As you can read here, we recently released an update, that tackled a technical problem. As we already had all the old programs installed, we worked a little more on this three year old title and improved upon the gameplay:
Leveling is faster know (a lot!)
Nearly all monster have been debuffed
ranged targeting improved
A short explanation: When we released the game three years ago, we mainly communicated with a quite dedicated community with players that knew the game very well. Consquently, the feedback mostly was: Too easy! Make it harder!
After colsing our studio, we noticed, though, that the difficulty was too harsh for new players, yet our team had to dissolve and we couldn't work on updates anymore.
With this update we changed the game to a more 'casual' feeling. We think, it improves a lot on the gaming experience. Most of the players didn't get to see all the monster, all the levels and equipment that is available. It simply took too long to unlock everything and players got bored or frustrated. The game in its current state should be closer to the original idea we had: A fun, casual, sometimes challenging game you can play with a couple of friend on a chilled evening.
I hope you will like it, Manuel [dev]
FREE NEW GAMEMODE GOBLINBALL
As of today, Friday 22. of September 2017 we proudly present the new and free GoblinBall Gamemode.
Looterkings presents a new and free fun mode for all you loot-greedy goblins out there! As even the most devoted gold-seeker will need a timeout every once in a while, we developed GoblinBall - a ruthless team sport for action-loving team players!
On a big, soccer-like field, a huge ball of stone has to be pushed into the enemy goal with your mighty weapons. Waves of monsters will invade the playing field and drop loot when killed. You will need the gold to buy powerful abilities that can turn the game into your favour! Select one of four classes in offence or defence and stand your ground!
Much love to our community! Thanks for playing our game!
Looterkings is Out Of Early Access!
Dear Goblins!
The elven queen is quite angry with us. The reason being, that we, the small heroic goblins from the mines deep below have finally developed our FULL potential. With numerous weapons, armors and hats, as well as magical cards to boost our strength and speed, we are well-equipment to raid the elven halls and steal any shiny loot that we can carry! Horray!
Now, jokes aside: We, the development team of looterkings had a rough last weeks here in Cologne and we are now happy to announce the release of version 1.0 to the public!
Because of unfortunate events that came up simultanious to the release we only now are able to publish this news, for example. Nevertheless I wanted to share some information on how development was and what kind of difficulties we had during the process.
We are a small team. Or to be precise, we WERE a small team (6 people). This project was, to be honest, too big for us: Not only the number of artists and programmers working on this was too small, also the experience was too little, as none of us had done a professional production beforehand. And to top the hybris we had when starting: We wanted to create a MULTIPLAYER game, which, from a technical point of view, is simply f***ing hard to do.
But there we were - we had some money to start with and had lots of enthusiasm. In the first year we made fast progress, gfx were coming along fine and basic gameplay was established. We announced the game, strolled through steam greenlight like is was a walk in the park and went Early Access. That's were problems started :D
We knew that Early Acces would be hard for us, because we really had some work left to do. Gameplay was not finished, balancing was off, whole features missing - yet we had no other choice than to go public and gain some money to keep production alive.
Reception was ambiguous, of course. Although Early Access is meant to be a process of development to share with the community, there always are those who expect a finished game, where only polishing has to be done. Looterkings was not like that - we had some serious issues to solve: The multiplayer-feature took its toll and we had to invest a LOT of time to solve technical issues. Gameplay-wise we noticed that we are nowhere near a final version. Good for us, there where a lot of people enthusiastic about the game: They helped us a LOT. MissionCards, ShieldBreak, Ingame Item Unlocking, Shop Placement & Teleport, MiniBosses, Enemy Design and Balancing were direct changes and additions we did based on the suggestions of the community. Slowly we moved in the right direction.
BUT we had one big issue, not unknown to many indie developer: Money was running out. Because of problems with our partners in marketing we could not reach enough people interested in our Early-Access game. Fear was growing that we would not be able to finish our work.
We started to look for publishers. After all, we had a solid game, 3D, multiplayer, nice gfx without cheap assets bought from the unity store, details SFX, our very own OST and at least 5 levels. Yet, the quest for a financal partner that would help us with marketing was difficult. Mostly because... Early Access. 80% oft the companies did like the game, but as it already was released to the public, interest stalled. And time was still running out.
We started to work harder and concentrated on adding the missing content. We were so close! We had nearly all features we wanted implemented. We had a system that allowed us to add weapons, gear, levels and enemies easily and fast, we had solved all technical issues.
Luckily, we could find a published in the last minute. Not the deal we were looking for, but it gave us 2 more months to finish the game and to reach version 1.0. Unfortunatly we already had lost one team-member and I (the project leader) had to minimize the team further to keep production alive. Additional to this, I as the project leader had stopped to pay myself money but was living on the cash I had put aside when working as a motion designer before production started. So at this moment, we are but 2 people working on Looterkings, with me sometimes having to jump to payed jobs to be able to afford my rent.
BUT, against all odds, we made it! Looterkings has reached version 1.0. And yes, there are some small features still missing (controller support), we have 9 instead of 10 levels and the last levels may not be as detailed as the first ones. But thats it. Apart from these issues, we managed to release a uniquely designed, funny dungeoncrawler with lots of content... and we are proud of it!
As many of the indie-productions out there we had our fair share of trouble and problems - but this is a happy end. We even will have a further game-mode we will release in a months time. Be prepared to learn what goblins do in their free time :D
As for now, we would very much like to know your adventures when trying to reach the elven queen in her holy halls.
Thank you for supporting us. Thank you from the heart.
Huge update coming soon!
Dear looters! You have been waiting for the next update and some of you asked, when we're done. We are elbow-deep into coding, asset building and testing. It won't be too long until the next update is coming. But it certainly will be HUGE with lots of new biomes, enemies, weapons, armor, helmets, new animations etc! So stay tuned, the biggest update yet will be at your fingertips to try out soon!
TWITCH MODE OUT NOW! (UPDATE TO v0.9.8)
It's finally here: the Looterkings Twitch-mode for monster-slaughtering streamers and their goblin-loving audience!
Twitch mode is a new game mode that lets twitch streamers play Looterkings together with their audience. The audience is participating via Twitch-chat by playing a typing-game alongside the streamer, giving him buffs and debuffs while fighting through the dungeons.
A lot of bugs have been fixed in this update. See a full list over here:
Patchnotes
Have a great weekend!
New Enemies and MiniBosses
Hail there, fellow looters!
We have been working hard on a new update for looterkings - and it took us some time, we know. This has been mostly due to the simultaneaous work on content for version 1.0 (to be precise on level 6 and 7) and on a new gaming mode that we will release in the next weeks.
BUT! as for now, we offer you this: 5 new enemies are roaming the dungeons of looterkings, together with minibosses, that can randomly appear on each level.
Meet the Ghost Elven King
These Mini Bosses are strong an sometimes you will need a certain strategy to defeat them, yet they offer a sparkling reward: Each MiniBoss will drop a kind of orb giving you the change to boost one of the following stats: Life, CritChance, Armor or Damage.
Furthermore we introduced the Game-Over-Reward, a kind of starter-gold-bonus for your next run after you died in the dungeons. Depending on how far you got before loosing your life, your gold-bonus will be bigger or smaller.
In addition to these content-Updates we also worked on balancing and also on single-player gameplay. Stay tuned for more and have a splendid weekend!
Your looterkings-Team
UPDATE TO VERSION 0.8 - BOSSFIGHT
Dear Goblins and Fellow Looters!
We are proud to finally be able to announce that we have moved on to version number 0.8. This means a whole lot of changes, both content and feature-wise. Most important, the fifth level with the first boss-fight is implemented, we integrated the music (although it's still in rough mix) and we have some new enemies.
As this is a quite big update, we made a video to show what we have accomplished in these last 4 months of Early Acces - and this is thanks to the people who supported us, gave us valuable feedback and sent in bug-reports. I really want to thank you guys - because this is really, what EARLY ACCESS is all about: To improve the game, to work hard on suggestions from the community and hereby improve the gemaplay.
https://youtu.be/PxskM7UzS4w
I really hope you enjoy the new changes - we have been quite nervous and anxious to release this update with all the small and big changes - and we hope you can experience the huge step forward we managed to take with LOOTERKINGS!
Thank you again and stay tuned for more,
the LOOTERKINGS Team
Halloween Update! Version 0.7.76
To get ready for this year's Halloween season and the upcoming sale, we added some specials to our game! Jack O' Lantern treats you with a new helmet designed based on his horrible face - but don't get tricked by the walls which hide it somewhere.
Additionaly the goblin gods throw a new enemy at you, lots of bugs have been fixed and we've got rid of the loot..
..but replaced it with the sweetest candy available :D
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!
Big Update! Version 0.7.68
This is a big update, that we have been working on for some time now. Time to do a small recap on how this first two months of Early Access went for us:
1. A BIG THANK YOU...
...to all you people who bought the game. Let's be honest - we love creating looterkings, but without you actually spending money on our product we wouldn't be able to continue work on this. And although we had some few critical reviews, the overwhelming majority was very enthusiastic and extremely friendly. This gives us some extra motivation on improving the game and we can proudly say that in these two months the game has changed a LOT!
2. IT NEVER WILL GO AS PLANNED...
This has been so true for our Early Access. When we released the game we thought, we already were near completion of the feature list. Now, two months later, the gameplay has changed drastically. It is more versatile and tactical while at the same time not being too hard for starters, but also rewarding for people playing it a while. I know we still have a journey before us, but I feel like having reached a gameplay-milestone with this update. Of course we will continue to tweak values, damages, animations. But the core system now is fun and stable - and we are very happy with it. This is thanks to the people supporting us and giving us valuable feedback!
3. WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
We are now finally working on level 5. I know this had been our intention when we released, but we quickly learned that balancing and core gameplay had to be addressed beforehand. Now we feel that the time has come to add more enemies, levels and equipment. The objective is to release level 5 with the bossfight as the next big update.
So please stay with us, enjoy the update and continue to send us emails, suggestions and write in the steam-forum. We are very thankful for any interaction and are thrilled to experience this creative development together with you, our community!
Hurrying off to do some lootin'
Manuel from Looterkings
Meet Us At Gamescom 2016!
We just released in time for the Gamescom 2016! Currently, part of our team is getting ready for the biggest game-exhibition in Europe. If you happen to be in Cologne these days, give us a visit and try out Looterkings! (oh, and pssst: We have a secret goodie for every visitor to loot!) :S
