this is looking nice nice nice! thanks for posting that rendering breakdown too, it is cool to see how that stuff works in the real world

just posted a new build for those that have access on steam. here is the change log:

CHANGE: level difficulty tweaks
CHANGE: astral walker can hover over acid / lava
CHANGE: special attacks don't effect builder block
CHANGE: can click the menu / replay buttons on the game over screen
CHANGE: spawn eggs have a single hitpoint, so you can kill them if you are quick
NEW: progress bar or game over screen
NEW: particle effect for waiting character you didn't choose
NEW: cool preview animations
FIX: faster and fastest mode are now capped at 60fps. People were having problems with their fans running all the time, this should fix it
FIX: debug keys not accessible from steam build (sorry, no cheating)
FIX: save / restore correctly saves waiting characters and enemy spawn locations
FIX: flood fill inaccessible empty spaces so astral can't deadlock game
FIX: a whole pile of graphical layering issues (special displays, cool down displays, wall shadows, monsters going under pickups)
FIX: dying from the poison correctly clears character
FIX: particle effects don't show up while the level is loading in
FIX: skelton was causing the hud to get wonky when a non necromancer character left the level


I am sure there is some stuff that I forgot, but this is probably the penultimate build. Going to start thinking about and designing the tablet / phone versions soon. I think the big part of it will be getting a portrait mode version working on phones. doing scaleable displays is such a pain in the ass too, so I will probably do something that just fits fine on small iphone, then minor scaling on android stuff. A bit worried about scaling, I couldn't get it working great on the computer version.

The other thing that I want to start working on is a puzzle mode for this game, I think fixed levels with fixed enemies and characters and stuff would both be fun to design and play.

those photos of snails are so great! I hope some of that color makes it into the game, but probably something you want to save for later once you have the core implemented.

this is looking super beautiful! I think the pixel art style is great, and it seems like you have dumped a bunch of time into it already, but the more vectory style is neat too. Maybe you could try doing hq2x as a starting port for the upres? might work out alright.

I think I am noticing some layering issues with the trees and the cliffs, I have had so much pain dealing with that on my game.

aww, thanks folks!

I am in a different timezone than the other guys for the next few months, so our dev cycle is:

 I work disconnected from everyone all day, make some mockups, shut down bugs, maybe implement a new feature or two.
 I go to sleep, wake up and there is a nice long bug list to burn down. I talk through the mockups with the other guys, and the strange difficult things, then start burning through the list, rinse and repeat.

This morning has been fixing graphical issues and level gen and saving stuff. Hopefully this afternoon I will get to the point where I can actually work on the new features. Aiming to push out a new build for testers tomorrow.



my mockup of a progress bar for the game over screen, hopefully to solve one of the complaints with not knowing how long the game is going to be.

hey thanks! your game looks awesome too. Good launch mates

trailer is up (and so close to 131 views!)

hmm, interesting concept. I am not sure how well it would balance with the turn order that is in place in the game. I guess I could balance it by lowering the amount of enemy spawns. I guess I could have turn order stuff with player / player / enemies. That works ok with something like arkham horror. the other thing to solve (and this is just a general issue with co-op board games) is that one player doesn't end up controlling everything.

An interesting variation would be a character that moves on a different phase than all the other characters, so when he is on your team you get two input phases before the enemies run. That would probably work within the system that I have in already.

I am on a different continent now, and have been smoothing out some bugs and adding features. The change log from the build I posted today:
- NEW: new save system
- FIXED: fixes to persistant tooltips
- NEW: particle effects for miner and frozen state
- NEW: spawning on a timer (and display of that timer)
- FIXED: removed references to the keyboard help (won't be in there for launch)
- FIXED: chestplate passive / mana pendant passives do immediate reductions on AP / HP
- FIXED: targeting displays are removed when character is frozen
- FIXED: distance enemies targeting display no longer breaks ice floor display
- FIXED: action sounds no longer play for characters that aren't doing an action

I'll expand on it tomorrow morning

cool, excited to hear! there is a low likelyhood that they will make it in for the first release, but I am planning on doing a bunch of post launch work on this game. There are a bunch of character concepts and enemies that we didn't get around to putting in.

No we hadn't, but it seems like an interesting idea. I just have no clue how it would work. . . do you have any suggestions for that?

this looks great! There aren't enough random gen driving games, so I am glad you are making one.

Added in the character unlocking (will upload a new build with this feature shortly). Also the discovery screen so you can get a sense of what you still have left to unlock.

then the last feature to complete before launch is the between world screens and some type of progress bar.



Here is the first between level screen (I think it comes up after the tutorial?)

Also What are the items like the boots or the neckalace, what do they do ?

you can hover mouse for tooltips that explain all the items, but those two are "ignore single enviroment dmg" and "potions up / health down"

yeah, I would really like to get more secret items and quest type stuff in there, I hope I will have time for it. If not, I will do it post release in a patch.

cool, thanks for the feedback. Yeah, there is an end state, but I should probably communicate progress through the levels more effectively. I guess things like spelunky generated a kind of wiki audience so that you can go look up how many levels there are, but not having that for alphas is tough. I can't remember the exact number of levels, maybe 16?

I do want to add unlocking characters, and maybe purchasing stuff, but the game is actually a highscore based thing, so it should be a tradeoff between getting a highscore and getting to the end easier. Hopefully character unlocking will be in there later this week tho.

I suspect that I will need to put progression stuff on the unlocks to communicate that they are in there to people.

I am the inverse with mobile v pc, I will give things on pc way way way more time. Mobile will be coming shortly after this version. I have a hack job running already, but it needs a bunch of work.

Started working on the unlock screen today:

just uploaded a new build for testers
- added tool tips on nearly everything (still missing environmental effects tooltips)
- fixed some bugs in the tutorial
- made a major gameplay tweak that didn't actually seem to change things much: 1HP potion and 2Action potions.

I am working on the steam integration today, so I will have to swap to giving out steam codes for the game I guess? :/ no big deal I suppose.

Tons of changes this week, as we rush towards release.

new title screen
in game options menu
added the golden guard enemy type
new particle effects on gold pickup and priest healing
previews of special actions for distance charcters (mages, archer and ninja)
display of the facing for the patrol enemy
performance fixes (less sprite loading, faster level enum checking)
new music
tutorial
acid boots (ignore environmental effects) now work
new chest graphics

[AGAIN. If you want a build, PM me, I have the link ready to send to YOUUUU.]

AGAIN. If you want a build, PM me, I have the link ready to send to YOUUUU.

lots of changes in the past few weeks:

- added a single (passive) item inventory slot. Right now, there are 6 passive items, but I think there could be more. Once you pick up a passive, you can't pick up another one on that character, so there is an opportunity cost. Some of the passives are hp / hit power things, some get you more gold with less tradeoff.
- made multiple types of chests that drop increasing gold for more enemy spawns
- fixed tons and tons of bugs that I have been overlooking for weeks.
- tons of new audio is in the game. So so so much audio, holy shit.
- smoothed out the level progression. Trying to find the point where it isn't random if you win or not. This is tricky.

the new passives are
- one hit kill (once per level)
- max hp + / max actions -
- max hp - / max actions +
- ignore environmental effects
- don't spawn enemies when opening chests (once per level)
- hp+ on kill (once per level)

Going to have to drop the overworld at least for the initial launch unfortunately. We just can't afford it. Probably fine, because we had stripped it back to the point where it was basically nothing, and what is even the point of having that at all. Going to do a more standard menu system, because there are about 5 menu screens that I need to implement. We are approaching crunch time now, I fear, and I have to move to another country at the same time :0 So basically, woo!

got a little play testing done on friday, tightened up a bunch of shit
- strange overlapping issues
- spawn issues
- inaccessible exits
- some enemies caused deadlocks
- lowered the difficulty significantly

I think there are probably still progression issues in place though. I just sent out another build this afternoon and took a quick pass at porting to touch devices.

After I did that, I added a whole new character that I have been putting off for weeks. Necromancer that raises a 1HP skeleton to work with your team.

If you want a build, please drop me a note, and I will PM you the link. I might be a little slow, because I am trying to incorporate feedback each time I get it.

did an announcement of the game today on our website.

http://luckyframe.co.uk/works/nightmare/

I have been doing tons of contracting work for the past week so not much changes from my side, other than strange balance fixes.