Dice related stuff

Terry Jan 30, 2019 7 Comments

Hello! It’s been a while! Let’s catch up! What’s been going on?

For now and probably for a while to come, pretty much all my news is gonna be Dicey Dungeons related. ¯\_(?)_/¯

This last month, in particular, has been really full on. It feels like a lot of people are discovering the game for the first time right now! This is probably because of some combination of our IGF nomination (!!!), our new gameplay trailer (below), and word of mouth now that we’re getting closer to finished.

But, far more than anything else, I think lots of people are discovering us right now because of Angory Tom and his awesome youtube series on the game (above!). If that includes you, hi! Thanks for checking out the game!

Ahhh, I’m back from my first ever PAX! (Check out our new gameplay trailer that we made for the show!)

I’ve exhibited my work at other shows in the past, but PAX was something very different. For one thing, it’s way more player focused than other conventions I’ve done (which have generally been developer focused).

And it’s huge – people kept telling me that PAX South was “the small one”, but it’s easily the biggest convention I’ve ever been to. It had what felt like an acre of *just* tables for people to play board games on. I heard there were talks and a jumbo stadium sized cinema screen somewhere too, but I didn’t even see that side of things.

I had a lot of fun demoing our game there! We had a *lot* of enthusiastic players come by and check it out, and took a lot of playtesting notes that are gonna make the next version of the game even better. Can’t wait for PAX East!

The next version of the game is coming out pretty soon! I’m aiming sometime early February for this one, but no promises 😛

For this version, the focus is on finally introducing some light story elements into the game. I was a bit worried about this step at first, but seeing how well it’s coming together, I think everyone is gonna like it a lot. The story is really helping the whole thing feel more connected and complete, without feeling like it’s in the way.

I’m also tackling on a lot of design stuff for this update, most importantly, reintroducing the Jester into the game, and doing a full design audit on the enemies. Also planning to take on as much stuff as I can from this scary list!

It’s really exciting to be this close to completion. I’m not sure exactly how many more alphas we’ll have before the final version is ready, but we’re getting very close.

(usual reminders: if you want to know when the game comes out on steam, then you can wishlist us here! Or, if you wanna try out the alpha version right now, it’s available on itch.io for a discount price of just $7.50!)

On a roll

Terry Jan 9, 2019 1 Comments

Hey all! Happy new year!

Around this time every year, I clean up my blog sidebar, move old completed projects into annual folders, make room for new things. But last year, for the first time since I started this system in 2008, I didn’t finish any new games. In fact, the only other things I even worked on were State Machine, and a joke jam game, which I didn’t finish.

I’m finding myself weirdly at peace about this. I guess I’m just not in a “small” game phase of my life right now? Maybe that’ll change again in future, but for now, I’m just really enjoying working on this big dumb dice game.

In Dicey Dungeons news: we have a new update! v0.15 came out on Christmas morning, and it’s *massive*. It features the quest system, which is the big idea at the heart of the game that I’ve been so excited to finally share. It also showcases the new enemy AI (previously written about in detail here), as well as a bunch of art, tech and design improvements. The whole team worked really hard on this one, and I’m really happy with how it’s turned out!

Finally, I’m incredibly proud our game is up for an IGF this year, for Excellence in Design! We are, I think it’s fair to say, kind of a long shot – but it means a lot to me to even be in the running. I can’t even.

I still don’t know exactly when Dicey Dungeons is going to be finished, but we are into the final stages of development now, and things are starting to fall into place. Gonna be a very busy couple of months for us! Thank you for playing <3