Hey Guild Leaders! This month I worked a lot on the new areas. Without further ado, here's some of what I've been working on during September.

New Areas

This month, I worked a lot on the new areas for early access - these two areas are: 1. The Bandit Stronghold
2. The City of Mist
With both of these areas, I've tried making them appear like they're places people live in (or used to live in, in the case of the city of mist).
Automatons will patrol the forgotten rooftop markets... (work-in-progress)
Vines of lichen will creep up the walls, while gears litter the ground.
And oddities might appear in the bandit's living quarters...
(And yes, you can shoot the targets)
Walking alongside the edge will make tiny bits of the towers fall below, reminding you of the danger of falling - or making for a dramatic effect when one is pushed off the edge.
Bridges also animate (alongside with whomever is standing on top of them).

Mist System

A vicious natural phenomena will affect your expeditions into the forgotten city of mist area - that is, the mist itself! When descending a floor, you'll be greeted by a "weather prediction" -
Forecasting the mist in that area. Every certain amount of combat rounds, the mist will rise up! It will stay there for a couple of turns and obscure your vision. [previewyoutube=Md7ijLZjv7M;full][/previewyoutube] It will pretty much "turn off" the vision of your non-current units. On top of that, every time you start your turn in the mist, it'll rotate your character randomly and move them to an adjacent tile you can step on. [previewyoutube=wMLlPsOLuJE;full][/previewyoutube] When you do discover a unit, ally or enemy through the mist, they'll stay there for the reminder of your turn (not round). WAIT! THAT SUCKS, THOUGH? It totally does! The mist is an environmental hazard, and it turns combat into an information-gathering game. But... there's ways to counter it, and upsides!! For example... - It only stays for a few rounds, so you can always wait it out. Maybe an ok option for defensive builds is stalling this way. - High movement builds let you scout around better and discover enemies / allies and set up attacks. - It can be countered to a limited degree with the "track" ability - The "burn" status effect counters it to an extent too by appearing through the mist The mist might be keeping something worse at bay, too...

Enemies

I've started working on the enemies for the new area this month too! Among them, two interesting ones are;

The "hungry grubs" - part of the mist moth hives. These little creatures swarm to your position. Even if they deal small damage and have low health, they're can become a real danger by cornering and overwhelming your characters with their numbers.

The "spitter grub" is going to spit weak but long poison at your characters from afar! Poison activates when attacking, so if this spitter grub has support, getting rid of them (especially using "free action" abilities) becomes tougher. On top of that, it'll slow your characters down, making reaching this enemy and stopping them tougher. Its main weaknesses are its limited range and limited movement.
I've been working on other enemies too, which I'll post about at the next update in about a month from now (:

Composer

After a long process of interviewing multiple composers and asking them for demo tracks for Netherguild, I teamed up with the extremely talented Daniele "Elrehon" Coppola! [previewyoutube=hEvTZVeXX0M;full][/previewyoutube] This is his demo submission for the bandit stronghold's soundtrack.

Notable Mentions...

There's more things I worked on this month! Since I can't fit everything from the weekly Netherguild Discord, I figured I'd drop a few honorable mentions.
Shooting from (or towards) a high-up tile will work differently to how shooting is normally done - it's tougher to shoot higher tiles from below (so you can only really shoot the ledge).
This means heightened tiles give much needed tactical freedom to ranged characters.
"Air canisters" are an idea I've been toying with for the city of mist - They'd work a bit like explosive barrels, but instead of dealing damage, they just push units away when exploding. This opens up the way to new strategies like attacking gas canisters with melee characters or pushing the canisters themselves, for a deadly combo that eventually pushes an enemy off the ledge, down to the next floor.
Netherguild will also take part in the Dreamhack steam event in the middle of October! An updated demo might arrive before or around that time too (if I find time between all the work on the new areas!). Also, welcome to all the new guild leaders who found about about Netherguild from the Tacticon event last month! Glad to have you here :D

The end

And that's all for this update! What a productive month. Thank you for checking it out, I hope it made for a fun read :D Cheers and have a great October! -David This is a summery of weekly updates over on the Netherguild Discord

[ 2022-10-07 16:42:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Netherguild is a turn-based tactical roguelite dungeon-crawler, where you command expeditions below the earth in a desperate attempt to cure a strange plague.
Explore, camp, and fight as far as you can before heading back to resupply.
What will you discover underground?

Key Features:

Bonfires:
Construct campfires underground, rest and eat next to them. The food items you consume affect your guild members and the rest of your expedition, with passive effects, permanent changes and more!
──────────────────────────────────────────


Combat:
Learn how to defeat different enemies (and when to flee) in combat. Hitting enemies requires no RNG - so you can depend on your abilities, but watch out for tricky enemies that are immune to your strategy, unfortunate circumstances and surprises!
In Netherguild, combat is another form of resource management- how can you prevent your characters from getting hurt, or receiving harmful debuffs? When is it the right time to use a powerful ability, when should you save it for later?
──────────────────────────────────────────────────


Oddities:
Different oddities you find underground will present you with various choices that may affect your expedition and the game world at large.
────────────────────────────────────────────────


The World Above:
While you explore below, different events may happen above-ground, presenting opportunity and choice when you return from expeditions.
────────────────────────────────────


Replay Value:
Random equipment, random character backgrounds with different skills each playthrough and procedurally generated levels every time you descend underground mean that playthroughs feel different every time.
────────────────────────────────────

Additional Features:

• Roguelite with Persistence and Story: Keep your characters at the end of each expedition (if they survive), equip them with powerful items and level them up over time. Netherguild's story progresses the more you explore and find out about the secrets of its world.
  
• Dungeon Crawling Resource Management: Powerful abilities have a limited amount of uses. Your characters have limited inventory space. What is more important? The priceless loot you bring up back to the surface, or the firewood logs that let you descend even deeper?
  
• Original Game World: Netherguild may be fantasy, but don't expect it to play by genre conventions at all; No Orcs, no Elves, and no wizards casting fireballs. Expect to find strange biospheres and denizens far underground.
  
• Cute Voxel Aesthetics: Contrasted by a story with serious themes, as you face against plague and conspiracy!
  
• Solo Developed: I'm always happy to get feedback, suggestions and inspiration from players. You can reach me through various channels such as my twitter, the Netherguild discord and Netherguild Steam forum. If you love Netherguild, dislike something about it, or you have a fantastic idea you think should be added to the game, please let me know! :D

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1464220/Netherguild/

Early Access: Risks, Plans and Expectations:

• Risks: It's possible that during development, I would run out of money and wouldn't be able to continue full time development.
  If that were to happen, I'll take up part time or full time work and develop Netherguild in my spare time. This game will be finished as long as I'm physically able to work on it.
  I'm doing everything in my power to combat this risk - for example, marketing and getting to a certain number of wishlists before release should prevent it from ever occurring - but I think it's still important to be honest about risks like this before release.
  If you want Netherguild to be successful, help me out! Let your friends, favorite streamer or gaming news site know about this game (:
  
• Plans: Updates will happen in regular intervals; With a new update every week to three weeks. I would like to have weekly / bi-weekly updates for the most part, but of course that depends on development, with bigger changes taking longer to update, but containing more content and additions.
  
• Expectations: Expect progress to be slow and steady- being a solo dev means I can't finish the game in a year, and big updates will take time. Also, expect me to always be active on the Netherguild discord during Early Access, listening to your feedback.