Genre: Fighting, Shooter, Simulator, Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Indie
Clone Drone in the Danger Zone
1v1 Multiplayer… is LIVE!!!
Today we launched 1v1 multiplayer duels!
And look -- our servers scaled up without exploding!
So go ahead, tell your friends! Challenge your neighbors!
Next Update: Improving Lag & Performance!
While many players are enjoying multiplayer, there are a few things we want to do to get pings lower and make the combat feel much more responsive. We're going to be doing a mini-update next, with:
This was a BIG update (including an overhaul of so much of the single-player tech as well) -- so let us know if you come across any new bugs or have issues with the game!
HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who tested the multiplayer beta over the last three months, who is hanging out playing duels this launch weekend, and for generally making this crazy dream of multiplayer Clone Drone a possibility for us!
Once 1v1 is feeling great, we've got some fun new plans for multiplayer on deck :)
1v1 LAUNCH DATE: April 18th!
Multiplayer launches on Wednesday, April 18th!
Bring a friend!
(to kick into a giant laser)
Multiplayer Development Progress Update & 1v1 Features!
Ahoy friends! We're super hard at work on Multiplayer Duel Mode, but wanted to take a quick second to update everyone on our progress!
We're zeroing in on a final, fun match structure for duels. Each player starts the match with 3 lives, and after deaths, players get to pick an upgrade!
Picking upgrades after death adds another layer of strategy to the game, letting you react to your opponent's choices and the map you're on!
Multiplayer-ifying Upgrades, Weapons, and Hazards!
As part of making the game work for multiplayer, we've been converting everything over to be multiplayer-compatible, including nearly every upgrade (hammer, bow, jetpack, kick) and hazards (sawblades, spikes, moving platforms over dangerous lava). While you may have kicked a Sword 1 robot or two into sawblades before, we're finding it's a totally fresh experience sending real human-controlled robots to their doom. Practice your maniacal laugh, you'll need it.
Dedicated Servers!
When we built Long Live Santa! as a test game, we used a direct peer-to-peer connection for matches. While this worked okay (and cost a good bit less) -- players who were acting as the host would sometimes drop, some hosts would have inconsistent internet connections or high pings to others in matches, and in some cases use their position as server host as an unfair advantage!
For Clone Drone's multiplayer, we're pulling out all the stops and hosting our own full-on auto-scaling dedicated servers! While the development branch is currently targeting a single region (US-East), soon we will support servers in regions worldwide, so not only should gameplay be nice & fair, but hopefully pings will be buttery-low!
What's Left to Do!
While we'd love to launch right now, we've got some things to do before shipping multiplayer to everyone!
The up-shot of all this is -- once we've developed this core fighting experience, other game modes will become easier and quicker to add! We're super excited about what's next for multiplayer (and shared some of our ideas in this other post), and can't wait to start slicing you all in half with our laser swords.
Follow Along and Let's Do This!
Multiplayer: 1v1 is coming!
Multiplayer is alive!
Soon the sword robots of the arena will be filled with human minds like yours.
We're starting with 1v1 Duels!
Our plans for multiplayer are far-reaching, but we're kicking it off with 1v1 Duels.
Two humans pick upgrades, then fight! Whoever runs out of clones first loses.
We're aiming to launch this to the world around late February / early MarchUPDATE: Now shooting for some time in April (more info), but come try the development branch now!
You can access the development branch!
Want to help test multiplayer? We're giving everyone access to the in-development version.
Right now it's a super-buggy, broken experience with terrible usability.
Nevertheless you can still try it! :)
Features on the Horizon
Multiplayer is going to grow and expand a lot over the coming months!
Here are some of the things we're going to be looking at:
Note: The above items are not in order, and might change drastically. We'll make specific decisions as we learn what multiplayer is like and see what people love or hate about it.
Let us know what you would most like to see in the comments!
Long Live Santa! is LIVE, Winter Sale, and Multiplayer!
Just over three weeks ago, we announced we'll be tackling adding multiplayer to Clone Drone in the Danger Zone—and to learn the principles of multiplayer game development, we’d first create a simple test game.
Instead of throwing the prototype away, we decided to quickly publish it for free on Steam!
Less than a month after starting development, and just a couple days after launch, Long Live Santa! has already been installed by over 40,000 players!
Early reviews claim such definitely-not-joking things as:
“10/10 better than PUBG confirmed” “Definitely better than PUBG” “PUBG has a rival”
Thanks to all the wonderful Clone Drone players who helped beta test early builds and shared ideas and encouragement on our Twitch dev-streams!!
Lessons learned, now on to Clone Drone Multiplayer!
We learned TONS about how to build and iterate on multiplayer games from this technical exercise. The approach we took held up well—hitting over 400 concurrent players worldwide at once!
We’re now buzzing with ideas for ways to make a fantastic Clone Drone multiplayer experience, and we’re glad we took the time to “burn a pancake”—though some say the pancake is not so bad!
In January we will start designing and building multiplayer integration with Clone Drone, using what we’ve learned from building the prototype to make it amazing!
Steam Winter Sale: Save 34% on Game Copies!
If you haven’t yet had a chance to pick up Clone Drone—or are kind enough to share the secret simple joys of Clone Drone with a friend for the holidays—it’s currently 34% off, its biggest Steam Store discount to date!
Now's a great time to treat yourself, be a hero, and grab a copy or two for some holiday training!
Long Live Santa! launches on Dec 19. With one week left we are hunting down the last bugs and making sure it's ready for launch.
Want to help us test it???
Fill in this form and we'll email you a Steam beta key that gives you instant access to the game!
Game details
Long Live Santa! is the game we built in order to learn how to make a multiplayer game.
It is a fast paced Battle Royale Christmas Carnage Simulator.
Everybody spawns in the center of the arena!
Weapons start dropping from the sky!
Santas fight wildly!
A winner emerges, and receives a Christmas Dinner!
We're learning a lot building this game, and we're going to apply it all when we introduce Multiplayer to Clone Drone next year!
Multiplayer is coming!!!
Ever since the game launched, multiplayer has been the number one suggestion.
In terms of adding value to the game, few features could have a larger impact!
It's a big undertaking for our tiny team, but we've decided that it's finally time to tackle it!
Here is the plan:
Rapid Prototype: Santa goes to War!
We've never launched a realtime multiplayer game before, so we're going to fix that! :)
Who will be the next Santa Claus? The answer will be written in the snow with red letters!
We're aiming to release the prototype before Christmas, but if you wanna try it sooner check out Erik's twitch streams or the discord server.
Multiplayer modes on the horizon!
Once we start building multiplayer in Clone Drone we'll probably start with a simple PvP experience, and launch it as soon as it's in a good state!
After that there are many options: Co-op, team deathmatch, ranked ladder, weird Twitch integrations. We haven't decided exactly what multiplayer in Clone Drone will look like.
What kind of gameplay would you be most excited to see? Let us know in the comments!
Other cool stuff:
0.11.0 - Twitch Extension, Cheer Bots and more!
A new update just landed and this one is all about Twitch Mode!
The Twitch Extension is here!
What enemies can you spawn? How many coins do you have?
For a long time the only way to find out has been to type commands into Twitch Chat, but that changes today!
Sitting on top of the stream window, the new extension lets viewers interact with the streamer with unprecedented ease!
Want to try it? Install the extension here, and download the latest version of the game!
Cheer Bots: Cheer for the human!
Want to support your favorite streamer through cheering in the chat?
The Cheer Bots are here to help!
For every 100 bits cheered a Cheer Bot will appear with a wonderful present to help the streamer. Destroying the cheer bot gives you armor, clones, skill points or a powerful allied robot!
See who's streaming!
On Earth, streaming platform shows game.
In Robot Utopia, game shows streaming platform.
Now you can browse live streams straight from the main menu!
Make some noise for your favorite streamer!!!
Everybody loves robots shouting at them, so we went ahead and made sounds for the subscriber emotes for as many top Clone Drone streamers as we could.
Here is a small subset of the many wonderful emotes that make noise now:
Send us an email at support@doborog.com and tell us who else should have their sub-emotes make noise!
Armor in Twitch Mode!
It's a small improvement, but now you can add armor to your robots in Twitch Mode. Doing so doubles their cost!
Let us know what you think of the new features, and go watch some streams at:
https://www.twitch.tv/directory/game/Clone%20Drone%20in%20the%20Danger%20Zone
0.10.1 - Too easy you say?
Hello humans!
Many of you expressed that although the Chapter 3 update was a lot of fun, it was over too quickly. This update builds on the new mechanics introduced in last update and adds a slew of new content for you to play with!
Story Mode: A new experience!
All levels in chapter 1 & 2 have been updated with new maps.
We've mostly kept the ideas of the existing maps, but re-built them using the level editor to up their quality.
We've also introduced Difficulty Settings!
If you've found Story Mode too easy try playing on Hard or Insane.
The only difference is in what enemies appear on the levels.
Chapter 3 also supports the new difficulty levels.
Endless Armor Challenge
Do you wish every enemy in the game HAD ARMOR??
Try the Endless Armor Challenge!
We've also added a bunch of armored enemies to normal Endless Mode.
Hello I am Business Jetpack Bot!
Clearly the game needs a new jetpack bot wielding a fire sword.
!spawn bjetpack Kappa
Speaking of fire, we've made it spread faster!
The slow creeping spread didn't feel good to get killed by. This feedback first surfaced in this forum thread. Thanks guys!
Bugs bugs bugs
We also fixed a ton of bugs. Let us know if you find more!
Next up: TwitchCon!
Erik and Brian will be hanging out at TwitchCon this week. Look forward to some all day streams this weekend of random people trying Twitch Mode.
0.10.0 - Chapter 3 is here!
The wait is over, chapter 3 has landed! :D
Here is what's new:
Story Mode Continues!
Venture into the Fleet Communications beacon on a desperate quest. This is our most cinematic chapter yet, with many twists and turns!
Armor up!
The main new game mechanic this update is Armor.
Protect your limbs from being instantly destroyed by death robots!
Armor is available:
Rise of the Fleet Overseer!
Long did the voices cry out for some sort of boss. The Fleet Overseer is finally here to shoot a giant laser at those voices! BOOM!
While she mainly appears in Chapter 3, other areas you can play with her are Twitch Mode and the Level Editor!
Allies!
A major new feature in Chapter 3 is playing with your trusty AI companion.
Stand back and watch them wreak havoc.
Allies are also available in Twitch Mode!
Simply type !spawnally fleetoverseer KappaPride to give your favorite streamer a helping laser beam!
We initially restricted this to Twitch subscribers, but decided to open it up to everyone. Enjoy!
Aim Time!
Aim time is an awesome upgrade that's been in the game for quite a while now!
We've made it even more useful by making it not trigger automatically when you draw an arrow back. Instead: right click to aim time with an arrow drawn!
This has the great advantage of not wasting energy until you really want to aim, for all you energy-frugal archers out there. Hurray!
What's next: A small update with more stuff!
As is often the case, we could have easily worked on this update for another month without running out of high priority tasks to do.
But instead WE SHIPPED IT!
Being in Early Access we strive to deliver you a rough, but satisfying experience in a timely manner. :)
The result is that we have a few things we wish we would have had time for, that we're gonna scoop up into a delightful update coming out 2-3 weeks from now:
