Hey everyone! I wanted to post a quick announcement to fill you in on where I'm at with development of Dungeon Deathball.
Towards the end of 2018, I paused work on it temporarily to do some freelance work, to help pay the bills at home. During that period I was unable to focus on this large, complex project with the small snippets of free time I had, but I did manage to develop some small, simple prototypes.
Many of these prototypes went on to become the basis for my Patreon campaign (another attempt to keep paying rent).
One of those prototypes in particular showed a lot of promise, and I decided I could turn it into a full game pretty quickly. That game is Ghost Grab 3000, and is coming out on Steam soon.
In March this year, my wife and I had our first child, and work on everything ground to a halt. Turns out babies need a lot of help!
Now, a few months later, I've started ramping back up to try to get Ghost Grab 3000 finished. But, it dawned on me that it's been a really long time since I updated Dungeon Deathball.
I want to take a moment to apologise for this delay and the lack of communication on my part, and to thank everyone here who has supported me along the way. Making a living from creating indie games is much harder than I had anticipated (and I knew it would be hard!) but I find it so rewarding and I think I'm getting better at focusing my attention in the right places.
I hope you'll stick with me on this journey. You have my word that Dungeon Deathball will get finished this year.
Thank you for your patience!
For more updates, please be sure to follow my Steam Developer page.
Matt
Update 0.11.4 - Leaderboard basics
Long time no update! I've been busy working on some other projects, namely bringing Switch 'N' Shoot to Nintendo Switch, and laying the foundations for my next game Ghost Grab 3000.
I plan to get back to finishing Dungeon Deathball soon. In the meantime, I've added some basic leaderboard support...
Your final score will be posted to the Steam leaderboards when the game ends (either victory or defeat).
You can view the leaderboards in a web browser interface. (Eventually I hope to add an integrated leaderboard display.)
Fixed bug where having the 'Damage' perk showed that the Shoot action would do more damage in the Help popup when it doesn't.
Time to jump back in and start posting some scores!
Meanwhile... watch this space (or my Twitter) for some more BIG NEWS coming on Thursday...
Seasons Greetings! ~ Winter Sale
2018 has been a wild ride! Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me this year. I truly can't express how grateful I am for the privilege of making indie games full-time.
I'm excited about what 2019 will bring. You can expect to see Switch 'N' Shoot on more platforms, a full release of Dungeon Deathball, and more projects bubbling to the surface.
Both of my games are on sale for a little while.
Please consider supporting my solo game development, sharing my games with a friend and please remember to leave a review on Steam!
If you like my work, please consider chipping in a little each month to help me keep doing what I do.
In return, you'll get exclusive access to early versions of my games, development blogs, Unity tutorials and access to the private Discord.
Thank you!
Update 0.11.3 - Bug fixes
As I mentioned in the last update, I've had other work commitments so I haven't been able to make any large updates to the game. But I have fixed a bunch of bugs!
Made it impossible to open the Pause menu during the enemy's turn, thereby preventing the UI from reappearing.
Help popups no longer fail to appear if you move the cursor between 2 adjacent tiles.
Stamina perk now displays the correct value when it's at level 2 or higher.
"Rest" button no longer also says "End Turn" if your current player has the Power Nap perk.
Chargers no longer kill themselves if they are pushed to the edge of the grid and are planning to charge off it.
Health bar popups now correctly placed above a Charger after they hit something.
Enjoy!
Matt
Update 0.11.2 - Help Popups and Options Menu
So the last few weeks have been bonkers due to a gigantic house move (turns out we'd hoarded loads of stuff???), and I've got some other work to do over the next month or two, so I wanted to get an update out this weekend to show you all that I am still alive and I am still working on bringing Dungeon Deathball to the finish line!
I wanted to get a new monster into the next update, but I've had to focus on smaller tasks to fit into my busy schedule. So here they are...
Help Popups
One of the major problems this game still faces is in comprehension, particularly of new players, about how the game works. This is an attempt to remedy that problem.
Now, you'll see little popups on the sides of the screen which provide useful information and explanations.
When your mouse cursor hovers over action buttons (e.g. Rest, Pass, Shoot) or field tiles (e.g. Move, Attack, Switch Player) you'll see a blue popup on the left which explains what that action does. If, for example, it's an Attack then it will tell you how much damage you'll do, whether or not it will stun the enemy, etc.
When your cursor hovers over an enemy monster, you'll see an orange popup on the right. This one tells you all about that monster's stats and how it moves and attacks.
Veterans will probably have already memorised a lot of this information (although there may be some useful details in there).
If you get tired of these popups or you find them obtrusive, you can simply disable them in the new.......
Options Menu
Hooray, now it's a proper game!
Hit the Options button from the title screen or the top-right corner during a stage and you can tweak the audio volume levels, or disable the aforementioned popups.
These settings are all saved across sessions automatically.
Full Changelist
Added 'Help Popups' which give useful information for beginners. These can be disabled in the new Options menu. Player action popups (left, blue) tell you about stuff you can do when you hover over a button, a selectable tile or a player info panel. Enemy info popups (right, orange) tell you about an enemy when your mouse cursor is over one.
Added an 'Options' menu (both from the title screen and in-game). Audio volumes (master, music and sound effects). Turn Help Popups on and off.
Turn number and Par is now displayed in the top-right corner (moved from bottom-left), along with the newly-displayed Trials/Stage number.
Par number now changes colour with more steps to show when you're approaching par. It now turns red when you're on your last chance, and goes grey when you've missed par.
Improved some basic keyboard/controller functionality for menus by having default buttons highlighted when they appear. More to follow.
Bug fix: prevented mouse clicks going through the UI and hitting tiles behind it.
Feedback
I hope you like the new features! If you're a new player, I'm particularly interested in how easy or difficult you find the game to learn and understand.
P.S. Who's going to EGX in Birmingham UK in a couple of weeks? I'll be there with my previous game, Switch 'N' Shoot! If you say me, make sure you say hi!
Update 0.11.1 - small bug fix
Gore Trials levels now play in the correct order if encountered in Trial 3.
- Matt
Update 0.11 - The Crowd
I'll be the first to admit it, Dungeon Deathball is a sports game that doesn't feel very much like a sport. There were some key components missing, preventing it from truly feeling like you were fighting for the entertainment of the monstrous masses.
In this update, the first thing I've done to address that problem is add the fireworks that go off when you win a stage (see the gif above). The second is...
The Crowd
Now you have a full crowd of spectators, both fellow slaves and domineering monsters. They'll animate and make a lot of noise, responding to your punches and cheering as you get smooshed into the dirt.
Monster Intros
Also, as you enter a new set of Trials, there are short new cinematic sequences that show off the new monster that you're up against.
Stay tuned for more monsters to populate the dungeon in the next update...
Full Changelist
Added much more detail to the crowds, including animations for the slaves, spectating monsters and cheering audio.
Crowd audio reacts to in-game events (hits, deaths, etc.)
Added fireworks and camera motion when you win a stage.
Added an intro for each new set of Trials, showing off the new monster that has appeared.
Slave Players now have various facial expressions which react to gameplay events.
Tick Spawners now have a 'maximum live children' capacity of 3. Once they've spawned 3 Ticks, they won't spawn another until one is killed.
"PASS" action now costs only 1 Stamina point (reduced from 2).
Bug fix: idle animation now works again on all characters.
Feedback
As always, I appreciate your feedback on these new changes. You can reach me on any of these channels:
I've been spending time with my family this week so progress has been a little slow, but I have got some improvements to share with you.
Game Structure
The biggest chunk of work on my part was changing how the game is structured from stage to stage. It's now played out in 4 trials made up of 3 stages (it used to be 3x4). I've added this concept of the 'Final Trial' which combines the randomly-selected monsters you encountered in the previous 2 trials. The reasons behind this change are mostly boring and technical, but you just need to know that it gives me more control over difficulty balancing further down the line.
Timeline
Next up is the Timeline screen. I've revamped this to be able to show your entire 12-stage run at once, including whether or not you got a perfect 3 Star score in each stage.
Final Score
And finally, the end-game screen now tallies up scores for your performance and gives you a final score. Eventually, I plan to add Steam Leaderboards so you can compare this score against other players.
Let me know what you think of the scoring system and share your top scores!
Full Changelist
Game structure is now 4 trials of 3 stages (instead of 3 of 4). Trial 1 is Mad Lads. Trials 2 and 3 are randomly selected monsters. Trial 4 is a combination of all monsters from the previous 3 trials.
The end-game screen now gives you a final score, which is a total of your Stars, Deaths and Par. Stars are worth 2000 points each. Deaths are a 1000 point penalty. Par is 100 points subtracted or added per turn, depending on whether you're above or below par.
The end-game screen is now displayed even if you lose.
Enemies can now spawn closer to the players on large stages. They'll spawn 2 rows away minimum, instead of at the halfway line.
The Timeline screen has been revamped: It now shows all 12 stages. Stage icons show whether or not you earned all 3 stars (white instead of grey). Sprites have been tidied up.
During the Enemy turn, the camera skips focusing on an enemy if they are not performing an action.
Bug fix: the Timeline now displays if you get Game Over.
Bug fix: the Ball no longer pops behind enemies if they are standing on the same tile.
