We've been quiet on Steam for far too long—apologies for that. After the frenzy of bug-fixing following our 1.0 release, we thought it best to pull back and be super thorough in our test-fix-validate cycle. After working a lot on process and execution, we have something worth sharing.
After making almost 100 improvements to ILLUMINATI, we're currently 6 more changes—both bug fixes and enhancements—and one Player's Guide away from calling this our 1.1. That's close, but we've been close for a little while now. We've brought so much goodness to the game since the previous Steam build that it seemed worth giving you an almost-1.1 release right now.
The community around the game that's grown up on Discord has been super supportive in finding bugs, pointing out edge-case rules we'd overlooked, and generally helping things along—they've helped us turn new builds very quickly. If you ever want the newest and bestest, with maybe a few bugs, join us there.
We'll share a list of the most important improvements soon, though you'll likely notice a few things—some for usability, some for clarity, others just for fun. Most notably in terms of content, we've begun introducing the first cards from Cults of Personality, our first season of major content updates. Now you can add famous (and infamous) Personalities to your conspiracy across the Illuminated eras, like Ronald Reagan and Fidel Castro in the 1980s, Hillary Clinton and Vladimir Putin in the 1990s, or Kim Jong Un and Tim Apple in the 2020s.
The complete 1.1 release will include those 6 changes mentioned above:
— Tweak the default set of cards for game balance, along with the remaining updates mentioned above. For example, we restored the Power levels from the 1990s edition of the tabletop game, meaning no more Groups with zero Power—though our tutorial still points out interesting facts about 0-Power Groups.
— Update the In-Game Rules Overview to match the Player's Guide.
— Make all the game maps larger to accommodate how much further you can now zoom out to admire your global power structure in all its decadent glory.
— Restored the tabletop game's auto-failure to rolling 11 or 12, versus just 12. I actually thought this was done, though something weird came up while testing that I'd like to shake out before declaring victory.
— And speaking of: we're making visual improvements to the Victory announcement. They're super basic right now; could afford to be more extra. To be fair, we're also improving the Defeat announcement so your enemies will be appropriately deflated.
Yes, that's only 5, but 23 is the Illuminati number and 2+3=5 and you're not cleared for Change #6 so you get 5 for now.
Also, along with the full 1.1 release, we'll share more about the path forward. No, that doesn't count as Change #6, which remains above your level of clearance.
So that's it for now. Buckle up, and get ready to take over the world.