Castle of the Underdogs released from Early Access!
First of all, thanks a lot to everyone who supported and helped me throughout the game's Early Access!
The final version of Castle of the Underdogs Ep1 is finally here. Early Access has been a long but fulfilling journey, during which I added most of the features I wanted for the first episode (especially during the first few months of EA). The late EA section was devoted mostly to bring heavyweight features like the Japanese translation, and the low powered GPU renderer, which have helped me releasing on Switch.
There are a few bugs that I still need to iron out. Most of them have already been fixed, but I didn't want to risk doing a patch so soon before the game's release without proper testing.
I hope you enjoy the game as much as I've enjoyed making it, and thanks again to everybody for your continued support.
Japanese language added
I'm happy to share with you that I have added the Japanese language to my game. As someone who has dreamed of creating a JRPG since childhood, this is a significant milestone for me and a tribute to the country that pioneered this beloved genre.
This build is also the release candidate, which brings the Switch and Steam versions to par with each other one week before the launch.
Game will be released on both platforms on April 14th.
Added support for low-end GPUs
After too many months working behind the courtains to port the game to other platforms, I'm 'backporting' the low-end GPU rendering mode to PC. You can choose between the classic and the low-end mode in the graphics options menu. This makes the game playable with decent framerates even on intel GPUs.
Several bugs have also been fixed in the process.
Small debug patch
No meaningful changes made, just added debug code to improve my chances to find a crash I've been searching for a while.
Patch #16 : Release candidate... probably.
This it the first version with all the projected features implemented and a release candidate for the full release. In this update:
Added the last achievements, including the Very hard + no flee one. This is a quite tough achievement for people who really like challenges.
Now when you're using a Phoenix Hair, the timebar updates so that you know when the revived character's next turn will be.
Fixed the poison damage amount, which was incorrectly calculated when waiting.
Several memory optimizations and hiccup reduction.
A few world map features wouldn't show a message in order for the player to know they could enter a new map by pressing the action button. Now they have it.
Fixed a few bugs related to cutscene skipping.
Sometimes some characters would get in the middle of the camera when doing an unite. Fixed.
Sometimes some characters would get in the middle of the camera when watching an enemy's stats. Fixed.
Fixed some problems when retrying battles.
From now on my focus will be on fixing bugs and improving the performance of the game.
I'm considering moving the game to NetCore to further improve performance, as I'm not very happy with some aspects of the game (specially some hiccups that have proved very hard to fix). If I decide to do the move a big round of testing will be needed again, however if the NetCore version does not significatively improve the problems I'm trying to avoid, this version is a release candidate.
Thanks for your understanding and support!
New Game Plus added.
New Game Plus added
You can optionally start a new game plus after finishing the game once.
You're required to load the completed game file (it has a yellow star on the savegame). The enemy book data info is loaded from this completion file, however you have to meet the enemy once in order to access its data.
You can skip most cutscenes holding Square / X button / "Q" key during 1 second.
Escape talisman is available (as Special Offers) in a few shops.
Note: some tutorials are not shown in New Game Plus.
More achievements added
The newest character was not appearing in the castle when recruited.
Improvements+fixes on several menus, specially on user input feedback.
Study Enemy no longer works if you're blinded (either with or without science)
Fixed sound effects of a minigame that were not working.
