8 More Lives — Join Playtest NOW!
Hey, friends!
Today I have two pieces of amazing news to share with you.
The Open Playtest Starts Today!
The 8 More Lives open playtest is now live!
You can join and play for free directly from the game’s Steam page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/683390/8_More_Lives/?snr=2___
Jump in, play, invite your friends, and spread the word! Every mention, video, stream, and piece of feedback helps us enormously.
And please don’t hold back with criticism. Tell us what you enjoyed, what confused you, what frustrated you, and what you think we should improve.
We really need videos!
Seriously. From the videos, I can understand what still needs work and what we need to fix. Please send them if you can — whoever sends a video, I’ll add them to the credits.
Playtest Release — What’s New?
The last two weeks have been packed with improvements. Here are the highlights waiting for you in the playtest!
Reworked Inventory and a Shared Stash
- Reworked the inventory and updated its artwork and interface.
- Added a stash shared between taverns. Pay to expand it, or increase its capacity through the Traders company perk tree.
- Added the ability to delete unwanted inventory items, along with a tutorial explaining how.
- Two-handed weapons now appear in a single equipment slot.
- Exceeding your inventory limit now gradually reduces your company’s movement speed.
- Expanded and updated trade goods, including their artwork. City labels now show which goods each city produces.
- Trade goods cannot be stored in the stash.
More Tactical Options
- Added a combat minimap and improved minimap readability.
- Deployment zones now expand when you start in hazardous terrain.
- Added perks that increase deployment space in the Brigands and Explorers company trees.
- Camps can now conceal their garrisons. The Explorers company tree includes a stat that improves your chance of scouting them.
- Certain perks now unlock a Training activity while camping.
- Added a Shortsword that can be equipped in either hand or as a sidearm.
- Added weaker knife attacks that do not require Advantage.
Controls and Quality of Life
- Added remappable hotkeys for most controls and an AZERTY preset.
- Added and improved edge scrolling, with an option to disable it.
- Added pause settings.
- Added sorting for recruits using revealed attributes and average potential.
- Added a money icon to help identify quests approaching completion.
- Locations now have names.
- Added save deletion.
- Improved Twitch integration.
Balance, Presentation, and Fixes
- Increased shield defence and durability, especially for Kite Shields. Reduced the Kite Shield push cost from 8 to 7.
- Increased the defence of high-tier armour and gambesons.
- Buffed crossbows and Rage, and adjusted perk ordering in Berserker mastery.
- Increased morale for Raiders, Atamans, and Ratbritters.
- Made Maine Coons and Persian Cats rarer, and added preferred attributes to some races.
- Slightly increased the availability of Rest Kits in camp loot.
- Updated achievement artwork, camp supplies, interface elements, and the main stylized font.
- Added new hornet sounds and made sound-engine improvements.
- Updated game text and improved AI, caravan behaviour, and map generation.
- Made performance optimizations and fixed numerous bugs reported by the community.
A huge thank-you to everyone who has been testing, reporting bugs, and sharing suggestions. Your feedback has helped shape these updates!
8 More Lives Is Going to DevGAMM Awards 2026!
The second piece of news is that 8 More Lives has been selected for DevGAMM Awards 2026!
This means a lot to me, and I’m incredibly happy to see the game receive this recognition. Please celebrate with us—we worked very hard to get here!
Thank you for supporting 8 More Lives, following its development, and helping me make it better.