About three months have passed since the release of Blade of Agony and the feedback so far has been impressive. We would have never expected such a global impact with so many positive, encouraging and kind words, so thanks to all of you for this.

Not only highly reputed gaming sites have been showcasing our game, YouTubers all around the world have been uploading Let's Play videos of our game which is kinda fun to watch as you finally can experience the maps from a player's perspective which is very different from our personal point of view as developers.

And even though we are happy about every single video being posted, we want to mention one particular person who spent a lot of effort to record a full 100%-completed walkthrough of all three chapters which we want to consider as definite source in case you encounter a dead-end or if you just want to find all the secrets and easter eggs that we've scattered around. Thank you pagb666 for your dedication - we really appreciate this, and we are sure that this set of videos will help a lot of players out there.

Comerades, it's Friday 9th of July and we hope you are ready to get psyched once again! The new version 3.1 of Blade of Agony has just been unleashed on ModDB's project page. So what can be expected? Is it all censored? Are swastikas gone and are Nazis only generic soldier cannon fodder? People expected the worse, but we can promise you there is no need to fear radical changes.

New features in v3.1

• New launcher (written from the ground, with additional options)
• Addons (a total of 12 gameplay mutators, featuring interesting replay-possibilities, loadable with the launcher)
• Ultra-Widescreen support (for 21:9 screens)
• New damage and powerup screen indicators (including indicators for grenades, damage direction, damage types, powerup cooldowns)
• Completely revamped fullscreen hud (powered by a new widget system, with transparent backgrounds)
• New additional boss battles and enemies
• Achievements system (total of 34, achievement board in the briefing room)
• Performance improvements (higher fps rates on weaker machines)
• Improvements to make the player-placed mines more useful
• Sprite improvements (additonal rotational sprites for 1-directional enemies, hires sprites for numerous lowres variants)
• Options menu simplification (making it more accessable to people outside the GZDoom community)
• Includes latest stable GZDoom 4.6
• Countless bugfixes, adjustments and improvements (over 400 Github commits)
• Replacement and improval of edgy and sensitive content (e.g. removal of historical references towards the Holocaust, character renaming, content replacement)

So what does the latter point mean? After feedback from the players all around the world, we took a closer look at some of the design-choices that we made and asked ourselves if some of the content, that has been considered to be "edgy" contributes to the story and the atmosphere, or actually doesn't. We have made some minor choices and even though some people believe that we went too far or "bent the knee", we think that our vision is still intact without these nuances and we really hope that you will enjoy the new version with all the additions we made.

Enjoy, and get psyched (you know how that works!)
Best regards,

Tormentor667 and the Blade of Agony Team

Since the release of v3.1 of "Blade of Agony" we have received numerous messages, comments and emails. Besides positive messages and words of support, we have also received a lot of opposition and disappointment.

"You have given up", "You have given in to the shitstorm", "You have lost my respect".

After more than 6 years of working on a project of the heart, these words of course hurt and disappoint us very much and after we had answered some of the comments on ModDB and by email, we now feel that an official statement is necessary to gain understanding and shed light on the matter.

The changes and mitigations we have implemented for version 3.1 do not stem from cowardice we have shown towards some users of the Doom community. Blade of Agony is a creative, free and artistic interpretation within the Wolfenstein universe. And as long as we are unpaid developers working on such a project in our spare time, it must be ensured that we realise our vision as we see fit. This is exactly the motto we have been working by for the last 6 years, releasing the last 3 chapters. So why the adjustments to v3.0 now?

As some of you know, the team around "Blade of Agony" consists of a colourful bunch from all over the world, including Israel and Germany. Wolfenstein 3D and swastikas have long been banned and punished in Germany in the field of entertainment. Since 2018, these laws have been defused, but games of this kind are still under the strictest observation by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (FOftPotC).

Although we as developers strictly condemn any form of discrimination, racial hostility, anti-Semitism and glorification of the Second World War, there were concerns on the part of various German gaming sites and news sources about whether we had not crossed a line with some content (including the depiction of a concentration camp, the explicit mention of affected population groups or the World's Fair in Paris with historical anti-Semitic content). From that point on, it was clear to us that we would have to reconsider the content in order to weigh up possible personal damage (for example a punishment from the FOftPotC if they deem the game unacceptable) from all the developers of the project concerned.

The Second World War was the most horrific conflict in our history, and we as a development team do not want to ignore, censor or even deny these atrocities. However, we have asked ourselves what position we are in as entertainers. Wolfenstein is and always has been a fictional scenario, so we have no duty to educate the people who play our game. We want to tell an exciting story. So our yardstick in defusing the game was "What content is necessary to achieve that and what content can we do without?"

Blade of Agony has been released in several versions before and as we changed, removed and added content from version 1.0 to 2.0 based on experience gained and advice received, this is an organic process that has now also taken place between 3.0 and 3.1.

While we can understand some of the disappointment, we hope players will understand why some changes had to be made and why we can no longer officially support v3.0, and ask that you do not share public links on our ModDB page. Of course, we have no influence on what happens in the private area.

We hope that you continue to have as much fun with Blade of Agony as we had during its development and we still wish you a good time.

Thank you,
Daniel Gimmer
and the entire Blade of Agony development team

After the original v3.0 of Blade of Agony has been taken down one month ago to calm things down, we are proud to announce the release of the updated version 3.1 which will be unleashed on Friday 9th 2021 - yes, already next week. As we have gone already into details about unfortunate coincidences and mistakable controversies in past articles, it's about time now to showcase what has been changed and improved. The new version is not just about changes, it's also about completely new features, but let's take a look:

What's new for v3.1?

• New launcher (written from the ground, with additional options)
• Addons (a total of 12 gameplay mutators, featuring interesting replay-possibilities, loadable with the launcher)
• Achievements system (total of 34, achievement board in the briefing room)
• Performance improvements (higher fps rates on weaker machines)
• Replacement and improval of edgy and sensitive content (e.g. removal of historical references towards the Holocaust, character renaming, content replacement)
• Sprite improvements
• Includes latest stable GZDoom 4.6
• Countless bugfixes, adjustments and improvements (over 400 Github commits)
• and many more...

Is this enough to keep you psyched? Well, we are, and we can't wait to release the new version of Blade of Agony to you - it was worth the wait and it is worth to play it (again).

PS: A very special thanks goes to our beta testers x3003, hawkwind3, Shockwave508 and everyone else who was active on our GitHub issues page. Another thanks goes to mgrinzPlayer for the new launcher. Thanks to all of you helping us improving the game. This wouldn't have been possible without you!