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[Chris Pavia]

I didn't even ask him to do that!

[McMutton]

It is the thing's most distinctive feature, I suppose.

[Chris Pavia]

Battling The Dark One. The black particles are normally much darker so you can only see his form when the blue particles pass through him, but it doesn't turn out well in still shots so I turned them down temporarily.

[Chris Pavia]

Working on visuals for the menus:



For players who are interested in the story, unlocking enemy entries in the Bestiary is one of the main methods of uncovering it (along with visual clues throughout the environments).

[Destral]

I'm jealous of your menu-making prowess  

Looking good, I love that particular mechanic of unlocking chunks of world lore by experiencing different aspects of the game world

Are you planning on having rare or secret monster encounters that you can only trigger if you do specific, secret things?

[TertiumQuid]

New interview just popped up: http://futileposition.com/2012/08/you-should-read-this-interview-with-the-developer-of-dungeon-hearts.html

Nice interview! Match-3 feels second only to dice themselves as a cross-genre mechanic, and works great. I'm not much of a puzzle gamer myself, but I love the throng of puzzle RPGs coming out, and DH looks like an interesting incarnation. I appreciate the meshing of a massive type game (JRPG) with casual (match-3) and commend your dedication to simplicity in the face of features. The strike gem UI reminds me of DDR in screenshots because of the graphical similarity to sheet music. I'd say 50% of the work in puzzlers is balancing, so good luck tweaking things ad infinitum.

[Chris Pavia]

I'm jealous of your menu-making prowess  

Looking good, I love that particular mechanic of unlocking chunks of world lore by experiencing different aspects of the game world

Are you planning on having rare or secret monster encounters that you can only trigger if you do specific, secret things?

Some encounters are rarer than others, but I don't have any that can only be unlocked by performing a certain action. I like that idea though, so maybe I'll do that when I add more enemies via a content update.

New interview just popped up: http://futileposition.com/2012/08/you-should-read-this-interview-with-the-developer-of-dungeon-hearts.html

Nice interview! Match-3 feels second only to dice themselves as a cross-genre mechanic, and works great. I'm not much of a puzzle gamer myself, but I love the throng of puzzle RPGs coming out, and DH looks like an interesting incarnation. I appreciate the meshing of a massive type game (JRPG) with casual (match-3) and commend your dedication to simplicity in the face of features. The strike gem UI reminds me of DDR in screenshots because of the graphical similarity to sheet music. I'd say 50% of the work in puzzlers is balancing, so good luck tweaking things ad infinitum.

There are a lot of things you can do with a match 3 mechanic, the simplicity makes it very flexible, which is what I think lends it so well to incorporating into other genres.

And yeah, balance is key, I'll probably be tweaking knobs right up until submission time! I've found many uses for Unity's Animation Curves in changing gameplay variables over time, although I wish their curve editor was more robust.

[Chris Pavia]

For anyone keeping tabs on this, just wanted to let you know that I'm aiming to hit Beta for the iPad version by the end of the month. Beta meaning the game is content and gameplay complete, with tuning, polish, and bug fixing remaining. The final phase should last between 1-3 months, then after release I'll start on the Mac/PC version, which mostly just entails supporting various screen sizes, and some light tuning to account for mouse accuracy vs touch accuracy.

[randomshade]

Not sure if you're looking for iOS beta testers, but I'd volunteer :D

[Chris Pavia]

If I get a chance to do real testing (i.e. with people outside my immediate vicinity) and you have an iPad 2 or higher, I'll send you a TestFlight invite.

[randomshade]

Sadly, I just have an iPad 1

[Chris Pavia]

Bummer. I haven't really checked if it runs well on an iPad 1 yet, but I don't expect it will.

[Mojo]

Love the designs !

[Chris Pavia]

Thanks! I'm planning on reusing all these characters and environments in subsequent Dungeon Hearts games, as well as adding more.

[Chris Pavia]

Bummer. I haven't really checked if it runs well on an iPad 1 yet, but I don't expect it will.

I should mention that part of the issue is that the game runs ~60fps, since timing and reaction speed are important factors of gameplay.

[Chris Pavia]

Status update:
-3 more menus need to be finished before the game is officially Beta. They are kind of complex because they involve many different states depending on which things you've unlocked in the game at any point. Hoping to have that stuff done by the end of the week.
-The good side is that I have a friend doing all the work on those menus, so I finished my Beta tasks and started on post-Beta tasks last week. Almost all known bugs are fixed, although I'm sure there are still smaller bugs lurking in the shadows, I just have to hunt them down.
-Started on some polish-level tasks. Last night I added facial animations to all the player characters for things like blinking, attacking, casting spells, etc.

Next up is optimization, such as combining textures where possible, and seeing how much more I can compress the audio while keeping the quality up. The only "big" bug left is gameplay/audio stuttering when new BGM tracks load, which should be fixable either by reducing the file size or having the main and interlude tracks always playing (with one at 0 volume), since they get cross-faded back and forth during gameplay.

[Chris Pavia]

Got a bunch of new screenshots over at the Dungeon Hearts Facebook page.

[Chris Pavia]

Since development is wrapping up, I started designing stuff for content updates should the game do well enough to warrant it. First update would probably be 4 new heroes, the player can then choose a party of 4 from the 8 total to use each time. The new four are:
-Thief: His skills allow him to bypass enemy armor, dodge attacks, and use enemy Runes (puzzle pieces) as his own.
-Valkyrie: Leveling up doesn't increase her strength/health stats like it does for everyone else (although she still has to level up to unlock her skills). Instead her skills allow her to capture the souls of defeated enemies to increase her stats. Timing is important, the skill for the stat she wants to raise has to be active when the enemy is actually defeated (which can be tricky if you're not attacking with her a lot to build energy). So if you ignore her she'll end up being the weakest hero, but if you focus on her she can be the most powerful.
-Witch: Protects the party from enemy Hexes (status effects), and can use them against the enemy. Can also make it so the enemy takes the same amount of damage it does to any party member.
-Gambler: A wild card, all his skills can hurt as much as help, and function like a shell game.

No character designs yet, just working out their mechanics.

On the development front, I'm mainly just bug fixing. Did some user testing for the tutorial over the holidays, and made some changes to things that weren't clear enough. Going to be submitting an initial build to Apple soon to see if it gets accepted and nail down a release date. Then I'll be starting on the Mac/PC builds, which mainly just means adding in support for other screen resolutions and keyboard inputs. Shooting to have Mac/PC builds out the same time as iPad, but can't promise that just yet.

[McMutton]

Can't wait to see what you cook up for those guys, art-wise.

[Chris Pavia]

Me too! It's been awhile since I've done any character design, so I'm eager to get back to it. The hardest part is that color is an important part of the game's visual language (each character's Runes are their own color, so red Runes for the fighter, etc), so it'll be tough coming up with 4 more colors that will fit in with the current palette without being confusing. I thought about making the color system more generic where whoever is in the top row will always be red, second row yellow, etc, but that removes a lot of the personality from the characters.

I made the initial submission to Apple last week, and it was approved for sale earlier today. Now I'm focusing on the Mac/PC/Linux versions, after which I'll make the final submission to Apple.

Also been brainstorming what may be the next Dungeon Hearts game, a Tactics-style (Disgaea, FFT) dungeon crawl with randomized dungeons and a dice-based combat system.