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Dicey Dungeons 0.16

February 27, 2019
[Play Dicey Dungeons 0.16 here]

It’s version 16! Wow. Whoa! We’ve come such a long way since that janky 7drl prototype!

This update is huge! Let’s see what’s new!

The Story

Dicey Dungeons finally has a story. We’ve been talking about this on the team for months and months, so it’s really amazing to finally have it in the game. It’s writen by Holly Gramazio (whose previous digital games writing includes the amazing How to be a Blackbird and One Night in Skegness).

We want the story in Dicey Dungeons to be minimal, funny, and seemlessly part of the world. I wanted it to bring all the different parts of the game together, and make everything feel more connected - and I couldn’t be happier with how it’s turning out.

This version just has three character introduction cutscenes, some “introduction” lines by Lady Luck, and very occasional monster “last words”. There’s more coming, though!

The Tutorial

We also finally have a tutorial! This will appear in the game the first time you play the first Warrior episode. (we still don’t have quest progression, though, sorry)

My goal with the tutorial was to make a kind of “youtube annotations” style thing, where you can just play as normal and little pop ups appear to tell you stuff from time to time. Depending on how this goes down, I might do similar ones for the other five characters.

Return of the Jester

The Jester’s back! Ahhhh!

I’ve talked a LOT about this already recently, so I’ll just say, it’s really good to have them back. The new Jester features five quests so far (including the temporary “classic hardmode”).

A huge design revamp

We’ve getting closer and closer to the end of development, and I’m getting to the point where I want to “settle” the design of certain elements. There was a lot of stuff that I haven’t touched for months - so for this update, I decided to do a complete top to bottom revamp of everything.

This is probably the biggest actual change with this update - virtually everything in the game has had a tweak, from dungeon generation and equipment distribution, to level up rewards, to enemy design - it amounts to hundreds of tiny tiny changes. Feedback welcome - I’m sure I’ll be iterating on all this stuff a lot more before launch.

Just to pick a few big things in particular:

  • Dungeons now have six floors instead of 5, making things very slightly longer.
  • All characters have new level up rewards and new level pacing, designed to tune things ever so slightly harder.
  • The game now has occasional “Super Enemies” - enemies that appear 1 level higher than usual, with remixed equipment.
  • In particular, Inventor equipment distribution has changed dramatically.

And an example of a few random small things:

  • Removed “are you sure?” style prompts from almost everywhere - when buying equipment, collecting chests, etc.
  • Counter Spell works for any dice now by default, and the upgraded version is useable twice.
  • Upgraded Healing Crystals cure poison.
  • New map blueprint layouts for dungeons.
  • Inventor doesn’t start with scrap metal anymore.
  • The Rat King is back, with a new design.
  • The Dragon has had a complete redesign, and is possibly the hardest boss now.
  • Renamed “Quests” to “Episodes”.
  • Witch can now get up to four prepared spells, or one prepared slot and three upgraded slots.
  • Removed Fuse, added new “Ruby Weapon” to Robot’s “You Choose, You Lose” episode. (previously named Dice for a Price)
  • Redesigned Vampiric Tendencies with a focus on a new piece of equipment, “Venus Fly Trap”.
  • Fixed the equipment screen, finally!

This process included doing a complete audit of every enemy in the game, again - which I’ll be posting about on my blog soon!

More Modding Support

This version of the game moves a huge amount of new things into scripts and data files that modders can modify. Including!

  • Script hooks at several points throughout the game
  • Level generation
  • User variables
  • The ability to use any piece of equipment as a skillcard
  • Custom characters

All of this, of course, runs on top of Lars’ polymod system, and uses hscript powered scripting. Honestly, I think this update should bring the game up 95% of what modders have been asking for. There’s a lot of new stuff to play with here!

New Music

Some brand new tunes this time around, as well as some updates to old songs, and remix ideas that Niamh is trying out!

An Irish Translation

Just in time for Seachtain na Gaeilge, I’m really proud to debut our new Irish translation, by Mícheál J. Ó Meachair and Kevin P. Scannell of Ríomhacadamh. (I’ll be putting together a small Irish testing group very soon if there are any gaeilgeoirs out there are interested in having a look - get in touch!)

A heads up that ALL translations this time are a little out of date - i.e. all the new cutscene text is in English. We’re waiting to finalise the game’s script before we get all that translated.

So what about v0.17?

Well, I have some big news on that.

v0.17 is probably going to be the last alpha.

Yep! After v0.17, the next version will be v1.0, which will remain on itch.io, but also, finally, coming to steam. (More information about when coming as soon as I know!)

I think with this update, we’re now far enough along that the end is very much in sight! v0.17 will likely be shorter and smaller than the last two updates, and more about getting the game stable while the team knuckles down and finishes the game. We’re doing it this way so that we can just focus as much as possible on the final version, but also, we wanna hold some surprises back for the launch!

However, I am planning to put together a smaller testing group for the release canditates. If you’ve been an active player since the early version, I might be getting in touch soon!

Thanks for playing. I hope you enjoy the new version!

Older builds and release notes:

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