Broken Crown – Alpha 0.7.5

This is one of the biggest updates Broken Crown has received so far.

Alpha 0.7.5 introduces two major milestones for the game: the Orcs are now a playable race, and Broken Crown can now be played in multiplayer through Steam.

Until now, humanity has stood at the center of the conflict.

That changes today.

The Orcs are no longer simply enemies waiting on the other side of the battlefield. You can now lead them, build their settlements, recruit their armies, command their Leader, and experience the beginning of their own campaign.

And for the first time, you can take Broken Crown beyond battles against the AI and face other players.

This update also includes a large number of improvements to combat, controls, fortifications, the minimap, animations, visual feedback, localization, balancing, performance, and overall game responsiveness.

THE ORCS ARE NOW PLAYABLE

The Orc faction is now fully playable.

Players can select their race when configuring a match, and the game now supports separate Human and Orc identities across units, buildings, colors, production, saves, AI, and multiplayer.

The Orc roster has been expanded into a complete playable army, including:

• Infantry

• Archers

• Cavalry

• Spearmen

• Workers

• Explorers

• Medics

• Leader units

• Unit progression across Tier 1 to Tier 5

Orc units now also have their own recruitment icons, faction colors, building color variations, and visual identity.

Their buildings are selected automatically according to the chosen race, allowing an Orc settlement to grow with its own architecture from the beginning of a match.

This is not simply a visual replacement for the Human faction.

The underlying race system has been expanded so that units, buildings, faction identity, colors, AI behavior, multiplayer spawning, and saved games can all correctly preserve the selected race.

A NEW ORC LEADER

The Orcs now have their own Leader unit.

Leaders are special battlefield units designed to become important tactical pieces instead of simply stronger soldiers.

Active abilities are now part of the Leader system, including effects such as:

Holy Ground Heals allied units progressively within an area.

Berserker Temporarily increases the attack power of affected allied units.

Abilities support configurable range, duration, stamina cost and cooldown, together with visual indicators, icons, animations, tooltips and particle effects.

In multiplayer, the host determines the units affected by an ability and synchronizes the result across the match.

Leader death can also be used as a victory or defeat condition, making protecting — or hunting — these units an important strategic objective.

MULTIPLAYER

This is the other major step forward for Broken Crown.

Steam multiplayer is now part of the game.

Players can create and join Steam lobbies and configure matches with human players and AI opponents.

Lobby configuration includes:

• Public and private rooms

• Password-protected rooms

• Steam friend invitations

• Human, AI, open and closed slots

• Team selection

• Faction selection

• Race selection

• Player colors

• Ready state

• Map selection

• Lobby information including players, match state and connection data

Behind the scenes, the multiplayer architecture uses an authoritative host to validate the most important gameplay actions.

Movement, combat, resource gathering, construction, recruitment, research, production, market actions, abilities, building states and other gameplay systems are synchronized between participants.

A large amount of work has also gone into improving multiplayer reliability.

This includes command batching, ordered command sequences, duplicate detection, reliable-message retries, remote movement correction, synchronization diagnostics and authoritative reconciliation of important game states.

Host authority validation issues have also been corrected, alongside lobby visibility and invited-player synchronization problems.

Auto-exploration routing in multiplayer has received additional fixes as well.

This is the foundation on which Broken Crown's multiplayer will continue to grow.

THE ORC CAMPAIGN BEGINS

The world can now also be experienced from another perspective.

Alpha 0.7.5 introduces the first mission of the Orc campaign, taking place in the arid lands of the Orcs.

The mission includes its own cinematic introduction and begins expanding the story beyond humanity's struggle for survival.

The conflict is no longer being told from only one side.

More Orc campaign content will follow as their role in the world of Broken Crown continues to expand.

NEW WALL AND FORTIFICATION SYSTEM

Defensive construction has received a major improvement.

Walls can now be placed through a new drag-based system, making the creation of defensive lines considerably faster and more natural.

The fortification system supports walls, gates and towers, with improved navigation and interaction between units and defensive structures.

Gates can open automatically for allied troops while remaining obstacles for enemies.

Pathfinding can also react to defensive obstacles, allowing attacking units to recognize structures blocking their route.

Construction feedback has been improved as well, making buildings currently under construction easier to identify.

MORE RESPONSIVE ARMIES

Unit responsiveness has received another major pass.

Group movement, combat orders and unit reactions have been refined to make armies feel more fluid and predictable when receiving commands.

Several systems work together to improve large-scale control:

• Centralized movement and attack orders

• Coordinated group movement

• Better distribution of units

• Reduced unit overlap

• Improved target acquisition

• Better target pursuit and replacement

• Defensive posture

• Hold position

• Automatic exploration

• Running and stamina

• Tactical formations

• Veterancy progression

• Counter relationships between troop classes

New running animations have also been added.

Combat impact has been improved with additional reaction animation work, including kick-back feedback during engagements.

Unit balancing and recruitment costs have also been revised as the roster continues to expand.

MINIMAP AND EXPLORATION IMPROVEMENTS

The minimap has received several improvements aimed at making map awareness clearer.

Resource indicators can now appear on the minimap after those resources have been discovered.

Once a resource node is exhausted, its indicator is removed.

A new camera boundary indicator also shows which part of the battlefield is currently visible on screen.

Camera movement through the minimap has been refined, and camera bounds have received additional fixes.

Explorer behavior has also been improved so that automated exploration prioritizes areas that have not yet been discovered.

BETTER GAMEPLAY FEEDBACK

Several interface and visual feedback improvements are included in 0.7.5.

Unavailable buildings are now visually disabled, making construction requirements easier to understand at a glance.

Buildings under construction have clearer visual feedback.

The unit path visualizer has also been fixed and improved, helping players understand where selected units are currently heading.

Orc recruitment icons and faction visuals have been added alongside the wider visual overhaul of the game.

These changes continue the broader UI and graphical restyling introduced throughout recent development, with improved images and icons for units, buildings, abilities and roles.

LEADERS AND ACTIVE ABILITIES

The Leader system has been expanded as part of this update.

Leader abilities are available directly from the selected-unit interface and are designed to create important moments during larger engagements.

Their use is tied to stamina, range and cooldown rather than functioning as unlimited passive bonuses.

This makes Leaders valuable, but also gives opponents a reason to identify, isolate and eliminate them.

TUTORIAL IMPROVEMENTS

The tutorial has received additional work, including an improved conclusion.

The goal is to make the transition from learning the basic controls to entering the main game clearer for new players.

Several supporting systems have also been refined as Broken Crown moves toward a more complete onboarding experience.

LOCALIZATION

Localization coverage has been expanded again.

Additional untranslated strings have been completed and more gameplay elements are now integrated with the centralized localization system.

Broken Crown currently supports:

• English

• Italian

• German

• French

• Spanish

• Simplified Chinese

Localization now covers a wider range of interface elements, objectives, notifications, units, technologies, production systems and campaign content.

The new Orc campaign content has also been integrated into the localization pipeline.

PERFORMANCE AND CODE IMPROVEMENTS

A number of systems have been optimized behind the scenes.

Frequently used global searches and resource lookups have been reduced or moved toward more explicit caching and initialization systems.

Obsolete code has also been removed.

These changes are part of an ongoing effort to improve performance during large battles and long matches, where hundreds of units, buildings, resources and multiplayer entities may be active simultaneously.

FIXES AND POLISH

Alpha 0.7.5 also includes a large collection of smaller fixes and improvements, including:

• Improved unit movement fluidity and response

• Fixed multiplayer auto-exploration routing

• Improved host-authority validation

• Fixed lobby visibility issues for invited players

• Fixed unit path visualization

• Fixed camera vertical bounds

• Added minimap camera bounds

• Fixed towers in Campaign Mission 5

• Improved resource indicators

• Improved unavailable-building feedback

• Improved construction feedback

• Improved Orc faction colors

• Added Orc building color variants

• Updated unit costs and balancing

• Improved tutorial ending

• Expanded localization coverage

• Removed obsolete code

• Reduced expensive runtime object searches

A MAJOR STEP FORWARD

Alpha 0.7.5 represents more than another collection of fixes.

Broken Crown now has two playable races.

Broken Crown now has multiplayer.

The core systems built over the previous updates — economy, construction, research, large-scale armies, formations, Leaders, Fog of War, AI, campaign missions and tactical combat — can now support a much broader game.

You can build as Humanity.

You can rise as the Orcs.

You can fight the AI.

And now, you can fight each other.

There is still much more planned for Broken Crown, and multiplayer in particular will continue to receive testing, balancing and improvements as more players enter the battlefield.

Thank you to everyone following the development, testing the game and sharing feedback.

The war for the Broken Crown has just become much larger.