Scrabdackle is a hand-drawn action/adventure game about going exploring, with non-linear progression and a unique mix of skill-based challenge and accessible gameplay. It features a vast, intricate overworld, tight and responsive combat, cheeky banter, and pages of lore to discover – all under a coat of playful charm.
You'll discover secrets, meet the land’s curious inhabitants, master new spells, study magical creatures, and overcome challenging bosses.
Inspired by classics like Link's Awakening, An Untitled Story, and Hollow Knight, Scrabdackle is a project designed, animated, programmed, and scored by one developer wanting to make a world worth getting lost in.
- Expansive, non-linear world allows for high replayability. The map can be navigated in any order on any playthrough. Try a different route every time!
- Secret characters, areas, storylines and oddities hidden where you least expect them. The more you explore, the more you’ll be rewarded with unexpected and delightful encounters.
- Tough-but-fair bosses with tight, challenging combat. With some practice, you can walk away from any fight unscathed. Or, toggle assist settings to define your own challenge.
- Unique storybook visual style made with hand-drawn line art and a pixelated brush.
- Optional dialogue that doesn’t take control away from the player. Just walk away mid-conversation, and characters will wave you off.
- Fill out your official wizardly notebook by scrying new creatures and documenting your findings! Review your field logs any time to see the world in closer detail!
- Charming original soundtrack with new tracks for every corner of the world.
- Tons of spells and relics to master. Swap magic powers on the fly to face any type of challenge any way you want!
Patch notes - 0.5.12e:
Backup save files are also created when the game saves
[/*]Added a dialogue line post-WK fight clarifying that Witchbrand can cut through cell bars.
[/*]Added player hitless buff during boss fights (explanation below)
[/*]
The hitless buff (called Heroic Surge in-game) is a QOL update in response to some feedback about boss fights. My design approach is to use the early stages of a fight where attacks are slower and isolated to teach you to master the later stages where attacks are faster and in tighter sequences, and to give you some extra health for each phase/bracket of a boss health bar you make it through.
It came up in some community discussions that if you\'re still learning a later phase, but have mastered an early phase - to the degree you\'re not even getting hit - that you\'re sort of unrewarded for that. In particular, the health pickup for clearing an early phase hitless can go to waste if you start well, and can\'t be saved for when you\'d want it later in the fight, when you\'re taking more hits against a phase you\'re not as strong at yet.
On thinking about it, this was... really valid! So I\'ve added something to specifically reward mastery of early boss phases, to help expedite you getting back to the parts you haven\'t mastered yet:
If you get through an entire boss phase without getting hit at all (regardless of your health), you\'ll activate Heroic Surge.
[/*]During Heroic Surge, your damage will increase by a flat amount per-hit - this is equivalent to around 50% more damage with Strata Blasts, but it\'s not percentage-based so varies a bit from spell to spell; you\'ll notice it more with weaker attacks like Strata Blast than already-strong attacks like Arc Bomb.
[/*]You\'ll stay in Heroic Surge mode indefinitely until you get hit - at which point you lose the buff.
[/*]You can always re-enter Heroic Surge state, but you\'ll need to survive a subsequent phase hitless to do so, since you already got hit that phase.
[/*]
The reward here is specifically for demonstrating mastery, which is why the damage buff is so strong (although, I\'m always open to tuning it more against feedback). If you can already no-hit a boss phase, a damage boost only equates to helping you get back to the content you haven\'t yet mastered faster, you know? And if you haven\'t mastered the fight yet, there\'s still benefit to working through that phase again on repeat attempts until you have.
If that sounds a bit confusing to read... well, it makes more sense in play, maybe, try it out! There\'s some fun effects to go alongside it.
-Dev mode Jake
Patch notes for 0.5.12d:
Adjusted Dark Clouds, Darker Magic to be a info-type quest, not a solvable-type quest
[/*]Fixed (maybe?) the issue with triggering a dialogues walk-away text the same frame as triggering a room transition - at the very least, added several validations
[/*]Fixed issue where situationally, veils could show up in the wrong position
[/*]When you deal a boss last hit, youre no longer capable of receiving any damage until you leave the boss room
[/*]Added a cairn to the wizard academy
[/*]Tweaked a line in Headmaster Whites conversation about Blues familiarity with gems
[/*]Fixed issue where Hist forgets they have not sold you an item yet
[/*]
-Dev mode Jake
Patch notes for 0.5.12b:
Fixed possible softlock in west Ducklands fort if you ran past the lever
[/*]Updated some final cases of \'old\' fonts in a few niche menu spots
[/*]Exposed the dev console keybind on public builds; console now indicates the keybind too
[/*]Dev console can now also be closed with Esc (whoops)
[/*]Tried to clarify the Duck Castle dining hall sticker puzzle better with an additional signpost
[/*]Lowered Dramaturge boss health buff from 150% to 125%
[/*]
For anyone checking if The Bug is fixed where dialogue bubbles/prompts don\'t appear sometimes - I don\'t believe so, unfortunately! It doesn\'t happen on my own computer (which would let me fix it really quickly if I could replicate), and after several reviews trying to figure out if the bubble is offscreen or invisible or why it seems to happen \"randomly,\" it\'s still not clear other than most likely being tied to something about how different devices process things. I stuck a few just-in-case validations in but I\'d be surprised if I happened to solve it by chance. Still looking into it, thanks for the patience!
-Jake
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It\'s here! It\'s real!
I\'ve been working on this thing since May 2020 - that\'s 5.5 years. Extremely surreal to be clicking a launch button.
Anyways - I\'ll leave reflecty stuff for post-launch. Thanks for all the support, and https://store.steampowered.com/app/1578720/Scrabdackle/\"" style="color:#bb86fc;text-decoration:none;">go try this thing out!!
Even if you played the demo thoroughly and have read or looked at everything about the game online, there\'s still going to be plenty of new surprises in store for you.
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/8d56a1049279345a3a84fd0e5d527115e4f78052.png\"][/img]
Oh wait-- looking for a deal? We\'ve got three!
The Intrepid Explorers bundle with Crypt Custodian and Nobody Saves the World!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/5e42e56d271c372407742754cca1a1786afe2294.jpg\"][/img]
[dynamiclink href=\"https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/64188/Intrepid_Explorers/\"][/dynamiclink][img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/d071cde5be9fa81b695595a4e9acf37913931b4d.png\"][/img]
The Morsels & Scrabdackle duo bundle!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/3fde3ea8cfe88b8bc1ec2f379cf2d4bcf63c50e9.png\"][/img]
[dynamiclink href=\"https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/64190/Scrabdackle__Morsels/\"][/dynamiclink]
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/d071cde5be9fa81b695595a4e9acf37913931b4d.png\"][/img]
And the Scrabdackle Act 1 + OST bundle!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/9751b039ba9b9c69df74a50029dd5779b3711cb5.png\"][/img]
[dynamiclink href=\"https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/63377/Scrabdackle__Game__Act_1_OST/\"][/dynamiclink]
Both the Intrepid Explorers and Morsels bundle are 10% off Complete-The-Set type bundles - if you\'re getting Scrabdackle consider grabbing one of them, too!
The Scrabdackle Act 1 + OST bundle is a 10% off Get \'Em All Together type bundle if you just want the game and the soundtrack!
WOW WOW WOW IT\'S ALL HAPPENING
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/c80cb7f2132945596cb02968ab390f22892438cc.png\"][/img]
Hey all, just wanted to put a piece out with some more detail about how we\'re approaching Steam Deck support, and why we\'re doing it that way.
(Update: If you read this, prior to 11/20, the situation\'s a little different and I\'ve edited the below. -Jake)
Short answers first before more detail!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/d071cde5be9fa81b695595a4e9acf37913931b4d.png\"][/img]
Will Scrabdackle support Steam Deck on launch? Yes (said with reservation)
When will you have less reservation behind that \'Yes\'? ...I\'m not sure yet!
Currently, the game runs okay on Steam Deck - there are some awkward patches, because it\'s not actually \'officially\' supported, because, well - at present, I haven\'t had any time to support Steam Deck yet, and if you\'ve given it a try you\'ll know that it kinda shows.
The awkwardness is all resolvable stuff, but it\'s not resolvable right now, and the experience right now is unfortunately not a great representation of the actual game. The game doesn\'t actually \"know\" if you\'re running on Steam Deck right now, basically, and that takes work and research and testing to set up right.
The reality is that, due to the above, I don\'t actually want the game to be on Steam Deck quite yet when it\'s not ready to be! I\'d rather \'launch\' on Steam Deck intentionally, once I\'ve had time to look into API trigger integration stuff and what\'s involved in supporting a hybrid mouse/controller input system and all that.
Not sure when that will be yet, though. It\'s not really a simple or small task, and I need to find a decent chunk of time to allocate while also supporting the PC Act 1 release and progressing Act 2 forward development at the same time.
Basically, we\'d really like to be enthusiastic about Steam Deck when we\'re ready and the game properly supports it - but right now it doesn\'t. And I\'ll let you know once I know when that\'s gonna be!
Hope that\'s understandable enough. Cheers!
-Jake
Hey folks! Got some Big News plus some supporting Other News Components!
Scrabdackle Act 1 releases Tuesday, December 2nd!
It\'s happening! I said \'this fall/winter\' and \'Q4 2025\' and I meant it!
I finished up the launch build the other night, and review keys are going out I think basically around the time I post this? So we\'re into the final stretch of this five-and-a-half-year-and-counting project, with Marketing-Mode Jake taking the last baton pass! Yes, there\'ll be Acts 2 & 3 to come, but we only get one \'real\' launch, yknow? It\'s exciting!
What time of day are we launching? ...Dunno yet! Something reasonable, surely. You\'ll hear about it before actual launch!
Scroll for info on pricing and related launch timing. But first!
Metroidvania Fusion Fest
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/b08d3e577ab74396017e62a4eb3b60b38922a4ad.png\"][/img]
We\'re in Metroidvania Fusion Fest on Steam all week! MVs are a favourite genre of mine, especially ones that play with the format - plus, there\'s a bunch of games from friends of mine in the fest with us, like https://store.steampowered.com/app/1219240/BioGun/\"" style="color:#bb86fc;text-decoration:none;">Bio-Gun ! Lots of reasons to go check it out !
Okay, back to Scrabdackle announcements!
Launch pricing
Scrabdackle will launch selling for $14.99 USD for Act 1, and the Act 1 OST (about 40 tracks and 90 min) will launch selling for $9.99 USD barring any discounts and so on.
Don\'t use USD as your local currency? No worries, we\'ve got you covered! Here\'s the full planned international pricing set we\'re doing. (We know USD conversion rates don\'t always reflect local currency purchasing power - we tried to take that into consideration for these rates.)
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/3707d974ad32d441d67f0bbe42bb2b6b6dac9799.png\"][/img]
Answering some potential questions quick before I talk timing!
Will the game price ever change in the future?
[list]If you [u]don\'t[/u] buy Act 1 and wait for a later act to release: Yes!
[/*]If you [u]do[/u] buy Act 1 now: No!
[/*]Basically, the sale price of the base game will increase slightly during both the Act 2 and Act 3 launches (which are still a good long ways out), but once you\'ve bought it, you\'ve bought it. You\'ll get the best deal if you want to buy now and play Acts 2 & 3 as they come out.
[/*]
Will Acts 2 and 3\'s OST be the same price?
No! Act 1 easily has the largest soundtrack since it introduces a bunch of character and combat themes that recur throughout the game. I\'m not pre-announcing those prices, but in our planning, they\'re scaled to the number of tracks on them.
[/*][/*]Other timings & launch FYIS
The public demo will be taken down on Nov 18th, two weeks before launch. The end of an era! There\'s been a Scrabdackle demo available in some form or another for over 5 years now, but it\'s time for me to start encouraging people to actually buy the game and uh, try and make a viable career out of this whole thing
Within the community, we\'re also enforcing a spoiler lockdown for the first week after launch, which is also when we\'ll do the next reveal round of our \"game theory\" story/lore betting game. More about both of those topics on the discord server ! Please do join if talking about the game with folks or checking out fan art and memes sounds fun, it\'s a good gang.
If you\'re a Kickstarter backer, check the latest Kickstarter update on the topic of key delivery and pre-launch access!
Okay! That\'s it for me, for now - I\'ll be back with some minor announcements etc between now and launch.
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Patch notes for 0.5.09b:
Gameplay
[list]Peeky\'s \'full region\' bits reward has been upped from 10 to 25
[/*]Removed \'corner bombs\' from Waking Fossil\'s last phase
[/*]Updated Ruins Hounds\' pursuit code; they no longer start running at max speed
[/*]Fixed Ruins Beast leaving its damage hitbox active for 2 seconds post-death (sorry, Harper! )
[/*]Garbage Eater can correctly be \'damage pierced\' with the Witchbrand when slashing it when it\'s inside its bin.
[/*]Lots of once-absent speaker tags populated for various \'nameless\' NPCs
[/*]
Other
Save stones no longer flicker the \'generic stone\' texture on room entry
[/*]Cleaned up a few last spots still using the \'old\' fonts
[/*]Updated some last placeholder UI SFX
[/*]Fixed dialogue bubble size rendering issue
[/*]Updated pause screen collection total handling, and explanatory message
[/*]Technical change to how fullscreen mode is handled - if your device had the rare black screen error, that shouldn\'t happen anymore
[/*]VSync added as a settings option (it used to only ever be off fwiw)
[/*]Fixed Skrine boons disappearing from the HUD upon respawn or reload
[/*]Resolved glitchiness with textures on certain room transitions
[/*]Fixed mousewheel not working for navigating dialogue for some players
[/*]Fixed notebook table of contents\' right page being out of alignment
[/*]Removed a small mouse click deadzone along the top of the screen (in the ruins)
[/*][/*]There\'s also a bug report icon/link on the main menu now! It goes to a database managed by Fellow Traveller that I have access to. (I am saying this in the hopes of no one submitting jokey reports thinking only I\'ll read it...!)
Most of what I\'ve been up to the past few weeks has been final prep on Act 1 content - there\'s some stuff in the game I\'m really proud of, but I\'ve had to really hustle to jam it in before launch I\'m gonna get back to that - but I\'ll be back with some news pretty soon!
-Dev mode Jake
Patch notes for 0.5.08a:
Replaced placeholder sounds for quest menu interactions (using the menu + related notifications)
[list]Still a little WIP! But trying \'em out.
[/*]
Fixed issue with motes deciding to wander offscreen (sigh)
[/*]Tweak to resolve an inconsistent crash issue for select players.
[/*]Adjustment to Litlte Lord\'s first* fight; they no longer turn invincible once at the start of their third phase, and received a small bump to health for that phase to offset that.
*Did you know the Peanut Village gate and Blustergust Ridge fights can actually be played in either order? Whichever one you get to \'first\' will be the easier one, and the \'second\' will be harder and assume you\'ve gotten the spells that the first fight gated off.
[/*][/*]Added death tracking! This is toggle-able in the Settings menu.
When you die (starting from now on; the game didn\'t previously track this), an animation will show how many times you\'ve died on that room specifically. That\'ll make it easy to see how many attempts you made against a given boss/arena.
[/*]On the minimap full-screen-view, if you\'ve died in a given room, that will be displayed in the lower-left corner.
[/*]Your total deaths will be shown on the pause screen, in the lower-right.
[/*][/*]Patch notes for 0.5.08b:
Temporarily disabled a secret room\'s teleport access until I have a chance to look into it (it\'s Thanksgiving today here in Canada! ain\'t at me desk much)
[/*]
Beyond that, most of my work lately has been on wrapping up Act 1 release stuff, so working on stuff not in the demo. Some neat surprises in store for the full launch!
-Dev mode Jake
The Honours Cabinet: In-game, per-save achievements!
If you\'ve noticed the \"Honours\" button being disabled right before loading a save file for the past, uh... two and a half years, and wondered what that button was gonig to be for - today\'s the day I can provide an answer!
\"Honours\" are the term for awards earned throughout gameplay on a given save file - like an achievement on Steam, except gettable per-save. They\'re stylized as various awards - a battle banner for bosses, a framed diploma for upgrades, a trophy for completionism, and so on.
They work a little differently in the demo vs. how they will in the Act 1 release build, so I\'ll get into that for those interested.
In the demo...
Three Honours are now obtainable, for each miniboss/boss accessible.
[/*]The others will be visible but locked off, as they\'re either only accessed in Act 1 content or there isn\'t a good way to reward it - you may have all the gold stars in the demo, but that\'s just a portion of the total Act 1 gold stars, so it won\'t unlock that award (and I\'m not making awards for \'all X in the demo\' since that milestone becomes irrelevant once you\'re playing the full game).
[/*]Honours in the demo [u]won\'t[/u] unlock associated Steam achievements - this is just the norm for demo apps vs. \'full game\' apps on Steam, since they\'re technically different application objects on the back-end.
[/*]
In Act 1...
All Honours from the demo will be carried over, and all \'missing\' Steam achievements will be re-triggered for content you\'ve already cleared.
[/*]Every Honour will, of course, be accessible! Which is a total of 17. (maybe 18 by the time of the launch? we\'ll see!)
[/*]There will be a few additional Steam achievements not associated with Honours, or a given save file. These are things that are either just for fun, a special kind of challenge that is more about \"ever accomplishing it once\" than redoing per-save-file, or are essentially non-awards that I want to track progress of on Steam. For instance - it\'s not really an \'achievement\' or accomplishment to pick up your scryglass at the start of the game, right? So that doesn\'t go in the Honours Cabinet, but I do still want to track it on Steam as a way of basically what percentage of people opened the game but didn\'t start a new game, and then how many people found the wand in the tutorial area, and so on.
[/*]
Maybe a little confusing? We shall see. In any case, you can always just ignore the Honours and achievements and just play the game; generally you\'ll unlock most of them organically anyways.
I\'ve been planning to add these for literal years, as mentioned earlier - there just wasn\'t a good time to prioritize them until fairly close to launch. I\'m excited to have them set up and in place going forwards though!
Patch notes for 0.5.07f:
Added Honours Cabinet
[/*]Fixed -all- Bulpesh acting like the unique sticker pool room Bulpesh (sigh)
[/*]Fixed fringe issue with the game hanging for some users upon quitting from the main menu.
[/*]Fixed quest menu keybind just plain missing in mousekey settings
[/*]
-Dev mode Jake
Patch notes for 0.5.07e:
Fixed issue with one room in Peanut Village crashing, exclusively in 07d
[/*]Fixed issue displaying 11 total stars when only 10 exist in the demo
[/*]Fixed gamepad buttons in keybinds menu being active before youve first switched to gamepad mode
[/*]
-Dev mode Jake
Patch notes for 0.5.07d:
Updated a few names in Kickstarter credits
[/*]Changed Bulpesh sticker room entirely; the original idea wasn\'t really presenting well!
[/*]Removed one room from the ruins which was inaccessible but still in the build code
[/*]Resolved a \'random\' crash bug for select users
[list]Caused by certain devices treating all error messages as a cue to crash even if there is no actual issue at play - well, the more you know!
[/*]
-Dev mode Jake
Hello! A huge day for Scrabdackle! Here\'s what\'s going on!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/8d56a1049279345a3a84fd0e5d527115e4f78052.png\"][/img]
The public demo has been refreshed! (AKA: Super-updated!)
What that means is basically that it\'s had a full quality-of-life pass, and all the improvements, minor changes, bugfixes, etc I\'ve implemented over the past quarter-decade (a literally true phrase) are now publicly available to experience. Stuff like:
More readable fonts (larger sizes, better character differentiation),
[/*]A new \"taskroll\" quest menu replacing the one that, uh, no one knew was there or how to use (it was kind of hidden in the minimap),
[/*]Completion/collectible tracking per-region (via the taskroll),
[/*]Notifications for when quests are started and completed, and better tagging for when a quest will continue in the full game,
[/*]A huge performance/optimization pass that should be pretty clear to see the gains of for anyone who played the previous build,
[/*]Speaker tags indicating the name of who\'s speaking, and a conversation log in the pause menu,
[/*]Controller support (finally! - although, I do want to tune it more as feedback comes in),
[/*]A pretty substantial batch of misc QOL features,
[/*]Aaand a general fresh coat of polish on like, everything.
[/*]
It\'s not really a change in content - technically there\'s a few more lore entries, rooms to see, and one new arena - but the focus is pretty thoroughly on bringing the public version of the game up to speed, rather than adding more content to a demo that I\'ve already seen enough people take 6 hours to 100%, eheh.
BUT ALSO, A PRETTY IMPORTANT NOTE: This new demo forces a new save file. Sorry for any inconvenience here, especially if you just found the game - it won\'t be necessary to do again, and demo saves will update to Act 1 saves when you buy the game on release (please?), but the old demo build was 2.5 years out of parity with the modern game. I gave carrying old saves over a shot, but there was too much risk of a major issue. Cleaner this way! Alas.
\"But what if I\'d rather just keep playing my old save?\" you hypothetically ask: No worries, that\'s still possible. In your Steam library, right click the Scrabdackle Demo, click Properties, then Betas - you\'ll be prompted to enter a password, and \"LetMePlayTheOldWay\" will unlock the archived build of previous version 0.4.03f. You can return to this window and go back to the \'default\' branch to get new demo access again.
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/8d56a1049279345a3a84fd0e5d527115e4f78052.png\"][/img]
Hey, we\'re a feature game in the Six One Indie fall showcase today... with a NEW TRAILER!
The showcase premieres later today, showing 40 selected games over an hour. For our slot, we\'ll be premiering the new Act 1 trailer! I\'m really REALLY happy with it, and all the feedback has been extremely positive so far.
About 10 of the selected games - including Scrabdackle! - were called on to get spotlighted in a sort of \'pop out\' feature from the developer, so immediately after the trailer there\'s also a short video of me talking about the game a bit more as well!
Here\'s the premiere link (or just a video link, if you\'re watching this from the future):
The pre-show starts:
8:50am PT
[/*]11:50am ET
[/*]
The main showcase starts:
9:00am PST
[/*]12:00pm ET
[/*]
And Scrabdackle\'s feature is on starting:
9:52am PT
[/*]12:52pm ET
[/*]
The event will also be showcasing on Steam from the 18th to the 22nd, if you want to check out all the other cool featured games (which - you really should, it\'s a really cool showcase!)
LINK: Six One Indie Steam Showcase!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/8d56a1049279345a3a84fd0e5d527115e4f78052.png\"][/img]
Is that it? NO!
Scrabdackle\'s also in TWO other Steam showcases/features right now!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/d071cde5be9fa81b695595a4e9acf37913931b4d.png\"][/img]
The Fellow Traveller Publisher Sale!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/e1638662f5dec3d7fd2d90d01bfeb45ceb9a339f.png\"][/img]
The sale is running until Sept 29th, and is a great source of story-rich and narrative-focused games to check out, if you\'ve been hankering for something new!
(This sale\'s actually been live since the 15th, I\'ve just been too busy with the demo update to write anything about it, aha - sorry gang!)
Wander Stars is also launching tomorrow, on Sept 19th! In its own words: \"Unleash custom attacks by combining words in this Super! Anime! Turn-Based! RPG!\" You\'ll find it front and center on the sale page; go check it out and wishlist it if it piques your interest!
LINK: Fellow Traveller Publisher Sale!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/d071cde5be9fa81b695595a4e9acf37913931b4d.png\"][/img]
The Wonders of Wizardry Sale!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/c1fa9473e32dec7082c52beb8a2b395552b79313.png\"][/img]
We\'re also part of the Wonders of Wizardry sale, running until Sept 26th! Although it\'s a \'sale\' by name, it\'s also about showcasing upcoming games (like us!) that have a focus on wizards and spellcasting as a central theme/aesthetic/setting/vibe!
I haven\'t seen the other games it in yet actually (I\'ll be seeing the page for the first time when it goes live today!) so I\'m pretty excited to see who else is doing what in the \'wizard game\' space!
LINK: Wonders of Wizardry Sale
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/8d56a1049279345a3a84fd0e5d527115e4f78052.png\"][/img]
Whew, okay, that\'s actually it for right now! Release date announcement still to come, we\'re not there yet.
Really excited for you all to finally see this work I\'ve been doing in the background all summer!
[img src=\"https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steamcommunity/public/images/clans/41080805/c80cb7f2132945596cb02968ab390f22892438cc.png\"][/img]
Hi everyone! Ive been a bit quiet lately while working on some pretty big changes behind the scenes, but Im finally ready to share them with you.
The main news is:
Scrabdackle: Act 1 will be releasing soon, targeting this fall/winter!
Whats Act 1?
Scrabdackle is divided into 3 narrative acts, which each give the player a main goal to work towards, a bunch of new regions to explore in any order you like, and a capstone final region that you can access once youve made enough overall progress. Each one is pretty huge - I'm expecting a first playthrough of all three acts to land in the 40-50 total hour range at this point. My publisher and I have decided to release Scrabdackle with the Act 1 content first, then update it with Act 2 content when that's ready, and then Act 3 content to conclude the full game (all as one game on Steam - it's not DLC or anything). More on what that means in the next section, I'll stay with explaining the 'acts' for now!
Completing a given act brings you to a new narrative plateau going in to the next one, as each act builds on previous ones in both story and gameplay: Act 2 adds to Act 1s map, and Act 3 does again, with later shortcuts connecting back to earlier areas you may have once thought were dead-ends in earlier Acts, and with later spells allowing for new traversal and combat options in earlier parts of the game. Characters from Act 1 might have more to say later in the game about the events of Act 2, or you may find new quests or content in older regions related to new discoveries youve made. You can also leave some Act 1 content for later, and come back to approach it with more spells and resources from later Acts.
Act 1: The Way Back Home takes Blue back to their academy to find out why a dark wizard attacked it, and covers about 10 regions and 9 bosses. It takes somewhere between 12-15 hours to complete all the main content on a blind first playthrough, and up to 17-18 if youre looking to find every secret and finish every sidequest. And some other neat stats like: Act 1 has about an hour and a half of music, and about 65k words of dialogue + in-character journal entries. Its a big game - heres a little breakdown!
This act division is how the game has always been structured - were just choosing to release it episodically to match those divisions rather than all at once, because after some discussion, everyone involved thinks its going to make for the best overall player experience. Basically, were trying to treat it less like a whole season of television being dropped at once, and more like releasing an episode at a time with some room to breathe and mull on new understandings and story developments in between.
(It also means getting to play through large parts of the game years earlier than you would otherwise! Which is something Im really excited to share.)
How does an episodic release work?
Well be launching Scrabdackle in early access on Steam, with the first third of the games content. Roughly a year afterwards (this is a loose target, mind you!) well add Act 2 to the game, and eventually after that, Act 3 and the finale in a final content patch that will take the game out of Early Access. No future content is going to be restricted to DLC or anything like that.
Basically, you still only buy the game once - you just get Acts 1 and 2 early, in this model.
In terms of how this affects the full games release date - mooostly it doesnt. Theres extra work I need to be doing for marketing, but a lot of the release-readiness tasks are getting moved from before launching Act 3 to before Act 1, so dev-tasks-wise its more just shuffling existing timings around rather than adding time.
Some other anticipated questions:
Whens the release date? Or when will you be able to say?
Were looking at late-ish this calendar year, but not announcing until were fully sure. Theres always room for unexpected delays in gamedev, and thats an order of magnitude riskier with a single point of failure / bottleneck (thats me). If any kind of personal emergency happens, for instance, things have to totally go on hold as no one can really run with the ball without me. So well let you know closer-to!
Will the game be releasing anywhere other than Steam?
Not during Early Access. For the Act 3 1.0 update, that could in theory change, but that decision is a ways down the line.
What languages will Scrabdackle be localized to?
For now, just English - the large amount of writing in the game means the cost to localize a single language is pretty high, so thats going to be something we let sales justify or not. Im not opening the door to community localization efforts at this time, but potentially I could revisit that if we still cant finance a professional one after we hit 1.0 (although its presently not my preference).
Will the demo be updating for the Act 1 release?
Dunno yet! The release build has a ton of optimizations, bugfixes, and quality of life changes that the current demo build doesnt, and Id really like to update the demo before then so that it also gets these improvements, but its not a sure thing. At the end of the day, the launch is my primary focus, and that just might not leave enough time for a demo update. At whatever future point I do update the demo, though, I should (I hope!) be able to keep it up-to-date with various subsequent improvements from that point on.
Whats the price going to be?
Weve got a working ballpark, but Id rather not set any expectations until that gets locked in. Ill let you know later down the line!
Will there be a way to purchase the soundtrack?
Yes! But TBD on the specifics, for now.
Im a Kickstarter backer - how does this affect my rewards?
Nothing should be impacted other than some delivery timelines moving forward, but theres more info here in the most recent campaign update! (Also, thanks again for backing!)
Hows development been going? Its been a bit!
I havent updated here recently, yeah! Largely Ive just been trucking away at making a (shockingly) large game on my own, but I write a big development update for the Kickstarter campaign every season, and I write about what Im working on pretty continuously on the Scrabdackle discord server! Heres where the KS updates are - the most recent one starts by echoing most of this Steam post, but the back half talks more about ongoing and upcoming development.
I really want this to succeed - how can I get more involved?
The main thing that helps is spreading the word, but! In the past, weve set up a sort of rally group of voluntary supporters on the Discord to mobilize the community for help with things like the 2021 Kickstarter, and if youre interested in that, then joining the Discord server would be amazing!
Aaaand a LudoNarraCon stream!
Okay, so yes, the Act 1 release plan was the focus of this announcement - but since LudoNarraCon is starting today, and as Scrabdackle is an official selection, I wanted to do something else for that, too! During LNC, there will be a looping pre-recorded video on the store page of me playing through the Duck Castle content, which is outside the bounds of the demo. If youre trying to stay spoiler-blind, you can scroll down and not pay it any mind, but if you want to see some more of how the games looking right now, its about 75 minutes from the start of the recording to the end, after Ive beaten the boss and poked around for some post-boss secrets in the dungeon.
This is my first time doing this sort of thing, so its a bit experimental and I erred on the side of simple, but if its interesting I had some other ideas for different types of videos and/or commentary that I could try putting on the store page in the future!
(Also, check out the LudoNarraCon page if you havent , its really cool and loaded with neat narrative games!)
All right, thats it for now! Interested to hear any thoughts, questions, and feedback you might have about all this, but overall its a change Im really excited about, and I hope you are too!
The Annual Fellow Traveller Publisher Sale starts today with up to 90% off story rich games!
Take me to the Publisher SaleThere are plenty of indie narrative titles on sale from Fellow Traveller - so whether you're looking for something new, a bargain, some cool soundtracks and bundles, or even something to play on Steam Deck, we're sure to have something just for you.
If you haven't already, make sure to check out the Scrabdackle demo and wishlist below to stay up-to-date with the latest news and announcements!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1578720/Scrabdackle/
Sale ends 24th September, so get in quick!
Fellow Traveller sat down with the solo developer jakefriend to talk about the games development, the influence of Zelda, secret areas, and more.
Fellow Traveller (FT): Who is Jakefriend? Tell us about yourself!
Hello! Im jakefriend, or Jake, a solo developer living near Toronto, Canada. I was a hobbyist game developer (as well as hobbyist musician and artist) back in the 2010s, and never had an intention to make a career out of any of my more creative pursuits. COVID happened, and I decided to make a small demo for my pandemic hobby project for fun, which got strangely popular, and well one thing sort of led to another! Ive been doing this full-time since a successful Kickstarter in early 2021, with a really tight-knit and friendly community thats been with me the whole way.
FT: Tell us about Scrabdackle. Hows development going? Whats it about?
Scrabdackle is a game set in a fantasy world where you play as a novice student wizard, Blue, whos been abruptly thrust out of their sheltered life for the first time, and who comes to learn and appreciate the world and the people living in it. Its all about the joy of exploration, the value and strength of communities, and that its worth standing and fighting for a better world for everyone. Though, it wasnt always about these things! I set out just to make something fun and playful, and it feels in a weird way like a lot of the themes sort of emerged on their own as I spent more time in the setting.
FT: Scrabdackle is described as a zeldalike adventure. To what extent did the top-down Zelda games influence your design?
Im a huge fan of the older top-down Zeldas! Theres a ton of charm to me in a game with a large, open world, discrete screens to get familiar with, and simple controls for combat and navigation. While Scrabdackle isnt evoking the classic Zelda aesthetic, the spirit is definitely there, in its nonlinearity and interest in a large, sprawling, continuous world that slowly opens up to you, filled with challenges and curiosities.
FT: Even the Scrabdackle demo is full of secret areas. How many total secrets are there to discover in the game?
The whole game is pretty jam-packed! A favorite from the demo is a hidden cave full of trash bandits. A few nearby characters hint that theres a bandit lair somewhere on the south side of the river, and theres one spot along the river thats got a bandit guarding seemingly nothing. If you poke around and find the hidden entrance, not only do you have a small challenge event that nets you a secret collectible, but you also meet a major character earlier than you might otherwise, which opens up new dialogue paths with them in the future! Theres tons of optional content hidden for observant players to find throughout every area (and theres a LOT of areas!).
FT: Weve heard that when youre developing a game, people tend to get attached to certain items, NPCs, enemies, and so on. What has been your favorite to design for the game?
Ooh, tough question! Its probably Flamajesty, the duck emperor, who is a giant, prideful flamingo. You dramatically duel them on a rooftop at sunset, and their moveset is really all over the place and a lot of fun sometimes they use their long neck and beak as a blade, sometimes as a jackhammer, and sometimes they spin like a top to close the distance between you! Its a really charming character design to me, although it was quite a lot of work to animate!
FT: Thank you for talking about Scrabdackle with us!
To stay up to date with Scrabdackle and jakefriend, make sure to hit that wishlist button, visit the website , follow Jakefriend and us on Twitter or join in the discussion on the Fellow Traveller Discord server.
The Annual Fellow Traveller Publisher Sale starts today, with up to 90% off narrative games
Take me to the Publisher SaleThere are plenty of indie narrative titles on sale from Fellow Traveller - so whether you're looking for something new, a bargain, some cool soundtracks and bundles, or even something to play on Steam Deck, we're sure to have something just for you.
Sale ends 1st October.
Along with Scrabdackle, there are two new games joining the Fellow Traveller family; Wander Stars and Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo - read up on each of them below!
- Wander Stars : Follow the story of Ringo and Wolfe as they join forces to collect the pieces of the Wanderstar Map in this turn-based RPG with roguelite elements! Use words to create your own fighting techniques, befriend your rivals, and explore the universe in an adventure inspired by 90s anime.
- Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo : A 3D adventure where you play as Kulebra, a dead snake with a heart of gold that wakes up in Limbo. Use your wits and keen eye to gather clues from the residents and find items that will help uncover the mystery of Limbo and its curse that traps souls into repeating the same day on loop.
Today we can finally reveal that we have signed a publishing agreement with the indie publisher, Fellow Traveller.
Fellow Traveller are an indie publisher focusing on narrative video games and who also run LuddoNarraCon . We're delighted to be working with them to bring Scrabdackle to the gaming community.
Stay tuned for more details later this year.
The Ducklands region has been greatly expanded, with a bevy of content, features, and gameplay optimizations to boot!
Journey further into the woods, plains, marshes, and gardens of the Ducklands, finding new weaponry and allies to help you venture across the Scrabdackle landscape.
[u]New content this update[/u]:
- The Ducklands region has been heavily expanded
- A new spell to learn
- Many new lore entries and collectibles to uncover
- Several new enemies, NPCs, and soundtracks
- A scrying-based sidequest rewarding players familiar with their lore!
- A huge amount of new dialogue
- A golf minigame!
The Ducklands are accessible from every other demo region, in the northwest of the current map. The region is by far the largest planned - while many new screens have been added, only about half of the region is accessible within the demo.
There are also a few new major features to talk about on their own:
[u]The Challenge Menu[/u]:
- This menu serves as a customizable difficulty manager that serves any players preference. Choose between 4 presets to determine how intense you want your experience to be, or open the advanced settings to customize every slider and toggle yourself!
- Challenge Mode presets do not restrict any content, and can be changed any time without judgement. No achievements will ever be restricted to certain challenge settings. Play the way that feels best for you!
- Your existing save file will be set to the way of the Poet, and new game files will prompt you to select a preset on first play.
- Somehow, you begin to suspect even this menu has its secrets
[u]The Sticker Binder[/u]:
- This menu, accessible once youve found at least one sticker, can be opened up to browse your stickers and pop them on to your academy notebook for fun, bonus decoration.
- You can also see which stickers youre missing here, as their silhouette will be visible. All visible stickers are collectible in the current demo.
- Share your best covers using F12 to take an in-game screenshot!
[u]Other notable changes[/u]:
- Significant optimization improvements
- Hundreds (not exaggerating) of bugs patches and and quality-of-life improvements have been implemented
- The magic casting system has been adjusted to be clearer and more satisfying
- Falling into water or a pit now deals light damage, and correspondingly, a ledge detection feature has been added to prevent accidental pitfalls. (Hazard damage can be disabled in the Challenge Menu).
This work was largely completed by early November last year, but I ended up needing to focus on something new for a while and get away from the mentality of always updating the demo. Its lighter on content than the Blustergust Ridge update, but thats partially because the content Ive been working on mostly will not appear in demo updates, and partially because some of the focus of this update was on depth of systems and polishing the experience, not breadth of new things to do.
From here, I am not going to be focusing on further demo work - Id like to eventually add a new spell in once Ive completed it for an upcoming region, but it wont be a major update, just a patch. The demo may receive some tuning and optimizations here and there as I implement them out for the full game, but at the moment the demo is functionally both content-complete and systems-complete.
If youre excited about the game, please pop by our Discord server to hang out! Theres a large, active community to talk lore with, talk speedrun strategies, and generally hang around and play games with!
Cheers!
Jake
The Blustergust Ridge region has been added to the demo!
Travel to the windy canyons at the base of Mt. Blustergust to find a new part of Scrabdackle, filled with new challenges to beat and characters to meet.
[u]New content this update[/u]:
- A new region, with its own soundtrack and unique environment
- 4 new enemies
- 1 new miniboss
- Several new unique NPCs and landmarks
- 14 new lore entries
- Many new challenges, quests, and collectibles
- A new spell to learn
- 4,000 words of dialogue
- A new type of challenge/obstacle I'll let you discover for yourself...
To find Mt. Blustergust, make your way northeast from either the Ducklands or the Rubble Ruins.
(Note - a major piece of new content may seem like it's not new if you don't have the Dashing Boots yet. If so, I'd recommend going to grab them afterwards for an extra surprise!)
[u]Other key changes and improvements[/u]:
- A new lighting system has been added to make caves dark and dim areas more atmospheric
- A few older music tracks have been updated with a fresh coat of aural paint
- A huge variety of bugfixes are in place!
This will be one of the last content updates for the demo - I'd like to add in a little more Ducklands content and another player spell ability or two to tie things off in a state I'm happy with for the remainder of update-less development, to better show off the spell swap system, but TB on when that will be.
See you on the ridge!
Jake
New content:
- 6th star added, found in the Rubble Ruins. If you found the skull island and felt underwhelmed before - head on back and have a fresh look!
Changes and fixes:
- Arena softlocking resolved (arena system entirely rewritten)
- New arena wall visual style
- Adjustments to a few enemies' knockback and hit recoil, like Trash Bandits, so that their charge attack can't be denied.
What's coming up next?
I'm well underway on the Blustergust Ridge region and am preparing to put it into the demo as a next content update, once I'm sure there's no more critical patching necessary for the current build. That should include another miniboss, some challenges and secrets, and a new spell!There's a good amount of small things to tweak in terms of bugfixes and cleanup, but that isn't going to be my priority, for now, until the demo content is resolved. Thanks to all who have been reporting them!
The "To-Do List" quest system and the S.E.E. hint system are now fully implemented!
Open your minimap with Enter and swap from Free Roam Mode to the To-Do List (or TDL) with Tab to see a variety of quests and pieces of information you've learned about them. Quests will auto-complete when their resolution circumstances are met, but will continue to appear under the 'Resolved' view of the TDL.
I'd recommend starting a new game to get the best experience of the system. Note that some hints won't always be hearable! You won't get hints for completed quests, of course, but you also might not be able to get some until you progress a quest far enough (try visiting a S.E.E. kiosk after defeating Waking Fossil!) or until you've already encountered the quest elsewhere.
21 quests, 75 entries, and 15 hints have been added to the game, or about 2,500 words all together! Enjoy!
Minimum Setup
- OS: Ubuntu 14+Memory: 2 GB RAMStorage: 200 MB available space
- Memory: 2 GB RAMStorage: 200 MB available space
- Storage: 200 MB available space
Recommended Setup
- OS: Ubuntu 14+Memory: 3 GB RAMStorage: 200 MB available space
- Storage: 200 MB available space
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