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[UnDungeon]

The Shift Came! UnDungeon is live on Kickstarter!

Kickstarter Gameplay Trailer

UnDungeon is an Action / RPG, oriented towards delightful storytelling, and aimed at exploration of a frequently changing gaming environment.
We are going to release UnDungeon for PC, Mac, and Linux. Besides, there are plans to release a console version.

The game begins shortly after a global cataclysm called The Shift merged 7 parallel but very different realities together. We are trying to create strange, unusual, and a bit psychedelic game world, which will combine features of fantasy, sci-fi, and cyberpunk.

The newly formed world is visited by 7 Heralds who represent each of the absorbed worlds. All these characters are completely unique - their appearance, abilities, and  playstyle varies a lot. The player can take control over one of them to start a campaign at the end of which he or she will decide whether the newly formed world should be destroyed or not.

The Herald travels through the procedurally generated global map that consists of levels. Each level is generated on the basis of the approach that combines machine generation and custom level design. As for the Herald, he (she, or they) participates in various events and communicates with creatures met during the journey. And of course the character has to fight with all possible foes. Battles are fast and quite simple - we are inspired by such games as Hyper Light Drifter, Enter the Gungeon, and Transistor.

Battles are fast and quite simple - we are inspired by such games as Hyper Light Drifter, Enter the Gungeon, and Transistor.

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[TheFundamentalDelta]

This game is BEAUTIFUL!

Ahhhhhhh, so good.

[Fenrir]

Nice to see you here guys, good luck with your project, it's gorgeous!

[UnDungeon]

Level geometry and brand new level editor

We reach our final week on Square Enix Collective and prepare massive update together with refreshed art.
Support the shift - http://collective.square-enix.com/projects/270/undungeon

When we launched Laughing Machines and started UnDungeon about a year ago, none of us planned a campaign like this one. UnDungeon was conceived as a small game similar to twin-stick shot ‘em up than to action/RPG.

Along with a new understanding of the project, we've made the core concept of the game much more complicated. Our team gained a lot of vital experience, so the narrowness of tools and level design mistakes became obvious. But we sincerely believe that it is never too late to perform even the most radical changes. Especially if it can move a project to a completely new horizons. Thus, the decision to create an absolutely new level editor that would comply with growing requirements of UnDungeon was rapidly accepted.

Level geometry is the key level design element. It's way much simpler to dive deep into the world full of bridges and rivers, hills and valleys, multi-level artificial structures and cliffs then to immerse in a world of box-shaped rooms with flat floors and walls. Therefore, the creation of a reliable tool that will completely revamp the existing level geometry became a number one task during this stage.

And now, after many weeks of work are behind, you can check our first attempts to cope with the new instrument. As for the level parts processing, it takes place in three stages.

At the first stage, the editor creates a common frame that considers an approximate level relief:



The next stage is about adding elevations, stairs, ramps, platforms, and various artificial structures that affect the level's geometry:



The last step is aimed at customizing and polishing the level - filling it with different objects and items: both decorative and gameplay-vital:



Besides, we are very delighted with a warm feedback on small cutscene fragments at the beginning of the teaser. We are going to widely use such inserts throughout the game to transfer the atmosphere of the doomed world. They will help to emphasize the details that are not available due to in-game graphics limitations.

Below, you can see a sneak peek of several cinematics which are currently under development:



Subscribe to our newsletter to be aware of updates, news and, of course, the launch of the Kickstarter campaign. The Shift is almost here and no one will escape!

A little bonus for today is a tripod pilot concept:



What do you think guys?

[crusty]

Love this freaky deaky style.  So beautiful.

Do you worry about combat readability?  There is a lot of stuff going on visually.  Moving/occluding backgrounds, non-transparent explosions/effects, many different projectile visuals.

You cited Enter the Gungeon as inspiration.  One of the things that I loved about that game was how it presented enemy projectiles in an extremely consistent manner.  I think its something that some bullet hell games get wrong.

I don't know anything about your game and I'm presuming some things about the combat loop that may be way off base, so please don't read this as criticism.  I'm simply curious how you think about and balance art and gameplay and I would like to hear your thoughts

[DemonSkullGames]

Very, very Beautfull, these aliens remembers me Indempendence Day, looks very nice to me!

[UnDungeon]

Text and narrative - Subject 1

UnDungeon is full of text content that describes each world in the closest details and provides the deepest insight into the reasons of events occurring around. Although all dialogs in UnDungeon are influenced by classical RPGs, the player can skip most of them, concentrating on a pure gameplay. It is possible due to a glossary.

The glossary contains information that the players collect during the run. In the beginning, it is almost empty, but the further the exploration goes, the more data appears in it. The glossary contains detailed information on all game aspects from the history of the world to consumable resources. Each article is split into several parts that become available bit by bit after the player finds corresponding log files. Most articles are written in a style of reports by UDN (United Network of Defence) - an organisation that exists since the very beginning of the Earth, actively explores the world, and is interested in Heralds.

Below, you can see an example of such reports. The text is influenced by SCP Foundation.

Subject 1
Code Name: SBJ-07101

Alias: Goo

Description: SBJ-07101 is a formless creature with a strong deformation of cellular structure and intercellular connections. The subject consists of a muddy viscous mass, has a density of 13.593 kg / m³ and a mass of 100-150 kg. The only noticeable organ in the subject's body is a core in the upper part of the cellular mass. According to an unverified theory, the core creates a field that combines all subject's cells together preventing their final collapse.

The subject can change the form of its body. For instance, it often forms a kind of face with a big mouth and empty eye sockets above the core. Besides, there are some documented cases when the subject formed a kind of hands as well as stretched in height.

The subject's behaviour is similar to hydras: if any object gets into SBJ-07101, it becomes digested. There is a documented fact of digesting a steel rod that was 10 cm thick. It seems that this process is uncontrollable. And it is the main reason of constant changes of the subject's weight. During the detention, this feature caused █ accidents with injured employees. Perhaps, SBJ-07101 can spit pieces of its flesh using them as a weapon.

The similarity with the human DNA is 99.9%. The subject understands the human speech and it seems that it can answer but all its replies are reduced to messy gurgling. The subject's IQ level is between 100-120 points. Furthermore, some tests showed the presence of such traits as shyness and closedness. The subject easily finds mutual understanding with staff workers and plays with guards. All these facts shows that SBJ-07101 was a human being.

Protocol:

the subject feels pain when pieces of flesh are separated from its body. Separated pieces with the minimum weight of █kg can exist independently. It is not known whether SBJ-07101 controls them or not, but it can devour them back;
feels strong pain while separated pieces are incinerated;
can absorb and accumulate poisons and acids.
Capture Circumstances: the subject was discovered on the territory of the chemical laboratory [DATA REMOVED] in the neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky. It completely filled a tank used for draining divert chemical mixtures. Initially, the subject was not considered as a living being that resulted in a loss of two agents who made an attempt to reach the core floating in the center of the tank. During the evacuation and transportation, object did not resist but was visibly nervous uttering inarticulate sounds, shaking, and changing its shape.

Interesting fact: the uniform of a junior research assistant and a driver's license in the name of [DATA REMOVED] were discovered in the tank and nearby. All personnel of the laboratory was eliminated.

[Alec S.]

This looks very nice!

[TonyManfredonia]

Wow! This art direction is AWESOME!

While I can see some Hyper Light Drifter-ish influence, your creatures and color palettes truly stand on their own.

[foofter]

Everyone else is saying it, but wow, the pixel art is beautiful, and I personally love how weird and original the characters and locations are! I like the level of detail and general style more than Hyper Light Drifter, personally.

Definitely following this... Action games aren't my thing, but I would still dare to play! 

[sidbarnhoorn]

Awesome! Looking forward to it!

[ryansumo]

The art is definitely very unique.  Looking forward to seeing where this is going.

[UnDungeon]

The Shift Came! UnDungeon is live on Kickstarter!

Kickstarter Gameplay Trailer

[LobsterSundew]

Congratulations on achieving over 1,000 backers so soon.

About the campaign's performance:

At 4:09pm PST on January 12th there are 1,008 backers pledging €18,392 (36.78% of the €50,000 goal).

The average pledge per backer metric is often double to triple the price of the most populated reward tier. It is currently €18.45 per backer. It has been around €20 per backer since it launched. This is good. When the early-bird tier offer is gone the campaign should become more efficient. Pledge upgrading can also happen in the last quarter of the campaign's run.

It would take 2,500 backers at an average of €20 per backer to reach a €50,000 goal. It looks like Undungeon already has 40% of the backers it needs to aim for to reach 100% funded. 31 days remain.

The second day isn't over yet. Momentum is good. I was hoping the second day would outperform the first in the number of new backers. The second day has 350+ new backers (with 5 hours left in the day) versus 618 backers for the first day.

Here is data for the first day:
http://i.imgur.com/bzPmQsM.png

There is a lack of large pledges. From one perspective the amount raised is more impressive because it was through many small backers instead of the mysterious large pledges some campaigns depend on.

Around 70% of backers are picking the €10 early-bird tier. It is often 40% to 80% of backers picking the cheapest option to receive the game. Around 40% of the funding is from the €10 tier. The €15 and €20 tiers below relatively much lower in number of backers at those tiers is not too big of a concern this early with the early-bird offer still being around.

There is not much else to note right now.

Kicktraq shows a trend to €309,264 (618%), but this early in the campaign Kicktraq is often extremely overoptimistic. Remember campaigns experience mid-campaign slowdown. BackerTracker shows a trend to €109,107 (218.2%). It could raise €191,599 (383.20%), but it is not yet known how Undungeon's campaign will react 7 days from now.

About project exposure:

Undungeon is firmly holding the top ranking in popularity for active video game Kickstarter campaigns. There is very little competition right now because January is often extremely slow until its second half. It is unlikely Undungeon's campaign score should drop below 30 meaning it shouldn't have to worry about dropping out of the top 20 active projects for the category.

The Steam Greenlight campaign launched today. Overall reactions are very positive.

Bitly's analytics currently shows 65 clicks. 47 of them at launch. This only applies to the project's short URL. I see the long URL is being used on social media, which is an explanation for why it is so low in the analytics.

It appears French news sites did well for providing early traffic. There was Gameblog.fr, RPG France and AJV France. Game Watcher, Gameranx, Eurogamer Italy, a Chinese indie game blog, Dual Shockers, a German PlayStation news site, Invision Community and The Golden Cartridge had articles. IGN Spain had the trailer uploaded to its site. The IndieDB page was updated. There were 7 different Reddit threads. A Square Enix press release has been out for at least 17 hours ago.

Large sites like Kotaku and Rock Paper Shotgun have yet to cover the project. From an optimistic perspective, this means the campaign might not be at its full momentum yet. It may do much better once large sites start mentioning it.

Very late tonight is a live Nintendo Switch event. Expect this event to soak up lots of press attention.

[UnDungeon]

DRM Free version of UnDungeon will be available on the GOG platform in addition to the release on Steam!

You ask us and we listen to you! We are extremely happy to announce that the DRM Free version of UnDungeon will be released on the GOG platform together with the Steam release.

Since we have joined the GOG platform, backers of all pledge levels will be able to select a Steam Key or a GOG copy for PC / Mac / Linux. As regards the consoles release situation - it won’t meet any changes. PS4, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PS Vita versions will be available for selection depending on corresponding stretch goals achievement.

UnDungeon Kickstarter