- Update notes for 23 November - 23 November 2025
Fixed a battle soft lock that occurs when CPU controlled Blinkers with Desperation status activate their Armor Blink Thrill Kill ability with the first of two dies rolled.
- NEGOTIATIONS HAVE FAILED! is available and 15% off during launch week! - 3 November 2025
It's been 1,390 days since I first wrote a note in my Obsidian vault on a sleepless night in January of 2022, when I saw, in that almost-dream state, the layout of a playing card game and rapidly came up with rules that determine how units attack each other, how their armor works, and how turn order can be determined. And that game is now available for you to play, with a whole lot more features and a grooving soundtrack.Get NEGOTIATIONS HAVE FAILED! this launch week for a 15% discount!Click here to join our Discord to find other people to play its multiplayer mode with!Tell your friends to check out the game and join the Discord, too!If you beat the demo...I have a secret to share if you beat the demo and don't wish to replay the tutorials, allowing you to get right to grinding shards to invade the Aetheryx Lair! But if you wish to find out, either join our Discord to ask, message @goo…
- What have we been up to leading up to our launch on November 3rd? - 29 October 2025
Hey everyone!During the Next Fest, we had a successful doubling of our total wishlists on Steam, and a good portion of people who tried out the demo. Please share any feedback in our discussion board or our Discord!What Moody's been up to:Mostly marketing the game on various social media, and also doing some IRL playthroughs of the game with friends. Moody also livestreamed the entire demo.Very minor issues were identified, and the muse continues to visit me as I see in-game events happen, inspiring me to add just one more challenge achievement for the post-campaign content this past Friday. Some of the most fun things to do in NHF's battle system are after you explore the main campaign!In our Discord, we started a high score contest for the Endless Patrol mode, featured at the end of the demo. We even did a fun live stream with side-by-side competing, followed by a head-to-head match f…
- Join the NHF! Discord and read about our recent development accomplishments - 13 October 2025
The NHF Discord Community is here!Click here to join us and start our community to...Discuss NHF!Share high scoresConnect for Remote Play Together sessions (for the full game's P2P skirmish mode)Suggest game ideas/improvementsReport issuesTalk about other gamesLooking forward to chatting to you there! Your participation and feedback will directly help improve NEGOTIATIONS HAVE FAILED!Achievements and post-game content fully implementedThe past three weeks, I finished fully implementing and testing the game's achievements as well as other goodies to make the game even more enjoyable after beating the campaign. I'm really excited to see everyone compete with one another and push themselves in their runs of the campaign.We'll have more updates in the near future as the Next Fest commences!
- Announcement: Demo is now live on Steam! - 1 October 2025
It's here! Download the demo to train yourself in NHF's battle system through the main tutorial area!Once you're more comfortable, tackle the demo's final section and share your high scores in the Steam community or on X while tagging @goofysocksgames!In the meantime, I'm doing some final additions to make the post-campaign game modes even more enjoyable, in response to the divine gameplay muses visiting me at the most inconvenient of times even though I already was excited to share the game before these additions.About the announcement image:I spent a majority of my progress of the game on artistic assets that weren't implemented along the way, so you can see in my GitHub contributions over the last month how last minute inspiration has been striking me!
- End of September Dev Update: Next Fest is... Next! - 27 September 2025
What I've been up toIt's been just about four weeks since I last published an update, and I'm really excited that we're so close to sharing the game with a bigger audience. Here's where my attention has gone:Setting up playnhf.comWe have a public website live, with a lot of the content that is already available on our Steam store and a link to the demo on itch.io.Steam Integration: Cloud Saves, Remote Play Together, and Build ApprovalSince this is the first game I've published on Steam, most of the time lately has been learning the process of implementing the Steam SDK into the game's code and getting NHF to launch/run. While it's a bit of work to find your way around, the actual integration of the game's code amounts to not much more than installing a library and adding a few lines of code.What was most exciting to me was how easy it was to set up things like Cloud Saves and Remote Pla…
- Negotiations Have Failed goes gold! Release date and more... - 1 September 2025
NHF goes gold! Release date and more...Monday, 3 November 2025In mid-August, for the first time since starting working on this game, I had no more todo items on my MVP list for Negotiations Have Failed. So the game is ready to publish on Steam, with the demo being accessible directly on Steam during the upcoming Steam Next Fest.Major work items focused on through the Spring and SummerSince my last update in March, where I reported that I had to finish writing and implementing the remaining poems in the game, I had the remaining items to work through:Fixing a softlock that occurred in a rare battle circumstance that I had overlooked in my code. (It was a one-line fix...)Mixing and implementing the last few songs that were composed back in Winter 24-25Revamping the game's final story and end credits sequenceImplementing a few secrets (my favorite thing to conceive and implement)Computer c…
- Update: Battle Backgrounds & What I'm Up To Now - 17 April 2025
Hi, everyone. Tim here with a brief update. Battle background artwork complete! While my last update said I would focus on releasing the soundtrack and looking at any feedback received from the demo for improvements, I didn't receive any feedback yet and decided to move forward with directly working on what's required for the full release. I've been working since January on completing the game's background battle art. Three remained, one of them quite larger than the others, and I finished them last week. What's next If you've played the demo, you've seen that each battle mode begins with a short poem, and there are a few more that I have to compose for the rest of the game's post demo modes. While I've written a lot of notes on the kinds of themes I wish to explore for each one, I'm also breaking out some of my collections at home to get my line writing muscles loosened up. So I'm focu…
- Weekly update #2: Soundtrack finished, - 30 January 2025
Hi, everyone. Tim here with the latest updates, mostly reporting on music things related to Negotiations Have Failed! Play our early demo build and give your thoughts and feedback You can play a good chunk of the game by downloading it on Itch: NHF Demo Page There's a feedback form there that you can fill out to let us know what you like and would suggest for NHF, and you can also join our mailing list there. You can also leave feedback in our Steam community/news posts and itch comment section. Short term goals Wrapping up arranging the end credits music. It's about 80% there.Making the demo's soundtrack available on YouTube, Spotify, and Bandcamp Seeing which ways I can make improvements to the gameplay based on collected demo feedback Last week's progress Soundtrack is complete* *If I'm being honest, I'll likely going to be tinkering with the songs' smaller details until the day befo…
- Try our demo, check our upcoming goals, and see our music/artwork progress. - 22 January 2025
Hi everyone! My name is Tim, and I'm the creator of Negotiations Have Failed. I'm going to share weekly updates of the most relevant news and what I've been up to regarding NHF's development. Play our early demo build and give your thoughts and feedback You can play a good chunk of the game by downloading it on Itch: NHF Demo Page There's a feedback form there that you can fill out to let us know what you like and would suggest for NHF, and you can also join our mailing list there. You can also leave feedback in our Steam community/news posts and itch comment section. Short term goals Wrapping up arranging the end credits music. It's about 80% there. Seeing which ways I can make improvements to the gameplay based on collected demo feedback Making the demo's soundtrack available on YouTube, Spotify, and Bandcamp After resolving these, I'll likely start working on the remaining artwork fo…
