Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Indie
Smash Dungeon
What's going on?
Its been a while since my last update so I thought I best let you all know where we are.
What the hell have I been doing for the last 3 months?
So so much...
Weapon Boosts While play testing I noticed how damn hard it was. When you have hordes of enemies coming at you a hit a run tactic didn't help. So I made the weapon boosts last for an entire encounter and also made them stack-able.
This means you can leave a couple of power-ups scattered around the dungeon then collect and activate them before an encounter and they will last until the encounter finishes. Each weapon boost has 3 levels too so if you find 3 chain lightning power ups and activate them before an encounter then you have level 3 chain lightning. The effects of the weapon boosts stacked and multiplied can be quite devastating.
More Passive Items The changes to weapon boosts opened an opportunity to introduce a few more items to take advantage of the change in game mechanic so there are a few more unique items to find which can help you along.
Archer Boosts The archer has been a tricky one to get right. Being a ranged unit gives you a massive advantage so to balance that the arrows don't hurt as much as melee, but having to fire hundreds of arrows in to a boss to down him gets a bit tedious and also I hadn't tackled the weapon boosts for the archer.
Thankfully it feels like tackling the weapon boosts has given the archer a new lease of life and while the slash boost will provide a slash wave for melee weapons, it will instead fire multiple arrows for the archer. This combined with knock-back and chained lightning gives a great boost to the archer.
Boss Improvements Play testing also highlighted a number of issues with the bosses.
So I've reworked the Weeper, Worm and Demon bosses, fixing a number of bugs and just generally making them ready for combat.
What's left to do? I have made two complete passes of everything and will be making a 3rd just to be sure that everything is OK which will hopefully be done by the end of November. I also have some testers lined up to do QA once the 3rd pass is done so its as bug free as possible.
The final fight level is still to do but I'm starting that NOW and expect to be done in a couple of weeks, at which point I'll post another update ːsteamhappyː
Thank You With the exception of the final boss level and some menu work I think its done. Its been a hell of a journey making this and for those of you who have stuck around I just want to say thank-you and I hope you have a lot of fun playing.
I'll be announcing an official final release date soon.
Dash Attack
Knocking enemies away from you is an incredibly powerful tool in your arsenal so I've added a new consumable power up which pushes the enemies away from you when you land from a dash. This gives you a bit of breathing space after a dash away to escape enemies and also causes a little damage too.
Distractions
Recently I have been doing a lot of play testing and a couple of things kept popping up. Firstly when you get a LOT of enemies coming for you things get a little bit too overwhelming. Its great to see swarms of enemies coming at the player but unless you have a big F%^#ing hammer it gets way too difficult. That brings me to the second thing I noticed. Despite the recent change to the sword and shield, there is still no substitute for a good hammer. This is something I'll be trying to address next.
But first things first. What to do about the swarms?
Place an object in a room that attracts the enemy, even if only for a few brief seconds.
The art of distraction ːsteamhappyː
The Training Dummy above is one of 3 new consumable items you can place to distract / attack the enemy to give yourself a little breathing space. The other two items are a more offensive option - Cannon & Tesla towers.
Here is an early preview of the Cannon.
Shield Up
I'm currently play testing and balancing the enemies strength & health and I noticed the sword and shield was a bit under powered. This was because I forgot to give the player a buff when they raised their shield so now if you raise your shield between you and an enemy then you will reduce their attack by extra, sometimes completely nullifying their attack.
The End Game!
Over the past few weeks I have been reviewing the art and improving the lighting for the levels and in the next few days I'll be updating the Steam page with some final screenshots, a couple of which I have already uploaded...
Also I've decided on a look for the the final levels which will be set deep below the dungeon surrounded by lava with the constant threat of falling in to it and losing health / dying. The enemies in this area will also be mainly fire based but include some very fast grunts, some super hard guardians and some pretty tough creatures. There is still some work to do on the lava levels to make them look more varied and interesting but here's a look at how they are shaping up.
Once this is complete I'll be moving on to play testing and balancing before release.
Thank-you all for your patience. This has been a labor of love (and hate at times) and has taken way longer than I had planned but its finally getting there ːsteamhappyː
PS Sorry I've removed the demo as it no longer represents the current quality of the game and at present my focus needs to be on finishing the full game rather than updating the demo.
Going Rogue - A New Demo
To tie in with the Going Rogue Festival on Steam there is a new Demo...
There's a new persistent realm to go with the randomness of the dungeons which will contain NPC's for you to interact with and receive side quests. There is also an early preview of the Wizards lab where you can use items you find in the dungeon to help you on your journey.
Its still under heavy development but hopefully there will be some news on a full release date in the next couple of weeks.
If you have any feedback hit me up in the Steam Community forums.
Thanks
A couple of new projectile enemies
I started to feel that the balance of the game wasn't quite right and we had too many melee based enemies which was making for fairly boring gameplay so to help break things up I'm adding more variation on enemy attacks, starting with some additional projectile enemies. Note, some of the actual attacks might change later such as spread attacks etc but for now here's what I have.
First of The Fly is a human/fly hybrid that is indigenous to the Caves, crawling around throwing incendiary skulls at you. [previewyoutube="s8w46Fj3w_U;full"]
And then we have the much more elegant Succubus who launches a magic projectile towards you. [previewyoutube="Wj8ED2KIDYo;full"]
Hope you like ːsteamhappyː
Cheat Death
When you die in Smash Dungeon its not the end, although you will lose most of the items you found on that run.
In a previous post I mentioned that you can find runes scattered throughout the dungeon. Runes are one of the items you will retain upon death and can be used to improve your characters abilities.
One such ability is Resurrection. Resurrection will immediately restore your health to 50% max which means no returning to purgatory and no losing you items ːsteamhappyː
[previewyoutube="nm1OLRULcW4;full"]
Great Halls, more enemies, more deaths and more... well everything!
There's lots of development happened since the last update. Some of which is cosmetic and some which have changed the game quite drastically. I'll be announcing all the changes in a series of news posts over the next few weeks.
In this post I'll be detailing possibly the biggest change which is moving from rogue-like to rogue-lite. you know, Death is not the end - Live, Smash, Die, Repeat!
Welcome to The Great Halls
The Great Halls are the upper most level of the dungeon. The ground floor if you like, and home to some of the Dungeons more friendly faces who will hopefully help you on your repeated attempts to Smash the Dungeon.
On a run through the dungeon there are many items for you to find that can improve your abilities or later be used in the Great Halls to help increase your chances in the dungeon. One such item type that can be found are runes. If you return to the Great Hall with a rune, the resident wizard can use the rune to upgrade you're character in many different ways.
Other characters exist within the Halls and the idea (although not fully fleshed out) is that you may be able to find items (or characters) of value to them in order to trade for items of value to you.
Thanks for reading ːsteamhappyː
Floor indicators & more destruction
Since the last demo I've had a look to see what improvements I can make to improve the gameplay.
As well as a lot of bug fixes There have been some changes and a lot of improvements. Most notable changes are...
Power arrow direction indicator.
New dashing enemy.
Health fountain.
More variety in floor layout.
Secret room clues to help you locate them more easily.
