Hello again, Rangers! We hope you've had a fantastic start to your summer!
To summarize: we've now sent out all the alpha keys to our Kickstarter backers, and it’s time for the Q2 update for 2026. Seeing so many of you finally step into the world of Lorne has been absolutely incredible.
To give you a proper look at how the game has evolved into the alpha build you're playing right now, let's unpack the version history and go through the progress step by step. Let's get into it!
Version 0.2.2: Here, the focus was mainly on foundational stability, refining the crafting component, and introducing essential physical interactions across the world and its UI. Several underlying systems were cleaned up to ensure a smoother experience before adding larger mechanics.Crafting and item handling: We refactored the crafting component code to improve stability and made sure harvested and crafted items (like fireberries) now stack properly in your inventory. We also fixed issues with the anvil in Lightstone, and made battle camps feel more alive by ensuring their cooking stations are fully interactable.
World cleanup: Vendors and enemies received a dynamic gravity component (with optimized buffer times on load) so they interact naturally with the terrain. Alongside this, we resolved a bug in the Withering that sadly kept Yk'Voz locked away. We also took care of a bunch of floating environment objects out in the world.
Invasions and UI polish: The invasion timer UI was given a visual polish, and we added a quality-of-life option to hide or minimize the wave timer using a hotkey.
Furthermore, if your Powercore is destroyed during an attack, the game now cleanly pauses your background saves and presents a newly polished Game Over screen. From there, you have a choice: load your last save and take another crack at the wave that broke your defenses, or start completely fresh from a clean slate.
Examples of some additions and fixes that came in Version 0.2.2:
Rebalanced experience gain when defeating enemies.
Fixed grouping errors on high Soulsdust loot drops.
Water crystals no longer incorrectly increase in size upon loading a save.
Cursor, game, and UI focus now work strictly as intended when swapping menus.
Removed a minor visual glitch from the splash screen.
Version 0.2.4: So let's unpack this one, beacuse it is a big one! It was a major content and gameplay leap forward for Lorne, bringing entirely new core loops, massive ranged rebalancing, and the foundation for our onboarding system.Meteors: To put the pressure on your base defenses, we decided to implement a meteor shower before every incoming invasion wave! These explode on impact and damage your buildings, complete with custom VFX and SFX. We introduced this to soften up the defenses you've prepared and make base defense much more dynamic.
The Fishing System: We're happy to introduce a early delivery of our first stretch goal of a fishing system for Lorne! You can now step up to any body of water, cast your rod and lure, and trigger dynamic fish-biting events complete with dedicated VFX and SFX. We've added a custom animation upon successfully reeling in a catch, which will now directly grant you experience points just like any other gathering activity, alongside raw fish for crafting. We're looking forward on improving this untill it meets our standards.
Archery and combat rebalance: We massively expanded the ranged arsenal. Base crafted arrows now come in batches of 30 (up from 15). We added 2 new bow upgrades, 2 new arrow upgrades for significantly improved damage, and increased base ranged damage upon leveling up. For our melee fighters, we also increased the raw swing reach on all one-handed axes to make them more viable in combat.
Farming and gathering overhauls: We refreshed all farming widgets to properly display item names and optimized the underlying tracing functions. Harvesting and interacting with farm plots are now entirely proximity based.
Before:
After:
Vendors and tutorials: All potion shops now feature interactable alchemy tables, and we added lootable food items like bread, flour, cheese, and fish out in the overworld.
Finally, we laid the mechanical groundwork for our tutorial system, introducing structured onboarding steps for signposts, harvesting, farming, base defense, shrines, and crafting stations.
Example for some addition and fixes that came in version 0.2.4
Decreased the base XP gained from simple gathering, but rare gems now provide a massive XP boost.
Lowered the tree cost for farm plots to better incorporate them into early base building.
Rocks are now much cheaper to buy and sell at vendors.
Harvesting Iron, any gem or dark iron nodes now also provide a portion of rock.
Bow upgrades now correctly require you to unlock the previous bow tier first.
Fixed bugs locking character movement if no water was found during a fishing cast.
Added zone popups for all shrines and implemented overworld borders.
Harmonized data table names, item descriptions, and fixed miscellaneous weapon spelling errors.
Polished various item names and descriptions
Version 0.5.0: Bringing us right up to our live Alpha version! Here the focus was all about honoring our community, massively streamlining base construction costs balancing on early feedback, and adding full voice acting to the tutorial.Honoring our backers in Valor's Rise: We fully implemented the backer statues in the Valor’s Rise area! All statues have been added with the wanted personal message provided by some of our Kickstarter backers.
Building cost reductions and a new UI to track resources while building: We got some feedback regarding the early resource grind, so we reduced the cost of all walls, wall connectors, and gates by 70%, while massively slashing the repair costs across all structures. We also implemented a live UI component during building mode that clearly displays your resource quantities to help you track when you are running low. Additionally, we added a new overview in the building menu to show you if you are missing materials to start building.
The new UI showing resource requirements and how much you have:
The new UI that shows off how many resources you have while building: Here we can see how the stone supply shrinks as it's used up.
Quality of life and structural fixes: We deployed a fix for a major bug that would sometimes rear its ugly head, where your entire base could instantly explode into matchsticks if you happened to lose a single structural part. We also updated the build menu to be a snappy toggle (default 'B') rather than a hold, and fixed inaccurate collision boxes across larger buildings.
Fully voiced tutorials and early economy: To make the onboarding experience as immersive as possible, the tutorial popups and beginning tutorial are now entirely voiced!
We also adjusted the early game start, tier 1 weapons and gear are more readily available, rare crafting materials drop more frequently from chests, and we vastly increased item drops from battle camps.
The groundwork for the next area: For those of you who have had the alpha for a bit, you might have noticed the beginnings of an arctic region. This is the starting point for the next major zone coming to Lorne, featuring a harsh, wintery theme.
Example for some addition and fixes that came in version 0.5.0
Vendors will now officially hustle you when you try to buy back your sold items!
Greatly buffed all Archer-specific trinkets.
Rebalanced and added new items to all treasure camps out in the world.
Rewrote the UI healthbar logic so it stays visible for longer during combat.
Fixed a bug where Imp minions were incorrectly tagged as Imp bosses.
Rebuilt global grass maps and fixed duplicate harvestable nodes
What's to come: Those of you who are members of our Discord will have seen that the changelog has been packed with updates for the new Arctic zone as development continues, including the addition of new villages, dynamic weather, snow systems, and other environmental effects You might have also noticed some hints about a demo, and yes! A brand-new demo is currently in the works. Because our previous demo was released long before the major pivot that shaped the Lorne we have today, we want to give everyone a chance to experience the true feel of the game.
We hope you're happy with the state of the game so far! To give everyone an even better look at our progress, we've just released a brand-new gameplay trailer. We are thrilled to share this inside look with you all, and for those of you in the alpha we hope you're enjoying your very first taste of the gameplay!
Community feedback: Feel free to swing by with your ideas, Bastion screenshots, and feedback on Discord as we continue testing the Alpha. And if you have yet to wishlist Lorne on Steam, feel free to do so as we prepare for our August 25th Steam Early Access release!
As always, we wish you all the best and we’ll see you in the next one!