Three tricky titles that will put your run ‘n’ gun and dungeon crawling skills to the test!
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Crown Trick Going Under Neon Abyss
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Nominate Crown Trick for a Steam Award!
Hi everyone!
We hope you're enjoying the treacherous dungeons of the Nightmare Realm and all the challenges they bring!
It's that time of the year again, the prestigious Steam Awards!
We'd love to see Crown Trick in the running for the 'Best Game You Suck At'.
If you've enjoyed playing and think that Crown Trick is indeed the best game you suck at, we'd truly love it if you could nominate us!
Thank you ːsteamhappyː
Crown Trick Dev Blog - Dungeon Design
When designing dungeons in Crown Trick, we began by considering the overall plot of the game and then narrowed it down to level design, interactive objects, monsters, and bosses. The main story follows Elle’s exploration of the Nightmare Realm in which the dungeons represent emotions — fear, regret, and anger. To escape this closed circle of the nightmare world and save the real world, she must find the mastermind behind the chaos. Each dungeon has its unique style and story behind it, but most importantly there are certain game mechanics and items in each dungeon that we want to discuss in this dev blog.
Tower of Sinners
In the Tower of Sinners, the atmosphere is constructed upon the emotion of fear. Our main inspiration is drawn from old tales of witch hunts in the middle ages. Therefore, the visual elements of the surroundings, monsters, and objects all correspond with that of a witch’s dungeon. As many tales of witches feature crucibles, we decided to add a big crucible at the beginning of each floor. Players can use it to obtain special status effects that will greatly assist Elle in this spooky place.
City of Steam
The inspiration for City of Steam comes from the story Frankenstein and the main theme in this dungeon is set upon the emotion of regret. However, the doctor in this case, went to extremes with his creations due to some other twisted reasons, which you may uncover in game. The entire dungeon in the City of Steam is designed as a scientist’s laboratory (and a rather mad scientist, from the looks of it). The place is rich with various steam pipes, electric panels, wires, strange devices and other technological wonders. Almost all the monsters that you meet there are the creations of Doctor Frank himself. There you will also find a quite useful item which you can upgrade at a special workbench. Remember to make good use of it as you battle Doctor Frank’s twisted machinations.
Ocean Depths
For the third dungeon, we wanted to come up with something quite different. Most traditional dungeon crawler games feature repetitive underground interiors and surroundings. We wanted to change that with something extraordinary this time. While considering ideas for what reflects anger as an emotion, we landed upon the concept of an underwater ocean world as a dungeon. From there, the idea of environmental pollution came to our minds quite naturally. In Ocean Depths, we give players a choice to pollute or purify the ocean and depending on the choice — the marine life monsters and bosses would become stronger or weaker. Compared to other areas, the dungeon itself turned out to be livelier and filled with more objects, including dangerous traps!
Realm of Kings
The first three dungeons serve as a sort of the background story for the game and we needed to have a key character that can connect these dots together. The domain of this rather interesting persona became the concept for the fourth and final dungeon. It was at first designed as a frozen castle and it looked darker and more dangerous than other dungeons. It’s filled with traps, interactive objects, secret rooms, and powerful monsters. We also thought it would be cool to add real chess pieces as enemies (because, you know — it’s a strategy game).
We don’t want to spoil the plot too much, since it’s one of the key areas to understand the story in Crown Trick. So, it’s up to you players, to find out what secrets are hidden in the Realm of Kings for yourself!
After completing the third day dungeon, in the Hall of Reincarnation, players will be able to access the new Darkness Invasion difficulty.
The monsters in this difficulty mode will become stronger, and adventurers will need to proceed carefully.
In the Darkness Invasion difficulty, the Day 2 dungeons (Tower of Sinners, City of Steam, Ocean Depths) now will have two traits of the dreamrealm.
Four new achievements have been added for completing the dungeons in Darkness Invasion difficulty, each corresponding with the 4 main dungeons in the game.
A new turns counter is added, and the number of turns there will count only during the battle. In the level selection screen, players will be able to see their record with the shortest numbers of turns for after completing a dungeon in the Darkness Invasion difficulty.
Experience Optimization
Optimized the player experience of the Trait of the Dreamrealm mechanic.
Optimized the player's experience of the slot machine and the weapon gacha machine.
Added more detailed information about weapons, relics, and items into the archive tab.
Added description of monsters' and bosses' weaknesses in the encyclopedia tab.
Added the current progress details of the player achievements in the achievements tab.
Optimized the gold coin drop experience of some treasure chests.
Optimized the probability of high-quality weapons drop in the weapon reward room.
Added a skip turn button to the game UI in only-mouse mode.
Bug Fixes
Fixed the issue where, under certain circumstances, the final boss would disappear during the transition to phase two.
Fixed the issue where players couldn't change to the full-screen mode by using keyboard.
Fixed the issue of game freeze in rare cases.
Fixed the issue where the sound effects of Summon Storm skill overlapped in some cases.
Fixed the issue where the new Relics would not work after the number of collected Relics exceeded 40 in the current run.
New Easter Egg Event: A Mysterious Stranger
Added 8 new interesting "mystery" events.
A Mysterious Stranger event can be turned on/off in the game options: "Options → Game → A Mysterious Stranger". After turning it on/off, the event will take effect in the next dungeon run.
This event is "off" by default. Players who want to experience it will need to turn it on manually.
The occurrence of mysterious strangers in the dungeon is random.
The above is the main content of this update. We will continue to pay close attention to the community and do our best to optimize the game experience even further. In addition, we are already in the discussions about the long-term consumption of soul shards, more challenging game modes, and more game content. We'll share more on future plans as soon as we can.
1. Bug fixes that cause no magnet drops in the battle against Doctor Frank when Trait of the Dreamrealm-Revenge is in effect
October 23rd Patch v1.0.0.10
Bug Fixes:
1. Fixed an issue that caused accidental death if a player had only 1HP and picked the White Orb relic; 2. Fixed an issue that caused abnormal game behavior after using the Thunder Spear in some cases; 3. Fixed an issue where the elemental damage of the "Chaos Nightmare" skill was sometimes inconsistent with its description; 4. Fixed the issue in the result screen when all weapon icons would be displayed as of legendary quality after unlocking; 5. Fixed an issue where the treasure chest could no longer be opened after appearing on the floating floor tile; 6. Fixed an issue that in some cases could cause abnormal game behavior during the last boss battle on the third day.
October 21th Patch v.1.0.0.9
Nightmare Runners,
In the recent discussions from the community, we noticed that a lot of players didn't quite understand how the negative status effects (elemental debuffs) exactly work in Crown Trick. So we think that it's important to explain some of its mechanics in this post.
First of all, immunity to elemental debuffs means that the owner is only immune to the negative status effect inflicted by this element, rather than the elemental damage itself. So for example, if you cast a fire skill on a monster that has immunity to fire, then your skill will still be able to deal the fire damage, but the Scorched effect will not be applied.
You can also learn more about the elemental effects in our handy video guide: [previewyoutube="NJIk0_0MRAY;full"] Because poison elemental skills are designed to be a debuff only without dealing direct damage, they will not have any impact on monsters immune to poison. Thus, we made an adjustment on them as below:
Normal monsters: Toxic Jellyshooter: now it’s immune to poison tiles instead of poison debuff Long-legged Urchin: now it’s immune to poison tiles instead of poison debuff Doctor Venom: now it’s immune to poison tiles instead of poison debuff
Elite Monsters: Mad Pharmacist: now it’s immune to poison tiles instead of poison debuff King Octo: now it’s immune to poison tiles instead of poison debuff
Boss enemies: Neptune: now it’s immune to all elemental tiles instead of all elemental debuffs Vlad the Commander: removed the poison immunity effect from his King Aura
Note: enemies immune to elemental terrain (tiles) doesn't mean that they will not be affected by the elemental effects.
Bug Fixes:
1. Fixed an issue where "Golden Touch" ability could sell items from the merchant's room; 2. "The Arrival" skill will no longer select holes as a target; 3. Fixed the bug that caused game freeze when the character died at the same time with a monster; 4. Fixed the issue that sometimes displayed Critical Attack rate as a negative number; 5. Fixed the issue when there was no reward available in some areas unlocked by the Dream Key; 6. Added a descriptive text for a special bucket in one room; 7. Weapons will be no longer be taken away by the Magnet Trap when Curse of Bondage takes effect.
And last but not least, now Eagle Eye Mode can be switched off by pressing the same button again, “V” by default.
About the Upcoming Game Update
Hello, dear friends and players,
We've received a tremendous amount of player feedback since launch! Your enthusiasm for the game was far beyond what we were expecting! Thank you all for providing valuable feedback and for supporting our game!
As you already know, we partially reduced the difficulty of the game in a recent patch (1.0.0.8). After some discussions within the team and after speaking to the community, we decided to add a more challenging game mode in the upcoming update.
Darkest Night Mode (Temporary Name)
After completing Day 3 dungeon and beating the final boss, players will be able to choose a new difficulty mode in the Hall of Reincarnation. At this point, players will be able to switch the game difficulty from normal to "Darkest Night", and vice-versa, at any time.
Darkest Night will be a challenging mode with a higher level of difficulty. After finishing a dungeon run, the game will record the run with the least number of turns spent in this dungeon and display it in the level selection screen. The real challenge will be to complete the dungeon with the least number of turns!
Player Experience Optimization
We are prioritizing some player experience optimizations according to the amount of feedback received from the community. As of now, this will include: Game Encyclopedia: adding more information with more detailed description so that players can have a better understanding of the game. Slot Machine and Weapon Gacha: optimize the overall experience of these mechanics. The detailed plan is still under the discussion but we will share more info about it in a future post.
We are still monitoring community feedback and discussing other player experience optimizations, we'll update you on this in the future.
Bug Fixes
We will continue fixing all kinds of bugs reported by players on Steam Discussions and our Discord server. We'll note bug fixes in the patch notes for all future minor updates. Please read through these for more information.
Follow-up Content
More new content such as relics, weapons and Familiars are already being worked on. We will share more information about this with you as soon as we can.
All of the content above is planned to be added gradually, ready for the upcoming Darkest Night update. We will continue to pay close attention to the feedback from our community and will do our best to optimize the game.
We wish you all good dreams in the Nightmare Realm...if that's possible! ːsteamhappyː
(Please refer to this as the list of things that we want to do. We'll share more information, including release timings for this update in the near future. Stay tuned for announcements!)
October 18th Update - Patch 1.0.0.8
Patch Notes:
Difficulty
1. Lowered the strength of some bosses. • Poseidon: Lower HP; longer cooldown for King Octo summon skill; longer cooldown and less damage for the charge skill. • Neptune: Lower HP and attack resist; longer cooldown for spawning minions, lower damage for the Elemental Arrow skill. • Vlad The Commander: Lower attack power and attack resist; lower attack resist for the chess pieces; increased number of turns for charging Blade Storm skill (also lowering its damage); lower the probability of summoning the Armored Legion. • Vlad The Impaler: lower attack power. • Tria: lower attack resistance. • Dr. Frank: Lower HP. • Lab Mutation: lower the power of Raging Throw, "Take This" is now a charging skill.
2. Lowered all monsters' HP and attack power in Day 2 and Day 3. 3. During the boss or familiar fight, when their HP drops to a certain level Elle will recharge more MP and additional blink usage from it.
Soul Shards and Relics
1. Increase the drop amount of Soul Shards after you kill monsters, Familiars, and bosses. 2. All relics in the merchant's store become cheaper by 100 gold.
Curses
Bleeding - now Elle only need to kill one monster to lift off the bleeding curse (instead of 3).
Bug fixes:
1. Fixed the bug that caused resolution issues on wide screen monitors 2. Fixed an issue where remapping Space caused an issue when interacting with items 3. Now you can see the pricing in Traditional Chinese again
We hope that these changes will help the new players to have a better experience while getting familiar with the game mechanics. And for hardcore players we want to mention that we are already working on a more challenging game mode and we will share more information about its content with you guys very soon!
Thank you all for your enthusiastic support and attention to the game! We will continue to do our best to optimize and update the game on a timely matter!
A Letter To The Players
Dear Nightmare Runners!
We wanted to let you know how grateful we are for your support during the official launch of Crown Trick! We are so happy and excited to see all the discussions about the game and we are doing our best to answer all your questions on social media and in Steam Community.
We are trying to be very open to listening to your suggestions and soon we are releasing a new patch to resolve some of the issues that were mentioned by the players the most.
This upcoming patch will include: 1. Overall difficulty curve of the game. Although, it's still under the discussion we are thinking to implement some balancing changes to the boss fights, monsters' growth and the drop rate of Soul Shards. 2. It seems that curse challenges may not exactly bring the experience we wanted players to have in its original design. So we are thinking of different ways of how to improve it in the future.
About Steam Cloud: it only works when you exit the game properly. Save issue may occur when your game shut down accidentally. For more information about Steam Cloud, please see the link below: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/cloud
Everyone is more than welcome to join our Discord server to talk to the developers directly! You can also follow us on Twitter and leave your feedback there!
