May 2021 Update - It's been a long, strange trip!

Over a year ago, I wrote an update and used the famous explorers, Lewis and Clark, as the inspiration for the piece.  At that time, our new playable demo seemed to be right around the next bend.  Instead, it appears the explorers were still a long ways away from their goal.  Chalk up that optimism to some naivaté, a little perfectionism and a lot of COVID-19.

It's been quite a journey. But we've made some significant progress.

1.  DONE  - Coat of Arms Creator allows players to create their House Standard and to derive personal Coat of Arms for their noblemen with unprecedented details. 
2.  DONE  - Unified Player Platform allows players to use the same account across the game's different domains, like the website and the client, with a unified communication, authentication and authorization system. 
3.  DONE  - Game Catalog provides the persistent, cloud-based game servers and their supervisor logic that can run multiple game instances, all using their own rulebooks and settings in parallel, as well as establishes the fundamental core of rich modding and our game world generation system. 
4.  DONE  - Online Client further enriches and ties all the parts of the client and server ecosystems, brings seasonal progress to the games and adds the ability to show the game map and to process the tick updates from the game server.
5.  WE ARE HERE  - Feudum Sims Light adds the ability for the players to start playing on MMO game worlds, try the basics of the game's economy system under different rulebook settings, as well as our new labourer system and the tasks of feudum management. Also meet the World Market where prices are driven by the players' actual demands. 
6. Petty Kingdoms allows players to assume control over multiple feudums, extend their rule and bid for uncontested regions, as well to use the world chat where the ladies and lords can meet.
7. Diplomacy includes major elements such as Player to Player trading, diplomatic treaties and vassalage. Once finished, this build allow players to interact with other players, sign various diplomatic treaties, begin trading and issue invitations to others to join the game.
8. Warfare allows players to resolve their disputes by other means; to gather armies - lances or mercenaries -, expand their territory with cold iron, attack other players, lay siege on fortifications or just sack and pillage for glory. 
9. Backgrounds brings the RPG Elements, Achievements, Starting and Unlockable Traits and Drawbacks for both the Noble Houses and the noblemen.
10. Workshop presents integrated support (like tools, tutorials and additional resources) for modders and modding.
11. Lore adds Global and Local Events as well as a tutorials.

But here we are.  Finally.  We're standing along the shoreline looking at the majestic Pacific Ocean. After the last two months of closed testing with our Vanguards, we've made available on the website a public playtest version of "Feudums Sims Lite" for everyone to take a peek at.  If you like what you see, take a look at our updated Pateon site.  All that extra time we spent over the past few years to get things right - has drained us.  Emotionally. Financially. Especially financially.  We're going to need your help to keep going.  So I invite you to do a few things.  First, download the demo.  Second, come visit our forums or find us on our Discord channel.  We need you to tell us if you like what we've done so far.  We need (and want) to hear from you!  Lastly, pay a visit to our Patreon page and pledge a little to help us continue the adventure.  We might be looking at the Pacific Ocean - but we're sure there is something on the other side of all that water ...