Dungeon Lad cover
Dungeon Lad screenshot
Steam
Genre: Adventure

Dungeon Lad

Patch 1.6 Is Now Out For MacOs
Sorry for the delay, mac builds always end up taking longer than I think.

Update 1.6 Curses
Patch Notes:


  • Curses: A new entity can now appear in the dungeon. Once unlocked, a reaper will offer you a chance to be cursed in exchange for a reward. The curses are generally things that make the game harder or alter gameplay for a few floors, with a reward at the end.

  • New Item: Rat Cage: Item makes you invulnerable to rats but take bonus damage from all other sources.

  • New Skill: Shrink Ray: A usable skill that cuts the power of a nearby enemy in half without altering the rewards you get for killing it.

  • Reduced permanent upgrade prices. I have reduced the price of most items by roughly half. This allows you to get stronger at a quicker pace, leading to you experiencing the full game much quicker.

  • Various bug fixes, number tweaks, and dungeon generation cleanup.



This update doesn't give a huge advantage to scores so for now I will not be resetting the leaderboard as I have done in the past.

Currently this update is only available for windows. Hopefully I can get the Mac build uploaded later tonight.

Thanks for playing!

1.5.3 Steam Deck Update
1.5.3 includes various fixes to make the game play better on the Steam Deck

Mac builds updated to 1.5.2
Sorry for the delay, saving was a little trickier for mac builds.

But now both versions are on the same version. Refer to the 1.5.2 patch notes to see what was added.

Thanks!

1.5.2 - Save Files
This update includes two changes.

1. You can now save your game from the shop. Saving will exit the game. When you start a new game, you will have the chance to load from your save. The loaded game will begin on the next floor after the shop. This means if you want to buy anything in the shop, you must do so before you save and exit, otherwise you will not get another chance at that shop. Exiting the game in the middle of a level will not save the game. Due to the way the levels are generated, there was just no way to allow players to save whenever they wanted. This will hopefully at least make it so you don't have to give up on a deep run just because you need to take a break.

I have never implemented saved games before. I have tested this a lot, but I am just one person and there is a lot of data to track in this game. Please let me know if you run into any issues.

2. I fixed a bug around the Pied Piper and Dark Souls items. They weren't resetting correctly, which meant if you bought the pied piper upgrade you would be stuck with it for the rest of the run.

The mac build of this game may take a bit longer to get out since saved data works slightly differently on macs.

On top of this I have been working on adding more content to the game, but I wanted to get the save functionality out as soon as possible. Look for more content in the coming weeks.

Thanks for playing!

1.5.1 Bug Fix, New Skill, Small Balance Change
I've been working on new content for the game as well as a save run feature.
In the meantime though, a crash was found and I wanted to get that fix out asap.

This update also includes a new skill.


  • Fix rare crash that could occur when using the Fire Exit item.
  • Added Super Smite skill. Same as smite, but instead of killing 1 enemy instantly, it kills all adjacent enemies. To offset this, it takes much longer to recharge.
  • Increased the recharge time on the Blood Pact skill. It's still powerful, but is less likely to carry a run alone now.



I hope that the next content update will be ready in a week or two.

Thanks for playing!

Patch 1.5: End Game Balancing
Patch 1.5 is a complete overhaul of the game that balances the end game scaling.
Before, once you got your character rolling there was little that could stop you. This led to the leaderboard simply being a competition of who was willing to play the longest. This fixes that.

Note: Because of the nature of these changes, there is a new fresh leaderboard to compete on. You can still see the original leaderboard by clicking the Season 1 button in the top left corner, but all new scores will be going to the Season 2 leaderboard.

Mechanic Changes



  • New Scoring System: The leaderboard is now based on a player's score instead of how many floors they have completed. Players score is made up by the following: 3 points per floor completed. 1 point per enemy killed. 1 point per orb picked up.

  • Enemies now scale faster depending on their type. Rats still scale at the same speed but knights scale much faster. This will lead to a higher variety in enemy strength in the end game.

  • The cost for most items scale as you get deeper into the dungeon. This happens at a rate of +2 gold cost for every 5 floors completed. Some items do not scale, such as the potion.

Quality Of Life Changes



  • You can now cancel purchasing a skill after you hit the buy button but before you assign it to a slot.

  • The compass item now has unique art so it is easier to tell apart from the clock items.

  • The quest tracker is now semi transparent. Reminder that you can hide the quest tracker completely with the 'Q' key or 'R1/LB' on a controller.

  • The blood pact skill now has a text popup that shows how much time has been added.

  • Quest rewards now scale as you go further in the dungeon. This ensures that quests are always worth doing.

Balance Changes




  • Armor now blocks half of incoming damage, rounded up, instead of all damage. It will always block at least 1 damage.

  • Necromancer item now gives +3 health per summon, up from +1.

  • The immortality skill now lasts 3 seconds, down from 10.

  • The time stop item, which makes time not move on the next floor, has been removed for now. I would like to add this item back in the future, but at the moment it creates too many exploits.

  • The immortality skill now lasts 3 seconds, down from 10.

  • You can now only purchase watch this (+1 clock on all floors) item once per run. The item was the main reason people were able to play indefinitely.

  • There is now a maximum amount of 3 re-rolls you can earn, down from 12.

  • Treasure chests now reward 3 gold, down from 5.

  • Removed the oops all clocks item. It was way too powerful compared to other upgrades.

  • Heart of Gold (switch your health and gold values) is now free.

Bug Fixes




  • Fixed a bug where the floors completed UI could sometimes be off by a few floors.

  • Fixed a bug where a shop could sell you a skill you already own.

  • Fixed a bug where the marked enemy quest did not interact correctly with the pied piper or dark soul item.

  • Fixed a bug where the smite skill would not reward any gold. It now rewards gold the same way normal kills do.

  • Fixed a bug where a specific quest would sometimes reward 110 gold instead of 10.

  • Fixed a bug where the oops all.... items were not working correctly.

  • The perm upgrade count in stats now shows the correct number of upgrades.



Reset


It is my hope that these changes will make the end game much more enjoyable. In a perfect world, this is the last leaderboard reset I will have to do. But the fact that I am a solo developer and the sheer amount of upgrade combinations in the game means I will likely need to do it again. I will always give substantial notice before creating a new season of leaderboard.

What's Next?


There are still a lot of enemy/item ideas I would like to add to the game. I have been working on bug fixes and balance changes since launch so I haven't been able to think about any new content. Hopefully this patch will put the game in a much better place where I can focus on expanding the game next.

Thanks for playing and to follow development you can follow me on Twitter

Season Two Starts Sunday April 10th!
Okay, i don't have full patch notes yet since things are still subject to change.
But Sunday April 10th, Noon EST I will be deploying the big balance update to the endgame.

This means the current leaderboard will no longer be valid. I am going to keep the leaderboard visible in game titled as "Season 1", but any new scores that are uploaded will go to a fresh Season 2 leaderboard.

I don't intend this to be a live service game, and season 2 might be the forever leaderboard, though I doubt it.

As I explained in my previous post, to make the sweeping changes I want to make to ensure the game is fun late game will mean the old high scores are going to be virtually unbeatable. A fresh leaderboard is the best way forward while still respecting the time people put into the original leaderborad.

So if you want your ranking to be cemented in Dungeon Lad history, you have until Sunday, 12pm est.

Full patch notes to follow.

Thanks!

Upcoming Patch: End Game Balancing and a New Leaderboard
First of all thanks for playing the game. As a solo dev it's been very fun watching people absolutely break my game.

I have fixed a lot of the bugs that plagued the game at launch, and have a few more to go.

I wanted to talk about the end game balancing, or lack of. I realize that once you get rolling almost nothing can stop you in the current state of the game. That's not ideal as the leaderboard basically comes down to who is willing to play the longest.

I have an update I am almost finished with that should hopefully fix this. It's a full re-balancing of the late game. I will have exact patch notes soon, but I wanted to give a summary of the type of changes I'm making.

1. The cost of items in the dungeon store are going to start to scale. Right now, you get to a point were you can just buy every item on every floor, and that's not very fun or interesting. The prices are going to start increasing after floor 5, and continue to increase every 5 floors after that.

2. The hard monsters are going to scale slightly faster than the weaker ones. Currently at end game there isn't much difference between a level 30 rat and a level 35 knight. This will change that.

3. The +1 clocks per floor item is very good. Currently you can buy it 5 times, meaning you have at least 5 clocks on every floor. This makes it impossible to lose. I still have some testing to do, but I am either limiting this item to 1 purchase per run, or outright removing it from the game.

There is a lot more going into the update, and like I said I will provide full patch notes when it launches, hopefully in the next couple of days.

The final thing I want to explain is the leaderboard. With a re-balancing of the game this large, the current leaderboard is going to be full of impossible to beat scores. My plan is to keep that leaderboard viewable in the game but not allow any new scores to be posted to it once the balance work is done. Instead, there will be a fresh leaderboard for the new scores.

In a perfect world, I won't have to do this again. But I am a team of one doing this in my spare time and this game has a lot of possible item combinations. So I fully expect to need a 3rd or 4th leaderboard as well.

I will make sure I give a day or two notice before I launch the update, so if having a certain place on the original leaderboard is important to you keep an eye here or on my twitter: https://twitter.com/GhostGoats

Thanks so much for playing my game. It really means a lot to me.

Mac Support Fixed
I am pretty sure I have fixed MacOS Support. I'm not going to flip it on in the store just yet. But if you have a mac and own the game, you should be able to install it and play it. Let me know if this isn' working for you.

Thank you for your patience.
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