What's changed in 1 year?

Since full-launch, Cyber Knights players have enjoyed a steady stream of new content and improvements, backed by our updates-never-break-save-games policy. Cyber Knights launched with a full scope of content already providing hundreds of hours worth of replayability, and we’ve continued to deepen and expand that over 80+ updates -- multiple expansions' worth of free content we’ve been able to add thanks to your support and Steam reviews.

We thought it’d be helpful to take a look back at some of the most notable updates across several areas:

Mission variety & story content

Our custom-built “Casting Director” story engine mixes hand-crafted story lines with proc-gen content, working hand-in-hand to evolve your characters and bring an exciting variety of events as your Knight grows in power. As you advance your timeline in the safehouse, the Casting Director draws from a pool of missions and storylines that your characters’ / contacts’ Power Level, backgrounds, and traits qualify for, weaving them together in unique ways each playthrough.

Steam post image Screenshot by player Zone Trooper.

Some of the most notable additions have been:

• The Ward War Era has been a major expansion, creating a faction conflict and demand from both sides for your unique talents. You can choose a faction to champion based on who you think will be better for New Boston; play both sides for your own gain; or let it play out on its own.

• The ally unit system used extensively in the Ward War era first debuted in an extension to the Truck Job storyline; game-controlled friendly NPCs add a new level of tactical variety and atmosphere to large-scale battle missions.

• We just extended the Zasha storyline, tied specifically to this merc’s background in the Ultimate Kill Fight combat sports league. Will you risk making powerful enemies, or leave her hanging just like they did?

• We’ve expanded a range of more dynamic merc-driven storylines that could apply to multiple recruits:

  • several updates adding Shadow Sites you can learn about from mercs with a megacorp background if you’ve raised their loyalty high enough.

  • mercs who come to your team with mysterious deactivated Deltaware cybernetics can reveal how you might be able to help them reactivate it, giving you one-of-a-kind cutting-edge cyberware.

  • losing a merc in action is painful, but what happens when a squad member you thought you left behind turns out to still be alive?

• Contacts in your network also continue to get more dynamic storylines, with a wider range of Power Play storylines, and Compromised and Imprisoned storylines that can eliminate them permanently if you don’t save their life.

• The Skyrise mission environment has been another significant expansion, bringing not only new maps but entirely new kinds of mission objectives, security devices, and even new music!

• All of this is in addition to multiple new maps + proc-gen objectives bringing the pool of total mission combinations to over 400.

We built the Casting Director engine to be infinitely expandable, letting us (and soon, modders -- let us know if you’d like to get early access to modding tools) continue to add depth and replayability to your adventures in the New Boston Zone. We want this to be a game you can come back to year after year, with new origin stories, retirement stories, and a wide variety of events in between to create your story each playthrough.

Character classes, recruits, & gear

Character build options are a huge part of the fun in Cyber Knights. We’ve added a ton of gear and cybernetics over multiple updates through the past year, a steady stream of new recruits through the Underworld Hub, and two new character classes so far:

• The Wireghost is the most recent addition, an alternative hacking class with more meat-space infiltration talents and a very different Matrix hacking style, including the ability to wirelessly connect to Matrix Hosts through security devices themselves instead of having to reach a terminal to jack into.

• The Warmachine class was added shortly after launch and has become a big part of many players’ run and gun teams. This cybernetic weapons master excels at chaining kills and debuffing enemies while dealing damage.

In addition to all of the weapons, weapon mods, items, cybernetics, matrix programs, and armor with mechanical impacts for your characters, we’ve added dozens more visual customization options from new tattoos to headphones to backpacks and more.

Tons of quality-of-life improvements

Our player count has grown tremendously over the past year, and with it, a lot of fresh feedback. Thank you to everyone who’s given feedback through the in-game F10 system where it’s easy for us to sort and prioritize, but also to the many thoughtful discussions in our Discord and the Steam forums.

We’re a small studio always juggling a lot of things, so we have to carefully prioritize ideas and sometimes rule out suggestions that are too far out of scope. But it feels great to have implemented so many suggestions and hope you’ll keep them coming.

Enemy variety & challenges (and difficulty customization)

Drones don’t just mean roboguards any more; from flying Lance VTOLs to deadly turret emplacements to heavily-armored hover tanks, megacorp and milsec factions have some serious new firepower to try and stop you with.

Contacts of any kind that you’ve crossed too many times have more options up their sleeve too, with new unique Head Hunters that could potentially intercept you mid-mission and cause chaos trying to kill you.

If you need to purchase new gear to fend off these threats, Matrix hacking always has good paydata available, but several updates have added new Matrix IC types, new Matrix host maps, and new security AI lurking within.

While you have the tools to tackle all of these challenges with firepower or stealth as you prefer, we’ve also added new options to our extremely customizable difficulty settings so you can always play the game your way:

• Adjust or disable the sec tally per turn to ease or eliminate any rising pressure during missions.

• Set a minimum turn delay between reinforcements to keep the Sec AI active but limit its ability to throw bodies at you.

Translations

Finally, much of our work this year has been on expanding the kinds of players and platforms we’re able to bring the game to. We released our first 6 translations (German, French, Polish, Italian, Spanish (LatAm), Brazilian Portuguese) in March, finished Spanish (ES) soon after, and are now working on Simplified Chinese. We’re continuing to evaluate further translations based on where our wishlists are coming from, and are looking at how to enable community translations through modding as well.

What's stood out to you this year?

Screenshot by player n0bra1ner.

As fun as it is to list all these additions and improvements, your experiences are where the joy really happens. Planning out the big heists, mowing down a group with full-auto, getting your last squad member out just ahead of the hover tank, playing the sec AI like a fiddle, unlocking the good stuff from the Contact you've pushed to power, earning the hard-won loyalty of your mercs enough that they tell you they have something secret to share, perfecting the drip for your fully-customized merc squad, realizing you're %&#@ed as head hunters make the sec level skyrocket then figuring out how to pull it off anyways...

Every day we hear about awesome moments from you in our Discord chat, Steam forums, on social media, etc., and let me tell you: it keeps us going. Thank you so much for diving in to Cyber Knights, telling others about it, and giving us the opportunity to keep expanding it!

We've got several more big items planned from the current post-launch roadmap before the end of the year, and are looking forward to scoping out a new one after that and enjoying adventures with you for years to come.

If you like what we put into our games, please give our Steam developer profile a follow to stay in the loop on future projects as well. And we'd love to see you comment on this post with something you've had fun with in the game this year.

Happy heisting, Knights. We'll see you under the dome.