Hello from the dungeon

Please pardon the dust. Lady Tallowmere is still preparing her next generation of procedural death labyrinths for your pain and pleasure.
Official artwork characters illustrated by Eric Grimoire

Meow?

What is happening...?
Why is there a kitten locked away? What secrets does it hold?
What else has been going on in the dungeons so far this year? Let's find out...

Mirror, Mirror

In the home room, a Magic Mirror now lets you change your character. Each character has a different trait. Additional characters can be unlocked by slaying matching enemies in Room 10 or higher.

Rack It Up A Notch

A Weapon Rack is also available, allowing you to choose a starting weapon. Starting weapons can be unlocked by finding the weapon in the dungeon and slaying enemies with it. Certain weapons with powerful element variations (such as Poison, Lightning, and Arcane) have higher enemy killing requirements, as well as minimum room number requirements before kill counts start tallying.

Why Can't I Hold All These Weapons?

The old eight-slot weapon wheel has been replaced with a new dynamic Weapon Selector.

Bring Me To Life

Eyes now blink, legs waddle, and necks snap back. Melee weapons have been given a slight animation while still retaining their instant-hit feel. Enemy eyes also glow so you can anticipate incoming attacks.

I Heard You Like Loot

Item Modifiers are still going strong. There are 7 different Rarities, as well as 5 different Item Tiers this time for even more damage and health.

More Souls Required

Slaying enemies and collecting their souls allows you to level up at Demon Statues:

• At Lvl 2, you can choose between a randomly-rolled amount of Strength or Health.
• At Lvl 3, a third Mystery reward becomes available.
• At Lvl 4 and higher, one of the three rewards will also have a random Bonus reward attached.

There are currently ~50 different mystery and bonus rewards available. Will luck be on your side?

Offerings & Curses

During your travels, you may come across various Pedestals, each presenting an Offering with a randomly-chosen Curse. Will you accept what's on offer?

Room Modifiers

From Room 6 and higher, Room Modifiers get added to most rooms, with additional modifier slots added every 5 rooms, up to 5 modifiers max per room. There are currently ~50 Room Modifiers in the pool.

Drink Up

Health Potions now have ranks. Certain potions also grant buffs. There are currently ~20 potion buffs available. Managing potions in a platformer is low on the list of things you'd rather be doing, so there is now a Quick Heal action to consume your best-available potion (factoring in how much health you are missing). If you have a potion with a buff attached to it, you can anticipate getting a heal and a buff without needing to rummage through your inventory.

Menu Development is Serious Business

The UI has been given an uplift in many places, with tabs, save slots, item detail enhancements, built-in achievements and Steam leaderboards, and a proper pause menu. Play:

• New, Load, Join, and Host.

Inventory:

• Weapons, Shields, Potions, Blessings, Attributes, and Journal.

Merchant:

• Buy, Sell, and Buyback.

Triumphs:

• High Scores, Achievements, and Leaderboards.

Options:

• Language, Screen, Sound, Input, Effects, and Advanced.

Pause Menu:

Rich 'n Creamy

With Rich Presence integration for both Steam and Discord, your friends can see status updates of how great you are as your room number increases as you delve further and further or perhaps they can shed a tear with you when you lament your death.

Where's the Steam page?

To launch Tallowmere 2's Steam page, I still need to finalise the screenshots and create a trailer, which means I need to do a sound effect pass, and another pass on the room themes with cool doodads and cosmetics. Since I'm still adding things, working on a trailer and publishing full-size screenshots feels like things to do last. The page will launch closer to the time when the game is ready.

Pricing

After much consideration, looking at what Tallowmere 2 offers compared to the first Tallowmere, I believe a steady price of ~$9.99 USD is more appropriate for Steam. I no longer feel increasing the price gradually throughout Early Access is ideal I do not fancy attempting to dictate which future feature amounts to which dollar value. I just want to keep things simple. In an attempt to honour my previous plan of starting at a lower price point, I will offer a launch discount of 40%, which is the maximum launch discount Valve allows. After that, the occasional discount throughout Early Access will be no deeper than 10%. The game will receive free updates as originally planned I still have no plans to offer premium add-on expansions. With single-player, local couch co-op, online co-op, and many more goodies and aesthetic delights compared to the first game, I feel ~$9.99 USD is reasonable. But please, let me know your thoughts.

Descent into Madness

While the features mentioned on the roadmap posted in December 2018 still stand, time estimations have gone out the window. In the midst of Tallowmere 2's development, the irl RNG gods have decided to hand me an autoimmune disease called psoriasis, and with it, psoriatic arthopathy, which affects approximately 1% of the population. This incurable inflammatory disease has been impacting my productivity. X-rays have not revealed any joint damage (yet), but the pain is there. I recall noticing external signs of psoriasis back in 2016, but it wasn't until 2018 that pain became apparent. Official diagnosis was given to me in early 2019 by a rheumatologist. I've been fairly quiet about this until now. I am still struggling to come to terms with it, but this disease has been a major factor as to why things are taking longer than anticipated. Being in pain almost 24/7 is a challenge. I try to ignore it, but that's easier said than done. Some days are better than others, but my typical day-to-day adventures include:

• Pain My elbows, fingers, knees, toes, hips, neck, shoulders, and spine hurt due to my immune system attacking itself. During the worst flare-ups, it feels like knives are being shoved into my back, and razorblades are being jammed into my smaller joints. Some days, it hurts to walk. Other days, it hurts to sit. Some nights, I wake due to my toes hurting in excruciating pain of all things. I am often maxed out on special prescribed painkillers, but they aren't 100% effective.
• Numbness and tingling In the past month, parts of my hands feel like they've fallen asleep, except they refuse to wake up. They aren't 100% numb, but the sensation is weird; makes typing and holding a mouse quite odd at times. The intensity varies. Occasionally, I have sessions where my feet, legs, and wrists also feel compressed and numb.
• Fatigue This one is the biggest hindrance: I am needing naps more often, and for longer; sometimes two naps a day even. I am most productive and energetic in the morning, but come mid-day and afternoon, I often run out of energy and need sleep.

With my body attacking itself, I do not have consistent energy and concentration like I used to. I am more tired than I used to be. Brain fog really is a thing at times. Waking up in the night due to random shots of pain also doesn't help. It's even reached a point recently where members of the public have been asking me if I'm okay, because I feel incredibly drained some days, and it shows. Now, not every day is horrible, but not every day is great either. It's extremely random and unpredictable. I do the best I can when I can. If anyone would like to swap immune systems, please let me know. mrbigguns

Still To-do

I thought I would launch Tallowmere 2 earlier this year, but things felt too early, so it's been months of polish and features this year so far instead. Tasks on my list to get this up on Early Access:

• Improve Elite healthbars.
• Ensure all weapons have elemental variations implemented.
• Add cool item names.
• Continue implementing the ~120 pedestal offerings and ~260 curses on my list. It's a lot of work, but it's coming along.
• Tidy up enemy AI.
• Add unique icons to the different potion types.
• Add sound effects to everything.
• Spruce up the room themes a bit more.
• Add ability to form parties easily to play with friends online hassle-free via Steam and Discord.
• Make sure everything continues to work online lunar2019deadpanpig

Onwards

As a self-employed solo game developer creating a multi-platform online co-op experience, my recent health complications have thrown a wrench into things. I'm still able to work, but perhaps not as fast as I'd like. Due to my unpredictable energy and concentration levels, there's not much point attempting to guesstimate timeframes. Will it be this year? Next year? ... Things will launch when ready. With Tallowmere selling over 120,000 copies across all platforms since 2015, I've been able to work on Tallowmere 2 as my full-time job over the past 2-3 years, and this will continue for the foreseeable future just perhaps more slowly than desired. So, thank you for your continued patience and support. I will see you in the dungeons soon enough. For updates, please follow my Steam developer page, Twitter page, and/or Facebook page. Chris

[ 2019-08-27 04:41:40 CET ] [ Original post ]