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Happy Holidays! – 2024 In Review
Come walk down memory lane to see all that happened in 2024 at Thunder Lotus!
Happy Holidays from the Thunder Lotus family!
Hey everyone!
2024 went quicker than expected, it feels like it just started!
Thank you so much for being part of our lovely family and for supporting us, whether it’s by reading my shenanigans, playing our games, making art, or interacting with us and the rest of our community, your involvement fuels our passion to keep creating better experiences!
With that in mind, join us in reminiscing all that happened this year! Spoiler alert: it’s mostly about 33 Immortals!
Start of 2024 – Winter
The year started off fairly smoothly as we were gearing ourselves for our 33 Immortals’ Closed Beta announcement in a brand new showcase hosted by our good friends at Evil Empire.
We were super happy to be invited to participate in such a wonder event, and we really couldn’t be happier to be surrounded by such amazing game developers during a packed showcase filled with banger titles.
Spring
iii initiative
When April rolled around, we hosted a watch party of the event to celebrate our next milestone with the team, and our community. Mic and audio issues on our end aside, we were really proud to share this event with you all, and that we were able to unveil what we had been working for since the start of the year and showcase our newest trailer at the time.
Purgatorio
While patiently waiting for the Closed Beta to start, we unveiled the game’s second region: Purgatorio.
There were a lot of uncertainty on whether we would even be able to finish the region in time for the Beta to start. The boss was still a work in progress, but we were excited to receive finally feedback on the game’s gameplay loop of going through Inferno to unlock keys to Purgatorio.
Closed Beta
Soon after, the Closed Beta kicked off with me and my good friend and colleague Cem hosting a couple of runs of Inferno with community members over on Twitch.
People were really excited at the prospect of trying the game out for the first time, and being able to play with friends in a party.
We had a few ups and downs, but overall everything went smoothly, and even had some content creators checking out the Beta, which we were really happy to see!
10 days flew by in a flash. The reception was better than we could ever ask for and we decided to close the Beta with another livestream as the servers were going down.
A big thank you to everyone who participated in the Beta and joined us for the streams. Your energy and your enjoyment of what we do really mean a lot to us and give us the strength to keep making content.
Summer
Closed Beta Infographic
As we winded down from the Beta’s closure, we took some time to do a bit of data gathering and we whipped up together a recap of the Closed Beta in numbers. Truthfully, we were astounded by the number of players who showed up to play, and we were very happy to see so many of you successfully defeat the work-in-progress Adam & Eve.
Gamescom 2024
When August rolled around, our good friends at Xbox extended an invitation to their Gamescom coverage in Köln, Germany, which we gladly accepted!
There, we announced our next step for 33 Immortals: the Xbox Insider Programme. We would give Xbox players access to our game for a weekend to test the game’s stability and new features we were working on.
Fall
New website!
Our website got a redesign!
This major overhaul of our website took many months to put together, and we’re so very happy with the results! It looks fancier and better than ever!
Twitch Con
At the end of September, we went to San Diego and hosted a small get-together spot near the convention center for creators to grab refreshments, play the game and meet some of the developers.
The event went really well, we met many fantastic creators and community members during the weekend!
Insider Program
While we were at Twitch Con, we also had our second Xbox Insider Program playtest happening, which had… a lot of issues.
We did our best to remediate the stability problems the build encountered, but it was clear we wouldn’t be able to fix it during the weekend. After some tweaking around and extending the playtest from a weekend to a full week, we managed to find the issue with the build and knew what steps to take to fix it… but that it might take a lot more work to get the game back into people’s hands than we had initially hoped.
Delay to 2025
The Xbox Insider Program #2 taught us a lot about what needed to be done to make the game better, but, by mid-October, it was clear we would not be able to meet the 2024 deadline we had set out for ourselves.
As such, we decided to leave the game in the oven to cook a bit longer by pushing back the Early Access release to 2025.
End of 2024
Adam & Eve
Some time after the Closed Beta, we finalized Adam & Eve’s design and were finally able to unveil the fight in its full glory.
10 year anniversary
Thunder Lotus is now 10 years old! Time really passed us by…
Looking back at the small team that created Jotun back in a very crowded shared office space, not knowing where they’d be today surrounded by like 5 times as many people inside a large office space, is still amazing to see how much Thunder Lotus has grown over the years.
Here’s to the next 10 years 🥂
New face in the Community team
In November, it was with great pleasure that we announced that the Community team went from a single person (me) to a dynamic duo!
The great and wonderful Alison Auzias joined me to manage our amazing community, and having another pair of hands have been oh so wonderful.
If you haven’t met her yet, come greet her on our Public Discord!
Charon’s Wish Ferry
To celebrate the season of giving, we hosted a little event on our website and through our newsletter where people could send in their wishes for what they would like to see in 33 Immortals’ future to our favorite smuggler: Charon.
Honestly, the reception has been a lot better than we expected! Most of the wishes we got were truly wholesome and it always warms our heart to see how kind our community is. Thank you all for participating!
Games We Loved 2024
As per tradition, we created a list of all the games we loved to play this year.
If you’re looking for things to play during your holidays, I highly recommend you to go check it out! There’s plenty of games that would’ve never been on my radar if not for my colleague’s wonderful recommendations!
Plans for 2025?
As we say goodbye to 2024 and hello to 2025, we ask ourselves: what’s on our agenda?
Well, there will definitely be a lot of things happening in 2025. While I can’t say all that will be happening, as to not spoil the surprise, one thing’s for sure is that we’ll be preparing ourselves for the Early Access launch with another playtest for 33 Immortals, this time, with Epic Games Store players!
We’re honestly eagerly awaiting all that’s happening next year, and really can’t wait, but, alas, all good things must wait.
If you’d like to stay up to date with our news, please consider subscribing to our mailing list!
Okay, that’s all I have for 2024.
Thanks again for all the support, it really means a lot to us, and I do mean it!
That said, it’s time for us to take our leave for the year. Stay happy, stay healthy and please don’t forget to take care of yourself! Have a happy holiday season & a happy New Year!
See you in 2025!
Many hugs,
-Med and the Thunder Lotus team
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