Welcome

Hey there! It's been a while since I've posted an update here, but I've finally gotten some time to give another one. There's been a lot of things added, but here are some highlights!

Updates to the combat system

I've changed the combat system in Dreadwinter, from a hack and slash dungeon crawler, to a turn-based card battler. I wasn't happy with how the previous system played, and I didn't enjoy working on it. Rather than work on something I didn't like, and end up with something that wasn't great, I thought it would be better to change it to something I actually enjoyed working on.

If you're interested in how it works, check out my blog post or my youtube devlog .

Outside of that, you're still exploring dungeons like before, but now you can buy packs from Blunder Muffin, the local hobby store, to acquire new cards and upgrade your deck!

Game intros

One thing I've been meaning to add to Dreadwinter is an actual game intro, to give a bit of background to your player, and the world that they live in. There are 3 different intros, depending on the lifestyle you imagine yourself living, before you become a part of Dreadwinter.

These are based on the 3 different playstyles you can focus on, adventuring, business, and coffee. There are small bonuses depending on the path you choose, but how the game plays out after is up to you!

Updating the game

I started working on Dreadwinter nearly 3 years ago, and a lot of the core assets and gameplay were made quite early on, so the quality is a bit lacking, compared to what my standards are now. I've hit a point where I'm trying to update the parts of the game that are now toddler aged, to make the quality consistent, before moving on to anything else.

A lot of the changes probably aren't noticeable, unless you've being paying close attention since the start, but there were a lot of things that I think were messy, or unclear, which have been improved on.

Cafe customisation

One of the core features of Dreadwinter's gameplay is to be able to customise your cafe to your desire, but I hadn't got around to actually being able to acquire furniture and decorations in the game. The furniture store, run by our resident talking pumpkin, has been around for a while, but it didn't have anything on sale. Not anymore!

You can buy furniture from a "catalogue" in the store, but there is also a selection of seasonal furniture on display, which you can buy by interacting with it. As the name suggests, this is a selection of furniture that is only available during certain seasons, and rotates at the end of the month. It's a bit fancier than the regular furniture, and therefore costs more, so make sure you save up for when it's available!

I'm also working on adding pets to the cafe. You can adopt them from the store, and they'll spend their time in the cafe, being cute and running around. Your first pet can be adopted for free, but additional animals require you to expand Dreadwinter to a certain level.

Steam Deck/Controller Support

The last thing I wanted to talk about is adding support for the Steam Deck, which would include controller support. From testing on my own Steam Deck, Dreadwinter is already playable and runs fine, but a lot of the menus are designed for mouse and keyboard, and don't have controller support.

You can run around and make coffee without any problems, but you may have trouble accessing your inventory, unless you bind a trackpad to function as a mouse.

I'm working on adding in full controller functionality, which I've found isn't as difficult as I thought it would be, but there's a lot of menus to rework.


That's it for this update! Thanks for reading, and I'll see you in the next one!

-Alex

[ 2025-05-05 17:03:43 CET ] [Original Post]