Hello everyone,

We’ve been pretty quiet about our current status since the Alpha 1.2 build last year, but we’ve got some good news to roll out! We’ve been hard at work on a host of new features and content, and not only that but we will be releasing it on Steam via Steamworks. Valve Software have been kind enough to give us access to the Steamworks API to release our mod on Steam and we’d like to say a big thanks to Valve for giving us this opportunity to expand Dreamball even wider! With these tools in our hands now we’ll have implemented a variety of new features such as stat tracking, better community integrations, achievements, regular updates, and more!

Starting with one of the biggest features coming is multiplayer. There’ll be a variety of new multiplayer modes implemented for VS & Coop. You’ll have all the singeplayer maps built for coop, aswell as VS-specific maps built for VS varying from different modes!

We’ve got some new SP / Co-op maps in stock which will be played out in this new ‘Lava World’ as well as a couple VS ‘Arena’ maps. The new map pack dubbed The Lava Update will contain these maps spanned across a Lava World themed environment with a host of new gameplay features implemented such as switches, fans, powerups, ball changers, jump enablers and more!

Here’s some sneak peaks at these new maps:

(click to enlarge)

The older maps you saw in v1.2, the Ice & Night themes, we’ve also given them a polish over into a more firm theme:

One other thing we’re glad to announce is we have a new and better camera coded. Unlike the previous v1.2 mapping-built camera, our coder, Alexander ‘Z33ky’ Hirsch, has redone the camera in code and it works smoother then ever! We’ve listened to the community input and have made the camera based of the feedback, it’ll be controlled by the mouse and movable in all directions aswell as camera zooming with the mouse wheel.

Now, we’re excited to finally have a new forum in place too. ‘vecima’, founder & runner of the Type 3 Studios modding community has been excellent to host our forums at his Type 3 Studios host, we thank him very much. You can find the new official Dreamball forums here now. This will be your new place to chat about anything you want Dreamball related. We’re always listening to community feedback a lot, so come join and throw anything at us and we’ll be happy to hear. Post any suggestions (achievement ideas, gameplay suggestions, etc) or share your thoughts on Dreamball, anything! The more input you give us the more we know what you want!

We’ve also got a new web domain: http://www.dreamball-game.com/

Our old web domain (http://dreamball.synthasite.com/) is still in use. Both these domains share the same site location, so any older domain links you have linked from somewhere will still work.

One other thing we setup a little while back is a Twitter account. We’ll be on there posting regular development updates, come follow our twitter to catch up on the team’s progress regularly.

Now with the tighter Steam Community integration we have with Steamworks, we’ve also been able to setup a Steam Official Game Group which you can come join here. Come join the rest of the rollers!

Now I’m sure your wondering when this release will be, right now we have to say a ‘when it’s done’. We’re working on a lot of enhancements for Dreamball and want to release when the time is right. It won’t be long, however! When we get closer to the date we’ll announce it all aswell as some additional exciting news such as the wide custom mapping support we’re adding. So stick around!

We hope your as excited as us. While we’re busy at work remember to come join our forums, share your thoughts & suggestions, we want to hear!