STUDIO WILDCARD THINKS SIZE MATTERS AND DELIVERS A SKYSCRAPER-SIZED TITANOSAUR, GIANT REDWOODS, AND THE BIGGEST STEAM DISCOUNT EVER
Seattle, WA – June 23, 2016 – Studio Wildcard, the studio that never sleeps, is going big today in every way possible with its online dinosaur survival experience, ARK: Survival Evolved! Available to all Steam ARK players starting now, update v243 is packed with features including the opening of the stunning Redwood Forest Biome, a major extension of the Snow Biome, and new structures featuring Ewo… well uh…tree-top villages with furry creatures. In fact, there are dozens more features in this update, from Gas Masks, to Rope Ladders, Tree-House Platforms, Sap Taps, and much more.
The biggest delivery? The Titanosaur, a gargantuan creature that is among the largest ever in a multiplayer action game – slowly roams the ARK and is neither friend nor foe. Whichever Tribes can successfully tame the beat can gain a massive benefit to their forces.
Best of all ARK Survivor wanna-be’s can now purchase the ultimate dinosaur survival game for 45% off the retail price (regular $29.99, now $16.49 for a limited time) during the Steam Summer sale, running today through 10 am, Monday, July 4!
Watch the new showcase video on YouTube HERE: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVw2vd4h0ho
The extremely rare Titanosaur (Titanosaurus Vagacastrum) is the largest creature found on ARK island, operating for many players as a mobile superfortress capable of ferrying obscene amounts of weight, structures, defenses and creatures upon its back. Essentially a walking mountain, this herbivore often crushes creatures and buildings within its path and takes issue with any creature invading his personal space.
The Redwood Biome is an all-new biome filled with lush, giant trees sturdy enough in which to build treehouses and villages. Harvest lumber from these gigantic arbors to create your fortress super high up in the air. Take refuge among the Redwood trees with new Wood and Metal Tree Platforms! Live like a Furry Forest Creature in these massive trees! Tap into the massive redwoods to extract their sap for healthy concoctions using the new Tree Sap Taps. Reach new heights with the Retractable Rope Ladders. Extend or retract these flimsy ladders, which are good for letting allies onto your ramparts while keeping the enemy out. There is a whole new way of life to explore! Littered throughout the Redwood and expanded Snow biomes are new ruins, which in future updates will contain collectible story notes about the history of ARK.
New ARK Content Includes:
- New Item: The Chain Bola ammo for ballista turret! Bring huge creatures to their knees, temporarily, by entangling them in these gigantic metal bolas.
- New Item: Gas Mask! Avoid diseases and poisonous gas with this protective breathing apparatus.
- New Item: Herbivore “TastyCakes”
- New Structure: Retractable Rope Ladders! Extend or retract these flimsy ladders, good for letting allies onto your ramparts while keeping the enemy out.
- New Structure: Tree Sap Taps! Slowly extract valuable syrup from the great redwoods for use in a variety of new recipes.
- New Mechanic: Custom Tripwire Alarm Notifications via SurviveTheArk.com (E-mail and Forum). Optionally Tribes can post to arbitrary URL, if they have a custom system! Now if someone’s raiding your base, you can get on top of it!
- GroundClutter effect extended 50% further and +20% more GPU efficiency
- Balled Doed’s are no longer invincible to Tamed Dino melee attacks — now just very, very resistant to them.
- Magnifying Glass now displays creature Torpor stats (on Wild creatures too).
- Tribe Alliances now disabled in Offline Raid mode (too complex to determine if anyone in an Alliance is around), C4/Traps can no longer be placed near Offline-Raid Protected Structures, and Offline-Raid mode now forces all Structures to be Lockable so that players can “Lock” Crop Plots to prevent their turrets from being disabled.
- New Server Option: “?PreventTribeAlliances=true” to prevent tribe alliances
- Engagement with Wild Naturally-Fleeing & Small creatures (tiny bugs etc) no longer trigger combat music
- Tamed Dinos that are following a submerged allied Target will not attempt to float to the surface of the water, but rather will attempt to stay at the depth of their allied Target. (helpful when deliberately going deep-diving your tamed land Dinos). However, Dinos that are capable of suffocating will try to surface if they are out of Oxygen regardless!
- Vaults can no longer be dropped onto saddle platforms
- Transfer-All/Drop-All methods now only drop/transfer what is currently disabled in the inventory, respecting any filters/folders you may have active (so for example, if you’re within a folder, it will only transfer those items, or if you have a text filter active, etc).
- Fixed an issue where pillars were not being calculated correctly as foundations when building pillars downwards
- Massive +33% rendering gains with any translucent rendering (particles, greenhouse windows, etc).
Feel like riding a dinosaur? Join the ARK community forums HERE: steamcommunity.com/app/346110/discussions/
ARK: Survival Evolved is in development for Xbox One via the ID@Xbox program, PlayStation®4 with Project Morpheus support, and Steam PC. The game is currently playable in Microsoft’s Game Preview on Xbox One and Steam’s Early Access program, which includes Oculus Rift VR support and an integration of Steam community features such as Steam Economy and Steam Workshop for custom maps and mods. Players can host private/LAN servers and have access to a custom-built version of the Unreal Engine 4 Editor for creating mods. The world of ARK is designed to be modder-friendly and ever-expanding!
To join our growing band of survivors, journey to Steam or Microsoft’s Game Preview on Xbox One to download the game. For the latest updates follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, subscribe to us on YouTube, visit the Website at playark.com and watch us tame and train leviathan dinosaurs on Twitch.TV.
ABOUT STUDIO WILDCARD
Studio Wildcard was co-founded in 2014 by Jesse Rapczak, former Technical Art Director at Microsoft Game Studios, and industry veteran Jeremy Stieglitz with the mission of bringing AAA quality to ambitious indie productions that are designed for core gamers. With combined 25 years of industry experience across multiple independent and studio-backed titles, Jeremy and Jesse have teamed up with other veteran developers for Seattle, WA-based and Gainesville, FL-based development studios that also include distributed team members across multiple continents. Wherever talented, driven developers may reside, Studio Wildcard intends to seek out and work with them!
ABOUT INSTINCT GAMES
Instinct Games is Egypt’s leading game development studio. Started in 2011 by former Timeline Interactive co-founders, the Instinct Games team develops and produces video games on all major platforms utilizing its competent technical team. Its mission is to collaborate with world class partners to foster Egypt’s video game development ecosystem and set a precedent of high quality, low cost, entertaining indie games with worldwide appeal.
