Hey everybody,

So for the past couple months, I've been rebuilding the game to support multiplayer, and also making big changes to gameplay and, well, everything. If you've been following the Twitch stream or the Discord you already know this, but to summarize the coming update for folks who haven't heard:

* the game is going 2D!

* and you control an individual character, with wasd + mouse type controls!

* and the world is infinite size! (I set up a Minecraft-style chunk loading system, so load times are almost non-existent and the world is infinite)

* AND there are more chat platform integrations coming - Twitch is already supported in the new Modlands, but Mixer and YouTube are coming soon!

* AAAAAAAAND - there's a new feature coming to the game soon that I'm very excited about, that no game has ever done before!!! Watch this space for more details!

* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND <drumroll> - synchronous Multiplayer will be supported!!! (this is one of the biggest reasons I wanted to rebuild the core of the game)

To check out a special preview build of the new version of the game, go to: https://triplejumpgames.itch.io/modlands-special-preview

Not all the mechanics are in yet, so bear with me - this is a special preview, and over the next couple weeks I'm going to polish it, and once all the core mechanics and multiplayer are in, it'll replace the old version of Modlands on this page, and this classic version will be retired to another page on itch.io, so you can still download the old version if you want.

Also, this is not ruling out the possibility of builds of the game that use the old art style - part of rebuilding the game is that I'm making the simulation parts modular from the view parts, so theoretically in the future I could make versions that have different viewers; kind of like how there are different viewers for the game Dwarf Fortress.

I hope you're as excited about this new direction as I am! There was a lot of thought and reasoning that went into it - the biggest things were that people universally asked for multiplayer, which the old engine couldn't have supported, and by making the art-style 2D, it makes it a LOT faster to add new items, which means I'll be able to add a lot more content to the game as a solo dev, PLUS there's a major creative feature I'll be adding soon that benefits a lot from this approach.

Let me know what you think! Remember to join the Discord at discord.gg/modlands, and check out the Twitch devstreams at twitch.tv/triplejumpgames :)