02 Jun 11
dislekcia
Today we’re finally ready to launch the new Desktop Dungeons site. We’ve got a ton of announcements, so here goes:
Firstly: You can now pre-order the full version of Desktop Dungeons for PC and Mac! Every pre-order will gain access to the upcoming beta as soon as it goes live.
Secondly: To celebrate pre-orders going live, we’ve got new versions of the Desktop Dungeons freeware for everyone. Not too many changes, just some bug-fixes, general cleanup and some interface changes. Oh! And a new class! And a new dungeon! Enjoy. Yes, your existing saves will carry over just fine.
Thirdly: We’re also launching the QCF Forums today. There’s now a definitive place to trade DD strategies and ask for support if something’s wrong.
We’re really excited about the next few months, there’s a lot going on. Oh, be sure to come say hi if you’re going to be at E3!
30 May 11
Nandrew
Yeah, this situation doesn’t look suspicious at all.
I’ve always felt a little bit guilty about the latter portion of freeware DD’s game progression: in terms of raw challenge, it was good giving players a few extra dungeons to bang their heads against, but the core gameplay never changed quite enough for it to be pronounced “good design”. It was more like simple difficulty escalation: people completed X, they wanted more, so we gave them Y with an extra boss and they were only allowed to hurt monsters by chest-bumping them.
The freshly-established code base in the Unity version was built with far more flexibility in mind, and it’s a lot easier to add variety in dungeons. Now it’s not just a matter of creating more difficult dungeons with one or two extra enemies: we can change terrain layouts, spawn numbers and even starting gear. We can even code special scripted rules on a per-dungeon basis to shake things up, though this has to be done with care.
Read on for a more detailed description of our changes, along with a bunch of screenshots — just please excuse the repetitive graphics, we’ve only got one terrain tileset loaded up at the moment! More…
24 May 11
Nandrew
If you’ve been reading up on previous posts, you may have realised two things: one, we don’t update this blog nearly as often as we should (er, sorry about that). Two, we’ve been putting a lot of emphasis on changing the way that Desktop Dungeons manages the player’s items.
Potions are just some of the things affected by our changes. Because they now take up precious inventory slots (along with every other item in the game), we’ve introduced a new helper to make the player’s chemical loadout far more varied and powerful.
Meet the Witch:
This kitten was found on Google. Hopefully we’ll have real witch graphics soon.
More…
16 May 11
dislekcia
Thanks to the fine folks at IndieCade, Desktop Dungeons is going to be making an appearance at E3 this year! The game will be at the IndieCade stand as part of their curated indie showcase (which just sounds totally posh). So if you’re heading to E3, come find Desktop Dungeons in the West hall: You might not meet us (we’re still trying to figure out how we could afford the trip) but we promise we’ll have something new for you to play!
Speaking of affording things and official announcements, it’s time we let you all know about something we’ve been working on for the past few months: We should be ready to start taking pre-orders for Desktop Dungeons on PC and Mac in the next couple of weeks. We could talk about the annoyances of accepting credit cards in Africa, but we figure you’d rather hear about the cool stuff:
- We’ll be launching a new Desktop Dungeons focused website, just for the game.
- Along with a dedicated QCF forum for feedback.
- And because you’re going to need something to feed-back to us about: The Desktop Dungeons beta will be available soon afterward to pre-order customers!
I still can’t believe our game’s going to hit both the GDC and E3. That’s childhood dream territory…
28 Apr 11
Nandrew
Guess you should have signed up for that suspicious-looking insurance policy after all.
In addition to gold being used for Kingdom upgrades (as well as a more limited form of spending within dungeons themselves), smaller amounts of money can be spent on carefully controlled dungeon preparations.
The previously-discussed adventuring locker is one such preparation, allowing players to carry a saved item into fresh dungeon runs for a fixed fee. But there’s many more to be discovered as players upgrade their kingdoms and learn about new buildings. Like other aspects of the game, preparations are designed to range from beginner-friendly helpers to subtle (yet powerful) boosters that more advanced players will find useful. More…
14 Apr 11
Nandrew
Locker items: never go dungeoneering without an eating utensil again!
Imagine this: you’re just wandering around on a merry ol’ dungeon run somewhere when you happen to stumble upon a shop selling the Orb of Zot, the Amulet of Yendor or something similarly rare and powerful. Unfortunately, the dungeon you’re in isn’t particularly challenging, and you lament the fact that such an uncommon occurrence is completely wasted on killing a boring old goblin lord. If only there was some way you could buy the item now and take it into the golem factory for your Wizard run later!
Well, as it so happens, the commercial version of Desktop Dungeons is going to have you covered. As mentioned in our earlier post, the brand-new locker system will allow players to store a limited number of items at the Adventurers’ Guild between dungeon runs, while charging them some sort of bureaucratic nonsense fee based on their market value.
What does this mean for the game? Behold: More…
07 Apr 11
Nandrew
… and that’s why you should always explore subdungeons.
The freeware version of Desktop Dungeons has always been hampered by a slightly bothersome gold carryover system. People have complained of its grindalicious nature, and it is indeed a rather weak design element — after all, one of our key desires was to avoid letting players bore themselves by mining for resources in a time-consuming way that wasn’t particularly difficult or rewarding.
In the fresh new version of DD that we’re working on, the economy has already undergone significant improvements, keeping much more in line with our original goals while hopefully avoiding some of the pitfalls: More…
22 Mar 11
dislekcia
It’s probably not possible to really convey the impact of coming to something like the GDC from the rather sparse game development environment of South Africa. We all had our eyes opened, our cherries popped, our minds blown and further variations on that theme. There was also a lot of handshaking. Then there was nerd-flu…
Here’s something we learned at the GDC:
1. Indie devs are awesome.
You have no idea how awesome. Seriously. Every single indie dev we met over the course of the week was literally amazing. Being surrounded by people like us is something that we’re just not used to, but are definitely feeling the lack of right now. More…
07 Mar 11
Nandrew
We did it! At this year’s Independent Games Festival awards (against all odds, expectations and core laws of existence) we managed to snag an award for Excellence in Design.
From left to right: Beardy McViking, Hatty “Fedora” Hat and Scary Drunkard. Also pictured: an award
Yeah, this all happened on Wednesday, but we’ve really really only just been able to spend enough quality time with our laptops to make this post right now (touring and pressing and marketing and celebrating takes its toll, yo). More…
02 Mar 11
dislekcia
OMG, we’re at the GDC! Besides having the time of our lives meeting hordes of our internet heroes, challenging people at Metagame and freaking out over how much random things cost in Dollars, we’ve managed to sneak in a few solid days of development. Behold the build that people will be able to play in the IGF pavilion at the GDC expo tomorrow:
Wondering what the crap’s going on there? You’ll have to wait till someone plays the new hard levels and moans about plants.
