Development Roadmap for March - Controller Support Incoming
Controller support will be coming later this week for Dad Quest! We'll also have some more news to share on what the team are working on. Please read below for more details.
Hello everyone, some important announcements today as we aim to release a little more detail on our development roadmap. If you have anything you want to see in the game, do let us know and the team will talk about whether this can be made possible.
Week starting 6th of March - The internal development period
So this was last week, we have been working on development preperation for the next few weeks, but it would be unfair to spoil some of these components at the moment as some of the framework is a focus on the next chapter of the game.
- Library NPC’s being replaced
- Scientists will be less “jacked”
- Child level cap will be made clearer
- Adding crate break particle effect
- Several hints to help players progress
- Narrative outline for the first new chapter
This build won’t be made live, you may see many of these additions however on the build that will go live on the 17th of March
17th of March – Public build to go live
This week will include most of the work that has been done from the 6th of March but also contain a few new features
- 360 controller support – This will be a Beta version of the controller support and it may need some slight changes in time
- A new enemy type in the dungeon.
The team will also be working on several other key parts in development which may not be part of this public update. These include:
- Secondary dad (more info soon)
- Completing missing tracks from the music list so far
- Some work to be done on the save system
- Developing the gameplay for the first chapter
Week starting 20th of March – Internal development
This week we will be continuing our work towards the first chapter, no public build will be made live this week, however we will be working on the following:
- Balancing child abilities
- A bunch of new toys
- Completing missing SFX
- New music
- Dad Tournament
- Further work done for the next Chapter
If you have any requests or comments do let us know in the forums! We all really want to continue bringing you an awesome game and early feedback has been great.
March 2nd Update - A few fixes!
Hello everyone,
We are all very pleased with the response from the community for Dad Quest. some great coverage from some youtubers and twitch streamers and many of you have left some great positive reviews on the game. Thank you everyone for the support and I hope that over the coming months we can deliver on a great, fun action platformer.
Of course, keep your suggestions and ideas coming, we are in the process of refining the next couple of months development and will hope to share some more news very soon.
Today we are releasing an update which includes a few bug fixes. A short change Log is below:
- Fixed an issue where the player could get stuck after talking to the CEO
- Fixed an issue where the game crashes if it can not find an audio device
- Fixed a few bugs with the prophecy dialogue
- Several other bugs addressed
This week has been predominately bug stomping. But the team are still working on new content and I hope next week we'll be able to share some details.
Do get in touch with us in the forums if you have any suggestions or any bugs to report.
Dad Quest Has Launched!
It's time for you to embark on your own Dadventure! Dad Quest has just launched into Early Access, Wahoooo!
As you all may know, we will be in Early Access for a minimum of half a year and plan on adding new chapters and content regularly. Today we're also releasing a new patch which includes a few bug fixes, some dialogue changes and a few books added to the Library.
First up, we did share a trailer yesterday, but here's a new cut which we hope you'll enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iut7-XQqwFA
Additionally, we've been given an Editors choice award by PopZara from Nia Bothwell, where she says:
"Dad Quest is brilliant not just in how it approaches the tired side-scroller genre, but also in how easily it kept me engaged throughout."
You can read the full review of the current Early Access build here:
Today's patch notes have focused on a little bit of polish. The team are already working on the next chapter of the story but below are the highlights of today's patch notes:
- Dialogue updates
- A bunch of new books
- Enemy bug fixes
We hope that you enjoy us as we make our own quest through Early Access. If you have any suggestions, want to give us feedback or have any bugs to report, make sure to get in touch with us in the forums. We hope you have fun playing Dad Quest!
22nd February - Patch Update, Trailer, Let's Plays!
Hello everyone,
We are one single day away from the release of Dad Quest in Early Access. For those of you who received advanced copies via Kickstarter, we've just released a new build which contains fixes for several issues and a few minor additions.
First up, A new trailer has just been made live, you can check it out here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__LqJKqAwqw
We've also had some awesome Youtubers play the game, here are just a few:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh2RvbaD1ro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u96C-rPLx8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgxUu5lsAhI&
There is plenty of other coverage including Yogscast's Hannah who streamed the game via Twitch! Overall, we've seen a lot of people enjoy the game and we're looking forward to developing Dad Quest further.
Today's patch highlights include:
- Fixed an issue where the world would not load textures
- Dad now extends his arm to try and recall child with Left Click
- Tutorial Area now teaches players how to recall the child
- Added a notification which tells players when the current content of Early Access has ended (Don't worry, more stuff will come soon!)
- Some work done to improve some memory issues
- Several Bug fixes
If you come across any issues, let us know in the forums or email us at support@excalibur-publishing.com with as much information as possible.
Inventory Update - Earliest Access Version
Hello everyone,
We have recently updated the game for our Earliest Access players (The few folks who get to play the game before the 23rd of February as they were Kickstarter backers). Today has been just a small user interface update which allows you to hover over an item in your inventory to see a small pop up window which has a description of the item.
You can drag these items into your childs inventory and give them new abilities including burn damage or even healing the dad. There is still some more work we need to do on this but if anyone has any feedback, do let us know.
A few other big fixes have also been included in this build.
All the best,
Chris
Rustling a Few Feathers - The Pigeons of Dad Quest
Hello everyone!
Today, Eric wanted to share some details on another enemy type in Dad Quest:
"Hello, Eric again, coming back to you with some more Dad Quest enemy lore. Pigeons have been a staple of Dad Quest since the very beginning of development. In fact, I made the pigeon art even before the game’s initial conception! Back in the day when I was learning Flash, I made a little game called Bird God in which you clicked to spawn pigeons until the game lagged. You can still find it on itch.io.
I thought these birds had a lot of charm, so when prototyping the early combat system, I figured I’d bring them into Dad Quest as a sort of living punching bag. They’ve been in the game ever since.
The Pigeon Family is one with a long history of violence and oppression. For decades, the pigeons have fought for their right to live amongst humans. Tired of being killed and treated as lesser, a group of pigeons in Mountain City have banded together to form the Pigeon Mafia, a rebellious organization that promises protection for fellow pigeons in exchange for a life of servitude. The Mafia’s violence has stirred controversy amongst the pigeons, scattering defectors across the mainland.
The brute of the family, the giant pigeon is over twice as large as the average bird. These are very dangerous foes, able to easily overwhelm a human and tear them apart. Their gigantism also alters their brain, leading to violent tendencies; they will often attack humans on sight to protect their kin. They will jump up and down as they approach, manically flapping their wings to intimidate. They then stab with their beak and talons to deal damage. The Pigeon Mafia seeks to employ Giant Pigeons and use their strength as a weapon.
Pigeon Wizards are high ranking members of the Pigeon Mafia who possess powerful magical abilities. They have been known to launch surprise attacks on humans by trapping them and spawning pigeons to attack. Their other abilities are unknown, but they should not be trifled with, despite how silly they look. Rumors say they’ve been trying to resurrect what they call the “Pigeon Lord” to spearhead their plan for world domination
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To stay up to date with Dad Quest, add the game to your wishlist!
Dad Quest Level Design
Good day expecting dads!
Today Ryan Huggins shares some details on the process of level design for Dad Quest:
"Hello everyone! I’m Ryan Huggins, the designer of Dad Quest. Today we’re gonna take a very brief look at one of the design philosophies central to my approach to Dad Quest’s tone and humor. This approach is shared with the other members of the team, but this post probably focuses a bit more on my thought process. Hope you enjoy!
OKAY.
Dad Quest is a game composed of weird situational humor, action platforming, and subversion. So with that said, most of what makes Dad Quest, Dad Quest, is not humor, but the approach to the game’s tone. That tone arises not necessarily from the jokes themselves, but from the CONTEXT in which they occur. Context is one of the words that comes up most often when we are discussing Dad Quest and in a lot of scenarios, it is context that makes what might be a truly terrible, sad, unfunny sequence into one that makes the player smile or laugh. As a designer, that context is what creates a space where you can subvert a player’s expectations, and therefore allows you to be funny in a satisfying way.
So, making levels in Dad Quest has been an interesting experience for me. Normally, I wouldn’t really consider myself to be a level designer, ESPECIALLY not for comedy games. In fact, previously I believed that level design, systems design, and narrative design were so intertwined that it would be almost trivial to differentiate between the skills required for the development of small games.
Oh boy, WAS I WRONG.
Here are some examples of just a SMALL portion of the sketches I’ve done just for the first 30-40 minutes of the game. I would say this makes up about 8% of the total sketches and only 1.5 of these images even have any connection to what’s currently in the game.
Level design and implementation is such a huge part of the game development equation that it takes up almost 70% of my development time on Dad Quest. I not only had no idea how time consuming it is, I also had no idea just how difficult it is to get right.
To many outside viewers of Dad Quest, it might appear that our focus might be on what's ‘funny', or what is outlandish and weird (especially because we make so much silly promotional content), but that is not necessarily the case. We learned not to do this pretty early in the game's development, because one question that was asked pretty frequently was, ‘What is funny?' Unfortunately, as we learned, what's funny isn't always what's fun - and even moreso, being funny in a vacuum is not satisfying.
As I grew as a game designer and into my design role for Dad Quest, I developed what I believe is an even better question: ‘Does the context of this situation lend itself to a humorous outcome?' This question changes how you approach the problem in a number of ways and that perspective change (context change, even) means everything to me when I think about how I'm setting the stage for any interaction. (An additional easter egg is that you can replace “humorous” with any type of outcome and the question still works!)
So, how does our comedy philosophy work its way into Dad Quest? As I’ve said, comedy is, in a lot of ways, not something that we meticulously plan out in Dad Quest, but as a group, we laugh a lot and have a lot of fun. We try to channel that into our game’s context, setting and world. Really, we just work quite hard to create that narrative, gameplay, and visual context where a lot of funny, subversive, amusing, or just ridiculous things can happen. This is very much our preferred work environment! Then, as game developers and artists, we let these things happen somewhat organically within the game. The writing, gameplay, art, music, etc existing as a way for us to facilitate the telling of our story. And that story is just a bunch of bad (dad) jokes that we created a whole world for, so that they could exist without feeling arbitrary.
Ryan Huggins
Dad Quest launches on Steam on February 23rd in Early Access
Dad Quest To Launch On Steam February 23rd - Competition
Hello everyone!
Today we're pleased to announce the release date for Dad Quest on Steam Early Access. That date will be.... 23rd of February 2017!
Those of you who backed the Kickstarter will be given a steam code in the coming weeks. It is important to note that it will not be the final version as we will still be completing some refinements and polish to improve Dad Quest when it launches at the end of next month.
Additionally, we have just launched a short competition over on the Excalibur website which will let you win your very own Dad Quest mug. Here it is in all its glory!
You can enter the competition by clicking the link below:
Tomorrow we'll have a new blog from Ryan Huggins, the designer of Dad Quest which will talk in detail about level design. So remember to add Dad Quest to your wishlist to stay up to date with all news.
Breaking a Few Eggs in Dad Quest
Hello everyone! Today, we're going to share some details on just one enemy type in Dad Quest, an action platformer adventure where dads wield their children as weapons to destroy their enemies.
Eric Winebrenner, programmer, enemy artist and secret designer on Dad Quest discusses below:
"A lot of my work this the past week has been developing new enemies for Ryan (other programmer, level designer and content creator) to use in level creation. One of our favorite enemies from our old flash demo was the Eggman, an egg that flew above the Dad and rained raw egg innards from the sky. We wanted to expand this enemy type into different sub-classes, and form a sort of “family”. We’ve always been interested in using the idea of a family to influence our enemy lore, as it mirrors the relationship the human Dad and Child have.
The Egg Family is part of a balanced breakfast and ecosystem. The Eggs are primarily predators, but will take to scavenging if need be. They are defensive by nature, and only kill to feed their family. They heavily rely on close teamwork to survive, and fill unique roles within the nest.
Egg children are timid lads who don’t want to hurt anyone. They are often hunted for their delicious innards, and must hide near to their Egg brethren until they develop their own defensive yolk glands. They are passive and will avoid the player, but not stray too far from their spawn. They will cluster around Egg workers and will accidentally act as shields for the more dangerous egg enemies.
After several weeks, the Egg Boy’s yolk glands are fully developed. They are now able to join their egg brethren in building the nest and hunting for food. The Egg continuously secretes a thick bile, which is then pressurized in its shell to form a solid projectile yolk. The Egg positions itself above its prey and fires its yolk at high velocity. When the prey is unconscious or dead, the Eggs carry it back to the nest to be broken down into sustenance for the family.
Most mature Eggs fall under the Egg Worker category, but Eggs that are especially strong become Egg Warriors. They form a sharp outer armor that wards off opponents, and are especially aggressive to anyone that threatens the nest.
Like any Egg, Egg Chefs have yolk glands. However, the chefs hold a special, acidic yolk which slowly breaks down any material its spread on. This breaking down of material transforms it into an edible form suitable for Egg consumption. Egg Chefs are highly regarded amongst their peers and generally do not stray far from their nests. Their acidic yolk doubles as a deadly attack when need be.
Having enemy AI behaviors reflect their roles in their ecosystem is a great bit of worldbuilding, and we hope to explore narratives surrounding each enemy family as content in the final game. You may be thinking, do Eggs have Dads? Find out eventually!"
Stay tuned for more info and remember to add the game to your Steam wishlist to be kept up to date with the development of Dad Quest!
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