We are excited to announce that DOOMBLADE is part of the DreamHack Beyond Gaming Awards!
For those who might not know, DreamHack Beyond is a one-of-a-kind hybrid festival that merges the immersive world of gaming with a physical event. Taking place both on-site and virtually, this event is a fantastic opportunity for gamers and developers alike.
We are proud to be a part of DreamHack Beyond's Steam event, which runs from December 15th to 21st. We congratulate all nominees for their incredible Indie game projects. We are holding our breaths with anticipation!
Follow us on Twitter and join our Discord if you haven't already.
Until next time, Muro Studios
Blog Post #9 - Enemy Design
Enemy design was the most enjoyable and challenging task in DOOMBLADE. This is because the interaction with the game’s enemies is fundamentally different from other games in the genre. Instead of approaching an enemy by walking into range for an attack while trying to avoid getting too close, in DOOMBLADE, the player simply clicks on the enemy to launch themselves at the enemy's face to perform an attack. This means that enemies have to be approached differently in terms of design.
For most enemies in DOOMBLADE, the design process started with the mechanical aspect. There was no visual look or lore in mind for the enemy - just boxes you would fight against. The design would begin with the enemy's purpose in mind. Is this enemy meant to help the player navigate the game world, or is it meant to be a challenge? Or rather, where does the enemy fit on this spectrum?
For example, we have Shadowfly - an enemy that hovers in the air and can't damage the player. This enemy serves purely as a navigational tool, allowing the player to reach different areas. On the other hand, we have something like Swarmstinger - an enemy that orbits the player and is only attackable when its defense is down. Swarmstingers don’t assist the player in reaching areas as they follow the player around, so they purely provide a challenge for the player to overcome. Shadowfly
Swarmstinger
An example of an enemy that falls between the previous two is Murdersquid. Attacking the squid from the wrong direction causes the player to hit its shield, stopping the attack and causing damage. Murdersquids can be used to reach new areas, but they also present a challenge for the player. The biggest challenges in creating enemies for DOOMBLADE were in devising different ways to limit the player’s overly powerful attack mechanics from obliterating the enemies before any meaningful fighting could take place. Murdersquid exemplifies this well. It’s not a difficult enemy to defeat, but the challenge is still present. Murdersquid
Designing the visuals of the DOOMBLADE enemy creatures was incredibly enjoyable and challenging. Due to the unique game mechanics of all the enemies, which stem from the core gameplay design, we aimed to make the enemies appear strangely chaotic while still fitting into the designed gameplay. An excellent example is the Subterranean Broodsmasher. It’s a slowly walking tank-like creature with heavy arms that it swings around when the player approaches. It also has toxic eggs growing on its back, which it hurls towards the player when the player is far enough away. In all the creature designs, gameplay took precedence, followed by the theme of the biome in which the creature was most frequently encountered in the game. With all these considerations in mind, we managed to create around 80 unique enemies for players to encounter. Subterranean Broodsmasher
Having so many different and interesting enemies meant that we wanted to display them properly and provide a bit of lore as well. This is why we were eager to create a bestiary for the game, allowing players to delve deeper into the enemies they encounter. Although we weren't able to have it ready for the game’s initial release, we have finally completed the bestiary update!
- The in-game menu now features a new page that displays descriptions of monsters you've encountered. - Monster entries are primarily unlocked by damaging the monsters. - There are over 80 entries available in the Bestiary.
Miscellaneous Improvements (some of these were previously implemented):
- Unread Atlas entries (as well as Bestiary ones) are now highlighted with an exclamation mark until they are read. - Added a "Mouse and Keyboard Recommended" text element in the main menu, which is displayed if a controller is being used, to guide players towards the optimal experience. - Addressed a highly requested improvement by providing guidance in the late game for finding Gloomsouls. Once the Gloomsouls have been freed, speaking to Voidchild in the Chapel of Doom will reveal the locations where the souls can be found.
Bug Fixes:
- In-game menus no longer extend beyond the screen when using an ultrawide monitor. - Corrected an issue where burning all Dread Indoctrination tools without collecting all Gloomsouls would unlock the wrong ending.
Read some more about the update and the enemy design in DOOMBLADE in our blog post #9.
Save & Sound - A celebration of music in games - Live Sept 11 to Sept 14
Get ready!
Join us September 11 - 14 right here on Steam for one of the largest digital expos about audio and music in games. Save & Sound features concerts, deep-dives, and mashups from 70+ developers from around the world!
Starting at 10am PDT / 7pm CEST, a 3-day live show from September 11 - 13 will showcase original content made just for Save & Sound.
Brian Skeel, composer of DOOMBLADE's soundtrack, has prepared an audio deep dive where he talks about the music of DOOMBLADE. He demonstrates how he perfectly blended the lush atmosphere and crushing aggression to fit the game. In DOOMBLADE, where innocence and vengeance form an unlikely pair, the music blurs the lines between organic instrumentation and synthetic sound design, reflecting an environment where ancient lands and advanced technology coexist.
Don’t miss out on updates!
Set a reminder to be notified when Save & Sound will go live!
The show will be streamed on the Save & Sound website, YouTube, and Twitch. Check out all the games part of the event on saveandsound.io
Blog Post #8 - The Void
The world of DOOMBLADE features a plane called The Void. It is a dimension integral to the story of the game and it also has a very important mechanical function: it is the realm of fast traveling.
Very early on in development, we knew we wanted the game to have an area called The Void. There was no particular reason for this - we just thought it would be cool to have a dimension of vast emptiness. At that point, we didn’t know what The Void would look like, we didn’t know how it would fit in the story, and we didn’t know how it would be used in the game’s design.
In the first drafts of the game’s story (which were pretty much scrapped as Andrew Adams, our game writer, got on board) The Void was the source of the game’s monsters. Somehow, it was also the source of power for DOOMBLADE, the game’s titular sword. The final story did retain some of those elements but in a very different form.
In an early demo of the game, The Void made its debut as a part of a boss fight which made it into the final game. Juha the artist drew inspiration from the Ultima series he had played in his childhood to create the outlook for the otherworldly plane. Having created The Void in the game we felt like it had to be used for more than just a boss fight.
The biggest breakthrough with The Void was the idea to use it for fast travel. Originally our fast travel points were just big black monoliths that teleported you around, but we came up with a much more organic way of traversing long distances.
The original fast travel point was just a black monolith. We later changed it into a machine that is activated with DOOMBLADE.
We had an enemy in the game we called the Escaper. Once you tried to attack it, it started escaping so that your attack would keep going until the Escaper finally stopped so your attack could connect. We used Escapers to lead the player to places otherwise out of reach or when we wanted to make traversal faster. So why not use a new version of The Escaper in The Void where nothing can get in your way to handle fast travel? And thus, The Voidborne was created.
On the left, the original Escaper later to be known as Feeble Fleebell. On the right, the Voidborne.
Traveling with Voidbornes worked great. As we tested the game and traversed great distances in The Void, one thing became clear quite fast: if we had another dimension at our disposal and we were doing a Metroidvania, surely this couldn’t be used just for fast travel and a single boss fight? So much space that could be used for plot points, secrets, and maybe even an additional power-up.
Things started to come together as Andrew got on board to write a proper story and lore for our game. The connection between The Void and DOOMBLADE was recreated in a much better way than we had originally envisioned it. Andrew also came up with The Locksmith - an important character in the story regarding The Void. I’d love to go into so much more about The Void, but we are reaching spoiler territory pretty hard, so I won’t expand on the lore more than this.
There was a point in development in which we had ideas for even more dimensions than two with all sorts of interdimensional mechanics involved. However, those plans turned out to be far too ambitious and that’s probably for the better - the game would have most likely become a huge mess if we went down that path. Extra dimensions would have also made The Void far less interesting. Instead, it ended up being quite a special place.
Stay tuned for further updates and we greatly appreciate all of your support!
When we started the development of DOOMBLADE we were still thinking it was going to be some sort of a sequel to our earlier Shadow Bug game. So in all of our early concept art, we have Shadow Bug as the main character.
The very first concept art for DOOMBLADE.
The core idea was there though. We wanted the game to be really fast as the core game mechanic allowed us to create super tight action sequences in the game.
Early concept art demonstrating the tight action gameplay.
We also wanted it to be a Metroidvania from the very beginning of development, so it needed to have beautiful environments and a distinctive art style to differentiate it from all other Metroidvanias.
This early concept art demonstrates the Doom Drop power up in use.
I was also experimenting with the animation style and the technical aspects of how we should try to create all the characters in the game. What I ended up doing is a sketch of a boss fight character with the art style we ended up with for DOOMBLADE.
Early boss character concept art.
The visual look of the game in the first half of the development was leaning more toward bluish-voidy coloring and visuals.
Early screenshot of the Inventory.
Somewhere after halfway through development we figured out that the game’s branding and overall theme should be more doomy and gloomy since the name of the game is DOOMBLADE. This thought process led us towards the red-colored theme, since we thought this is more doomy. Also at this time, we figured that the main character had to be something other than Shadow Bug as well, so we started throwing around ideas for Gloom Girl.
The first concept of Gloom Girl.
From the very beginning of the game's development, I wanted the game to have more detailed backgrounds than what is usually seen in other Metroidvanias. In most cases, the background is more simplistic and somewhat blurred. I wanted the background to have lots of detail to be able to create more environmental storytelling as well. This was obviously a great challenge, since the more detail there is, the harder it is to try to make all the important stuff pop out for the player to be able to see where to go. Quite often we had the idea of creating the characters with a slightly separate art style from the background, with outlines around them. This would have been a good choice and an easy one. But I wanted the game to be more immersive visually, so I thought the characters and the background should have the exact same visual style to make it “realistic,” which I think gives better immersion for the player visually. Then again, this was a challenge but it also motivated me. It was always awesome trying to figure out how to make things pop out using some little cues here and there. A good example of one of the things I ended up creating is the glow that is present on all of the walkable platforms. I think this works really well to give the needed interpretation in very detailed environments.
All the platforms in the game have a glow on top to show players where they can walk on.
Personally, I think the art style of DOOMBLADE ended up looking super awesome and I’m really proud of it. We have had great feedback from players also noting certain issues with readability here and there - please keep the feedback coming! It really has helped us to develop the game further in all aspects! I hope you enjoy the visuals in DOOMBLADE as much as we do!
So doomy, so gloomy!
We also pushed a small update today including the following two changes: - Added a Mouse and Keyboard Recommended text element in the main menu which is displayed if a controller is being used to guide players towards the optimal experience. - Added much requested guidance to late game for finding Gloomsouls. Once the Gloomsouls have been freed, talking to Voidchild in the Chapel of Doom will reveal the areas the souls can be found in.
Stay tuned for further updates and we greatly appreciate all of your support!
Originally, the core gameplay mechanic of DOOMBLADE started forming in my head when I was watching an episode of Attack on Titan. In the show, heroes fight gigantic titans by shooting wires on them and then pulling themselves up on the titans so they can reach their weak spots. The action scenes in the show are incredible and I found myself thinking how cool it would be to be able to move like that in a game. To fly through the air to your target so effortlessly. And with such power.
Gloom Girl, the heroine of our game, doesn’t need wires to attack enemies, instead she is propelled through the air by the sheer power of DOOMBLADE. This is our core mechanic - so called flight attacks. You click on an enemy and Gloom Girl flies fluidly through the air to kill it. Not only is this a great way of defeating enemies, but it’s also a convenient way of moving around the game world. In DOOMBLADE, to move is to kill.
The Mechanics
Tweaking the flight attacks to be what they are today has taken a lot of time and iteration. We’ve tried versions in which the player stops for a while in the air to perform a more cinematic attack animation as well as versions in which targeted enemies stop moving so that the player’s trajectory is more predictable. But in the end, what we found to work best is an approach that keeps things as dynamic as possible. The player never stops - attacks are performed instantly upon reaching enemies so the movement can keep going. Enemies don’t stop when targeted - this creates more action in the game and allows for more versatility in enemy design. We keep things as fluid as possible.
For most of the development of the game we were focused only on controlling the player with mouse and keyboard. Playing the game with a controller seemed like a pipe dream. After all, the game mechanics were all about aiming with pinpoint accuracy. With less than six months to the release of the game we woke up to the reality that people will also want to play with a controller. Metroidvania players are used to having a controller in their hands. Someone in a metroidvania online community even stopped playing our demo as soon as it was apparent that there is no controller support. We had to do something.
The Expert
As we didn’t have any ideas of our own in how to make controller gameplay work, we decided to try to outsource the work to an expert. And we are very glad that we did. We found Kevin Struillou, a developer from France to take on this seemingly impossible task. Somehow he managed to make the game work very well on a controller. Instead of aiming with a mouse, you use the right stick to aim sort of like in a twin stick shooter. This is a huge simplification, but it gives you a basic idea of the controller scheme.
We still feel like mouse and keyboard will give you the optimal experience in DOOMBLADE. In the end, the situation is pretty similar to first-person shooters. Playing with mouse and keyboard gives you more control, but playing with a controller is a bit more relaxed. And then there are exciting ways in which the two control schemes of DOOMBLADE meet: with a Steam Deck you play the game with the controller scheme while at the same time being able to tap on enemies on the screen for more accuracy when needed. In the end, DOOMBLADE can be played in more ways than just one, and we are really proud of achieving that.
We also pushed a small update today including the following two changes: - DOOMBLADE is now usable on ultrawide screens, meaning in-game menus no longer scale themselves out of the screen. - Fixed one scenario that triggered the wrong ending when finishing the game.
Stay tuned for further updates and we greatly appreciate all of your support!
We are excited to present an update with the changes that many in the community have been asking for and hopefully can greatly improve the gaming experience. You requested, we delivered. Let us know what you think! ⚔️❤️
Map Markers:
- Players can now mark locations on the map with Map Markers - The maximum amount of Map Markers placed on the map is 20
Speedrunning Updates:
(Check out more below if you'd interested in speedrunning!)
- An in-game stopwatch can now be enabled under Options --> Video Settings - Game time is now saved even when dying or quitting to main menu. - While a room change is in progress, game time is not running anymore
Level Design:
- Updated level design in a room in which some players were experiencing navigation difficulties: After receiving Shadow Form, it was not that clear that you could pass a wall in the room to the right from Faceless Waste. There is now an additional space in the room which is more visible and should help with navigation issues.
Bug Fixes:
- Fixed a visual bug that reset save slots' saved hours to 0 every time 24 hours had been played. - Fixed a bug that enabled map drawing in a place it shouldn't have: When starting from a save inside the World Eater, map drawing was enabled after going to the Void even though it shouldn't have. The bug only affected the drawing of rooms already visited.
Join the DOOMBLADE Speedrun Community!
Are you honing in your DOOMBLADE skills with lightning speed and precision? Ready to flaunt your impeccable navigation skills to the world? ⚡️
Guess what? The wait is over! We've launched our official speedrun leaderboards for the full campaign!
Who can be the quickest in all of the Lowlands?
Head over to https://www.speedrun.com/doomblade to submit your epic runs and claim your spot among the best of the best. Let the speedrun madness begin!
Stay tuned for further updates and we greatly appreciate all of your support!
We couldn't be more thrilled to share how DOOMBLADE has been received by the community.
The response from both players and critics has been nothing short of phenomenal. Today, we're excited to announce that DOOMBLADE has now also achieved a high current Metascore rating of 85, cementing its status as a must-play title.
From the moment we embarked on this journey, our team poured their hearts and souls into creating an unforgettable gaming experience. It was an ambitious endeavor, drawing inspiration from the beloved Metroidvania genre, while infusing it with our own unique twist. We are overjoyed to see that our efforts have resonated with players and critics alike.
Your support and enthusiasm have been the driving force behind our success, and we are immensely grateful for your dedication. We are also listening to our community about ways we can still improve on the game and today we have released our first patch note with fixes after listening to feedback from all of you. Don't hesitate to reach out in our Steam forums, social media, or in our Discord community if there are further changes that you would like to have happen.
If you are interested in these details, check out that post here: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/922050/view/3662036267729559587
Stay tuned for further updates and we greatly appreciate all of you for making the first week after launch amazing!
- Final Boss Fight changes to accomodate the controller experience better. The experience with Mouse and Keyboard is largely unaffected. Dread Lords cannot be attacked anymore when their shields are up. Being attackable while shielded added nothing meaningful to the gameplay. When playing with a controller, you could far too easily attack a Dread Lord by accident, because of aiming between so many attack targets on the screen while a lot of action was taking place. - Typo fix in a dialogue. The shop keeper in Wilderwood had a typo in their dialogue. They said 'midjudged' instead of 'misjudged'. While hilarious, this was not intended and has now been fixed.
Bug Fixes:
- Small collision fix. The room left from the blue tristone piece had a poorly positioned collider which allowed the player to throw Nightmare Onions through a wall. - Sound fixes. A couple of sounds in a mid-late game area weren't connected to the Audio Options volume sliders so they played even with volume 0. - The game was granting achievements for finishing a fight even though the player died and did not finish the fight. This occured always in the last wave of a fight and should now be fixed.
