The 2018 Seven Day Roguelike Challenge ran from March 3-11. As I've said before, 7DRL is a big deal for me and I wouldn't be on Steam without it, so I try to participate every year.
The challenge has a formal review process and that process just wrapped up today. It turns out my game DEAD FACE did very well this year, getting the top score. To be clear, 7DRL is not a competition. But I'm still ecstatic!
http://www.roguetemple.com/7drl/2018/
In other news, I am getting very near to completing the last update to Golden Krone Hotel. It's a big one and will require some testing. Stay tuned.
Valentine's Day Competition Results
Thanks to everyone who joined the competition! We got a great response and lots of solid runs. Player skill was clearly higher than last time and almost all the top scores had extended Underworld visits.
I think the number of Twitch followers for the game doubled in the last 3 days too!
Here are the leaderboards: http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/valentines.php
A few note about calculating results. Some people dominated the charts, but only one prize per participant. I've gone in order of score to preserve the WOW factor of some of these insane runs. Some categories will have multiple winners because I kept counting when encountering past winners.
Six 1st place winners will be receiving their choice of Unexplored, Fidel, Haque, Tangledeep, or Dungeonmans.
Five 2nd place winners will be receiving Auro: A Monster Bumping Adventure.
They should expect to hear from me soon.
Thanks again to everyone!
Valentine's Day Competition: February 14-16
If there's one day out of the year on which you absolutely must play Golden Krone Hotel, it's Halloween. But if I'm allowed to pick two days, Valentine's Day would also be included. Why?
It's a game about blood of course. Hearts pump blood. And hearts represent Valentine's Day. There's more.... but to say any more would spoil it.
So where were we? Ah, yes. COMPETITION TIME! The competition starts on Valentine's Day (2/14) and runs until 2/16.
Of the 12 classes in Golden Krone Hotel, 4 could really use some more love and we're going to give it to them.
Rules
To win, you'll have to get the highest score in one of these 4 classes: Assassin, Merchant, Light Mage, or Shapeshifter.
You must play on NORMAL mode
Begin and end your run during the 3 days of the competition (2/14-2/16)
Make sure to upload your morgue file (this happens automatically if you play through Steam)
Prizes
Four winners will get their choice of any of the following games:
It's 15 tracks, 38 minutes long, two bucks. The store page has a samples of each song. I think you'll enjoy it. :)
It's on sale for a couple of days.
Release party winners
Quick note first: the game is out and on a 20% launch discount for one week. Go grab it now!
Last night's release party was amazing. The crowd was fun, the questions were good, and the streams were absolutely on point. Thanks to everyone who showed up! Thanks again to Esty and Massack for streaming. You can go check their recorded video from the party here and here.
Now onto last night's winners
First we gave away 6 keys. Here are the winners for that:
Webmant
Unholydonuts
dialga586
Majora
nuzcraft
tynq
We also ran a competition to see who could get the highest scores in 5 categories. You can take a look at the top 10 for each.
To determine winners, I only counted each person for one prize and included only those who showed up for the party itself:
Congratulations to our winners! Each one wins a Golden Krone Hotel key and a key for the (soon to be released) Golden Krone Hotel OST. I will be contacting them through Discord shortly.
Version 1.0 - The final countdown
In preparation of Golden Krone Hotel's full release on Thursday, I have pushed one last update. This is mostly polish stuff, but some of it is quite cool!
Bloody sprites
I had never actually drawn sprites for the Demon Blood abilities since they were so rarely seen. That has been corrected (and made less rare).
These 10 abilities have also been tuned up and made more fun in general. For example, you can now throw furniture into monsters or monsters into each other and both will be damaged.
Other missing icons (e.g. taking stairs) have been added in as well.
I MAKE YOUR SCREEN SHAKE
There's now a subtle screen shake on all attacks. Critical hits have stutter frames too. Both of these make combat feel waaaay more engaging. Feel free to turn up the shakiness!
Grimoire++
Spells can now go to level 4. Once you have a full set of spells, each grimoire is guaranteed to contain a spell you already know, making it easier to level up your spells.
Sunny surprise
I've addressed one common request: a warning to prevent you from getting burnt when travelling between stairs. Requires 'Confirm dangerous moves' option.
A bunch of small touches (like new sound effects) have been added and several bugs fixed.
Demon Blood is less rare and abilities have been tuned to be more useful
New icons for contextual abilities and menu
SCREEN SHAKE
Stutter frames on crits
Bat form now has better defense
Added 3 new obstacles: Grandfather Clock, Cauldron, & Crate
Made a few positive statuses last longer
Guaranteed food drops are no longer always ale and there is no guaranteed food on the first floor. Ale was too boring!
Morgue files now show the turns spent in human and vampire forms
Tuned a few bosses to be very slightly harder. Strigoi no longer spawns Grunts.
There's a very scary surprise for anyone fighting the underworld bosses now
Prevented werewolves from casting magic
The price of STUPEFY has been increased from 6 to 8
A REST button to remind players about this important ability
Added an option for waiting on animations to finish. Turn this off for faster play, but maybe some animation weirdness
Made it possible to complete tutorial with mouse only
Sounds for elemental attack types that had no sound before: ICE, FIRE, PSYCHIC
Sounds for quaffing potions and using Demon Blood
Movement confirmation warns you when travelling between stairs as a vampire during the day.
Fixed an exploit that made 'Confirm dangerous moves' help you too much when confused
Tidied up the help and some stat descriptions
Fixed some issues with rebinding keys during the tutorial
Fixed the Ice Father description
Fixed a sprite issue with the entryway
Fixed an issue that allowed you to take the same spot as a friendly monster when sliding on ice
Golden Krone Hotel launches on October 26
After 3 years of development and 1 year in Early Access, Golden Krone Hotel is shedding that EA label and fully launching on October 26th at 6pm EDT.
The last year been a blast. The community has been great and you've helped the game evolve to be so much more than what it was last October.
I have a little party planned for release night. I'm going to hold a competition and give away keys (both randomly and for the competition winners). Please come join us and tell your friends.
http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/releaseparty/
See you there!
The Despair Update (v0.13) - Original Soundtrack, new difficulty mode
I hope you're sitting down for this one.
OST
Golden Krone Hotel now has an original soundtrack by Christopher Loza! You might know Christopher from the KeeperRL soundtrack, but he also made our delightful chiptune title track and trailer music. We've been working on redoing all the game's music for a few months and it's finally done.
If, however, you want to switch things up or just get nostalgic for the old music (which has a more ambient horror focus), you can toggle back and forth between both soundtracks in the Options menu.
Despair mode
Even if you're not quite ready for the game to get harder, I know you will be eventually. Despair is a new unlockable, unfair, and unforgiving difficulty mode. It comes with its own redone title screen featuring a gnarly remix, blood moon, and custom font. I have to be honest: this is easily the most badass thing in the game.
Visual tweaks
Stained glass has been toned down and looks less like "unicorn puke." Menus have been visually reworked and made Fancy!
There's also a good number of bug fixes. Thanks to everyone who reported them!
Changelog:
The game now features an original soundtrack by Christopher Loza. The old soundtrack can be switched in as well.
New difficulty: DESPAIR MODE
The credits menu has been totally reworked into a "crawl" and now displays after a win (also available from Options)
Reworked menus
Stained glass no longer looks like "unicorn puke"
Difficulty can now be selected with keyboard (left/right)
Drawing ASCII windows differently depending on their orientation
Debug menu has been made more difficult to accidentally access (now requires '~' + 'debug').
Accessing the debug menu (or running console commands) prevents a run from having a morgue file saved. This should prevent at least one category of "cheat" morgue files from popping up on the leaderboards.
Fixed an issue with sliding on ice diagonally
Fixed a morgue display issue when dying of starvation
Fixed a major bug where reading a book the same turn one dies turns you immortal.
Any unbound commands (which had their keys stolen from another remap) are randomly assigned keys, which should prevent a bug where the game wouldn't start with unbound keys.
Fixed an issue with potion deduction. You should be able to deduce identities more often.
Fixed a game locking bug with Examine mode in the tutorial. Also now easier to escape from menus in the tutorial.
Fixed an issue with MIASMA that wasn't hurting enemies unless they were directly hit.
Fixed an ugly display issue with spell icons on Grimoire menu
The Grognard Update (v0.12) - MAC/LINUX SUPPORT & DIAGONALS
HOLY CATS, WE'RE LEAVING EARLY ACCESS NEXT MONTH.
This month it's all about playing the way you want to play. That means Mac and Linux support, tools to prevent stupid deaths, keyboard examine, ASCII mode, and optional 8-way movement.
The final class has been added as well: Berserker. With the highest starting strength of all the disguises and an ENRAGE spell, you'll surely wreak havoc on the hotel. That brings us to 12 classes and 19 achievements to collect!
Diagonal movement
Four way movement has always been helpful for players without numpad. But sometimes it just doesn't feel like a roguelike without diagonals.
Adding optional 8-way movement to Golden Krone Hotel affects A LOT. Expect the game to feel different, but hopefully still balanced. It's now easier to dance around lone enemies and it's possible to dodge light beams. But remember it's also easier to get surrounded and magic becomes 8-directional too.
ASCII Mode
ASCII can look cool as hell. It's often easier to understand what's going on too. So here it is.
There's a Muted Palette option that almost turns the game greyscale (the main exception being hints of red). This an excellent option if you want to crank up the horror aesthetic.
Grognard Mode
If you really want to go old school, there's GROGNARD Mode. This flips a bunch of options simultaneously to make the game look and feel more like a classic roguelike. You'll get ASCII, diagonal movement, and a bunch of display effects turned off (like animation, damage numbers, bounciness, etc.).
But feel free to play with those on if you prefer! It's quite fun playing a little bouncy @.
Changelog:
Mac and Linux now supported. Please let me know if you have any problems.
Optional diagonal movement added
ASCII mode added
Bump animation added
You can now Examine with keyboard (press V) and hovering over tiles also displays their name
Added a "Confirm dangerous moves" option. If you die to sunlight a lot, this might help
Berserker class added
Shapeshifter now turns into a wolf whenever in moonlight
Spiridus and Moroi toned down a bit. Moroi range reduced
Options menu reorganized and several new options added
Sound play when selecting options
Added highlighted text to tutorial to make it easier to understand
Fixed a very weird bug with ice/stairs that created ghost enemies that could be killed infinitely
Fixed a crash when playing the game outside of the Steam client
Fixed an issue with the revolver cancellation not clearing selected tiles
Fixed an issue with certain attack types being displayed
Fixed an issue with rebinding ESCAPE/ENTER
Fixed the display of 1HP in morgue files
Fixed an issue with ring display in morgue files
Fixed an issue with resting while poisoned/burning
Since the game is wrapping up, please let me know of any last minute ideas on balance/polish. Big changes are probably not making it in, but there's still a month to fine tune things.
And I'm super serious about the price increase this time (I wanted one last opportunity for Mac/Linux players to buy at $5).
