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[Neeko]

Good feedback, thanks. I'm definitely going to take it into consideration.

[Neeko]

It’s finally here! Demons with Shotguns is available on Steam today!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/370940

While the game is being released through Early Access, the game is very polished and all current 7 competitive local multiplayer game modes are feature complete. If you were ever a fan of the fast paced, twitch style shooting action of 90s arena shooters such as Unreal Tournament and Quake 3, I think you’re going to love Demons with Shotguns.



Please note however that the game’s singleplayer component isn’t available yet, which is still in early development, but we’re hoping to have something ready for community feedback soon. Thus keep that in mind when deciding to purchase! If you’re not into competitive local multiplayer games, you won’t hurt our feelings if you decide to wait for the singleplayer to become available



So besides the singleplayer campaign, what’s on deck? What can you expect to be added in the coming months?

• More competitive game modes
• More tarot cards
• More death animations
• More achievements and stats
• More playable characters
• Secret, unlockable characters
• Customizable controls
• Continuous polish, balance changes and tweaks

Of course, your feedback is going to improve the game and help us decide what to balance, polish and change. We hope everyone enjoys the game.

Finally, be sure to check out the game’s killer soundtrack from VHS Glitch on Bandcamp.

https://vhsglitch.bandcamp.com/album/demons-with-shotguns-ost



Enough talk! Grab your shotgun and get ready to battle for the souls of your friends!

[Neeko]

Working on a new tarot card, Clones!



This tarot card, as you can probably guess, spawns three clones of yourself. In Deathmatch, you can confuse your opponents and trick them into fragging a clone, but that won't earn them a point, giving you more time to counter attack. In Capture the Soul, you can use your clones to grab the soul and capture it. These are just a few examples on how your new clones can be used.

If you die, however, so do your clones.

[Neeko]

Build 0.1.1 has been pushed out to Steam! We packed a lot of new stuff and changes into this one.

Summary of changes

-King of the Soul & Team King of the Soul game modes
-Score text different color for each player
-Runtime binnable controls
-In Thy Image tarot card
-Gluttonous tarot card
-Projectile different color for Satan’s Spawn
-New player death animation
-Suicide stat tracking
-Match Settings menu to configure score limit, time limit and turn on/off tarot cards
-Option to turn on/off gamepad vibration
-Left analog stick not as sensitive in menus
-Misc. menu changes and polish
-Performance improvements in the Church arenas
-Bug fixes

The two biggest additions are the King of the Soul game mode and new tarot cards.

King of the Soul is where you fight to maintain control of the single soul, earning a point for every 5 straight seconds you have control. First player to 10 points wins. Of course, there’s the Team version of this mode as well. This game has a great “cat and mouse” chase like dynamic to it and we’re eager to know what you think of it.

We’ve also added two new tarot cards, Gluttonous, in which the controls of your opponents are reversed and In Thy Image, where 3 clones are spawned that mimic your control and you can use to do your bidding (see previous posts for a GIF).

There’s a bunch of tweaks and other additions based on the feedback we received, such as a new Match Settings menu that’ll allow you to fine tune the settings of your match, ability to turn off gamepad vibration and now you can completely rebind your keyboard and gamepad button mappings.

We did decide to remove the ability to have two players share the same keyboard. This was a very experimental feature and it turned out that it was very difficult to perform a lot of the game’s key movements with just one hand (shotgun jumping, for one example). So moving forward, only one person can be at the keyboard. All other players must be using a supported gamepad.

Oh, and I heard you guys want singleplayer? Well we’ve been actively prototyping a lot of ideas and we finally came up with a design that we really like and development is fully underway. We’re really excited to share what we have planned and hope to have some gameplay to show in the coming weeks.

To hold you over till we can talk about singleplayer more fully, here’s the Nomed, foot soldier of the Nephilim army, and the common enemy you’ll be facing off against.



and they brough their pets

[Neeko]

As previously mentioned, we started working on a singleplayer campaign mode for Demons with Shotguns. We put together a basic prototype to exercise the game's current mechanics against this type of gameplay. The more we playtested, we came to realize two things.

But first I want to state that Demons with Shotguns has been, and always will be, a competitive local multiplayer game first and foremost. Since the very beginning, everything about the game has been designed to deliver an experience that resembles 90s arena shooters, and we truly feel the game exceeds in delivering that experience as it currently stands.

Prototype level in the Unity editor.



That said, we found the current mechanics didn’t transfer well to a traditional campaign experience, at least not as they are now. As we expanded the prototype level, it became more obvious the experience was a bit shallow and more depth would have to be added to achieve a experience worth pursuing, and something you’d actually enjoy playing!

GIF of the basic gameplay of the mini-campaign prototype.
http://www.gfycat.com/InbornMildCowrie

Which brings us to our second conclusion. The scope of a traditional campaign would require much more development time then MindShaft Games can afford right now. We can’t succumb to feature creep, which is all too infamous in destroying games, and even studios. One of the hardest things to do in game development is recognizing when something simply isn't fun, and/or can seriously drive the development off course to inevitable doom, and to decide to simply cut it out.

As a result, we've ultimately decided to no longer pursue a traditional campaign. However, we aren’t cutting singleplayer completely just yet! We’ve already started prototyping an enemy horde mode where 1 - 2 players fight to fend off wave after wave of enemies in a single arena space. Prototyping will continue and we’ll see how that evolves!

Here are some screen shots of this new mode, currently titled End of Times, in action.  

[Neeko]

Build 0.1.3 - Singleplayer End of Times Mode Now Available

End of Times

I’m happy to announce that the singleplayer game mode for Demons with Shotguns, End of Times, is now available on Steam. This game mode is a enemy wave mode where 1 - 2 players must fend off wave after wave of the Nephilim army to unlock each arena to face off against a Nephilim boss to prevent the end of times!

This game mode should be considered pre-alpha right now. The content being included in the initial release is very light, with only two arenas and two enemy types to face off against; more arenas and enemies are being worked on for future builds. Being early access, I wanted to make the game mode available to you now so you can provide feedback on the early mechanics and gameplay.

End of Times currently has two difficulty settings, Normal (default) and Hardcore (can be enabled in the Options menu). These settings change how enemies are spawned, more specifically how many will spawn at a time, making the game much more challenging. Please play both and let me know what you think of them.

The current plan for End of Times is to have a total of seven enemy types, including a final boss battle, across several arenas with unlock progression.

Versus

Versus matches are now much more customizable, allowing you specify the following match options:

-Specific tarot cards can now be turned on/off (not applicable to Last Soul Standing)
-Shields can be turned on/off
-Ammo spawn time can be adjusted
-Tarot card spawn time can be adjusted (not applicable to Last Soul Standing)[/li][/list]

As a result, tarot card effects are now more easily stacked. Try mixing and matching different tarot card combinations for some very interesting and fanatic gameplay. My personal favorite is the Satan’s Spawn and Possessed combination.

Pending any additional, major feedback, the Versus game modes are closing in on being complete now. This will allow me to focus on the End of Times game mode.

Of course, this build also includes miscellaneous bug fixes and tweaks done throughout.

[Neeko]

Build 2.1.0 was pushed out earlier this month, which introduced a new enemy type, Rocket Nomed.



Rocket Nomed doesn't move, but wields a devastating rocket launcher. This enemy is confined to Watertower Terror at the moment.

This build also includes the following changes:

• Reduced Nomed box collider size
• Reduced Bloody Mary attack speed
• Displaying damage amount in stats window, instead of number of deaths
• Bug fix with subsequent soul energy spawns causing high velocity
• Nomeds now jump!
• Improved player respawning in End of Times to check for nearby enemies, and attempt to spawn in a safe area (if possible).

I hope to push out a new build this week which will introduce two more enemies, the Hellhound and Axe Demon.

[Neeko]

Happy Halloween! Before we dive into the latest development update, I want to point out that Demons with Shotguns is currently 66% off during the Steam Halloween sale! This is a perfect time to grab the game for your upcoming holidays get together. Act fast as this sale ends November 2nd.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/370940

Last post we talked about the End of Times game mode, an enemy horde mode were 1 - 2 players must fend off waves of the Nephilim army. We showcased many of the different enemy types, and since then have pushed out yet another enemy type, so appropriately called Glut



Glut a swelling demon of explosive gas, waddling about in search of the player. As soon as he spots them, he'll charge after them and swell up before releasing a noxious and deadly explosion!

It's been a common feedback that the players and objects in the foreground were very hard to read in the Hell arenas. So we went ahead and adjusted the contrast between the foreground and background layers, making the background layers darker so that the foreground would pop more, drastically increasing readability.

A before shot, with all layers being near equal in brightness.



With many of the characters and objects sharing the same colors as the background layers, they were easily lost while playing an intense match. In future games, to help increase readability even more, we'll ensure important objects and characters use colors that aren't used in the background (and vice versa). This is a trick that Blizzard famously uses.

Here's an after shot, showing the darker background layers.



As you can see, the foreground pops very nicely and is easier to read.

Another small, but important change, was finally fixing a bug with how players gibs have forced applied to them upon a explosion. Player gibs are simply game objects with a rigidbody that are child to the parent player game object. When a player dies from an explosion, a system handles activating the gibs and applying force to them so they appear to explode in a gory and bloody fashion.

The problem was that since the gibs were children to the main player game object, they would move relative to the parent, which caused undesirable effects and the gibs would move in the space as the player object would, instead of moving independently, which is what you would expect. You can notice this in the first gif of the exploding Glut. Notice how all of the player gibs move hard left instead of upwards.

Now, when the gibs are activated, they no longer stay as children to the player object. Here's a gif of the improved system.

[Neeko]

It's been awhile since I provided an update here. I've mainly been working on finishing up the End of Times game mode, which is now done, all while polishing and improving the Versus game modes. Most recently, I've been working on the boss battle, which is now wrapped up, but I went through a few different iterations with the design. I originally envisioned the battle as a epic rooftop battle, but I quickly came to realize the battle was falling into all the bad boss battle tropes, so I scrapped it.

Here's me animating the original boss design in Spine.


And a early look at what the boss battle was planning to be.


Instead, I ended up making the boss battle seem more like a Versus bot match, challenging the player to master all of the skills he's learned, all while preparing him for more masterful Versus matches.

Here's the final boss design. The Devil takes many forms.


The game is now done and is leaving Steam Early Access April 25. Enjoy the new release trailer!

[Neeko]

It's been a few months post-release and thought it was a good time to write up a postmortem, which you can check out on Gamasutra. The postmortem includes sales numbers, which is always interesting :D

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/NicholasDiMucci/20160623/275260/Demons_with_Shotguns_Postmortem__Dont_Quit_Your_Day_Job.php

TL;DR
Demons with Shotguns wasn’t successful and resembles your typical indie game development story. If you want to make money doing this, you most likely need to make a game you most likely don't want to make (what does the market want?) and you should really work with a publisher, especially if you're bad at marketing, advertising and networking. Like most creative fields, don’t quit your day job, if you’re thinking of doing this full time.