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[Ian_A]

Hey TIG-pals!

Crimson Keep is a first person, action RPG developed by Ian Atherton and Ben Rog-Wilhelm. We've taken a lot of inspiration from games like Diablo, Hexen, and TIG's own, Delver. It's our goal to expand on these titles into the game we've always wanted to play.

View the game on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/632110/Crimson_Keep/

We have a lot of features planned for the game, here are some of them:

• Randomized Dungeon Layouts, Weapons, and Items
• Varying speeds, ranges, and arcs for different weapons
• A wide range of interesting abilities to choose from, useful for different combat situations
• Locational damage tracking (hitting enemies in certain areas has different results)
• The enjoyment of an MMO's 1-60 grind condensed into 90 minutes
• New parts of the game, classes, items, and bosses unlocked each time you "beat" the game
• Hardcore roguelike elements: permadeath, cursed items, hunger, deities

(All of this is currently in the game and working besides traditional roguelike style cursed items.)

Most of the devbloggy stuff thus far has been over at http://www.indiedb.com/games/crimson-keep but I'm going to start posting here as well.

Thanks a ton for taking a look at our game. Feel free to speak your mind on any questions, thoughts, concerns, or critiques you might have about the game.

Email: [email protected]
Website: www.escapecrimsonkeep.com

[jctwood]

This sounds very exciting. Love the title text, very subtle!

[benjkers]

liking the miniaturized look of the character models - definitely distinctive stuff

[JSK]

This looks really cool, I always love games that take inspiration from Diablo The art style looks very nice too, sort of cartoony but with a darker twist to it.

I wish you guys good luck with development!

[Ian_A]

Hey everyone, Ian here, artist and designer for Crimson Keep. Over the last couple weeks we've been working on making the enemy AI more complex and threatening. Ben's been working hard at creating different actions for enemies to take based on their distance from the player, and other factors, such as actions they've previous done recently, and some weighted randomness. With the base AI in place, Crimson Keep was essentially a rhythm game, so we're working on making enemies less predictable and overall, much more dangerous.

Since we're also ramping up to another friends and family demo release here in March, we're doing a couple much needed things such as menus, and dealing with game feel. So getting the first person arms in, and some animations for the abilities was really important for that. These animations convey important animation to the player, and can also make something feel good when you do it. As I said in the video these aren't the final arms we will be using, but it's always good to take a first pass at something, see how it works, and then iterate until it's perfect. That tends to be how we've worked on this project so far, and it seems to be working.








Thanks for your interest in the project, and we'll see ya next week with more info!

[Ian_A]

Our website is now up and working. http://www.escapecrimsonkeep.com/ Any feedback you guys might have on it would be appreciated. 

[Pixel Noise]

Wow - concept art looks awesome - and your gameplay footage is already looking good, considering you've only been at it for ~6 months!

Checked out the website - think that looks pretty good too!

Also really like the idea of "condensing the 1-60 grind into ~ 1 hour", as well as newly unlocked content each time you "beat the game". Great ideas.

[Ian_A]

Wow - concept art looks awesome - and your gameplay footage is already looking good, considering you've only been at it for ~6 months!

Checked out the website - think that looks pretty good too!

Also really like the idea of "condensing the 1-60 grind into ~ 1 hour", as well as newly unlocked content each time you "beat the game". Great ideas.

Thanks Pixel Noise, glad to hear it. Yeah I'm one of those people that have always enjoyed "mini-grinds" but not grinds that take forever. I think this was actually one of the biggest strengths of Diablo 3, constant leveling and new abilities or modifiers to abilities. The rest of the game, meh not so much.

[Ian_A]

Hey everyone, Ian here, artist and game designer for Crimson Keep. Over this last week we've been working on making some enemies that are substantially smarter and more difficult to fight, and I think we've been somewhat successful. Now this test enemy will regularly charge at you to close the distance, if the enemy hits you when charging the player's movement speed is reduced for a couple seconds, and there is also a chance that they are stunned, leaving the player open to the enemy's follow up attack. For more difficult enemies like this we've added a dodge maneuver that allows the player to do a quick sprint in whatever direction they are moving, or straight back if they aren't moving. We're still figuring out what kind of resources the dodge/dash will use if any. One possible option is a fatigue debuff that stacks up as it is used, or maybe just a couple charges of dodge that recharge after a cooldown.

There's also a bit more environmental art this week, this time a rock pillar that seems to add a nice bit of caveyness to the cave, as well as some subterranean roots. The new first person arm rig is complete, so now we just have to make some animations for it, and get the arms looking good texture wise. On the graphics front we've also been trying to make some of the particle effects better like the blood spray.



Thank you for your interest in the project, and we'll see you next week with more info!

[Ian_A]

Alright, finally got those youtubes embedded right, forum's a little finicky about that it seems.

[Ian_A]

New fire particle effect. Used the elementals pack from the Unity Asset store, but customized it a bit for our game.

[Ian_A]

We'll be coming out with another private alpha soon and would love more people to give us some feedback. We're thinking about sending people a tip over paypal if they make a video of them testing it too. Here's a google form for signing up for the monthly alpha/newsletter http://goo.gl/forms/CWWKy7Buip

[Ian_A]

Hey Yowl, Ian here. This week I focused on some visual FX, visual art, and game feel stuff. I started to take a hard look at the sounds we have, and they aren't lookin' too good, so I gathered up some free resources and started plugging a few of them in. It's funny how a few sounds can have such a big impact on how a game feels and plays. I've noticed this a fair bit when it comes to movies as well, like when you turn on a movie that you didn't really have any preconceived notion on, and then you notice cheap sounding music or sound design and you begin to realize you are watching a cheapo SciFi channel movie.

I also tried to refine animations a bit, and make the first person rig look a bit better, new texture, and better hand pose than before.



And I finally got around to adding an animation for the Pigman Warrior's Gorge ability, (where he consumes a nearby corpse to become more powerful). I think we still have a small issue with corpses, where when the body goes into ragdoll mode it can get away from the collider representing the corpse as a target for things like Gorge, so probably need to child that to the ragdoll?



And here's the weekly(ish) video depicting some of these changes:





Thanks for your support and interest in Crimson Keep!

[Ian_A]

Made a lot of good progress over the last 8 days or so, working towards a pretty big update and another demo for some pals to play. Again, if you're interested in getting the demo sign up on this google form to get monthly demos and a newsletter about Crimson Keep: http://goo.gl/forms/0ohp7jBvm4

Here's a new weapon for the Pigman Warrior:

[Pixel Noise]

Subbed - looking forward to checking it out!

[Ian_A]

Hey everyone, Ian here, artist and game designer for Crimson Keep. It's been a long strange March, and Ben and I have finally wrapped up what I think is a decent demo. From the play tests we've witnessed so far, people seem to be liking it. We've had quite a few improvements since last week, and some of them have left a pretty big impression on the play experience. Let's take a look at what's new.

Leveling: Enemies now grant experience when the player kills them. There is a sound and a prompt to select a new ability when you level up. Once you do "ding" you open up the new escape menu where you can choose 1 of 3 abilities. There's also tooltips now so players aren't quite so in the dark about what abilities do. But I think we will keep them vague as far as numbers are concerned, so people feel more inclined to experiment and keep playing the game.



Fiercer Foes: Every melee enemy now has the AI we were testing with the treeman model, that means every melee enemy might charge at you, snaring and stunning you. This makes melee enemies much more dangerous, especially in large groups. The player's saving grace is the dodge ability which can usually get you out of position before the enemy does their follow-up attack after stunning you. These stronger enemies encourage the player to use their abilities smartly, as well as taking advantage of the enemy behaviors, such as the Pigman's insatiable appetite.



Bone Mage: Speaking of fierce foes, the Bone Mage is a real pain in the ass, and now that he's got some particle FX rigged up so his attacks are finally "fair" enough that he can make an appearance. Although ideally dealt with by stunning, or at a distance, the Bone Mage can be killed with just raw reflexes.



Polish: A recurring theme of our dev blogging is polish. Game dev is a highly iterative process, and we take that to heart. Ben and I often implement a raw version of something first, and then take many passes on it over time until it starts to shine. I consider this whole demo to be a pretty good demonstration of that, we're tuning, polishing, and making things feel cooler as needed. This includes updating props, making new ones, ironing out small bugs, altering and improving animations, adding sounds and FX, all of which we took a lot of time to do in the last couple weeks.



Thanks for coming along with us on this journey, and look forward to many more posts as we venture forth into April and beyond. As always feel free to leave comments with your thoughts, questions, or critiques on the game, and you can learn more about it at Escapecrimsonkeep.com

[Ian_A]

Here's a gif of our new melee ability system! It now jives more with the mouse clicking for melee attacks players are used to. Hitting a 1-5 key while moving with WASD was a bit difficult.

[Ian_A]

First pass on the ghost enemy art:

[Ian_A]

RANDOM DUNGEON GENERATION HAS BEGUN!!! SO EXCITED!!!

[Ian_A]

Exploring the rooms we made for testing procedural generation, little cramped.