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[Spidi]

Hi there!

Where was I for a month again?! Many friends already asked this and other difficult questions like "I planned to finish this game in 4 months and I've been working on it for 6 now" or "Last month you kind-of promised to have an open beta and a complete game by now" and the "Quality over quantity" was the best answer I gave. Actually I really believe in what I'm doing and the way I'm doing it. I know it is madness, game development is about risk management and this project is becoming more and more risky day by day (risk of losing a lot of money and losing the ability to continue full-time game making ).

The thing is the game was NOT GOOD two months ago. I could have rushed it to market, I really could, but my ghost whispered to me and I had to follow its lead. I'm in this for the love of it and for the love of the craft as a whole. I want to make games and continue making games as a living, but at the same time I want to be good at it and be proud of what I make.

Now with this out of the way let's jump onto the progress in the last four weeks !





Polish

Few people said to me, based on my last entry, that the game starts to look really polished. I felt really happy about that, because I haven't actually started on my planned polishing tasks. Besides composing the sound track and working on finalizing and balancing game systems, the last few weeks were spent on polishing the look and feel of the game .

Movement

First I added some sprite effects to the player movement which fades out over time. This is a great visual cue to show the direction and the old positions of the player and also makes the "dusty & old" dungeon image more believable .



Then a subtle bounce was put on top of the original player movement transition. It does not seem like a big addition but it does make it feel more like walking than the old moon-walker dance move .



The last movement tweak was configurable sprite and sound effects for levels. Now there is splashing in the caverns instead of dust puffs as an example.



Animated health-bar

This is something which is absolutely not a necessity for a game, but once you saw the Diablo 3 health globe it cannot be unseen . Back to reality. I wanted to add a subtle sliding animation to better signal the player about the significance of the health change. I think it turned out wondrous !



Ambiance

One nice touch I really like is atmospheric sound effects. In many games if you mute the music you can easily hear a lot of background effects which do not come from entities in the world but from the environment itself. Examples include crackling fire, rats squeaking, stuff like that. I Am Overburdened is not a gothic themed nor a horror game, far from it actually, but I wanted to achieve a "spooky" overall feeling so I added something similar. Dripping water in the caves, rattling chains in the dungeons etc...

Dripping.ogg

Chains.ogg

Monster skills

This was a feature which was missing from the game for so long. I actually implemented the underlying system while working on the prototype (so really really long ago), but I had no time to actually add unique skills to the monsters . Now each and every one has it's own "thing" which makes them memorable and really stand out. Not just attribute differentiation, like careful this one is "strong", this one is "fast", bla bla, but instead something like this: careful this can dodge your attacks, or that one can interrupt you and cancel your hit, or that pesky beast can resurrect so it is a real damage sponge!



There are some neat ones which I will not spoil because they are really fun, powerful and buy the game once it's out (there is no fun in spoiling everything) !

The Black Raven Market

During a play-testing round I realized there is a huge problem with the pacing of the game. The game-play did not change enough during a full play-through regardless of the changing environments, monsters and increasing power levels. Another problem a lengthy game usually had is RNG (those infuriating random numbers ). It felt a little boring and a bit too random (not enough control over the outcome). I realized a shop could solve these issues, but not a typical buy whatever you want when ever you want type, but more like a rogue-like shop , that allows more player control but it also presents another hard choice (as many things in rogue-likes).



Welcome to the Black Raven Market. Every first shop level sells random pickups (health potions, attributes etc...) and every second shop level sells random magic items, but you can only buy one stuff on each level! I'm evil, I know it MUWHAHA. In a full play-through you will encounter 10 shop levels which gives some extra space for player choice and nicely breaks up the "kill some monsters defending important loot and run to the next level" game-play loop.

Music makes the world go around!

I'm not a musician and the following sneak-peek into the official soundtrack of the game is proof of that. Regardless of it being pretty amateurish I'm still really proud of it . Instead of trying to make AWESOME music (which I simply can't ) I focused on adhering to some fundamentals I settled on before jumping onto composing:

• Retro sound, match the looks of the game.
• Leave a spooky and mysterious impression.
• Be consistent using similar patterns and tunes.
• Gradually get more intense and chaotic.

I hope it isn't grating at least .





The full OST is around 15 minutes so its my longest work in this regard yet + it is long and varies enough to not get too repetitive during a full play-through .

I should also mention, that I used the wonderful Bosca Ceoil tool for composing. It's quite limited, but it is really really easy to use. You should definitely check it out if you would like to make some chip tunes. It is free and works in the browser too!


Thanks for reading!
Stay tuned.

[Spidi]

Hi everyone!

I took my time again to make this new post, but I was really occupied with life and stuff and took approximately two weeks off from work (got married <3 + been pretty sick for a week ). Last week was only spent on polish and adding "extra" features, so it is only a matter of a few weeks to finally tackle this beast of a game , I'm almost at the end of this marathon!

I'm also trying a new vlog format this time, with more video content and less slides. It is a video log after all ...
I hope you all will like it.





Map generator tricks

I extended the implementation of my "semi-procedural" map generator algorithm with a neat and simple trick. It is working from hand authored map templates, so I added the possibility to randomly flip over the vertical and/or horizontal axes!



For the 4 resulting maps on that screen the exact same handmade tile-map template was used. This results in 2 to 4 (if you can use both axes) times the possibilities of slightly different generated maps for the same amount of hand made maps .

Dungeon progression

Each level type has a unique name now + when you enter a level you get a notification about where you are in the dungeon/story:



I'm still not 100% satisfied with this level change pacing/effect. I may add a really tiny "to black-screen and back" transition effect too. I'll try it out and see whether it works better...

Speech bubbles

These fancy text graphics are pretty useful for delivering help notifications, narrator or character speeches and to convey more details about the world to the players.



I also implemented some features to make them easier to control and more readable:

• New ones can optionally "cancel out" old ones (request them to start fading out), or can simply be played alongside the existing ones (conversation)
• New ones are automatically overlaid on top of the existing ones.

Some conversations and player speeches will occur during the game-play too, not just in the "menu".

Polishing animations

The game has only static sprites, no hand-drawn or any key-frame based animations at all. So far I tried my best to move the sprites in a way, that make all the motions look fluid, but I always had plans to go further than that! I wanted to achieve a look, regardless of having no "proper" animations, that is interesting, at least a little bit.

I implemented an animated "stretch and squeeze" transformation for sprites and added a subtle one to the hitting obstacles/walls movement of the player character.



As the next step I added stretch, squeeze and shake to sprites at various points during battle.



These GIFs have "New & Old" slides for comparison, but it's fun to check back how the game looked few months ago. Here goes the "same" battle from an early version:



I'm really proud how much I could achieve with only "static" sprites .

I wanted to further enhance the user interface too, not only the in-game action, so I added a small and short "Back Out" ease to item pickup sprites to make them pop:



I still have plans for more animation enhancements, but it is already August and I still have a lot of other tasks to take care about before releasing this game, so it most probably will have to suffice.

Collectibles

I integrated some systems into the game last week which I deemed "extra" previously, but as I mentioned around a month ago, I want to make the most out of this game, and completionist players (myself included ) are going to love this !

Now you can gather detailed information about the monsters and artifacts of the game. After several kills you can unlock a monster (weaker ones need more kills) and after a few pickups you can unlock an artifact (rare ones need less pickups).





There is an extra secret monster unlock too, which you have to look for carefully during a play-through, its hidden well . There will be more traditional achievements too, but they are currently in the design phase, so nothing to show yet.

I also ~finalized my "elevator pitch" for press/buyers:
I Am Overburdened, a silly roguelike with 20 inventory slots
Tell me what you think!

I'll be back in a week or two with more news on the game .

Thanks for reading!
Take care.

[Spidi]

Hello there!

I'm still alive and working on the game so I jump right into what I worked on in the last month or so. Even though I was pretty silent a lot has "changed". The topic will be polishing, because it never stops , some input handling tricks and another pretty complex one: game balance.





Polishing

During a series of play-test sessions with friends, family and old colleagues I gathered some really valuable feedback on how to enhance the user experience. Thankfully the game itself was well received, but the mentioned "issues" really bugged me, so I sat down for a week or two to further enhance the presentation.

Cost indicators

This was a tiny addition but helped a lot. Now the color of the chest and shop item cost texts reflect the state whether you can open/buy them.


Animated texts

I went into an in-game UI tuning frenzy, so I added a "pop" animation on value change, besides the existing yellow highlights, to gold and attribute texts.


Health bar

The health bar got some love too! I implemented a fade-in/out effect for the heart sprite slowly turning it into a "black" one when you are low on health. I also added a maximum health indicator and the same value change "pop" animation I used for the gold and attribute texts.


Battle events

Battle events and various skills (hit miss, dodge, fear or cripple events etc...) got many complaints due to their visibility being insufficient, leaving the player puzzled sometimes why a battle didn't play out as expected. Besides using the existing sprite effects I added text notifications, similar to the ones used with pickups. No complaints ever since .





Critical strike

This one was an "extra". I wanted to beef-up the effects of the critical strikes to make them look more ferocious and better noticeable.


Level transition

Play testers shared my enthusiasm towards having a better level transition effect, so I slapped on a black screen fade-in/out during dungeon generation and it worked wondrous.




Input handling

I knew for a long time now, that the simple input handling logic the game had will not be good enough for the shipped version. I already worked a lot on and wrote my findings about better input handling for grid based games, so I'm not going to reiterate.

I mostly reused the special high-level input handling parts from my previous game Operation KREEP. It was a real-time action game, so some parts were obviously less relevant, but I also added tiny new extras.

I observed players hitting the walls a lot. Since the player character moves relatively fast from one cell to another this happened frequently when trying to change directions, so I added a timer which blocks the "HitWall" movement state for a few milliseconds towards each walled direction for the first time when a new grid cell is reached. Again, results were really positive .



Balancing

My great "wisdom" about this topic: balancing a game, especially and RPG, is hard. Not simply hard, it is ULTRA hard. Since I never worked on an RPG before, in the preparation phase I guesstimated, that it will took around 2 to 3 days of full-time work, because after all it is a simple game. Oh maaaaaaan, how naive I was . It took close to two weeks. Having more experience on how to approach it and how to do it effectively I probably could do it in less than a week now with a similar project, but that is still far off from from 2/3 days .

Before anyone plays the judge saying, I'm a lunatic and spending this much probably wasn't worth it, I have to say, that during the last 6 months nothing influenced the fairness and "feeling" of the game as much as these last 2 weeks so do not neglect the importance of it !

Now onto how I tamed this beast!

Tools and approach

Mainly excel/open-office/google-sheets, so good old-fashioned charting baby . And how? I implemented almost all the formulas (damage model, pickup probabilities, loot system etc...) in isolated sheets, filled it with the game data and tweaked it (or the formulas sometimes) to reach a desirable outcome.

This may sound boring or cumbersome, but in reality charts are really useful and these tools help tremendously. Working with a lot of data is made easy and you get results immediately when you change something. Also they have a massive library of functions built-in so mimicking something like the damage reduction logic of a game is actually not that hard.



That is the main chart of the game, controlling the probabilities of specific pickups, chests and monsters occurring on levels. It plays a key role in determining the difficulty and the feel of the game so nailing it was pretty important (no pressure ).

If balancing this way is pretty efficient why it took so much time? Well, even a simple game like I Am Overburdened is built from an absurd number of components, so modeling it took at least a dozen gigantic charts . Another difficult aspect is validating your changes. The most reliable way is play-testing, so I completed the game during the last two weeks around 30 to 40 times and that takes a long while . There are faster but less accurate ways of course. I will talk about that topic in another post...

Tricks and tips



#1.: Focus on balancing ~isolated parts/chunks of your game first.
This wide "chest chart" works out how the chests "behave" (opening costs, probabilities, possible items). Balancing sections of your game is easier than trying to figure out and make the whole thing work altogether in one pass. Parts with close to final values can even help solidifying other aspects! E.g.: knowing the frequency and overall cost of chests helped in figuring out how much gold the player should find in I Am Overburdened.



#2.: Visualization and approaching problems from different perspectives are key!
The battle model (attack/defense/damage/health formulas) wasn't working perfectly up until last week. I decided to chart the relation of the attack, defense and health values and how their change affect the number of hits required to kill an enemy. These fancy "damage model" graphs shows this relation. Seeing the number of hits required in various situations immediately sparked some ideas how to fix what was bugging me .



#3.: ~Fixing many formulas/numbers upfront can make your life easier.
Lot of charts I know, but the highlighted blue parts are the "interesting" ones. I settled on using them as semi-final values and formulas long before starting to balance the game. If you have some fixed counts, costs, bonuses or probabilities you can work out the numbers for your other systems more easily. In I Am Overburdened I decided on the pickup powers like the + health given by potions or the + attribute bonuses before the balancing "phase". Working out their frequencies on levels was pretty easy due to having this data. Also helps when starting out, since it gives lot of basis to work with.

Now onto the unmissable personal grounds. Spidi, you've been v/b-logging about this game for a loooooong while now, will this game ever be finished?! Yes, yes and yes. I know it has fallen into stretched and winding development, but it is really close to the finish line now and it is going to be AWESOME! I'm more proud of it than anything I've ever created in my life prior .
Soon, really soon...

Thanks for reading!
Stay tuned.

[Spidi]

Hi everyone!

This entry is a bit more like an announcement and less like a devlog entry, but here it goes:
I Am Overburdened is going to be released on October 23 for PC !!!
Here it is, the release trailer featuring some fun game-play footage in all its glory:





Store, platform, price & wishlisting

The game will be sold primarily through Steam and itch.io for Windows PC initially. The future platforms will depend on how well the game does sales wise. I would not like to promise any other devices/OSs upfront as porting can be a big effort so if the game flops I may not have the time/capital to deliver.

It will cost 4.99$ (may vary based on store & region).

It is a relatively short game, but has a huge "replayability" factor.
Since it is run focused and has permanent death, completing it once will take less than an hour, but the game has enough content (artifacts, monsters, procedural dungeons, unlocks, game modes) to keep it fresh for dozens of playthroughs.

I really believe it is a correct price point. It has a lot of fun stuff to keep you entertained for a while .

You can already wishlist the game on Steam to get an e-mail on release day:


Or you can follow my developer profile on itch.io to get a notification:


My website, the Steam store-page and the Steam Community Hub already has a lot more information about the features of the game and the release itself.

Release calendar

I'm doing a little marketing "sprint" thingy up until the release day. I'm calling it the "Wishlist Release Calendar". Essentially, to promote the game a little, I'm going to release an artifact from the game every day with its "fluff" text on various channels (here too) updating or posting the new version of the following image:



Heeeeeeeelp!

If you like the game or liked it's development "story" you can help me. Wishlisting the game now on Steam (even for buying it later) or buying it on release day (there will be a tiny discount ) supports me tremendously. Even if you are not really interested in buying/playing the game you can help. How ?! It's simple, share it. Share a store-page link or the trailer with friends and relatives who may be interested in playing it. That is all! It's really nothing, but it may allow the game to reach a broader audience, and thus in the long run may allow me to further support my game development journey .

Thanks in advance.

Promises, future

No one knows how the future unfolds. I have confidence in the game, because it is AWESOME, but I'm crazy nervous . The success of a game doesn't only depend on its quality (or I should say the quality it's developer perceives ). No matter how this release turns out I can promise more devlog entries . At least one about the last development weeks of I Am Overburdened and a little later a postmortem entry about it.

My journey may change course, but it doesn't end here , wish me luck !

Thanks for reading and thanks for all the support so far!
Take care.

[nathy after dark]

Taking a brief scan over the first page of posts, I think the idea is great, I would definitely play it, and high five for using Trello. It's so amazing I learned the API so I could automate script actions, haha. Highly recommend taking it to the next level, especially if you like Python (there's a wrapper module).

[Spidi]

@nathy grrrl
Thanks for the kind words !
+Thx for the Trello tipp. I've been thinking about that during this project as not everything fit perfectly when doing manually (&python is cool ). I guess for the next project, one should always try/learn something new .



P.S.: off topic, just wanted to check it but your patreon link seems to be broken?!

[nathy after dark]

Nice catch! Fixed.

Just saw your post about the extra unplanned time you're spending on this and the risk of losing your full-time capabilities. It's sad.  I was pretty impressed/curious when I noticed you were full-time in my initial once-over. I gotta read more and watch some of your videos from the last project. It's cool that you've been sharing so much info (including the emotional parts) because I definitely do the same thing but I don't see many other people doing it. 

[Spidi]

the risk of losing your full-time capabilities. It's sad. 

Yeah it's a bummer, but I'm the only one to "blame" . I knew from the beginning that game development is a risky business so sort of prepared myself for this outcome too .
I'm doing the best I can to make this a viable thing, if I fail I will simply continue it as a hobby afterwards.

It's cool that you've been sharing so much info (including the emotional parts) ...

Yep, I like doing it this way. Being open about the whole development process can be educational. I also love and follow the b/v-logs of lots of other developers for this reason + I don't want to romanticize the process as this mystical and super fun thing. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE game development and it IS super fun but it is also hard and challenging work (I guess many here already know that ). I know/heard-of many people who wanted to enter the field due to the belief of making games must be same or similar as playing games where it is a completely different thought process and minute to minute feeling.
I hope that I don't "overdo" these emotional parts though , I don't really want to sound like a cry baby





I made a proper announcement under Townhall and doing the "Wishlist Release Calendar" thingy in that thread:
I Am Overburdened - a silly roguelike [Steam & itch.io]
Hope no one minds, I thought it is more of a promotional thingy than a devlog one.

[nathy after dark]

I hope that I don't "overdo" these emotional parts though , I don't really want to sound like a cry baby

Can't be worse than my log. Own it!!

Wishlisting the game and followed you on itch!

[flex$]

hey dude i can tell you've put a lot of effort into this project and it's looking really polished. hope the launch is a success!

[Spidi]

@nathy grrrl:
Okay you won
It's cool , but I'm progressing slowly with your log and in taking a look at your games, quite busy ATM , I'll make sure to check it thoroughly...

@flex$:
It feels awesome to hear, thanks for the compliment.
+ That is one hell of a badass banner

[neutonm]

Hey hey hey  

It's been nice reading the more detailed description of your dev steps. I always wondered what was your audio design choices and here it is! Just want to add to this point that all unnecessary noise or ambiance coming from the record can be simply removed by a tweaked "Gate" VST effect or the usual "De-Noiser" that comes as standard plugin in most DAWs. Good job anyways, the sound is precious

I know the game hasn't been released yet but... do you plan to continue doing gamedev stuff, maybe there is already a new game idea that is waiting its turn in the queue?

Good luck with the releasing tho,
subscribed!

[Spidi]

Hi neutonm !

Thanks for the tips and the praise about the audio, I have to say that still pretty much:

when it comes to audio, but yeah I also felt like all-in-all it turned out OK .

do you plan to continue doing gamedev stuff

I would love to, actually there is nothing else in the world I would do instead, but whether I continue with as much time investment as in the last few months depends heavily on how well this game does   ...

I actually have another game project I've spent months on prior to this game and a little during the development of I Am Overburdened parallel and I would love to finish it (was sadly put on hold due to it's gigantic scope ):
Unified Theory

Will see, fingers crossed, I'm hoping for the best!

[Spidi]

Hello there!

This is going to be a painful post for me, but I got to do it ...

TLDR:
I had to postpone the release of I Am Overburdened by a little more than a week, to the 2nd of November !



That is the Steam workshop page. The build is approved, only a press of a button would make it live, yet I messed it up big time!

During the "hopefully final" test session this weekend I discovered few severe technical issues (bugs yuck). Since I went to a family visit I did not start fixing stuff + it would have taken more than a few minutes (still tried to work a little during the middle of the night , but with no luck yet ) . I also miscalculated how much time I will have for creating proper release marketing materials today, so all in all I simply did not prepare well for the 23rd of October.

I can not express how sorry I am and how shameful I feel right now. This was an extremely hard decision to make. I made a lot of posts around the INTERNETZ with the previous release date, trying to gather some interest around the game, but releasing it in this state would go against my principles. I simply don't want to publish a buggy product.



I know, I know, there will be bugs, no software is perfect, but as I stated numerous times before, a good game tomorrow is better than a mediocre one today and we are talking about only 10 extra days. "If it is only a few bugs and a bunch of marketing materials why not only a few days instead, why more than a week?!" Good question and the answer is simple. This is already and immensely embarrassing situation, even though I know I'm making the right choice. I feel like I'm letting people down who wanted to play the game today . It is a no-brainer, that I don't want to end up in something similar again. Targeting the 2nd of November will give me plenty of time to fix the remaining issues and prepare for a better launch without an absurd work-schedule.

I hope you understand my decision and forgive me for my messed up planning. I thought about continuing the release calendar at least. I prepared the first extra one and if you are interested I will keep posting it .



Again, I'm really sorry. I'll try to make it up to you with an even better game !
Take care.

[nathy after dark]

Hey fam, hang in there  it'll be great when it happens.

[neutonm]

Relax dawg!
Everything will be just fine!

Delayed game is always better than the rushed one. That's a well known fact in this industry. We'll wait 

What's that "Severe Bug" anyway? If you don't mind telling ofc. For me severe killer bugs are those with "access error at 0x90000 address" types where even stackoverflow can't help. Debugger doesn't help much, nothing helps and that leaves you to find a needle in the haystack kind of situation. What's worse about them is that they make game unplayable. Had few of those and they still give me nightmares.

[nathy after dark]

What's that "Severe Bug" anyway? If you don't mind telling ofc. For me severe killer bugs are those with "access error at 0x90000 address" types where even stackoverflow can't help. Debugger doesn't help much, nothing helps and that leaves you to find a needle in the haystack kind of situation. What's worse about them is that they make game unplayable. Had few of those and they still give me nightmares.

Saaame. But if you have a Mac or Linux machine available to work with, sometimes Valgrind can point out those errors for you. It's saved me from despair before!

[Spidi]

@nathy grrrl and @neutonm

Thanks! Yep I usually act nervously and overreact some things, but indeed this decision was for the sake of the game and for making and releasing a better product. Thanks again for the inspiring wishes .

About the issues: I became a C# "peasant"   a year ago, so I rarely experience memory leaks, double deletes, stack corruptions and similar stuff since , BUT the issues were game breaking still  . Most of the major ones could be tracked back to my scene/screen management stuff, more specifically transitions, cut-scenes and relevant input handling logic. Sadly even at the very last story scenes the player could break the game, leaving it in a "frozen input" state where only alt+f4 helps or in a state where the appropriate ending scenes or menus don't show up.
Not unlocking your achievements or loosing the statistics right at the end of a full playthrough this way even if it happens rarely sounded horrible to me when I discovered it 

I also had some localization related issues, but I would not call them severe. They could crash the game, but only in very specific cases (e.g.: while working on translations or when a new update had missing strings for a language) and they could be fixed easily or even after release so it wasn't a big thing, but this way I will have time to make these systems more robust too 

Thanks again, I got myself together, fixed most of the problems by now and I'm preparing like a mad man for the 2nd of November 

[Spidi]

Hello there!

In the big sprint towards publishing this game I forgot to update my blog with a proper release announcement . I had to split myself in millions to actually finish the game and put it out there, but still, silly me how could I forget .

Takeaway: I have to prepare better for my next release, but I heard from other developers, that no time is actually "enough" .







Released

Yes, I Am Overburdened was released at evening (by GMT) on the 2nd of November.
It can be bought on Steam and itch.io for 4.99$ and there is a launch-week 20% discount so get it while it's hot (currently at 3.99$ which may vary based on region)!

   

There is also a tiny extra for my previous customers, call it a "gesture" if you will. On Steam if you bought Operation KREEP before, there is a Magic Item Tech RETRO Bundle to "complete my games" and you get an extra 10% off for I Am Overburdened (sorry itch.io users, I haven't found a way there to bundle it like this).

First day

Now that I'm over the big rush for the release and over the first day, I can slowly ease into handling issues and working on updates, fixes and fine-tunings. The first batch of feedback is really positive and I got decent featuring from the press so far, which is awesome. People seem to understand and like the game, many even praise it and are really enthusiastic about its future . This is an awesome feeling!

The game is up to a slow start sales wise but it is too early to draw any kind of conclusions (it's only been a day). Of course I will do that in a few weeks in another blog entry. Fingers crossed .

Thank you!

Allow me to grab this opportunity to formally say thank you. Thank you for all who followed the development. Thank you for those who supported, helped and encouraged me along the way. Thank you for everyone who contributed, either with tips, suggestions, testing or critique. And thanks for everyone who already bought the game, I hope you all are having a great time !

I'm adding a new screenshot about the inn in the game (pun intended ), because in the last two weeks of development I changed it a bit (added even more stuff to the game ).



Thanks for reading, I'll be back with more stuff soon.
Take care!

[nathy after dark]

Nice!!

I might pick it up later today.