We have just announced Romans: Age of Caesar, a co-operative grand strategy MMO and spiritual successor to our online castle builder! Pre-registration for the game’s first closed Alpha is now open, with our announcement trailer revealing Romans to prospective governors worldwide. Building on the unique MMO design of Stronghold Kingdoms, Romans is an online co-op city builder with thousands of players working together to rebuild Rome. The result is a shared world builder that returns to the classic Roman setting designer Simon Bradbury and producer Eric Ouellette made their name with before founding Firefly Studios in 1999.

In Romans players must rebuild the empire as they share resources, re-establish trade routes and protect their cities from barbarian invasion. Experience classic city builder gameplay online across on an entire continent as you build, trade and fight together with 15 other players in each city. Revive the republic and restore the Roman Empire to its former glory! Planned for both PC and mobile with full cross-platform play, Romans: Age of Caesar is scheduled to release later this year.

Join Aaron & Nick for some intense Stronghold 2: Steam Edition action as they premiere the first episode of the Stronghold Challenge! Watch as Firefly’s devs tackle a series of community-suggested challenges in the first of our Challenge series on our official Firefly YouTube channel. This week Aaron takes on numerous Sir Williams before switching gear to take on Olaf and others in one of our favourite community-created maps. This is all while Nick answers your most pressing Stronghold Next questions over the course of our hour-long stream!

Stronghold & Chill returns this week with in-depth discussions, revelations and behind the scenes stories of programming within game dev as Aaron interviews Jack Massey, Junior Programmer here at Firefly Studios. Learn what it takes to cut it in the video game industry as we learn the ins and outs of being a programmer, the bread and butter of a video game studio. Stronghold & Chill aims to bring the developers at Firefly Studios and it’s communities closer together, so make sure you’re subscribed to us on YouTube to catch brand new episodes with our other developers!

This week we’re back with another episode of the Stronghold Showcase! This new series sees Firefly Studios highlighting hidden gems from Steam Workshop, Stronghold Heaven and other Stronghold fan sites giving new life to classic titles. Whether you’re seeking a fresh Crusader skirmish map on which to battle friends or a brand new siege scenario to test your mettle in Stronghold we have you covered! Selecting maps from Firefly Studio’s legacy titles with active map making communities and easy access via Steam Workshop or Stronghold Heaven, Aaron showcases a series of awesome custom maps to dig your teeth into until Stronghold Next surfaces:

• MINAS TIRITH
• LABYRINTH
• RIVERSTONE WOODS
• COOL MAP
• YEVON ISLAND

Do you have a multiplayer battlefield, siege scenario or cosmetic map you think deserves to be in a future episode? Comment and let us know! We’re constantly on the lookout for cool fan-created content and love spotlighting lesser-known creations that go under the radar.

Matt doesn’t know what to do with his hands, Paul does and Andreas keeps messing up his lines… It’s must be the Firefly Studios end of year outtakes! We take you behind the scenes to everything from how we’ve been improving retention and begging for subs through to what has come to be known as the ‘Hubba Bubba Saga’.

Watch as we fail time and time again to produce useable footage with two whole months’ worth of company outtakes. There’s swearing, sweating and everything in between as we pull back the curtain revealing our inner workings and ‘creative process’.

We hope you enjoy this bumper dose of outtakes and look forward to many more in 2019!