and taken together, it delayed the plans I originally had for this month.

So, October’s plans are bumped to November:

I’ll be adding more types of soldiers beyond just swarmlings, the first temporary league, and several performance improvements, among other things.

Many of you have been waiting for beta invitations. We’re getting closer - thanks for being so patient! There will be more news posts about beta invites this month.

Thanks for your patience!

Your swarmling-queens, hatched outside of combat, produce swarmlings during combat. Every few seconds, your swarmlings attack the enemy. Destroy the enemy Lair to win!

I’ve also worked on adding the infrastructure behind leagues. Leagues are periodic “seasons” that will have slightly different rules or new experimental features. Choose a league when starting a new character.

October will open with the permanent Standard league. Expect temporary leagues to begin in November. When a temporary league ends, its rankings will be frozen and archived, and its characters will move to Standard league for further play.

These changes, along with a few smaller features, will appear in the beta on October 1, when the new in-game countdown timer reaches zero.

In October, I’ll be adding more types of soldiers beyond just swarmlings, the first temporary league, and several performance improvements, among other things.

Many of you have been waiting for beta invitations. We’re getting closer - thanks for being so patient! There will be more news posts about beta invites this month.

More beta invites will be sent soon; there’s a few issues to fix first. If you won a beta key, watch your Reddit inbox this week.

The tasks from my last update - code quality improvements, a placeholder combat system - are done. I’m now working on the combat system and periodic seasons/leagues, plus feedback from beta testers. Expect another update like this one in about a month.

Don’t want to wait that long for news? The War Swarms issue tracker - the to-do list I work from every day - is now public. If you’re curious what exactly I’ve been up to, follow along with upcoming milestones and the list of issues. You can also watch the changelogs, which will soon be much busier.

Development is going smoothly, if a bit slower than we’d all like. Things have been quiet because I’ve been working, not because I’ve vanished!

No beta invites have been sent yet. The original plan was to send the first invites around the end of June; obviously that’s been missed. Not ready to share my next ETA just yet, but we’re getting closer.

What am I working on now?

• The biggest missing feature: combat. I have some plans and some experiments, but the implementation’s not quite ready yet. Combat won’t be there when the first beta invites go out. We’ll start with a placeholder that implements the resources and loot gained from combat, without any actual combat. This way, other parts of the game that depend on loot gained from combat are still playable.
• Improving the quality/maintainability of War Swarms’ programming. While building War Swarms, I’ve had to learn some tools I’ve never used before. Naturally I made some mistakes, and those past mistakes had started to slow down development. I could have powered through those and got the beta out earlier, but I chose to take the extra time to get things right.

The first beta invites are likely to go out once I’m done with these.

In other news, here’s a few highlights from my Reddit posts in the last month:

• Email notification for War Swarms news posts is now possible on the subscribe page. If you haven’t already, sign up!
• Combat will be single-player, not player-vs-player.
• A mobile version is likely at some point.

Without warning, the Overminds vanished. Their disappearance shattered the unity of their underlings, and left many smaller, fractured swarms behind. Some swarms now wander leaderless and confused, some let their bloodthirsty instincts run wild, and some vie for power and control over the others.

Grow your fledgling swarm, fight your way back to dominance, and discover what fate befell the Overminds - all with no graphics.

My next game, War Swarms - based on Swarm Simulator - will begin closed testing this month! It’s been in the works for a long time now, and I’m excited to finally start sharing it. Don’t ask me for access yet - watch for announcements on news.warswarms.com or /r/warswarms.

Here’s what to expect:

• The same rapid-growth mostly-idle gameplay you know and love from Swarm Simulator.
• Combat, replacing the territory system, finally gives your swarm a chance to draw blood. Your warriors reproduce during combat - the longer a battle lasts, the more numerous they can grow.
• Always-online. Most blatant kinds of cheating are impossible. Leaderboards are more reliable. Play from multiple devices and multiple browsers easily, with no fear of losing your progress. Observe others while they play, or play for your own audience. Possible multiplayer features later (not on release day).
• Play anonymously - start playing instantly on release day, sign-up not required.
• Create multiple swarms (characters) per account. No more import/export gibberish.
• Monthly(?) season resets, each with fresh characters, empty leaderboards, and new content/features unique to the season. Entirely optional - your past swarms will not be deleted.
• The code will be open source on release day, just like Swarmsim.
• All this, and still no graphics.

Swarm Simulator is not going away, of course! That said, most of my programming and development time will be focused on War Swarms now.

No release date ready to share yet. Expect the closed beta to last several months, with more people invited as time passes. Watch news.warswarms.com or /r/warswarms for updates!