Shadows of Forbidden Gods — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| Bugfix and UI | 2026-08-17 | Hello everyone, I've been trying to avoid updating the game too much because while there are some changes I wanted to make I was afraid they would break saves and mods. However, recent new bugs have forced me to make this change. Firstly a critical issue has arrived because mods are now getting out of sync with each other and causing game-breaking bugs. There was also a bad screen resolution bug I needed to resolve. There are also reports in the community of some file corruption issues, so you may want to verify your files on Steam to fix those. I've included a few UI updates I thought were important, alongside this. I've tried to avoid break |
| Bugfix: Fewer Flesh Gods | 2024-04-17 | Hotfix to fix an issue where a previous patch included the "God: Escamrak" mod in the mod upload folder for everyone. I left in there during testing something or other, and it got uploaded to everyone. The game should now delete this mod, so you don't have the "upload mod" button on the main screen. It is checking the files there against an SHA512 hash, so if you are a modder and have changed the files in the modUploadFolder you may need to manually delete the files yourself. |
| DLC Released: The Horrors Beneath | 2024-03-13 | The DLC is finally here! Bringing new exciting ways to doom humanity. Devour them from beneath, explode their cities or give birth to an abomination. Dwarves and Cthonians Locked in battle underground, the inhabitants of the caverns wage a constant war of survival against one another. Dwarves, the new good race, are prone to falling to Shadow. Away from the sun, their souls slowly slip into the darkness, but they can redeem themselves by sacrificing gold. Interrupting this process or driving them into self-destructive greed can lead to the destruction of their heroes and rulers. They also tend to hold grudges, and can be provoked into war to |
| UI update and notes on DLC | 2023-12-01 | Over the past couple of months I've been working on DLC for Shadows. Based on current progress it should be released around January, maybe early February. The DLC focuses on adding an underground layer to the map. The underground is its own map, with slightly fewer locations than the surface level, accessed by travelling down a limited set of connecting links. Initially the domain of your agents as well as the newly introduced Dwarves and new evil species, humanity can discover it and begin colonising it, as can orcs if you guide them through the tunnels. It adds new mechanics for how heroes can discover your actions (certain crimes, includin |
| UI for Curses Map View and a couple of Bugfixes | 2023-10-18 | Gameplay: -Human Souls increase the Death percentage in a location by 1% per turn while dissipating UI: -Added curse map view for tracking who is in a cursed house Bugfixes: -Fixed Darkstone description -Fixed descriptions of Vinvera powers borrowed by Broken Maker -Broker Maker can't create agents over the cap any more -Elven Arrogance in Dark Empire no longer harmed by nearby monster territory |
| Bugfixes and proofreading | 2023-10-04 | All events have now been given a proofread (many thanks to contributing writer John Chao here). Along with this, a couple of bugfixes: -Fixed bug with kills not being tracked by assassinate challenges (sometimes critical for First Daughter summoning) -Fixed display issue with events where progress could be displayed to far too many decimal places |
| Hotfix to V1.1 mod config | 2023-09-26 | A quick fix to an issue which some people were having with mod configurations, following the V1.1 update |
| Unity situation resolved and V1.1 | 2023-09-25 | After a couple of weeks of confusion, it seems the Unity situation has been resolved. They have changed their plans to only apply to the 2024 build of Unity (Shadows is built off the 2021 version), and have promised to cap the maximum invoice to a percentage of revenue. This fixes all the issues other than the somewhat concerning lack of warning about contractual changes. What this means is that Shadows can continue development as planned. While this may become a problem in the future, there are no immediate concerns. Version 1.1 is therefore going live today, after a little bugfix and adaptation to avoid it breaking save games from V1.0. Mod |
| Issues regarding Unity pricing changes | 2023-09-17 | As you may or may not have heard, the indie game dev industry was thrown into chaos this week. Unity, the makers of the most popular indie game engine, decided to implement a per-install pricing. Devs (or possibly distributors, depending on which communication of theirs you read) will have to pay 0.20$ every time a player installs the game. This would come into effect in January. There are thresholds, and based on the license I use (as a one-person company), Shadows would probably not need to pay anything on top of the existing licenses. Regardless, this is still a critical risk for the future of the game for the following reasons: Malicious |
| Changes to mod support, and one of our Artists made a game: Age of Tribulation | 2023-08-29 | Two items today, one for everyone in the community, and one for modders. Firstly, for everyone: Contributing artist Brad, from Apostle Games, is soon releasing a new Dark Fantasy party-based RPG. Check it out here, to get your next fix of grim darkness: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2575780/Age_of_Tribulation/ Secondly, for modders: Following discussions, I've decided to keep the game in Unity's development mode forever, but employ a hack to remove the "development mode" watermark from the bottom right. What this means is the read console error text will be there to make debugging easier. If you are using Harmony to make mods, this also |
| Assorted Bugfixes for V1.0 | 2023-08-20 | A few bugfixes, with more to come. Crucially fixes the long-standing achievement bug for "Stone Cold". Bug fixes will be merged onto the beta-branch in the next patch (as well as sent over to the Itch build). Details: Gameplay: -If Mammon's initial settlement would be too small ( |
| Beyond V1.0 | 2023-08-01 | Two weeks after release, and after a bit of a holiday for me to rest and rebuild, work can resume on Shadows. I've not yet fully planned out how things will go, just getting to V1.0 full release was enough of a task. The first new addition is a new god, which is now available on the beta-branch. Its powers and mechanics are roughly playable, but need polishing and almost certainly bugfixing. Going forward I'd like to avoid breaking mod compatibility as rarely as possible. There were a few issues even with V1.0, and I'd like to avoid repeatedly forcing mod creators to update their work. This may mean working towards one big release in October, |
| V1.0 Hotfix | 2023-07-19 | Regardless of how much testing is done, bugs seem to always slip through This bugfix catches a couple of them, in a way which in testing lets people carry on past pre-crash saves. Specifics: -Fix gamebreaking bug, where a civil war could crash the game and prevent game progression -Fix major bug where the "Kill the Chosen One's mentor" questline would break when selecting "spare" option |
| Version 1.0: Shadows of Forbidden Gods | 2023-07-15 | After a year and a half in Early Access, Shadows of Forbidden Gods has reached the end of its roadmap and is ready for full release. The game has come a long way since its first version. New Gods, new agents, bunch of UI changes (in the first few versions, you couldn't even click on units to select them, you had to rapidly click on a location a bunch of times, a truly awful UI choice). The game has also expanded to include modding, and the community can now enjoy a variety of extremely high quality mods, covering new narrative events, entirely new gods with complex mechanics and new high quality art. This community participation has gone beyo |
| Bugfix: Political Instability not working | 2023-06-15 | Quick bugfix, putting it on the main branch due to its severity: Political Instability, a core mechanic for taking down empires, wasn't working. Fixed now. |
| Hotfix: Stop agents all being infected with fungal plague | 2023-05-30 | Quick fix to an issue which caused ALL agents to spawn with 100% Cordyceps infection. Thankfully benign, and won't affect anything gameplay wise (I think?) but still probably best to clean that up real quick. |
| Victory Point changes, Madness Victory Art and drag-drop UI for item trading | 2023-05-30 | A variety of small but very necessary changes made here. Firstly, madness has a new victory art screen for people to enjoy. Nice and purple. To allow this to actually be reachable without extremely fiddly and tedious messing around, the way victory points for the madness ending are computed has been updated. Shadow should no longer be as much of an issue for achievement seekers. UI also gets a bit of polish, with drag-and-dropping being added to item trading. Hopefully can make it to minion rearrangement pre-combat in the next patch. Changes in detail: Gameplay: -Victory for insanity buffed: The SUM of both insanity victory point gain forms ( |
| New Tutorial Added, along with Bugfixes | 2023-05-17 | A new tutorial has been added, following feedback as to what the next thing players will need to master will be after the first tutorial. This one focuses on using two agents in tandem to distract while shadow is spread. It's a bit more freeform than the first one, and hopefully serves as a better preparation for the full game. Still doesn't touch on 'advanced' features such as magic, Holy Orders or Orcs, and these may be the subject of further tutorials. Along with this, bugfixes for the bugs: Gameplay: Other: -New tutorial added Bugfixes: -Reworded achievement "28 turns later" -"Assign guard" power of the Insect God can no longer assign a g |
| Bundle and Bugfixes | 2023-05-05 | Recently I was contacted by the publisher of "We the Refugees: Ticket to Europe", asking to bundle Shadows with their newly-released game. The issue is close to my heart, and so Forbidden Oak Games Limited has donated 1000£ to the UK-based "Choose Love" refugee charity. Shadows may be about utterly obliterating humanity, but hopefully we as a community can try to make the world a better place whenever we get the chance, esepecially in these turbulent times. Alongside this, a critical bug has been fixed: The game was losing progress when people were winning as Iastur, requiring them to then re-win as She Who Will Feast. This should be fixed, w |
| Bugfix: Fewer evil trees, fewer lunatics murdering fishmen | 2023-04-30 | Gameplay: -Appoint state religion AI no longer assigns a "religion" tag to each religion which would be removed -Madness outcomes now can't kill evil things, such as vampires or your own agents, and can't kill targets more than 5 links away Other: Bugfixes: -Fixed UI scaling issue in windowed mode -Fixed Ruins exploration only producing the Vinerva outcome -Fixed bug where national action to join the Alliance would process international relationship incorrectly |
| Yet more bugfixing | 2023-04-27 | A few more bugfixes, and some much-needed text being finally added to the Insect God. In detail: Gameplay: -Dissendent "seperatism" distance requirement reduced to 5 -Black Forest can no longer be cast on 100% enshadowed rulers Other: -Added text to flavour and descriptions for Insect God Bugfixes: -Dissident seperatism power now can't be used on useless locations (non-cities) -Agents will no longer take actions due to insanity -Improved Vinerva ruins exploration, giving number of seeds remaining -Fixed game crashing on defeat -You can now rob Acolytes -Fixed bug in "Temptation of Eternity" which prevented it being used if the ruler had 100% |
| Balance, Bugfixes and UI Improvements | 2023-04-23 | Just a few changes to V0.13, fixing a few of the known bugs, and improving the map view UI. Changes in detail: Gameplay: -Elven arrogance drop from menace reduced (2.5% to 1%) -Elven arrogance increases with nearby human unrest Other: -Window size can be adjusted using key commands (default to Z and X, rebindable) -Item finder view reworked. Now sorts by type, and can pan to each location in turn -"Prophecy" map view added, lets you see who is furthest along the path for each Holy Order's prophecy -"People" map view added, lets you find anyone if you know their name (or part of it) Bugfixes: -Fixed description for Late Stage Infection Victim |
| Bugfixes for V0.13 | 2023-04-18 | A few critical bugs cropped up, and had to be fixed quickly (a few hopefully less critical ones remain, and will be fixed in the next few days). Also has a couple of UI changes. Changes in detail are: Gameplay: -None Other: -In filters, masked-out units are now invisible, instead of black, to reduce clutter Bugfixes: -Fixed issue where "Repeat challenge" would appear despite the challenge being gone -Exceptions thrown during mod loading will be logged again -Fixed bug with the load saved games button if the player hadn't ever saved a game before -Fixed game-crashing error when an elven city falls |
| Version 0.13: Elves | 2023-04-14 | Version 13 is here, introducing Elves, a (usually) good-aligned minor race, as well as UI changes and new achievements. The Elves are a proud people, often to their own detriment. They have an arrogance which you can exploit, driving them towards isolationism and contempt for humanity. Avoiding putting the elves at risk can lead to them ignoring the conflicts of the human world, favouring their own internal affairs. Elven society is highly structured, and can be brittle under pressure. Their rulers depend on the Wayfinder hero to replace lost kings and queens, and the Wayfinder themselves must be appointed by the elven nation's sovereign. If |
| V0.12 Hotfix | 2023-02-11 | Potential fix for the persistent "spacebar causes agent to take action" bug |
| V0.12 Bugfixes and rebalancing | 2023-02-10 | A few changes to V0.12 to correct reported bugs and issues Gameplay: -Chosen One desire to assist the Alliance now depends on their liking/disliking towards The Alliance -Aware nobles in Ophanim society no longer increase the speed of doubt growth -Improved behaviour of dark worship. Ophanim locations now block it (redistributing the shadow) and empty locations no longer act as shadow sinks -Consecrate can't be used by heroes with shadow > 99% -Orcs no longer delete shadow when they expand -Orc spawn check time increased a bit Bugfix: -Fixed an issue where an army in a recently-ended battle where one side had no armies would lock the game -Fi |
| Bugfixes and Rebalancing | 2023-02-01 | Changes made to how the previous hero rebalancing was implemented, they're now mostly connected to the difficulty system, so only apply to people choosing to play against the harder difficulty modes. Also comes with a critical bugfix to windowed mode. Changes in detail: Gameplay: -Hero level up time now depends on difficulty, reverted to base 10 at normal difficulty -Holy Orders only have one free acolytes per level -Heroes only gain XP bonuses on difficulties above normal -Added option for hero spawn percentages Bugfix: -Fixed issue where windowed screen resolution could be set to too small for the UI to work -Fixed message for heroic "assas |
| Version 0.12: Insect God | 2023-01-31 | Version 0.12 brings two major new features, the last roadmap god, the Insect God (although secretly fungal in nature) and the first set of Steam Achievements. The Cordyceps Hive Mind exists by infecting and infesting insects and humans alike. Using a system of pheromones, the mutated worker insects leave their hive to capture infected human prey, who are then fed to the larvae to grow into more insectine horrors. Eventually, vespid swarms can be summoned to eradicate humanity, both from the hives and by bursting directly out of the infected humans in their cities. Ruins are also undergoing some improvements, with the introduction of a couple |
| V0.11 Hotfix 3 | 2022-11-07 | A few issues fixed. -A bunch of null pointers which occasionally cropped up, especially relating to national religions, were sorted out. -The game now at least doesn't crash when the human population reaches zero, but it's not really playable past that point regardless. -Dead people won't try to hunt down your agents -Heroes are less inclined to disrupt people who are laying low -Exploit where you could summon The First Daughter multiple times is fixed |
| V0.11 Hotfix 2 | 2022-10-26 | Fixed another couple of issues: -Fixed possible nullpointer, caused by a society losing its capital -Fixed "declare state religion" causing the entire world to change religion |