Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
Dear Citizens of the Suzerainverse,
Welcome to our May 2026 Broadcast! Since our last update, we've been busy making progress across multiple projects. We're excited to give you a look at what we've been working on.
In this edition, Ata shares the latest developments from across our projects, we venture behind the scenes of The Conformist, showcase some of James' newest audio work, revisit our Sordish Lorscha cooking competition, and round things off with highlights from this year's Torpor team day out.
Development Update from Ata
Hello everyone,
May ended up being a good month for progress across the studio. We spent a lot of time consolidating work, refining plans, and steadily moving our projects forward. They are all progressing at different speeds and facing different challenges, but it's always rewarding to see ideas slowly transform into something real.
Starting with The Conformist, we've made significant progress on the prototype. The architectural skeleton of the experience is now in place, characters and dialogues have been drafted, and we've continued advancing the systems that will help define the game. Skills design has also been moving forward through new iterations and discussions as we work toward agreeing on which concepts are the strongest candidates for prototype testing. More progress was made on the project's main gameplay feature as well, which is now entering a refinement phase with further iterations. Our goal is to test how smoothly it integrates into the broader experience and ensure that both the narrative and gameplay components complement one another while still having enough room to stand on their own. We've also seen new concept art and visual exploration take shape, which is always exciting. Perhaps most importantly, collaboration across the team has really found its rhythm. It feels like we've reached a good velocity where more and more of the work is moving from documents and plans into an actual playable build. Alongside that, our internal tools continue to evolve and improve, helping not only The Conformist but future Torpor projects as well. We've gone through several iterations to make our daily workflows smoother and more effective.
Project Aperture completed its narrative review and reflection phase and is now wrapping up its current round of internal testing. Several storylines were expanded, character motivations were strengthened, and relationships became more nuanced. There's still more work ahead, but this pass significantly improved the narrative experience and many of the moment-to-moment interactions. We also finalized and began integrating several lightweight gameplay systems that complement the experience. These systems help reinforce the themes of the story while making some of the broader changes happening throughout the narrative more visible to players. We're now working on the final scenes and endings, which is traditionally one of the most challenging parts of development for us given how much complexity accumulates toward the conclusion. For the content that has reached a sufficient level of polish, we're also preparing for our first closed external playtest to gather feedback from outside the development team.
Project Fulcrum continued to move forward on the design side. We clarified the next major objectives and established what we want to implement and test over the coming months. Several designed features are now making their way into the build, and we're increasingly shifting our attention toward the larger strategic and systemic layers of the experience. After spending a lot of time understanding the smaller components, we're now confident enough to focus on the bigger picture. The narrative has expanded as well, with new choices, conflicts, and dilemmas designed to deepen the Suzerain-style experience without overwhelming players. The art team has continued exploring visual directions, while audio design has been experimenting with custom solutions and new tracks to create a richer music and soundscape experience. We've also spent a great deal of time thinking about onboarding, tutorials, difficulty options, and the overall first-time player experience.
On Project Vanguard, we've made progress on hiring and are excited that a new producer will be joining us soon. Their focus will be helping us build the team, establish momentum, and move the project forward in a more structured way. We look forward to sharing more about Vanguard in the months ahead.
As always, thank you for following along and supporting our work. Building games is a long journey filled with countless iterations, small victories, and occasional surprises. Thankfully, those surprises are usually the fun kind that are waiting to be solved by our passionate developers.
A Glimpse Inside The Conformist
The world of The Conformist continues to take shape. Over the past month, the team has been crafting new environments, breathing new life into existing ones, and pushing forward with concepts that help define the game's unique visual identity.
To give you a peek behind the curtain, here's a look at some of the work-in-progress enviromental scenes inside Blender:
New Sounds, New Projects
We previously shared a few clips from Torpor’s Sound Designer, James, giving you a glimpse into the audio magic happening behind the scenes. Since then, he’s been hard at work in the studio, crafting not only music, but also sound effects and ambient soundscapes that help bring our worlds to life and make every experience feel more immersive.
Of course, we could tell you exactly which clip belongs to which project... but where’s the fun in that? Have a listen and see if you can guess!
At the end of May, we shared a lore piece featuring the recipe for Sordish Lorscha, and the response was incredible. Seeing so many of you engage with this tasty slice of worldbuilding inspired us to take things a step further.
To celebrate the community’s enthusiasm, we launched a culinary competition and invited players to bring Sordish Lorscha to life in their own kitchens. Whether recreating the recipe faithfully or putting a unique spin on it, participants had the chance to showcase their creativity, compete for a €100 Steam gift card, and earn access to test early builds of upcoming Suzerain projects.
We've already received some incredible entries, and there's still time to join in. If you'd like to put your culinary skills to the test, be sure to submit your creation on our Discord before entries close on 17th June. Head over to Steam for the full rules, details, and how to enter.
While this Broadcast is technically a recap of May, we're making an exception for something too good not to share: this year's Torpor Day, which took place just last week.
For reasons that were definitely work-related and not an excuse to spend a day outdoors, we headed north of Berlin to Eberswalde for a crash course in wilderness survival. The team learned how to start fires with birch bark, build shelters, how to read a compass, and acquire a healthy respect for just how useful modern conveniences really are.
We also discovered that it takes approximately fifteen game developers to successfully tie a knot in a forest, a finding that may or may not influence future project planning.
Here are a few photos from the adventure:
After eight hours in the wilderness and temperatures reaching 23°C, it was finally time to head back into the city for a well-earned dinner and a few cold drinks.
What better way to end the day than overlooking the historic rooftops and landmarks of Berlin's Mitte, reflecting on everything we'd learned, and perhaps appreciating modern comforts just a little more than usual.
