We're currently working with Makeship to get a Chunks plushie out. We've gotta sell about 200 of 'em before November 16th for the funding campaign to succeed, so we're gonna need a lot of help with this! Every bit of support counts!
If you order one and we don't meet the funding goal, don't worry -- you'll be refunded! You're not risking $30 in the event that the campaign fails, you'll get your money back in full.
On the other hand, if the campaign succeeds you'll get Chunks delivered straight to your home and everyone will be happy.
We've got about 21 days as of right now to raise funds, so any help is greatly appreciated!
This is just a little personal preamble, if you wanna see what this update actually added scroll down :)
The Home Theater Update is out and playable now with new cutscenes, bosses, items, and more! A while back I made a promise that this game would receive a few significant content updates. At first, I hoped that we'd be able to get one out at the start of this year. Between classes, bug fixes, other projects, etc., that didn't happen. Around May or June, we decided that we would put our foot down and get these updates out. We made an internal roadmap (which we shared publicly back in August) and got to work.
After a few months of hard work, the first of these updates is here! We have some big plans for the rest of these updates (and other stuff we're working on) that heavily involve the game's characters. For a long time, we've had all these ideas for the game's playable characters in terms of lore and personality that we never really got to express in-game. We had stories for all of these characters and we discussed how they arrived in the mansion, what their lives were like before the start of the game, and what we believe would happen to them after the game's events -- but most of this never made it into the game... until now.
The goal of this update is to heavily expand on the backstories of the game's playable characters before we dive into some more character-based content in some of the later updates and out-of-game stuff. Enjoy watching the new cutscenes and learn some more about the game's characters!
NEW STUFF
Brand-new cutscenes available for every single unlockable character!
Check them out from the extras menu!
2 new bosses!
Nataleviathan, Earlyborn Destroyer (Floor 3)
Cybil, the Cult Chief (Floor 4)
11 new enemies!
Wormbo (Floor 1)
Meltface (Floor 1)
Cageling (Floor 2)
Ashley (Floor 2)
Masked Cultist (Floor 3)
Cultist Brute (Floor 3)
Longleg (Floor 3)
Healer (Floor 4)
Hazmat (Floor 4)
Mousetrap (Floor 4)
Portrait Demon (???)
33 new items!
Sorcery for Dummies
Tiny Wallet
The Globe
I.E.D
Eviction Notice
Au
Shiny Pocketwatch
Eggy
Handsaw
Silver Soul
Baby Chunks
Heatseeker
Dummy
Item Refresher
Weapon Refresher
Insurance Card
Yellow Fedora
V.I.P Pass
Lucky Dice
Private Eye
Purple Umbrella
Monster Snacks
Forever Flame
Ultra Hot Pepper
Tasty Treat
Combustophile
Toxic Barrel
Gas Mask
Hourglass
Stethoscope
Big Heart
Brass Knuckle
Pinata
25 new weapons!
Dragon's Mouth
Flame Minigun
Drill
Radioactive Hammer
Rotten Tomato
Record
Chest Scaffolding
Wind Staff
Egg Staff
Shell Cannon
Fireshell Cannon
Eliminator
Vacuum Cleaner
Mr. Friendly
Marching Drum
Electrical Nodes
Thumbtacks
Reflector Gun
The Glove
Gold Gauntlets
Iron Gauntlets
Fire Punch
Bullet Bomber
Sex Gun
Radiation Sex Gun
Cybil, a brand new shopkeeper who can be found on alternate floors 1, 2, and 4!
A new post-credits scene for the normal ending!
Brand new character-dependent art for the game-over screen!
CHUNKS PLUSHIE!
We're working with Makeship to create an ADORABLE Chunks plushie! Later today (around 8 PM EST), a crowdfunding campaign is gonna be launched so we can get this thing made. Consider chipping in so you can get your very own Chunks!
The next update in this series -- the Bombs Away Update -- will be out in December. We haven't settled on an exact date yet, but it'll likely be closer to the end of the month, maybe around Christmas. Bombs Away will have a bit more meat on its bones than the Home Theater Update, including the game's first new character since launch along with a few new achievements. Expect some more substantial information about this update in the next couple of weeks :)
1.2.0 BETA - The Home Theater Update is now available on the public beta branch!
The update will be OUT of beta on the 25th!
Happy one-year anniversary, everyone!
First off: since the update's final version will be out in under a week I'll be saving all the fancy stuff for a later announcement post, so I'll try to avoid doing a big ol' preamble here.
Second: I know this is long overdue (but I'll save the apologies for the previously-mentioned later post).
Third: this is the COMPLETE version of the update and is pretty much the same version that'll be officially released on the 25th give or take a few bug fixes that'll probably happen between now and then. So, finally, here it is!
NEW STUFF
Brand-new cutscenes available for every single unlockable character! Check them out from the extras menu!
2 new bosses!
Nataleviathan, Earlyborn Destroyer (Floor 3)
Cybil, the Cult Chief (Floor 4)
11 new enemies!
Wormbo (Floor 1)
Meltface (Floor 1)
Cageling (Floor 2)
Ashley (Floor 2)
Masked Cultist (Floor 3)
Cultist Brute (Floor 3)
Longleg (Floor 3)
Healer (Floor 4)
Hazmat (Floor 4)
Mousetra[ (Floor 4)
Portrait Demon (???)
33 new items!
Sorcery for Dummies
Tiny Wallet
The Globe
I.E.D
Eviction Notice
Au
Shiny Pocketwatch
Eggy
Handsaw
Silver Soul
Baby Chunks
Heatseeker
Dummy
Item Refresher
Weapon Refresher
Insurance Card
Yellow Fedora
V.I.P Pass
Lucky Dice
Private Eye
Purple Umbrella
Monster Snacks
Forever Flame
Ultra Hot Pepper
Tasty Treat
Combustophile
Toxic Barrel
Gas Mask
Hourglass
Stethoscope
Big Heart
Brass Knuckle
Pinata
25 new weapons!
Dragon's Mouth
Flame Minigun
Drill
Radioactive Hammer
Rotten Tomato
Record
Chest Scaffolding
Wind Staff
Egg Staff
Shell Cannon
Fireshell Cannon
Eliminator
Vacuum Cleaner
Mr. Friendly
Marching Drum
Electrical Nodes
Thumbtacks
Reflector Gun
The Glove
Gold Gauntlets
Iron Gauntlets
Fire Punch
Bullet Bomber
Sex Gun
Radiation Sex Gun
Cybil, a brand new shopkeeper who can be found on alternate floors 1, 2, and 4!
A new post-credits scene for the normal ending!
Brand new character-dependent art for the game-over screen!
ACCESSING THE BETA
Accessing the public beta branch is simple as can be and only takes a few steps:
Find the game in your Steam library, right-click it, and select "Properties..."
From the menu on the left of the new window, select "BETAS."
Click the dropdown menu underneath where it says "Select the beta you would like to opt into", select "public_beta - Public beta."
Wait for the game to complete updating.
Launch the game!
The update will be officially released on OCTOBER 25TH! Expect a more prettier, fancier, more elaborate post with some details about the second update in this series then!!
Thanks for all of your support :)
- Jack
Roadmap Announcement Sale
Sale
Dead Estate is now 10 months old!! I don't think we can ever express how honored we are that you would all play this game, help spread it around, and to share all your kind words. That warm reception more than anything else has motivated us to continue development :)
You are all the best. And you deserve the best in return! Part of that, is running a Sale for Dead Estate, with our lowest discount yet (-30%) for the next week.
Roadmap - Part 1
But more importantly, we are thrilled to announce a Roadmap of upcoming FREE updates!! Starting with the Home Theater update, coming October 19th, 2022 (our 1 year anniversary!)
Intro cutscenes for all unlockable characters
New enemies + bosses
25+ new weapons
30+ new items
and more...
And in the months that follow, we'll have both the Bombs Away and Heaven & Hell updates. Hopefully you can forgive us for slowing down on updates while we worked behind the scenes towards all of this!
We've been teasing screencaps of the new Cutscenes (example directly above) all month over on Twitter. A lot of love and effort has been put into these, and we're practically bursting having to withhold the full animations a while longer!
Roadmap - Part 2
And within roughly 1 years time, we should reach the endpoint of all this insane path we're heading down. We don't want to give too much away too fast. But suffice to say, the leap Dead Estate took from a free webgame to it's Steam launch, will be comparable to the leap Dead Estate 1.1.5 takes through to Update 6!!
In addition to these content drops, expect the difficulty ramp of the game to be largely reworked, alongside plenty of other tweaks and fine tuning so the game can reach it's max potential.
Thank you all once again! It's a pleasure to be able to give back to fans old and new in this way :) -Graeme (2 Left Thumbs)
PS. If you could Wishlist Picayune Dreams that would be so wonderful. You rock!
Trading Cards and Badges are here!
This has been in the works for a LOOONG time, and we are so excited to finally be dropping Trading Cards into the game! We didn't want to just copy and paste existing game assets onto cards, even though that could have easily been done months ago when this option was first made available to us.
Instead, we loved the idea of working with the Dead Estate + Newgrounds communities, as well as fans/friends of the Milkbar Lads, to commission unique pieces of artwork that exist solely to show off in these dope new cards! It took far more time and effort to put that all together, but the results speak for themselves! Be sure to "inspect" the cards, clicking the images to see the full artwork! The card only displays a fraction of the full artworks that were created.
The cards are named/described in such a way that you can quickly and easily see the name of the artist who created it. For example, the Jules card was created by Arzonaut!
And also for your convenience, here are links to all 12 of these artist's Newgrounds pages where you can look at their entire portfolios of amazing artworks!
Hopefully you enjoy collecting the cards, crafting badges, swapping background, and all that good stuff. But ideally you'll also find some exciting and talented new artists to follow as well.
1.1.5 - February update -- Changes, fixes, and new stuff(?)
NEW STUFF...?
Added some stuff to the true ending credits
(Steam only) You can now "rebuild" a save file based on your Steam achievements from Settings > Game settings
With this oppption, you should be able to get all of your unlocks back if your ever lose your save data
Added a new aiming mode named "Z-Aiming" accessible from Settings > Control settings
When enabled, your character will ALWAYS aim your gun towards your crosshair even when jumping or falling as opposed to always aiming relative to where you would be on the ground
If that explanation doesn't make any sense, just give it a try
Z-Aiming can also be instantly toggled on and off by pressing the F12 key
Added an option to enable a CRT filter in the Settings > Video settings > Effects settings
Something completely different! Search for it! Have fun!
CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS - Changed the true ending credits - Changed the gallery - Made improoovements to gamepad controls - The "Chrysus Medallion" item no longer takes your money away if you're in a pause state (level transitions, endings, etc.) - Decreased the amount of health for Golden Leeches - Moth enemies no longer attack immediately after entering a room - Teleporter Crystals will now automatically teleport you back to the start room after 5 seconds if you're stuck behind furniture - Updated some item descriptions to better explain their usage - Updated several achievement names and descriptions to explain them better - Reorganized the video settings menu, there is now a submenu named "Effects settings" which includes the new CRT filter - Improved elevator hitboxes - Elevators now pull you closer to them if you're nearby, making it easier to board them
FIXES - Fixed a crash sometimes triggered when continuing a run as Fuji - The above fix also should resolve many of the save data wipe issues that some users have experienced - Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when picking up ammo boxes - Resolved an errrrror that would allow players to die during level transitions or endings with the "Chrysus Medallion" item - Fixed a common soft-lock where you could become permanently stuck behind objects while being pulled into Teleporter Crystals - Fixed a bug causing button prompts to display off-center - Fixed an error that caused some gamepads to barely detect diagonal inputs - Fixed an error that made characters move diagonally at half-speed on some gamepads - Fixed a bug where signs on the balcony would appear behind pillars - Fixed a bug that allowed the Coffin Key to stay with the player if you start a new run after dying - Fixed an error where Golden Leeches wouldn't spawn from pots - Fixed an error where the wrong image would be displayed during the regular ending as Gnome Jeff - Cordelia's Dad no longer has ttthree hands in the credits!
This took me way too long to put out! I took a short break for a few weeks towards the end of December to work on some Newgrounds projects (Peter the Ant: Reloaded and Gravity Shift, check them out!) Once I was done with that, I finally got a chance to resume work on this. Unfortunately, I'm a lot busier with classes this semester than I was last semester so that's been sapping a lot of my time to continue updating Dead Estate.
A major content update is still underway. We originally wanted to have it out last month but, like I said, a lot of my time has been taken up by other things. The update is likely going to be larger than originally planned as well. I'll end this before it turns into a rant -- thank you all for your patience and your support of Dead Estate! Sorry again that this update took a while to come out, it should quell a lot of common errors that people have frequently reported. Also apologies if there are any typos in the patch notes!
One more thing: trading cards should be out soon! We're working with a ton of different artists to make this happen, I think that everyone will be really happy with how these come out :)
Dead of Winter - Humble Bundle
With the busy holiday season, it's been a hot minute since we've been able to provide an update! I wanted to share some news to let everyone know what we've got going on, and confirm that we are still updating this game.
Dead of Winter Against every piece of conventional wisdom that comes with selling a game this early in it's life (we're creeping up on just 3 months now!) we opted to participate in Humble's Dead of Winter bundle! But really, we couldn't resist! I've been a customer of Humble and their bundles since the "Humble Indie Bundle 6" back in 2012. So the opportunity to participate in one of these has been a bit of a game-dev bucket list item.
Being featured alongside such an intriguing assortment of horror, and horror-adjacent games also felt like a great opportunity! Seriously, what even is the deal with Golden Light?! That game is bonkers!!
Yes, we stand to lose money on each of those sales. But our hope is to share our game with a wider audience, provide people with an escape during the brutal Winter season (I live up north myself. Consistent -30 days are no joke!), and to also support the wonderful buildOn charity! To date, this bundle has already sold 24,867 units (not all at the tier with Dead Estate & Golden Light). It's incredible to think that our game can bring individuals joy, while also supporting a much larger cause! So any lost dollars on this heavily discounted bundling feels well worth it to us.
Discount transparency: We are running our own 10% discount for the duration of this Humble Bundle. And with the Lunar New Year sale creeping up on Steam very soon, Dead Estate will be listed at 15% off. I simply want everyone to have all the relevant information to inform their purchase!
Want a bunch of cool games? Buy the bundle. You can't wait, and want to just support us? Buy here! Think you'd feel cheated if the price dropped another 5% right after buying? Maybe hold off a couple weeks.
Pixel Day 2022 This team got it's start on Newgrounds, and it's a site that we all still love dearly! January 23rd is their annual Pixel Day event! Our lead dev, Jack, has been putting together something really cool this year! Dead Estate is FAR from forgotten! Taking part in game jams is a great way to get the creative juices flowing, and to avoid burnout after pouring so much into Dead Estate the last ~18 months. So don't expect any major updates in the next couple of weeks. But DO expect a really awesome, new free game over on Newgrounds on the 23rd!
Upcoming patches I still check reviews, and discussion threads every single day! My apologies that I cannot reply to them all, but I work to consolidate bug reports and quality suggestions into a running document we have on the dev side. If you've ever shared it, I've made a note of it!
Trading Cards & Badges? You bet!! Did you know new games don't automatically qualify for that? We crossed the necessary engagement thresholds a while back, so it's something we are now capable of adding! It's taken a little while to put that together, but expect those to be added to the game sooner than later :)
We still have big plans for future, free content updates. Current in-game bugs range from major, to negligible little visual glitches. So we want to make sure we're cleaning up the real problem causers, while also building towards bigger more exciting updates to keep those 100%ers busy with new challenges and other cool offerings. It's a tough balancing act! But we're so excited for our 2022 Dead Estate plans. I've said it before, but I'll say it again. The best is yet to come!
-Graeme (2 Left Thumbs) PS. If you made it this far, I recently added a complete remake of the classic Alice is Dead series to the list of projects I'm publishing. If you remember that series fondly, please consider giving that page a look, and wishlist. Cheers!
1.1.4 - Even tinier update & C-costume teaser(s)!
! NEW FEATURES, CHANGES, AND FIXES BELOW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR GAME CONTENT !
CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS - Bosses are no longer affected by stun - Substantially boosted the health of the Kraken boss - The Exit Realm floor now has its own unique teleporter rooms - Added a slight cooldown on swapping weapons using the mouse wheel - Bullets created using the Bullet Staff weapon now have a downward trajectory
FIXES - The true ending credits now properly display Kat as the voice of Diavola -- sorry! - Fixed an issue where the game would become softlocked upon dying with the "Chrysus Medallion" item - Fixed a bug where Leeches would have a chance to spawn as Golden Leeches upon re-entering a room - Roselia's shops on the Balcony and Exit Realm floors now display the correct backgrounds
I've seen a couple reports of a crash that has resulted in people's save files getting wiped. If you've experienced this, please let me know the circumstances that it happened under! If you've seen an error message along with this, posting that would especially help. In the meantime, I'm gonna keep trying to figure out a fix. If your save file has been affected by this, let me know and I can try to rebuild your save file based on your Steam achievements.
I know I mentioned in previous patch notes that I would like to have a major content update out in January. Unfortunately, between fixes, finals, Christmas, and the upcoming Pixel Day event on Newgrounds, I haven't been left with a lot of time to actually work on the update. It's very likely that this update will end up coming out in March or April instead (which sucks because I wanted it to be a cool New Years update). I probably won't officially announce a release window until I'm certain. On the bright side, now I'll have more time to make sure that the update is as good as possible. I know I say this every post but thank you all for your patience with these updates!
On a more positive note, here's a teaser for some of the new C-costumes that will be included in the content update. See if you can figure out who/what they are!
1.1.3 - Little baby-sized patch
The college semester has taken an unexpected turn for cramming a ton of work into a very small amount of time. Makes sense given we're getting close to the end and Thanksgiving break is next week, but regardless I didn't anticipate how much time it would take away from working on updates for Dead Estate.
This patch is pretty overdue given that in the last couple posts I mentioned wanting to get one or two of these out every week, so sorry about that! School ended up pulling me away from this for longer than I expected:
! NEW FEATURES, CHANGES, AND FIXES BELOW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS FOR GAME CONTENT !
CHANGES AND ADJUSTMENTS - You can now switch between weapons using the mouse scroll wheel - Very slightly increased the chance to obtain ammo from killing enemies - Buffed the ammo drop % chance increase from "Aura of Ammunition" - Reduced the amount of money obtained from destroying weapons - Lowered the price of "Old Reel" - Lowered the price of "Breezepods" - "Resume" is now selected by default when pausing while on a gamepad - Made the teleporting animation faster
FIXES - Changed the description of the "Midas" medal to be more accurate (it used to displayed 5+ golden pots as the requirement when it should've said 10) - Changed the description of the "Speedrunner" medal on Steam to be more accurate (used to display 15 minutes when the requirement was 20) - Your current amount of money is now saved when your runs are auto-saved - Maximum weapon count is also saved now (affected by items like "Holster") - ...And your maximum jump count is also saved (affected by items like the "Magic Carpet") - The Chainsaw is now properly classified as a melee weapon and is affected by melee upgrades - Fixed a bug where the "Sugar" item would not properly halve your HP
There's not much in this patch, but rest assured that we're still working on the big January Q1 2022 content update that I've mentioned before. It's gonna be awesome. In the meantime, I'm still gonna try to put out these small patches semi-regularly.
