If you like Golden Krone Hotel, you can thank the Seven Day Roguelike Challenge which spawned it. I've been doing 7DRL for 10 years now. This year I decided to try something a bit strange: a rhythm game. The official judging process has concluded and somehow my game Conga Dungeon ranked #1. I urge you to check out the games. There are a ton of amazing entries.
Along with Conga Dungeon and three GKH updates over the last year, I've also been working here and there on expanding Leyliner, a cross between a traditional roguelike and a deckbuilder. We just put out v1.4 and the game now has over 90 cards.

So what's next?

I've got two new projects here that I think are awesome, but I can't do everything. Leyliner feels like a long-burn process which might have a many years long Early Access period (what I should have done with GKH really). Conga Dungeon on the other hand is probably the coolest idea (with the most mainstream appeal) I've ever come up with. I'm thinking about taking a few months to craft a nice trailer, a preview of where the game could go if I stuck with it. If people find it interesting, that'll be the validation I need to keep going on that project. I do want to return to Leyliner in the near future though. And maybe, who knows, I've got enough energy for more GKH after that. Any thoughts on which of these two projects I should be pursuing? Let me know.

[ 2023-05-05 03:08:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update fixes several bugs and balance issues introduced in v1.10 as well as fixing the lag when encountering lots of monsters/obstacles (pretty noticeable sometimes on Steam Deck).
One big UI issue was the lack of potion tooltips when playing on controller or Steam Deck. All menus with potions now show the full potion tooltip. So with these two improvements to Steam Deck playability, I can say without reservation it's a damn great experience on that platform. One other neat feature: you can mark Hawker items to buy later. Gameplay changes:

• New monster: Skeleton Archers
• Added the ability to mark Hawker items to buy later. These are highlighted on the Hawker menu and the Hotel Map.
• Removed intelligence bonuses from TOUCH and EXECUTE and lowered the thresholds slightly on the latter to: 20/40/60/80
• Lowered VORTEX damage, since it was arguably the most efficient spell in the game
• Added spike rooms into map generation
• The chance of finding swords and revolvers has been increased, since these particular items are so important but armor items are mostly interchangeable.
• Now preventing levitation with Big, but allowing it Statue Form.
• Slightly lowered the speed of the Spiridus
• Reduced the spawn rate of Iron Maidens

Other:

• Fixed the performance issues related to too many monsters by caching monster sprites. This can be disabled in Options if it causes any problems, but it should resolve performance problems on Steam Deck.
• Fixed a bug where hovering a particular icon showed the real identity of a potion. Yikes!
• Fixed an issue with Options on Steam Deck where using the cursor didn't actually change options
• Now preventing transmutation to the same potion
• Now grouping Primer menu by bundles
• Fixed an erroneous log message when using BLAST and hitting no targets
• Added some achievements related to SECRETS
• Fixed an issue where template rooms that should have items sometimes did not
• Fixed a display issue when Officer leveled up and full healed
• Fixed a bug related to fighting Fane but leaving to go somewhere else
• Apparently seeds were completely broken (such that map generation would diverge immediately after the first room) since the last update. This should be fixed
• The streak counter on Despair mode now runs negative. Sorry.
• Fixed an issue with allies not fighting mimics
• Fixed a bug where you wouldn't stop resting when being attacked by mimics
• Fixed a minor issue where the player is less than 1 hp from full and full hp is displayed, but books are not read yet.
• Fixed a map generation connector issue (you might have seen areas blocked off strangely)
• Fixed some issues with monsters pursuing you due to visibility or noise
• Added option to Morgue to toggle sorting between Score and Date and defaulting to the latter so that your newest entries are at the top
• Fixed a bug with chairs spawning in walls
• Added icon to Floor 10 in Hotel Map showing the GOLDEN KRONE
• Unexplored floors are now highlighted differently than explored ones on the Hotel Map
• Changing status description for multiple stacks to say "Status+2" instead of "Status-2", which was confusing.
• Fixed "NaN" hit chance descriptions when deluded
• Removed Vortex Solomonari from the Rafters
• Adding current version to Options and Morgue files
• Fixed a "double level up" issue which actually turned out to be a missed stat increase from an earlier level up
• The Ring Acquired menu now closes on the press of any button
• Fixed a bug with diagonal buttons on the Hotel Map closing the menu
• Fixed a save/load bug where the levers in the Dungeon no longer appeared
• Added that sweet Zyalin art from the v1.7 update screen as a collectible page in the Books & Letters menu
• Showing the same green flashing on your character when Heavy Poisoned as just Poisoned
• Fixed a bug where Antidote wouldn't remove Heavy Poison if you had no Poison
• Styling changes to potion tooltips

[ 2023-01-13 15:26:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

This update includes full Steam Deck support including achievements, solid controls, and controller rumble. Golden Krone Hotel already played well on controller and it's now a great fit for Steam Deck. The only known issue: there's occasional lag in some areas with a lot of monsters or animated tiles; I hope to address this in the future.
A new branch, 3 new spells, and 5 new monsters have also been added. Significant changes were made to the game's overall strategy, which now makes it easier to plan out your run but trickier to kill later bosses (which previously felt a bit too easy). Read on for even more... If you're keeping track, this is the 5th major update since I claimed I wouldn't update the game again. Woops.

Major changes:

• Steam deck support
• Controller rumble
• New branch DUNGEON: Dodge spikes while facing a new human boss. This is a random swap out for Library.
• 5 new monsters including...
• Jester: a new vampire that jumps in a knight's move and attacks with poison knives causing Hysteria
• Bishop: a high level vampire that has a large area charged attack
• Floating Eye: another monster that can cast GAZE, but only if its eyelid is open
• Champion: a new mid level human with a charge attack
• Vortex Solomonar: a Solomonar variant that casts VORTEX
• New spell TOUCH: a single use spell that deals 50% of a monster's HP and heals your HP/MP for that amount
• New spell EXECUTE: kills an enemy below 30/50/70/90% HP (based on spell level)
• New spell HONE: grants stacking Clever bonuses
• The Hotel Map now shows the ring contained in each floor you've discovered
• Hotel bosses now get bonus stats for every ring you've acquired (5% health, 2 strength, 1 intelligence)
• Some of the harder bosses have been made easier, initially, to compensate for ring bonus stats
• New item: Hotel Map, which populates the location of all floors and rings on your Hotel Map menu
• Clarity has been added to monster descriptions, particularly around hit chances. Hit chances are also shown when you miss an attack. Thanks to redxaxder for some calculus wizardry on this!
• There's now support for win streak tracking in the Disguise menu (optional), morgue files, and leaderboards
• Added some holiday event art and added an option for it (you might have to manually enable it if you're interested)

Other changes:

• Added juice to Level Up and ring menus
• Some crates now have gold in them. They have a different sprite to indicate this, so while there's now incentive to destroy some obstacles (we know you love to do it) you don't have to waste your time when there's no reward
• Overall gold generation has been cut down dramatically.
• Gold drops are now based on monster XP level rather than a weird calculation based on floor number
• Right click now closes menus
• You can now examine tooltips using keyboard/controller
• Added Examine controls on disguise menu
• Added Examine button to main UI
• Abilities are now listed on monster descriptions
• Vague threat levels removed from monster descriptions
• Monsters now try to avoid damaging tiles when wandering
• Player accuracy raised by a single point, making it overall easier to hit things
• It's also now very slightly easier to hit things with revolver
• Added option to "relock" all unlocks
• Full potion menu now accessible from Quick Potions menu by hitting the same key
• Out of depth monster generation has been tweaked, hope you brought your adult diapers
• You now only read books when at full health
• Made imps less dangerous
• Added human-only mode accessible in Options (not advised, but there you go)
• Discord link added to upgrade menu
• Removed some of the warnings around starvation before you're actually starving. No longer necessary because you no longer instantly die of starvation.
• Reduced big bomb damage slightly in despair mode
• Clever now increases mana regen
• ROUNDHOUSE hits all neighbors in 4-way movement
• Changed sound volume so it falls off faster with distance
• Increased the chance of broken windows on the first floor
• Changed chests so they are immune to damage
• Styling a few statuses better
• Version number added to Options menu
• Redrew a few ring sprites to make them more distinct
• The Sovereign and Signet ring bonuses have been swapped because the swap better matches the ring art
• New floor sprite in the mix
• Some animation effects now rotate

Bug fixes:

• Fixed Fetter, it was completely broken before
• Fixed some major isssues related to monsters moving on a different floor resulting in glitchy monster artifacts (most commonly seen in Great Hall or Rafters)
• Better overall error handling to hopefully more often recover from and log some fatal crashes
• Fixed several issues with BIG and sounds/screenshake
• Fixed a bug where you aren't damaged immediately when pulled into water. The solution involves the player being processed after monster turns, always. This might have minor unforeseen consquences.
• No longer playing sounds while waiting, which should avoid some audio weirdness because 50 turns of sounds aren't played in an instant
• Fixed a bug where Heavy Poison wasn't removed by Antidote
• Now requiring Rusalka to be in their starting pool to entrance you (to avoid a softlock issue)
• Fixed a bug where deprecated spells could show up in the weekly
• Fixed a bug with psychic attack animations (slashes going in the wrong direction)
• Fixed underworld boss display on Hotel Map
• Fixed an issue with targeting the same monster repeatedly with revolver
• Fixed a bug with book sprite mismatches
• Removed the ugly scrolling completely on the disguise menu. If it doesn't fit, you can Zoom out the UI in Options
• Fixed an obscure bug in Pharmacopoeia, it's confidential
• Fixed some cheesy exploit involving chests and vamp abilities
• Fixed (for the 3rd, 4th time?) placing stairs far away from bosses
• Fixed a bug where destroying a gate removed a key, possibly even going negative
• Fixed a bug with chest mimics + stairs
• Fixed key hint display for NUMPAD buttons
• Fixed random disguise selection which wasn't random on game load
• Fixed Quills Shield status description
• Fixed yet another bug with Underworld boss deaths in case you killed boss + throne on the same turn
• Fixed a save/load bug where Day Demons went back into stasis unexpectedly
• Fixed Fire Mother half health bug
• Fixed some bugs with reading books
• Fixed broken tooltip control hint on Quick Potions

Thanks to Keriew for the detailed bug reports! As always, please feel free to share your feedback on Steam or Discord. Enjoy!

[ 2022-12-21 11:58:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello, my Kronies!
Since the release of v1.9, I've actually been pretty busy with work on Leyliner. A few months ago a player informed me that the controls were completely borked on Steam Deck. I ordered a Steam Deck immediately and just got mine in the mail a few days ago. Good news: I've been able to push out a quick build on the experimental branch that appears to work surprisingly well on Steam Deck. Controls work flawlessly out of the box. It's a pretty great experience from my limited testing. Bad news: there are definitely a small handful of issues and I don't have time to fix them for at least a few days:

• I had to break achievement support on Steam Deck to get controls working (long, boring story) but hope to add it back in later
• The default zoom level might need a little work, I would recommend zooming out (top of GKH options) slightly to avoid scrollbars on certain menus
• Performance was a little bit laggy after several minutes.
• Morgue files are also broken

I have ideas for how to solve all these but need more time. In the meantime, it would be great if anyone with a steam deck could try out the experimental branch build and let me know what you think. People have been clamoring for a switch release (sorry not going to happen) and I gotta say having GKH on Steam Deck is a great fit, a dream come true.

[ 2022-10-18 22:30:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thanks to all who joined the v1.9 beta. It's now fully live. v1.9 introduces an explosive new branch plus many new spells and abilities. A huge number of small tweaks and improvements have been included.

v1.9 summary:

• New branch GREAT HALL: tons of goblins and explosions
• Three new spells: VORTEX, FETTER, and QUILLS
• Six new abilities: AURA, SHRED, WRING, GUZZLE, ASSASSINATE, and FRENZY
• Abilities now take 0 turns and can be chosen out of 3 options
• Changes to Officer, Apothecary, Assassin, Commander, and Challenger disguises
• UMBRA has been properly nerfed
• Improvements to BLINK, TEMPEST, WARD, LEVITATE, and BLAST
• Options menu reworked. Custom input delay option added to fix numerous control issues.
• Tons of bug fixes, gameplay tweaks, and UI improvements
• Noise system revisited and now shown on UI
• Secrets?!?

Full changelog: New Content

• New branch GREAT HALL: tons of goblins and explosions
• New monster Goblin Hurler: throws bomb
• New monster Balaur Hatchling: an early game version of the Balaur but this one is completely blind.
• New spell VORTEX: pulls monsters in and around you and damages flying/floating monsters
• New spell FETTER: binds a monster in magical chains that cause levitation and prevent movement
• New spell QUILLS: gives you a magical shield based on your missing health that reflects melee attack damage
• Vampire abilities now take 0 turns and can be chosen out of 3 options just like spells
• New ability AURA: a rapidly shrinking aura of immunity that can be used to shield yourself or allies
• New ability SHRED: damages monsters near you and adds Bleeding
• New ability WRING: causes non-bleeders to become bleeders
• New ability GUZZLE: collects all nearby blood
• New ability ASSASSINATE: teleport next to the closest enemy and give them stunned and vulnerable statuses for 1 turn
• New ability FRENZY: sets your HP to 1 and gives you a quills shield equal to your missing health
• New Legendary Grimoire that gives more spell options or more mana
• New MALLEABLE MODE. All spells, abilities, stat upgrades, etc. are chosen for you.
• Added 4 new entrances to the hotel
• New item Hunter's Lens: improves your critical hit chances

Graphics changes

• The explosion animation has been redrawn to look a lot better
• Chests now explode their items onto the surrounding tiles instead of just being a menu
• One turn illumination from spells now draws instantly
• Bats added to the title screen
• Added fadeouts to a few spell animations like FIRESTORM
• Primers have been colored blue to more clearly distinguish them from grimoires
• Now drawing blood behind torches... it looked really weird before
• New chair obstacle with 4 direction sprites
• Camera zooms in when talking to friendlies

Gameplay & UI

• Noise is now displayed on the main UI. Many actions that were missing noise now have them and the system has been rebalanced.
• Commander now starts with AURA, Assassin with FADE, and Alchemist with WRING
• Apothecary given another extra poison resist level
• Officer now gets a full HP/MP heal on level up
• Challenger now starts with an ability when starting as vampire
• Significantly buffed weekly challenge archenemies (they were real pushovers before)
• Raised the chance for Challenger to start as vampire to 50:50
• UMBRA has been nerfed. It should still be a great spell but not so good it trivializes the game.
• UMBRA minions are sped up but weaker, so you don't have to wait on them so much.
• No more UMBRA healing on Revenant
• Hotel stairs can now collapse. Collapsed stairs require an extra turn to climb.
• Allied vampires no longer steal your blood unless they need it and you don't
• Stun and frozen moment now reduce evasion to 0
• Fixed a bug with Vulnerable inadvertently reducing Defense. With this change, Vulnerable should cause slightly less extra damage.
• Critical chance is shown on the character sheet
• Werewolves have been reworked: They now have a huge crit chance and heal/satiate on crit
• SWAP has been folded into BLINK (if a monster is in that direction, you swap)
• TEMPEST is now a lot more consistent
• BLINK has been made more accurate with further guaranteed distance
• WARD cost reduced
• BLAST can now destroy walls starting at level 2
• QUAKE damage now requires line of sight
• LEVITATE speed up increased by 1
• Big sludge XP cut in half (because you also get XP for the spawned sludges)
• Ice House monsters are now immune to cold so they won't die in the icy water
• Spiridus has been made flying
• Demon Blood potions are again guaranteed in every run
• Bleeding now does 1 damage in Easy, 3 in Despair
• Monsters will now stay in the same relative position when climbing stairs with you if possible
• Reduced Magma Golem chance per turn to create magma
• Bounty Potion payout is now purely based on turn count which should be way more consistent
• Tooltips added to small disguise buttons
• Message added if user tries and fails to use diagonal movement for various reasons
• Moroi and Samca are now vulnerable to moonlight
• Hunter gets QUILLS now instead of ENRAGE, which wasn't really something you could play around
• Added the times when you changed form to the morgue
• Goblin Anarchist now only combusts with a 1 tile radius regardless of if they blow up before or after death

Options & Controls

• The option menu has been reworked: options are now grouped by subheaders
• All options now have detailed descriptions
• Added visible values to slider options
• Added a custom input repeat option that fixes a slew of horrible control issues for some people (this includes accidentally flying across the map if you hold down a movement key or shooting the revolver 10 times in a split second and ruining the tutorial)
• Added the ability to bind some arbitrary keys that were not supported before (e.g. Alt)
• Option added to disable xp sound
• Added a button to open the minimap
• Added a button to open the hotel map
• The "center" controller button is now mappable
• Added playstation controller icons
• Ability direction selection has been improved
• Right click now works for examine in keyboard examine mode
• The player can no longer "shoot themselves" which previously did nothing but wasted a bullet

UI

• Spell and ability names are greyed out when unusable
• Broken windows are highlighted on the minimap
• Hunger status is now shown for non-human forms like bat form
• Low level human spell casters now show all possible spells on description so you don't have to examine each one
• Resistance tooltips now have precise detail
• Shadow Form description now shows total values instead of per level values
• Added success rate chance to CHARM failure messages
• Next Page indicator on books
• Added a death tip about examine
• Added a death tip if you die with Vulnerable
• Death tips now have red highlighting on important words
• Added a note on fountain descriptions to say they might identify the associated potion

Bug fixes & Tweaks

• Fixed several display issues with the player or monsters falling in pits
• FINALLY fixed the generation of ugly doors, I think
• Fixed some display issues with the health bar
• Fixed a bug with Samca and frozen moment
• Fixed a weird display message involving Holy Water
• Fixed some dash bugs
• Fixed river portal sprite
• Fixed several ASCII display issues
• Fixed a display issue with commander and firefly
• Fixed a bug with pushing Samcas through sunlight while vulnerable
• Fixed some bugs with shadow minions dying to sunlight
• Fixed an issue with Goblin Anarchist allies hurting you, which was annoying
• Fixed some staircases not spawning far enough from boss
• Fixed a double death message from Goblin Anarchist
• Fixed a bug with talking to bats, which you can now properly do
• Fixed a bug with allies refusing to swap with you if near water
• Clarity reworded, for clarity
• Fixed a bug with tooltips overlapping hotel map and other menus
• Fixed some issues with low screenshake values overriding higher ones
• More clarity on staying in the SHADOWS in the tutorial

[ 2022-08-22 14:52:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is a followup to the last announcement that v1.9 is live on the experimental branch. Here are a few fixes and tweaks to that: Major

• Fixed a locking issue when selecting demon blood abilities after a save/load
• Chests now explode their items onto the surrounding tiles instead of just being a menu
• Greatly improved QUILLS damage
• Removed the slow moving camera system completely due to performance concerns
• Made several early game monsters have slightly less dexterity (easier to hit and dodge)

Minor

• Fixed odd staircases descriptions (e.g. "staircase to floor 17")
• Fixed a misleading UMBRA description
• Added chairs to kitchen entry
• Fixed a bug with map gen connectors that was messing up Sewers
• Fixed a small sprite bug with larva
• Removed move confirm on bomb traps
• Tweaked WRING a bit to make it less overpowered
• Fixed a longstanding issue where the resistances could get scrambled on the character sheet or morgue file
• Improving title screen rendering for fast refresh rates (already noted a bug with this though)
• Fixed an issue where Harpies would run away from you even if they couldn't see you

Thanks for all the feedback so far and please keep it coming.

[ 2022-06-28 06:10:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

tldr: You are invited to come beta test the v1.9 release which you can access in Steam through Golden Krone Hotel -> Properties -> Betas -> experimental.

v1.9 summary:

• New branch GREAT HALL: tons of goblins and explosions
• Three new spells: VORTEX, FETTER, and QUILLS
• Six new abilities: AURA, SHRED, WRING, GUZZLE, ASSASSINATE, and FRENZY
• Abilities now take 0 turns and can be chosen out of 3 options
• Changes to Officer, Apothecary, Assassin, Commander, and Challenger disguises
• UMBRA has been properly nerfed
• Improvements to BLINK, TEMPEST, WARD, LEVITATE, and BLAST
• Options menu reworked. Custom input delay option added to fix numerous control issues.
• Tons of bug fixes, gameplay tweaks, and UI improvements
• Secrets?!?

I'm usually pretty quiet about beta testing, but here's the problem. For a variety of life reasons, I've gotten in a habit of releasing only about once per year. And I only get a flood of feedback after I declare the testing done and publicly announce the release. This results in things like UMBRA being wildy broken for months which is a real shame. I've made a lot of spell and ability changes, so I'm hoping to really kick the tires this time around. Also I want to take a moment to say I'M SUPER PROUD OF THIS RELEASE. The new branch is totally wild and is one of the more interesting branches introduced so far. Some of the new art is among the best the game has ever seen including a new bomb animation. The new vampire abilities are so ridiculous that I can't believe I added them. You'll be shocked the first time you eat a... well, I don't want to spoil it all. And now we have spooky bats on the title screen (shoutout to acro for providing the bat art). :)


I've also fixed an issue that went on steathily for 5+ years and which neither the players that experienced it nor I fully understood, but which totally sucked. Some players would perform an action (like moving or firing the revolver) 10 times a second and they assumed the game was intentionally designed this way (???) so I didn't hear about it for a long time. Full changelog: New Content

• New branch GREAT HALL: tons of goblins and explosions
• New monster Goblin Hurler: throws bomb
• New spell VORTEX: pulls monsters in and around you and damages flying/floating monsters
• New spell FETTER: binds a monster in magical chains that cause levitation and prevent movement
• New spell QUILLS: gives you a magical shield based on your missing health that reflects melee attack damage
• Vampire abilities now take 0 turns and can be chosen out of 3 options just like spells
• New ability AURA: a rapidly shrinking aura of immunity that can be used to shield yourself or allies
• New ability SHRED: damages monsters near you and adds Bleeding
• New ability WRING: causes non-bleeders to become bleeders
• New ability GUZZLE: collects all nearby blood
• New ability ASSASSINATE: teleport next to the closest enemy and give them stunned and vulnerable statuses for 1 turn
• New ability FRENZY: sets your hp to 1 and gives you a quills shield equal to your missing health
• New Legendary Grimoire that gives more spell options or more mana
• New MALLEABLE MODE. All spells, abilities, stat upgrades, etc. are chosen for you.
• Added 4 new entrances to the hotel
• New item Hunter's Lens: improves your critical hit chances

Graphics changes

• The explosion animation has been redrawn to look a lot better
• One turn illumination from spells now draws instantly
• Bats added to the title screen
• Added fadeouts to a few spell animations like FIRESTORM
• Primers have been colored blue to more clearly distinguish them from grimoires
• Now drawing blood behind torches... it looked really weird before
• New chair obstacle with 4 direction sprites
• Reworked camera system that slowly follows player
• Camera pans during dramatic moments and zooms in when talking to friendlies

Gameplay & UI

• Commander now starts with AURA, Assassin with FADE, and Alchemist with WRING
• Apothecary given another extra poison resist level
• Officer now gets a full HP/MP heal on level up
• Challenger now starts with an ability when starting as vampire
• Significantly buffed weekly challenge archenemies (they were real pushovers before)
• Raised the chance for Challenger to start as vampire to 50:50
• UMBRA has been nerfed. It should still be a great spell but not so good it trivializes the game.
• UMBRA minions are sped up but weaker, so you don't have to wait on them so much.
• No more UMBRA healing on Revenant
• Hotel stairs can now collapse. Collapsed stairs require an extra turn to climb.
• Allied vampires no longer steal your blood unless they need it and you don't
• Stun and frozen moment now reduce evasion to 0
• Fixed a bug with Vulnerable inadvertently reducing Defense. With this change, Vulnerable should cause slightly less extra damage.
• Critical chance is shown on the character sheet
• Werewolves have been reworked: They now have a huge crit chance and heal/satiate on crit
• SWAP has been folded into BLINK (if a monster is in that direction, you swap)
• TEMPEST is now a lot more consistent
• BLINK has been made more accurate with further guaranteed distance
• WARD cost reduced
• BLAST can now destroy walls starting at level 2
• QUAKE damage now requires line of sight
• LEVITATE speed up increased by 1
• Big sludge XP cut in half (because you also get XP for the spawned sludges)
• Ice Houses are now immune to cold so they won't die in the icy water
• Spiridus has been made flying
• Demon Blood potions are again guaranteed in every run
• Bleeding now does 1 damage in Easy, 3 in Despair
• Monsters will now stay in the same relative position when climbing stairs with you if possible
• Reduced Magma Golem chance per turn to create magma
• Bounty Potion payout is now purely based on turn count which should be way more consistent
• Tooltips added to small disguise buttons
• Message added if user tries and fails to use diagonal movement for various reasons
• Moroi and Samca are now vulnerable to moonlight
• Hunter gets QUILLS now instead of ENRAGE, which wasn't really something you could play around
• Added the times when you changed form to the morgue
• Goblin Anarchist now only combusts with a 1 tile radius regardless of if they blow up before or after death

Options & Controls

• The option menu has been reworked: options are now grouped by subheaders
• All options now have detailed descriptions
• Added visible values to slider options
• Added a custom input repeat option that fixes a slew of horrible control issues for some people (this includes accidentally flying across the map if you hold down a movement key or shooting the revolver 10 times in a split second and ruining the tutorial)
• Added the ability to bind some arbitrary keys that were not supported before (e.g. Alt)
• Option added to disable xp sound
• Added a button to open the minimap
• Added a button to open the hotel map
• The "center" controller button is now mappable
• Added playstation controller icons
• Ability direction selection has been improved
• Right click now works for examine in keyboard examine mode
• The player can no longer "shoot themselves" which previously did nothing but wasted a bullet

UI

• Spell and ability names are greyed out when unusable
• Broken windows are highlighted on the minimap
• Hunger status is now shown for non-human forms like bat form
• Low level human spell casters now show all possible spells on description so you don't have to examine each one
• Resistance tooltips now have precise detail
• Shadow Form description now shows total values instead of per level values
• Added success rate chance to CHARM failure messages
• Next Page indicator on books
• Added a death tip about examine
• Added a death tip if you die with Vulnerable
• Death tips now have red highlighting on important words
• Added a note on fountain descriptions to say they might identify the associated potion

Bug fixes & Tweaks

• FINALLY fixed the generation of ugly doors, I think
• Fixed some display issues with the health bar
• Fixed a bug with Samca and frozen moment
• Fixed a weird display message involving Holy Water
• Fixed some dash bugs
• Fixed river portal sprite
• Fixed several ASCII display issues
• Fixed a display issue with commander and firefly
• Fixed a bug with pushing Samcas through sunlight while vulnerable
• Fixed some bugs with shadow minions dying to sunlight
• Fixed an issue with Goblin Anarchist allies hurting you, which was annoying
• Fixed some staircases not spawning far enough from boss
• Fixed a double death message from Goblin Anarchist
• Fixed a bug with talking to bats, which you can now properly do
• Fixed a bug with allies refusing to swap with you if near water
• Clarity reworded, for clarity
• Fixed a bug with tooltips overlapping hotel map and other menus
• Fixed some issues with low screenshake values overriding higher ones
• More clarity on staying in the SHADOWS in the tutorial

Enjoy, but please expect bugs! Please share any feedback on our discord or the steam forums. Last thing, here's some seeds that guarantee the new branch:

• goblin1
• goblin3
• goblin5

[ 2022-06-20 12:10:49 CET ] [ Original post ]

Back again with a sizable update right before Halloween. ALSO. This weekend is the 2021 Roguelike Celebration! I'll be giving a talk on Saturday, October 16th. Golden Krone Hotel is also featured in a Steam sale tied to the celebration. Check it out!

Highlights

• New sounds and music including 9 new songs by Christopher Loza
• Starvation rework with no more instant deaths
• New branches: Baths and Sewers
• New monsters: Harpy, Sludge, Samca
• New spell: UMBRA
• Hotel entrance rework
• Magical drinking fountains added
• YOU CAN PET THE DOG
• And lots more!

Sound

• Nine new songs by Christopher Loza
• "Classic" soundtrack removed (this was an alternative free music soundtrack, not good)
• Music selection is matched to intensity of current situation
• Music won't change if repeatedly and quickly switching floors
• New sounds like splashing, footsteps, and entering a portal
• Sounds now play in stereo (e.g. sounds far to the left only play on left speaker)
• Electric melee attacks now have a unique noise

Starvation rework

• Starvation has been reworked. No more instant deaths. You instead take continuous damage and no longer regen mana once completely starving.
• Lower starting satiation to offset the starvation rework

New content

• New branch: Baths. A random swap out for Greenhouse. Fight lightning fast Harpies and the entrancing Rusalki.
• New branch: Sewers. A random swap out for Grotto. This branch has an optional miniboss, the Rat King, and a new monster, Sludge.
• Sludges split into two when attacked and leave behind toxic sludge piles that spew poison gas when stepped on.
• New enemy: Samca. A weaker version of Moroi that is not easily struck.
• New status effect: Bleeding. When struck by repeated physical attacks from the same enemy in a single turn, some of the immediate damage is converted into slow bleeding.
• New spell: UMBRA. Become permanently more powerful with each cast, but at great cost.

Gameplay

• Drinking fountains that act like time limited, one use potions
• Commander disguise can convert potential allies that are equal to their level (as opposed to only greater than their level)
• BOMB allows you to choose a potion instead of selecting randomly
• Primer now transmutes a potion if you have no unidentified potions
• Brutemaster's pet wolf get stronger when they level up
• And you can pet the wolf!
• The Abberation status (provided by Flux potion) gives you double attacks in addition to random damage types.
• Fire Mother has been made flying
• Player speed can no longer drop below 4
• Antidotes are now a guaranteed potion and made slightly stronger
• Added a neutral Firefly monster
• Time crystals made slightly rarer
• Stained glass windows are visible during the day even if otherwise complete darkness
• Made a few good statuses last longer.

Map gen

• Reworked the hotel entrance with 11 new rooms that can appear on any side of the hotel. Each new entrance gives a significant and immediate boon.
• More level generation templates
• Templates are randomly rotated offering more level variety
• Branch stairs should now be guaranteed to spawn far away from bosses.

Graphics

• Reworked stained glass windows to look taller/better
• Humans/vamps hit by electric attacks have a cartoony skeleton animation
• Skeletons slightly redrawn and cuter
• Redrew stairs going down
• Monsters that spawn additional monsters (e.g. Wolf Spider) are more convincingly animated when producing those monsters
• Gallery and Baths now have columns instead of single wall tiles

UI and game feels

• Stairs and items are are shown at full brightness even in darkness. This turns out to not look particularly weird but is a huge accessibility win.
• XP displays as a percentage towards the next level instead of... whatever that was
• Revolver aiming now remembers your last target
• Status effects indicator appears directly above character when first granted status
• Special now appears on the character sheet
• Made critical hits feel meatier
• Hawkers display as green on the mini-map
• Autoresting now stops when mana is recovered and health is full
• Removed move confirmation when blind
• Moved note about numpad to diagonal section for clarity
• Changed unstable description to be more clear
• Fixed spacing on title screen menu for better hovering
• Changed "quenched" to "doused" in Burning description to avoid confusion with Quench ability
• Added tip to game over screen about magic/resting making hunger worse
• Status badges now fade in and initially glow
• Added note about full potion menu to quick potions
• Three new achievements related to Sewers, Baths, and UMBRA.
• Clarified Vulnerable status description

Bug fixes and tweaks

• MIASMA bug fixes including fixing a bug where diagonal casts sometimes missed their target completely
• Fixed a major freezing issue that occurred when ISPs blocked vulgat.com
• Fixed an issue where some animations were too fast
• Fixed an issue with branch names not abbreviating on the hotel map
• Fixed an Alchemist bug with potion icons
• Fixed a bug with husks getting permanently "stunned"
• No longer displaying character shadows over pits

[ 2021-10-15 06:56:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

Update highlights

This update is one of the largest to ever hit GKH. It includes:

• Graphical improvements: individual potion icons, wall shadows, rounded corners on water/lava, several new sprites, hovering animations for flying monsters, and more
• A complete disguise rework that gives each disguise a Special property
• 3 new disguises: Bombardier, Ice Mage, and Commander
• New branches: MENAGERIE and ICE HOUSE
• A new Weekly challenge mode
• Speedrun and seed support
• AI pathfinding improvements - Charm is much more usable
• More sounds, bug fixes, and secrets...

Competition

To commemorate the introduction of the new Weekly challenge mode, I'm also a running a competition. Here are the rules: [olist]

The competition runs one week: Monday, August 31st - Sunday, September 6th.

Play the new Weekly mode and upload your morgue file

The top score for Week 1 wins - track the leaderboard here.

The prize? Get your own tombstone in the Graveyard with your chosen name and an "epitaph" (a short phrase chosen by you). Alternatively, choose the epitaph for my tombstone.

This comp is a one shot event. If you find a way to submit a second score, it won't count. [/olist]

Full changelog

Compare the previous version to v1.7:

Graphical Improvements

• Rounded corners on water/lava and a much nicer water animation
• Flying/levitating monsters are now animated!
• There is now a shadow near the bottom of walls making them appear less "floaty"
• Individual icons for each potion bundle, which makes your collection easier to understand at a glance
• Redrew the awful looking stone walls
• New floor tile in the mix
• You can now see 2 tiles deep through cave walls, making them look chunkier and eliminating ugly gaps.
• You may have noticed some odd behavior with obstacles like tables, particularly that if they were forcibly moved they didn't seem to cleanly animate. It wasn't your imagination and it's been fixed.
• Pits have gotten a makeover. Dust particles float out of pits to make them more distinct from dark areas. The edge of pits matches the surrounding tiles better now.
• Improvements to the visual effects of CHARM, GLACIATE, and QUAKE
• Effects for some monster spells that summon monsters
• Added a nice fade in effect to pages in the book menu.
• Fixed some weirdness that occurs the split second after taking a portal.
• Clearing outdated sunlight/moonlight from previously seen tiles which tended to look rather jarring and confusing as well.

Disguise Rework

• The disguise menu has been refactored from scratch. No more sensory overload with all the gory details of 15+ options staring at you.
• Almost every disguise has been tweaked
• Each disguise except the Officer now has a unique Special, something that no other disguise can get.
• New disguise: Bombardier. Starts with the BOMB spell and is particularly proficient at using it.
• New disguise: Ice Mage. Can only learn ice spells. Ice resistance and fire vulnerability. Starts with ENCASE.
• New disguise: Commander. Addresses a very common complaint: why do your fellow humans and vampires never pitch in to help you?

Changes to existing disguises

• Officer gets improved leggings in addition to the other improved gear
• Vagabond has reduced metabolism
• Scholar will find improved grimoires
• Assassin now gets Invisibility Potion instead of Blood and a bonus to dexterity when Hidden/Invisible.
• Cultist has reduced cooldowns on demon blood abilities.
• Shapeshifter no longer starts as a werewolf (it seemed to be a major letdown when people realized it was only temporary), but can easily become one on Floor 1. The timing of Lycanthropy triggered by moonlight has been extended.
• Sharpshooter's bullets pierce through enemies, potentially hitting multiple targets in a line.
• Alchemist knows the identity of all potions. Primers, which usually identify potions, instead reroll a chosen potion to something else. Also Flux has been swapped for Lizard Leg.
• Merchant will heal when picking up gold piles.
• Apothecary's horrible stats have been made slightly better.
• Berserker has a 25% chance to knockback enemies when landing hits.

New Spells

• ENCASE. Creates a wall of ice blocks around you. The ice can be pushed around.
• BOMB. Creates deadly explosions that can destroy walls, but a potion is required to fuel each cast.

New Branches

• The MENAGERIE/ICEHOUSE branches have a 50% chance of showing up in each run in place of MAZE/HIVE. The maze seemed to be one of the most boring areas in the game, so hopefully having both possibilities offers more variety.
• MENAGERIE: a collection of all new exotic enemies. Some enemies are confined to cages; others will find their way out regardless.
• ICEHOUSE: a dangerous ice themed branch, which still fills the role of a food cache.

Weekly Challenges

• A new mode: Weekly. One chance per week to beat the game. Everyone gets the same map and same disguise.
• Half the time, a random disguise is selected.
• The other half, you get a new disguise which is unique to the weekly challenge: Challenger, which rolls random attributes, spells, and potions every time.
• You are prevented from descending beyond Underworld 2 during the weekly challenge. Competing on score will be more about getting as many of the 9 rings as you can in as few turns as possible rather than an endless slog through Underworld.

Website updates

• New weekly challenge leaderboards
• Added more filtering options to the leaderboards

Seeds

• The seed of each run is recorded on morgue files
• You can choose a seed on the disguise menu (make sure to pick the same disguise for this to be effective)

Speedrun support

• Run time is recorded and preserved across saves
• An optional run timer can be displayed on screen
• Time added to morgue files
• Best time for each class/difficulty added to disguise menu

More Sounds

• Sounds for opening chests
• Sounds for picking up potions, bullets, books, armor, guns, swords, etc.

New Monsters

• A new mid level vampire type "Knight" that is strongly resistant to damage types other than sunlight. I'm hoping this adds more incentive to interact with the sunlight mechanics.
• Lava Croc. Imagine a crocodile pulling you into water. Now imagine a crocodile pulling you into lava.
• A bunch of unique monsters added to the MENAGERIE/ICEHOUSE: Monkey, Tiger, Poison Toad, Shark, Elephant, Yeti, Polar Bear

Balance

• The Queen Bee and Varcolac have each had their XP halved. Varcolac was actually giving out more XP than later, harder bosses. Queen Bee was propelling people to late game power way too easily.
• Sand Vipers removed from the Greenhouse. These were both way deadlier than new players expected and too exploitable for experienced players.
• Greenmen are now healed by water

Miscellaneous

• Charm changes: Better ally pathfinding, Cap on succesful charms per spell level, Higher failure chance, Pet wolf is slightly stronger
• HEAL now heals allies too when you're full health
• Increased QUAKE damage by 50%
• 5 new achievements: new disguises, weekly, and under 20 minutes
• Monsters will now prioritize non-pits when following up stairs. They can still fall down the pits by accident, but only if the area is too crowded.
• Improved swapping behavior. Neutrals move out of the way of enemies and allies. Allies that are the same kind as an enemy will move out of their way too.
• Preventing death from poison and a few other things while resting. You will still die, but the game won't allow you to do it in one button press.
• New option for changing the number of on screen log messages
• A few spells can no longer be cast if doing so would be pointless (e.g. no potions for BOMB)
• True damage numbers now shown in log instead of maxing out at remaining HP
• Removed screenshake when attacks are happening off screen
• The character sheet can now be open AND closed with the same button: C
• Goblin Anarchists behave similarly to the BOMB spell including destroying walls.
• New soaking "Wet" status. Increases resistance to fire, removes the Burning status, and slightly damages vampires after exiting water.
• Levitation now lets you move while in Statue Form.
• Most ice monsters no longer slide on ice. This prevents the Ice Father from killing himself repeatedly, which was pretty confusing.
• The chance to sometimes avoid sliding on ice has been doubled from 5% to 10%.
• Status effect reporting is a little cleaner without the unnecessary duration when removed.
• Slightly improved the look of buttons in the Morgue.
• Reworked the tutorial section on sunlight. Players were given 99 bullets to play with, but only a single bullet is required. Many players literally thought the game required you to shoot the enemies dozens of times. This area may now be more deadly for people not paying attention, but hopefully the point is driven home.
• The tutorial can now be skipped at any time from Options.
• Added an "unlock everything" option to Options.
• The message displayed when attempting to climb the final staircase without the required rings has been made more clear. I watched too many people guess at what to do.
• Reduced the game executable size by 500MB

Secrets

• Some easter eggs for my Patrons.
• ??
• ?????

Bug fixes

• Fixed a rare bug that could happen if an enemy was trying to slide into a tile while it was getting replaced with something else (e.g. TEMPEST).
• Keyboard revolver aiming has been fixed to have parity with the mouse
• Fixed some huge bugs with pits
• In general, a whole class of movement related issues should now be prevented
• Fixed a bug on morgue files where vampire turns + human turns did not quite equal total turns.
• Tons of typo fixes.

Huge thanks to Athros, Acro, Tone, and Tom Loughlin for their help in testing this update! If you find any issues, please reach out! Instructions for doing so are in the forums. Enjoy!

[ 2020-08-31 22:37:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

I know I said last July that I would no longer update the game. That's generally true as far as big content updates go, but I've wanted to tackle a few quality of life issues.

Quality of life stuff

These things have been requested for quite a while. I thought the game had ample warning about starvation, but it turns out tunnel vision is forcing a lot of players to miss the standard warning. So I'm adding a modal warning whenever you're near starving. Also, all levels are mapped on the Hotel Map as soon as you see stairs leading to them. You also get a little log message which might help you spot staircases more easily.

Ally system

The game engine was totally not built around having allies, so I had to rewrite huge sections of it. But now there's a new spell CHARM, which lets you convert wild beasts to your side. Yes, I'm talking rats, bats, balaurs, even crocodiles. Only being able to tame beasts might seem limited but there are a few surprises if you look hard enough... Along with that, there's a new class, Brutemaster, which starts out with CHARM plus a pet wolf.

Revenant

How about something completely different? The new Revenant class bypasses most of the normal game mechanics. There is no healing from blood, no regen (HP or MP), and no hunger whatsoever. Instead this class heals every time you drink a potion, so drink up!

Apothecary upgrade

The last class I added before this was the Apothecary. Though very powerful late game, they're a bear to play early on and it's easy to shoot yourself in the face with your own MIASMA spell. I've added one pip of poison resist for this disguise.

Performance

What really drove me to do this update is I realized I could possibly fix a long running performance issue with the game. It turns out that Pixi, the rendering library I was using, was slowly growing a texture cache and never releasing it. The result was that the game ate up about 50MB extra memory on each new run. Within 20 runs, that's a gigabyte of extra memory. Several runs could cause the game to bog down severely. Woops! I believe this has been fixed.

Controller lag

I believe I have fixed the cause of controller lag reported by several players. Things should be much smoother!

New achievements

Four of 'em!

Lots of bug fixes and typo fixes

One in particular that you might notice is a fix regarding map generation with doors. Sometimes extra doors were generated not surrounded by any walls. That's been corrected. I also fixed a somewhat rare bug that only occurred if the Ice Throne and Ice Father were killed on the same round about 50% of the time. And I fixed a bug where vampires didn't take damage when standing in sunlight if they came into your field of view for the first time. And lastly, I have improved the way some errors are logged so I should be able to track more issues if they arise.

Enjoy!

And by the way Happy Halloween!

[ 2019-10-27 20:49:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Several things I want to share today:

Patreon

I started a Patreon! I made seven 7DRLs and released Golden Krone Hotel all in my spare time while working a regular full time job. With increasingly little free time these days, Patreon will make it easier for me to justify continued work on all my little roguelike projects. https://www.patreon.com/vulgat

Discord

Simultaneously, a new Discord server was launched to provide a place for the GKH community to hang out. We do have a channel within the roguelikes server, but I wanted something that can grow as I work on new projects. Stop by and say hi some time. https://discord.gg/3YdrDez

Seven Day Roguelike Challenge - 2019

The judging for the 7DRL challenge of 2019 is complete. My entry Spell Wheel, a zany broughlike about constructing complex wands, placed 6th... tied with 10 other games (what an amazing showing this year huh!) http://roguetemple.com/7drl/2019/
Speaking of broughlikes, there's another upcoming game jam called the Seven Day Broughlike challenge. I will probably be participating if I can squeeze in some time. I'm also working on a JavaScript tutorial about building your own broughlike. Look for that in the near future. https://itch.io/jam/broughlike

[ 2019-04-13 01:51:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Valentine's Weekend Competition is over. You can see the leaderboards here: http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/valentines.php You might notice a particular participant there a lot: me! I never realized how fun the game is with turn restrictions. And the winning runs were quite surprising. Sub-2000 turn wins!?! I don't think anyone of us realized what was possible before this competition. Congratulations to LuckyLuckLuc, Tone, and zxc. The turnout was a bit lower than I expected, so I still have 1 key for Rogue Empire. The first comment requesting the key will get it.

[ 2019-02-18 13:54:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

We're running another Valentine's competition starting Valentine's Day (Thursday) and going all weekend.
This time, it's all about trying to get the lowest turn count. To win, simply beat the game with at least 4 rings and try to do so in the fewest number of turns. You have four days to do so.

Rules

• Winners will be those with the shortest turn counts on winning runs having a minimum of 4 rings
• You can play on either EASY or NORMAL mode
• Begin and end your run during the 4 days of the competition (2/14-2/17 EST).
• Make sure to upload your morgue file or turn on Automatic Morgue Upload
• This time, previous winners will have their placement acknowledged but will be ineligible for prizes

Prizes

The top 5 winners (3 on NORMAL mode, 2 on EASY) will win a copy of the recently released Rogue Empire. https://store.steampowered.com/app/650940/Rogue_Empire_Dungeon_Crawler_RPG/ Winning in few turns will be challenging. Feel free to share your strategies in the GKH discord. Good luck!

[ 2019-02-09 17:27:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Congrats to emikaela for last night's win. The final night of the Halloween contest is about to begin! Tonight's disguise is CULTIST kronecultist A few reminders about the rules:

• Most importantly, the only way I can verify your win is an uploaded morgue file. Make sure you are playing through steam so your username is captured and turn on automatic morgue upload if desired
• Your time must begin on or after 10pm EDT
• You must play on NORMAL
• You must play as the specified disguise

If you believe you are the first to win, please announce such in the discord chat. Good luck!

[ 2018-11-01 01:44:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Congrats to IceBox and LuckyLuckLuc for winning times on NORMAL and DESPAIR last night respectively. The 2nd night of the Halloween contest is about to begin! Tonight's disguise is MERCHANT A few reminders about the rules:

• Most importantly, the only way I can verify your win is an uploaded morgue file. Make sure you are playing through steam so your username is captured and turn on automatic morgue upload if desired
• Your time must begin on or after 10pm EDT
• You must play on NORMAL
• You must play as the specified disguise

If you believe you are the first to win, please announce such in the discord chat. Good luck!

[ 2018-10-31 01:49:56 CET ] [ Original post ]

The Halloween contest is about to begin! Tonight's disguise is BERSERKER A few reminders about the rules:

• Most importantly, the only way I can verify your win is an uploaded morgue file. Make sure you are playing through steam so your username is captured and turn on automatic morgue upload if desired
• Your time must begin on or after 10pm EDT
• You must play on NORMAL
• You must play as the specified disguise

If you believe you are the first to win, please announce such in the discord chat. Good luck!

[ 2018-10-30 01:51:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

Three races, three chances to win Golden Krone Hotel has been fully released for one year! To celebrate, we're running a friendly little contest. Be the first player to race to the top of the hotel to win. The contest takes place over 3 nights (10/29 - 10/31) and starts precisely at 10pm EDT each night. Your run must start on or after that time.

Rules

[olist]

To win, be the first to beat the game on NORMAL mode by getting at least 4 rings

Each night you must play with a specific disguise, which will be announced on twitter and discord shortly before the race starts

Make sure the setting "automatic morgue upload" is turned on to qualify or quickly upload it manually

As an extra bonus: try your hand at DESPAIR mode. One extra prize will be awarded to the first player during the three days who wins a run on DESPAIR with the announced disguise as long as that run begins and ends between 10pm - midnight EDT.

Max one prize per player [/olist]

Prizes

Winners will have their choice of the following games: https://store.steampowered.com/app/588650/Dead_Cells/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/646570/Slay_the_Spire/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/722730/Cogmind/ Please come hang out with us on discord and feel free to stream if that's your thing. Good luck!

[ 2018-10-25 02:47:47 CET ] [ Original post ]

A really quick announcement: I've pushed a very small but important bugfix update to address issues in the update from last week. Basically, the previous update attempted to fix an issue which would occur if you saved in a treasure room in the Underworld. After loading the save, subsequent levels would be corrupted because they were using the wrong level size. In an attempt to fix that issue (which was fairly rare), I introduced a bug where several of the regular levels would be corrupted. Uh oh! Sorry to anyone that got tripped up by this one. It didn't come up in 3 weeks of testing. If you do see any other weirdness, please let me know! The second change is that, after selecting a new zoom level in the Options menu, the selection stays on zoom instead of jumping all over the place.

Contest

Keep an eye out for an upcoming announcement regarding the Halloween contest.

[ 2018-10-15 02:04:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

As I said in the last announcement, I'm winding down the major content updates to Golden Krone Hotel but bug fixes are still fair game. In this update, I've fixed a really weird bug with winning the game, added some cool effects to the Big status, and added one new disguise (I couldn't resist). The new disguise is the Apothecary. Easily the hardest start to the game, this disguise is also potentially the best in the late game. Full change log below.

Wiki

I've designed GKH as the anti-wiki roguelike, easy to pick up and totally winnable without spoilers of any kind. But still I've had a couple players ask "where is the wiki!?" Here is my answer. The wiki covers stat calculations, tips, and details on the 50+ monsters and 16 branches to be found in the game. Feel free to add your own strategies. https://www.goldenkronehotel.com/wiki

What's next

If you want to see where I'm going after this project, please sign up for my email newsletter. The next thing may or may not be roguelike related, but I promise it will be interesting. :) http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/#mc_embed_signup_scroll

Changelog

• New class: Apothecary
• Screenshake and sound when Big
• The underworld bugs are fixed, I think
• Miasma for players has guaranteed poison and extra status effects per level
• Organ plays sounds on hit
• Up and Down works on all menu lists and Space confirms so the game is easily playable with one hand
• Attempted fix for controller + revolver going insane
• Zoom level gets reapplied on load
• Shield upgrade display bug fixed
• Fane no longer hits you when forgiving
• Vampires no longer wander into sunlight when unprovoked. They will still run into the light when chasing you

[ 2018-10-11 00:46:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Some roguelikes never cease development. Well, this ain't one of 'em.
When Golden Krone Hotel was released last October, it was absolutely a complete experience, but a handful of things never made the cut. With this last update, the game is as exactly as I envisioned when I first decided to expand it from its humble Seven Day Roguelike origins. Six new branches have been added bringing the total number of floors on each run to 27! Controller support is finally here as is clouds saves. Nine new achievements were added. Hawkers are now friendly so you don't have to tip toe around them. Several new monsters are introduced with this update including the Devourer, a vampire that can teleport to pools of blood. Other vampires now drink blood off the floor just like the player does.
The Underworld has been reworked to make it more varied, interesting, and fun. Lore is now permanently collectible and a ton of books, conversations, and even a world map has been added.
A hotel map provides the location of hawkers, chests, and bosses. New spells, new potions, and a new vampire ability are in the mix. Dozens of other changes listed below....

Have fun

Enjoy the update, let me know if you see any issues, and one last favor: please add a review to the game if you enjoyed it. The game should be going on sale within 24 hours. Thanks for all the support, my kronies!

Changelog

Full list:

• Cloud saves
• Controller support
• Zoom level to help with odd resolutions and playing on a TV
• 2 new guaranteed branches:
• HEDGE MAZE
• HIVE
• 4 new random branches (you'll see 2 of these each run):
• LABORATORY
• RAFTERS
• WATCHTOWER
• WORKSHOP
• Added Fede ring. It gives a spell power bonus and can be found in one of the previous two branches
• Hawkers are now friendly all the time
• Prices in the hotel have doubled
• New vampire to fit in for the Hawker: Devourer. This one is bad ♥♥♥
• Other new monsters: Elder GreenMan, DeathCap Toadstool, Electric Golem, Magma Golem, Artificer, Gargoyle, Naiad (water nymph). Mother♥♥♥♥ing Bees!
• WARP has been removed. I finally admitted to myself that it was useless.
• Two new spells: GLACIATE and QUAKE
• New demon blood ability: QUENCH
• Demon blood abilities are now randomly swapped out periodically when you have a full set
• Demon blood abilities are easier to acquire the fewer of them you have (first one is guaranteed)
• Minimap can be expanded
• A hotel "overworld" map can be access with 'I'.
• Expanded and rewritten lore and some more conversations. 40+ pages to collect, plus an infinite procedural "Song of Blood"
• An actual overworld map is one of the things you can collect, which is totally pointless but cool!
• New potion: BIG. The berserker starsts with it now.
• New potion: Clarity
• Condensed intelligence and mana potion into one way more useful potion, which is now given to the Scholar
• Merchant gets a bonus $100 to start
• Walking on stairs automatically tells you the destination
• Mana increase per level simplified (2mp/level)
• Fixed a crash bug which happened when falling through a pit onto ice
• Enemy vampires will drink blood just like you do. Some vampires will even go out of their way for it. The player now bleeds.
• Strength, which was significantly underpowered compared to dexterity, now gives a percent damage reduction (1.5% per every point above 10) on top of it's previous function.
• All the statuses have been stylized
• Added organs. Examine to play (V/select)!
• Added Time Crystals
• Blast damage reduced per hit
• Examing a sunlit staircase gives the proper description
• Tile animation is slowed down when the game is struggling. I *hope* this helps with performance somewhat
• Items can be picked up on lava/water
• Water + lava = stone
• Fixed a very elusive portal spawn bug
• Windows are brightened even when unbroken and even a bit before sunrise!
• Sunlight on windows has been added to minimap
• Added note to options about Numlock needing to be off for diagonal movement
• Thumb ring nerfed (100% -> 33% crit chance)
• Dummy status when submerged
• New floor sprite on main floors
• More potions made optional per run, so you get more variety
• Confirm default moves is now on by default, but way better
• Wolves are friendly to werewolves
• Hunters buffed slightly
• Burning monsters now give off light
• Invisiblity no longer prevents enemy spell casting when adjacent
• Solomonari now have colorful robes to hint at their chosen spell
• Turn count added to UI
• Morgue auto-upload turned off by default
• Random class selection
• Lots of Underworld changes
• Underworld no longer reenterable except through recall potions
• Armor now spawns in Underworld
• New item: Arcane Hammer. Increases your lowest gear by +1. No limit.
• Power curve in infinite levels retuned
• Blood drops on ice
• Too many balance tweaks to mention
• Each Underworld level has a distinct look and layout and set of monsters rather than all being a generic underworld cave setting
• Sometimes multiple Baron bosses can spawn
• Barons have a wider variety of abilities
• Some more Baron appendages
• Treasure levels that spawn about 10% of the time
• Cancelling Grimoires gives +1 MP
• Tooltips on spells/abilities can be accessed through V + 1-4
• Fixed an issue with remapping 0 or ` keys
• Text fix on 1 gold piece
• Distracting console messages removed after examine/revolver modes are exited
• Casting a spell now ends the turn for any monster. No more one turn deaths from Gorgon Queen
• The encounter with Fane has been altered slightly
• Fixed a light bug with TEMPEST
• Fixed incorrect key hints bug
• Fixed selectable loading screen
• Fixed Gallery crystal display cases that were accessible with 8 way movement
• 8 way vs 4 way movement is locked per run
• Fixed a display issue with vampires sometimes having .5 extra MP
• "Delete save" button has been renamed to "Delete current run" for clarity
• Fixed the remapping of CONFIRM
• Now allowing UP/DOWN/CONFIRM to be used on menu lists even if they are mapped to A-Z. But beware if using this feature! It will preferentially select the enumerated menu list item before your command (e.g. picking [S] instead of DOWN)
• Shift movement no longer brings up Confirm Move warning but instead stops early

[ 2018-07-21 15:28:30 CET ] [ Original post ]

The 2018 Seven Day Roguelike Challenge ran from March 3-11. As I've said before, 7DRL is a big deal for me and I wouldn't be on Steam without it, so I try to participate every year. The challenge has a formal review process and that process just wrapped up today. It turns out my game DEAD FACE did very well this year, getting the top score. To be clear, 7DRL is not a competition. But I'm still ecstatic! http://www.roguetemple.com/7drl/2018/
In other news, I am getting very near to completing the last update to Golden Krone Hotel. It's a big one and will require some testing. Stay tuned.

[ 2018-05-04 22:05:15 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thanks to everyone who joined the competition! We got a great response and lots of solid runs. Player skill was clearly higher than last time and almost all the top scores had extended Underworld visits. I think the number of Twitch followers for the game doubled in the last 3 days too! Here are the leaderboards: http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/valentines.php A few note about calculating results. Some people dominated the charts, but only one prize per participant. I've gone in order of score to preserve the WOW factor of some of these insane runs. Some categories will have multiple winners because I kept counting when encountering past winners.

First place winners

Merchant

Rogue Likelike with a score of 17,452,577

Light Mage

zxc with a score of 9,622,942 LuckyLuckLuc with a score of 135,130

Assassin

IceBox with a score of 7,195,860

Shapeshifter

Webmant with a score of 5,716,242 kvlt with a score of 194,742

Second place winners

Assassin

Tone with a score of 5,015,460

Light Mage

Massack with a score of 57,549 ukuko with a score of 17,336

Shapeshifter

Squirrels with a score of 3,922

Merchant

Waervyn with a score of 2,888 Six 1st place winners will be receiving their choice of Unexplored, Fidel, Haque, Tangledeep, or Dungeonmans. Five 2nd place winners will be receiving Auro: A Monster Bumping Adventure. They should expect to hear from me soon. Thanks again to everyone!

[ 2018-02-17 14:02:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

Thanks to everyone who joined the competition! We got a great response and lots of solid runs. Player skill was clearly higher than last time and almost all the top scores had extended Underworld visits. I think the number of Twitch followers for the game doubled in the last 3 days too! Here are the leaderboards: http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/valentines.php A few note about calculating results. Some people dominated the charts, but only one prize per participant. I've gone in order of score to preserve the WOW factor of some of these insane runs. Some categories will have multiple winners because I kept counting when encountering past winners.

First place winners

Merchant

Rogue Likelike with a score of 17,452,577

Light Mage

zxc with a score of 9,622,942 LuckyLuckLuc with a score of 135,130

Assassin

IceBox with a score of 7,195,860

Shapeshifter

Webmant with a score of 5,716,242 kvlt with a score of 194,742

Second place winners

Assassin

Tone with a score of 5,015,460

Light Mage

Massack with a score of 57,549 ukuko with a score of 17,336

Shapeshifter

Squirrels with a score of 3,922

Merchant

Waervyn with a score of 2,888 Six 1st place winners will be receiving their choice of Unexplored, Fidel, Haque, Tangledeep, or Dungeonmans. Five 2nd place winners will be receiving Auro: A Monster Bumping Adventure. They should expect to hear from me soon. Thanks again to everyone!

[ 2018-02-17 14:02:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

If there's one day out of the year on which you absolutely must play Golden Krone Hotel, it's Halloween. But if I'm allowed to pick two days, Valentine's Day would also be included. Why? It's a game about blood of course. Hearts pump blood. And hearts represent Valentine's Day. There's more.... but to say any more would spoil it. So where were we? Ah, yes. COMPETITION TIME! The competition starts on Valentine's Day (2/14) and runs until 2/16. Of the 12 classes in Golden Krone Hotel, 4 could really use some more love and we're going to give it to them.

Rules

• To win, you'll have to get the highest score in one of these 4 classes: Assassin, Merchant, Light Mage, or Shapeshifter.
• You must play on NORMAL mode
• Begin and end your run during the 3 days of the competition (2/14-2/16)
• Make sure to upload your morgue file (this happens automatically if you play through Steam)

Prizes

Four winners will get their choice of any of the following games:

• Unexplored http://store.steampowered.com/app/506870/Unexplored/
• Fidel: Dungeon Rescue http://store.steampowered.com/app/573170/Fidel_Dungeon_Rescue/
• Haque http://store.steampowered.com/app/662540/Haque/
• Tangledeep http://store.steampowered.com/app/628770/Tangledeep/
• Dungeonmans http://store.steampowered.com/app/288120/Dungeonmans/

Four more runners-up will receive Auro: A Monster Bumping Adventure http://store.steampowered.com/app/459680/Auro_A_MonsterBumping_Adventure/ Here's wishing you a satiating Valentine's Day and good luck! :kronewerewolf:

[ 2018-02-04 20:17:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

If there's one day out of the year on which you absolutely must play Golden Krone Hotel, it's Halloween. But if I'm allowed to pick two days, Valentine's Day would also be included. Why? It's a game about blood of course. Hearts pump blood. And hearts represent Valentine's Day. There's more.... but to say any more would spoil it. So where were we? Ah, yes. COMPETITION TIME! The competition starts on Valentine's Day (2/14) and runs until 2/16. Of the 12 classes in Golden Krone Hotel, 4 could really use some more love and we're going to give it to them.

Rules

• To win, you'll have to get the highest score in one of these 4 classes: Assassin, Merchant, Light Mage, or Shapeshifter.
• You must play on NORMAL mode
• Begin and end your run during the 3 days of the competition (2/14-2/16)
• Make sure to upload your morgue file (this happens automatically if you play through Steam)

Prizes

Four winners will get their choice of any of the following games:

• Unexplored http://store.steampowered.com/app/506870/Unexplored/
• Fidel: Dungeon Rescue http://store.steampowered.com/app/573170/Fidel_Dungeon_Rescue/
• Haque http://store.steampowered.com/app/662540/Haque/
• Tangledeep http://store.steampowered.com/app/628770/Tangledeep/
• Dungeonmans http://store.steampowered.com/app/288120/Dungeonmans/

Four more runners-up will receive Auro: A Monster Bumping Adventure http://store.steampowered.com/app/459680/Auro_A_MonsterBumping_Adventure/ Here's wishing you a satiating Valentine's Day and good luck! ːkronewerewolfː

[ 2018-02-04 20:17:52 CET ] [ Original post ]

This small update fixes the Throw bug, makes Despair mode slightly easier, and the end game slightly harder.

Changelog

• Critical hits from enemies reduced by 20% in DESPAIR mode. Before this change, DESPAIR was clearly impossible (now it's just unclearly impossible)
• Keyboard selection on the Disguise menu now scrolls the page too
• Fixed a game locking bug when a monster was thrown into a second monster
• The final Mausoleum chamber now has water surrounding the gear rooms
• Enemies standing in fire/water no longer accept their fate and wait to die
• List of monsters available during Delusion has been dramatically increased. Now you can, for instance, hop around as a plant
• Ammo has been reduced slightly
• Damage reduction from the 3rd and 4th resistance levels has been nerfed. This makes Ward and rings less overpowered
• Memento Mori Ring bonus damage reduced from 5 to 3
• Poison Ring bonus damage reduced
• Fixed the workings of Statue form, which previously let you become easily immune when combined with rings
• Corrected the behavior of WARD and the display of the Resistance status
• Several spelling mistakes corrected
• Fixed the numbering on Portals leading further into the Underworld

[ 2017-12-05 02:12:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

This small update fixes the Throw bug, makes Despair mode slightly easier, and the end game slightly harder.

Changelog

• Critical hits from enemies reduced by 20% in DESPAIR mode. Before this change, DESPAIR was clearly impossible (now it's just unclearly impossible)
• Keyboard selection on the Disguise menu now scrolls the page too
• Fixed a game locking bug when a monster was thrown into a second monster
• The final Mausoleum chamber now has water surrounding the gear rooms
• Enemies standing in fire/water no longer accept their fate and wait to die
• List of monsters available during Delusion has been dramatically increased. Now you can, for instance, hop around as a plant
• Ammo has been reduced slightly
• Damage reduction from the 3rd and 4th resistance levels has been nerfed. This makes Ward and rings less overpowered
• Memento Mori Ring bonus damage reduced from 5 to 3
• Poison Ring bonus damage reduced
• Fixed the workings of Statue form, which previously let you become easily immune when combined with rings
• Corrected the behavior of WARD and the display of the Resistance status
• Several spelling mistakes corrected
• Fixed the numbering on Portals leading further into the Underworld

[ 2017-12-05 02:12:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

The original soundtrack for Golden Krone Hotel has been released as DLC: http://store.steampowered.com/app/738980/Golden_Krone_Hotel__Original_Soundtrack_by_Christopher_Loza/ It's 15 tracks, 38 minutes long, two bucks. The store page has a samples of each song. I think you'll enjoy it. :) It's on sale for a couple of days.

[ 2017-11-05 01:08:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

Quick note first: the game is out and on a 20% launch discount for one week. Go grab it now! Last night's release party was amazing. The crowd was fun, the questions were good, and the streams were absolutely on point. Thanks to everyone who showed up! Thanks again to Esty and Massack for streaming. You can go check their recorded video from the party here and here.

Now onto last night's winners

First we gave away 6 keys. Here are the winners for that:

• Webmant
• Unholydonuts
• dialga586
• Majora
• nuzcraft
• tynq

We also ran a competition to see who could get the highest scores in 5 categories. You can take a look at the top 10 for each. To determine winners, I only counted each person for one prize and included only those who showed up for the party itself:

EASY MODE

Esty was here with a score of 130,911

NORMAL MODE

Artanis with a score of 5,919

DESPAIR MODE

Massack with a score of 6,670

100% HUMAN RUN

zxc with a score of 2,454

100% VAMPIRE RUN

Webmant with a score of 1,232,990 Congratulations to our winners! Each one wins a Golden Krone Hotel key and a key for the (soon to be released) Golden Krone Hotel OST. I will be contacting them through Discord shortly.

[ 2017-10-27 17:52:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

In preparation of Golden Krone Hotel's full release on Thursday, I have pushed one last update. This is mostly polish stuff, but some of it is quite cool!

Bloody sprites

I had never actually drawn sprites for the Demon Blood abilities since they were so rarely seen. That has been corrected (and made less rare). These 10 abilities have also been tuned up and made more fun in general. For example, you can now throw furniture into monsters or monsters into each other and both will be damaged. Other missing icons (e.g. taking stairs) have been added in as well.

I MAKE YOUR SCREEN SHAKE

There's now a subtle screen shake on all attacks. Critical hits have stutter frames too. Both of these make combat feel waaaay more engaging. Feel free to turn up the shakiness!

Grimoire++

Spells can now go to level 4. Once you have a full set of spells, each grimoire is guaranteed to contain a spell you already know, making it easier to level up your spells.

Sunny surprise

I've addressed one common request: a warning to prevent you from getting burnt when travelling between stairs. Requires 'Confirm dangerous moves' option. A bunch of small touches (like new sound effects) have been added and several bugs fixed. Don't miss our release party!

Changelog

• Unique Demon Blood icons have been added
• Demon Blood is less rare and abilities have been tuned to be more useful
• New icons for contextual abilities and menu
• SCREEN SHAKE
• Stutter frames on crits
• Bat form now has better defense
• Added 3 new obstacles: Grandfather Clock, Cauldron, & Crate
• Made a few positive statuses last longer
• Guaranteed food drops are no longer always ale and there is no guaranteed food on the first floor. Ale was too boring!
• Morgue files now show the turns spent in human and vampire forms
• Tuned a few bosses to be very slightly harder. Strigoi no longer spawns Grunts.
• There's a very scary surprise for anyone fighting the underworld bosses now
• Prevented werewolves from casting magic
• The price of STUPEFY has been increased from 6 to 8
• A REST button to remind players about this important ability
• Added an option for waiting on animations to finish. Turn this off for faster play, but maybe some animation weirdness
• Made it possible to complete tutorial with mouse only
• Sounds for elemental attack types that had no sound before: ICE, FIRE, PSYCHIC
• Sounds for quaffing potions and using Demon Blood
• Movement confirmation warns you when travelling between stairs as a vampire during the day.
• Fixed an exploit that made 'Confirm dangerous moves' help you too much when confused
• Tidied up the help and some stat descriptions
• Fixed some issues with rebinding keys during the tutorial
• Fixed the Ice Father description
• Fixed a sprite issue with the entryway
• Fixed an issue that allowed you to take the same spot as a friendly monster when sliding on ice

[ 2017-10-24 11:45:44 CET ] [ Original post ]

After 3 years of development and 1 year in Early Access, Golden Krone Hotel is shedding that EA label and fully launching on October 26th at 6pm EDT. The last year been a blast. The community has been great and you've helped the game evolve to be so much more than what it was last October. I have a little party planned for release night. I'm going to hold a competition and give away keys (both randomly and for the competition winners). Please come join us and tell your friends.
http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/releaseparty/ See you there!

[ 2017-10-21 19:01:06 CET ] [ Original post ]

I hope you're sitting down for this one.

OST

Golden Krone Hotel now has an original soundtrack by Christopher Loza! You might know Christopher from the KeeperRL soundtrack, but he also made our delightful chiptune title track and trailer music. We've been working on redoing all the game's music for a few months and it's finally done. If, however, you want to switch things up or just get nostalgic for the old music (which has a more ambient horror focus), you can toggle back and forth between both soundtracks in the Options menu.

Despair mode

Even if you're not quite ready for the game to get harder, I know you will be eventually. Despair is a new unlockable, unfair, and unforgiving difficulty mode. It comes with its own redone title screen featuring a gnarly remix, blood moon, and custom font. I have to be honest: this is easily the most badass thing in the game.

Visual tweaks

Stained glass has been toned down and looks less like "unicorn puke." Menus have been visually reworked and made Fancy! There's also a good number of bug fixes. Thanks to everyone who reported them!

Changelog:

• The game now features an original soundtrack by Christopher Loza. The old soundtrack can be switched in as well.
• New difficulty: DESPAIR MODE
• The credits menu has been totally reworked into a "crawl" and now displays after a win (also available from Options)
• Reworked menus
• Stained glass no longer looks like "unicorn puke"
• Difficulty can now be selected with keyboard (left/right)
• Drawing ASCII windows differently depending on their orientation
• Debug menu has been made more difficult to accidentally access (now requires '~' + 'debug').
• Accessing the debug menu (or running console commands) prevents a run from having a morgue file saved. This should prevent at least one category of "cheat" morgue files from popping up on the leaderboards.
• Fixed an issue with sliding on ice diagonally
• Fixed a morgue display issue when dying of starvation
• Fixed a major bug where reading a book the same turn one dies turns you immortal.
• Any unbound commands (which had their keys stolen from another remap) are randomly assigned keys, which should prevent a bug where the game wouldn't start with unbound keys.
• Fixed an issue with potion deduction. You should be able to deduce identities more often.
• Fixed a game locking bug with Examine mode in the tutorial. Also now easier to escape from menus in the tutorial.
• Fixed an issue with MIASMA that wasn't hurting enemies unless they were directly hit.
• Fixed an ugly display issue with spell icons on Grimoire menu

[ 2017-09-23 23:32:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

HOLY CATS, WE'RE LEAVING EARLY ACCESS NEXT MONTH. This month it's all about playing the way you want to play. That means Mac and Linux support, tools to prevent stupid deaths, keyboard examine, ASCII mode, and optional 8-way movement.
The final class has been added as well: Berserker. With the highest starting strength of all the disguises and an ENRAGE spell, you'll surely wreak havoc on the hotel. That brings us to 12 classes and 19 achievements to collect!

Diagonal movement

Four way movement has always been helpful for players without numpad. But sometimes it just doesn't feel like a roguelike without diagonals. Adding optional 8-way movement to Golden Krone Hotel affects A LOT. Expect the game to feel different, but hopefully still balanced. It's now easier to dance around lone enemies and it's possible to dodge light beams. But remember it's also easier to get surrounded and magic becomes 8-directional too.

ASCII Mode

ASCII can look cool as hell. It's often easier to understand what's going on too. So here it is. There's a Muted Palette option that almost turns the game greyscale (the main exception being hints of red). This an excellent option if you want to crank up the horror aesthetic.

Grognard Mode

If you really want to go old school, there's GROGNARD Mode. This flips a bunch of options simultaneously to make the game look and feel more like a classic roguelike. You'll get ASCII, diagonal movement, and a bunch of display effects turned off (like animation, damage numbers, bounciness, etc.).
But feel free to play with those on if you prefer! It's quite fun playing a little bouncy @.

Changelog:

• Mac and Linux now supported. Please let me know if you have any problems.
• Optional diagonal movement added
• ASCII mode added
• Bump animation added
• You can now Examine with keyboard (press V) and hovering over tiles also displays their name
• Added a "Confirm dangerous moves" option. If you die to sunlight a lot, this might help
• Berserker class added
• Shapeshifter now turns into a wolf whenever in moonlight
• Spiridus and Moroi toned down a bit. Moroi range reduced
• Options menu reorganized and several new options added
• Sound play when selecting options
• Added highlighted text to tutorial to make it easier to understand
• Fixed a very weird bug with ice/stairs that created ghost enemies that could be killed infinitely
• Fixed a crash when playing the game outside of the Steam client
• Fixed an issue with the revolver cancellation not clearing selected tiles
• Fixed an issue with certain attack types being displayed
• Fixed an issue with rebinding ESCAPE/ENTER
• Fixed the display of 1HP in morgue files
• Fixed an issue with ring display in morgue files
• Fixed an issue with resting while poisoned/burning

Since the game is wrapping up, please let me know of any last minute ideas on balance/polish. Big changes are probably not making it in, but there's still a month to fine tune things. And I'm super serious about the price increase this time (I wanted one last opportunity for Mac/Linux players to buy at $5).

[ 2017-09-11 12:53:02 CET ] [ Original post ]

Maybe you've seen some of the newer branches (Grotto->River->Maelstrom) and wondered where they were leading to? Well here's the answer. This update introduces the UNDERWORLD, an infinite series of levels filled with ice, lava, demons, procedural monsters, the craziest boss fight in the game, and pain. Lots of pain.
The central set piece of the Underworld is a fight involving Fire Mother, Ice Father, and 7 Demon minibosses (one for each day of the week). I don't want to spoil anything, but I'm super excited about this encounter. And that's not counting six new demon monsters. Highlights include the Demon Ghoul which only attacks when you're injured and the Demon Viper which can poison/confuse/delude you all at once. Unsurprisingly, demons drop "demon blood", which can grant demonic abilities and heal you, even above max HP. Lastly, the coolest part of the Underworld is that it goes on forever. In each level after the first you'll find a Baron, a randomly generated boss. These guys have random attack types, resistances, spells, and even sprites!
Party time To give you an extra leg up, each collectible ring now has powerful effects. Collecting them will be crucial to surviving the horrors of the Underworld. A new class has been added. In a departure from the typical design, the Light Mage has a permanent effect: your character always glows. Stealth is nearly impossible, but several areas of the hotel become easier to navigate. This class also starts with a Celestial Essence (probably the most powerful potion) and a brand new spell, FOCUS. Other changes include more satisfying enemy deaths, new sound effects, some tweaks to the Fane encounter, and several bug fixes.

Changelog:

• New branch, UNDERWORLD, which is reachable from red portals in the Maelstrom.
• New boss encounter with Ice Father and Fire Mother
• 6 new demon monsters
• Infinite descent into the Underworld is possible and procedural bosses will be at each level to greet you
• Morgue files are now uploaded automatically with an option to turn off. Please let me know if this a problem for you.
• Lava and Ice tiles added.
• Demon blood can now heal above max HP. This change is a buff for one of the existing classes (wink, wink).
• Rings now have bonus effects
• New class: the Light Mage
• New spell: FOCUS. Turns ambient light into moonlight, moonlight into sunlight, and sunlight into a deadly bolt of fire
• The Spiridus now does PSYCHIC damage. Uh... good luck
• Blink is now directional! Warp Mages rejoice. Also, it's easier to get goodies in the Gallery
• Blood lasts at least one turn under Acceleration. Before it never even showed up
• Confusion no longer prevents spell casting, but makes failure rates go up
• XP is animated and has its own new sound effect (too annoying?)
• Monsters now glow red when dying
• Monsters sometimes drop gold on death.
• Gold for selling items reduced
• Fane has been given a throne
• New Fane artwork added instead of generic vamp portrait
• Antidote now also gives a temporary poison resist
• Bosses give more XP
• Fixed an error with hovering over unidentified potions
• Made 'ESCAPE' exit the dismiss gave over screen
• Hunters no longer cast damaging spells, but instead enrage themselves
• Music is softened when in menus and chatting
• Music is now switched out properly when taking a portal
• Fixed an issue with sprites drawing incorrectly (usually seen in Maelstrom
• Spell failure note added to Grimoires
• Fixed several issues with menus and resizing
• Fixed an issue with volatile poison and water
• Fixed an issue with double tooltips when hovering identified potions
• Fixed descriptions on bookshelf/paintings
• Added a button to make it more obvious morgue entries are clickable
• Some late game enemies made tougher... but probably not enough

Let me know what you think! I'm very curious how people think the Underworld is balanced. One last reminder that the price increase to $10 is coming in a few days.

[ 2017-08-07 22:49:18 CET ] [ Original post ]

Boom goes the dynamite. ːkroneboomː
Golden Krone Hotel now has Steam Trading Cards. There's 5 cards, a badge, 3 backgrounds, and 10 emoticons ːkroneprincessː ːkronetoadː ːkronecultistː to collect. Apparently, I forgot you also have to check a box to tell Valve your game has trading cards and achievements (even though it clearly already knows that). So... I've checked those boxes. Now you can see the features are present on the store page. Woot! Some of you may have already been awarded cards for your playtime. This is really good, as I was initially concerned that recent changes to Trading Cards might prevent the cards from dropping completely for games like this one. Fortunately that's not the case.

One more thing

I'm putting the game on sale soon, though I can't say exactly when. When that happens, Golden Krone Hotel will be the cheapest it's ever been (and cheaper than it will be for several months). Shortly after the sale ends, I'm planning on raising the price from $5 to somewhere around $10. This is a really tough decision to make, but I think after adding a tutorial, save system, unlockable classes, morgue files, achievements, trading cards, a bunch of new branches and monsters, and all around polish the game is worth more than it was at launch. If you have feedback on pricing, I'd be glad to hear it.

[ 2017-06-14 02:33:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

Here we go with a pretty huge update!
The newest branch is THE MAELSTROM, an everchanging dimension that spawns portals to random locations throughout the Hotel. Frankly, this branch is heavily inspired by DCSS's Abyss. There's several ways to get to the Maelstrom and not all of them are voluntary... The Merchant was added, a new disguise that starts with 4 unidentified potions.
Five monsters have been created including Goblin Anarchists, Prismatic Masses, and three kinds of Toadstools (wandering mushrooms that shoot various types of poison). And there were plenty of small changes. This month, I reviewed dozens of old (and new) Let's Plays with a more critical eye. Polish has been added with the goal of making mechanics easier to learn, easier to understand, and simply more fun.

Changelog:

• The tutorial has been improved with some handholding removed and "blended" right into the game itself.
• A Hints system has been implemented to help explain several crucial mechanics.
• Blue, Yellow, and Red Toadstools added. Green Men turn into "Husks" when dying, which can transform into Toadstools at night.
• Prismatic Masses added. They do all 10 kinds of damage and can only be found in the Maelstrom.
• Goblin Anarchists added
• Merchant disguise and achievement added.
• THE MAELSTROM is the new branch, reachable from the River. It uses a kludgy cellular automata to reorganize itself.
• Monster generation has been corrected. With the introduction of wolves last patch, waaaayy too many monsters were getting spawned. Woops!
• Bats, toads, and baby spiders have all been made a bit less annoying.
• The transition between human/vampire and vice versa has been clarified visually. Previously, it was especially confusing because of unread books.
• A less annoying door sound has been introduced. The old one can still be heard occasionally.
• Fixed a game locking bug that happened when the user clicked on Menu while in another menu. Thanks Mitchfynde!
• Difficulty is now on the character sheet
• Added descriptions to each difficulty mode
• Balaurs have been removed from the Pharmacopoeia
• Fixed Stupefy mouse range indicator
• Pools of blood stick around slightly longer.
• Fixed an issue where music wasn't switched out when teleported, only when taking stairs
• Tooltips show up for identified potion icons on the Potion menu
• Blood potion gives a small HP boost when humans drink it
• Right before turning vampire, regeneration goes up 4x. This should prevent a lot of bad experiences when going vamp
• Vampire disguises get to start at night now.
• The Shapeshifter starts during a full moon and Lycanthropy lasts much longer.
• Reworked disguise menu to use relative rather than absolute stats.
• Animated the key icon on disguise menu to make it clearer when unlocks are available.
• Hawkers weren't actually resistant to sunlight, but that's been fixed.
• Instability effects (resulting from repeated teleport magic) have been softened.
• A nifty teleport animation has been added.
• Moroi have been made much weaker, but now give the Vulnerable status.... which is really scary!
• Examining a sunlight/moonlight tile now says something about the light there.
• Miasma has been buffed a lot, but has a chance to poison now instead of confuse.
• Combustion and particularly Volatile Poison have been made MUCH more useful. Hint hint.
• Added a Confusion icon
• Monsters are now generated away from staircases to discourage a reliance on stairdancing.
• Put in a decent message in case save file loading fails.
• Fixed a common problem where players would fire their revolver in the wrong direction because they moved their mouse when intending to just click.
• Apparently several monsters that shouldn't have been regening health were in fact doing so. That's fixed.
• Lore books are now collected in the Books & Letters menu. The opening letter will no longer be shown by default.
• Drop caps (the super cool huge letters that begin chapters in old books) have been added.
• Some file writes have been made asynchronous, which should prevent some hiccups.
• Stritiba renamed to Cragsbellow to help with pronunciation.
• Death tips font made much bigger.
• Cancel option added when trying to forget a spell.
• Plate and leggings auto-equip wording clearer.
• Beds give a hint about how to rest.
• Input delay added to certain menus to prevent accidental selections.

A couple last housekeeping notes: The plan is to release by Halloween. so we've gotten well past the halfway point of Early Access. If you have any feedback or ideas for the game, the time when that can make a meaningful impact is quickly running out. Also, don't forget about the recently added achievements and the Morgue sharing system. Feel free to share your runs in the forums or on the official subreddit. Enjoy!

[ 2017-05-31 02:08:50 CET ] [ Original post ]

Golden Krone Hotel now has 14 achievements. There's an achievement for beating the game with each disguise and an achievement for killing each boss. I might add a few more over time. A little explanation on this update: I was planning on releasing it as part of a larger update. However, as soon as I configured achievements in Steamworks I realized they were publicly visible. Uh oh! In other words, people could see the achievements, attempt to get them, and be hugely disappointed because the code wasn't setup to activate them yet. I rushed this one out to prevent any letdowns like that. Now I'm off to work on that next update. Enjoy!

[ 2017-05-08 12:15:36 CET ] [ Original post ]

Due to popular demand, Golden Krone Hotel now has morgue files and an online leaderboard. This update also brings 3 new monsters, a new class and branch as usual, and... bounciness?!?
While testing some jumping behavior for the Toad, I realized the animation looks a lot more lively by having all characters bounce around like they're all on pogo sticks. I've made the "bounciness factor" an option, but by default I'm going to add in at least a little bounce. It'll be interesting to see how people like it!

Changelog:

• Morgue files have been added, which can (optionally) be uploaded to http://www.goldenkronehotel.com/morgue.php, shared with friends, and ranked acording to score.
• A new branch: The River, which sits below the Grotto.
• A new disguise: Alchemist. Start as a vampire holding several unread books.
• Three new monsters: Wolves hunt in packs, Toads jump around and attack from range, and Goblins are a plain old monster.
• Monsters have been reshuffled to make the first floor much easier and less annoying! The standard monsters on Floor 1 are now Grunts (weak vampire), Rats, Bats, and Goblins. Baby Spiders should be less common.
• Bounciness. All characters bounce around. This can be increased or turned off completely in the Options menu.
• All characters also have shadows. This can also be turned off if desired.
• Pharmacopoeia and Mausoleum have each been extended to 2 floors.
• Some late game bosses and monsters have increased in difficulty to match the extra XP now available.
• The Varcolac is now always in werewolf form at night.
• Moroi were way too weak. They now have a ranged attack, which can't be dodged. It can't reduce you below 50% health though.
• Wooden wall sprites have been redrawn and darkened to enhance contrast and readability.
• Potion tooltips added to unidentified potions in Primer and Hawker menus.
• Book sprites have been made clearer to distinguish.
• Options menu now remembers your previous spot.
• Pressing escape during the logo/title screen jumps straight to the Start menu.
• Fixed a bug that allowed you to save after death and then walk around like an invisible ghost spraying blood everywhere.
• Credits and Help moved to Options menu to reduce title screen clutter
• Fixed a scrolling issue with some screens like the Disguise menu.

[ 2017-04-23 16:59:37 CET ] [ Original post ]

The 2017 Seven Day Roguelike Challenge ran from March 4-12. I owe a lot to 7DRL and wouldn't be on Steam without it, so I try to participate every year. This time around I made a wacky zombie survival game called Zurvivors. Anyway, the review process wrapped up today. You can view all the results here. I'm back into Golden Krone Hotel development and am currently working on morgue files. I plan to have an update out by the end of the month.

[ 2017-04-08 16:06:08 CET ] [ Original post ]

Changelog:

• Fixed a save/load freezing issue that was consistently affecting some users (thanks Eoin Butler)
• Reduced save times by 60%
• Fixed a bug with Hawkers being generated after loading a save
• You can no longer swap places with a friendly while in statue form
• Improved error logging a bit

[ 2017-02-16 02:24:23 CET ] [ Original post ]

There were a few bugs lurking in 0.7, so I've fixed those. Changelog:

• Items were not showing up on minimap at all. Fixed.
• Made highlight colors brighter on the minimap and the walls darker. Should be easier to see stairs now.
• Unlit torches weren't being generated, making everything way too bright. Fixed.
• Recalls now go to the Grotto, which should generally be safer than the Mausoleum. Eventually, they'll all go to the MAELSTROM...
• Warping potions no longer have a risk of instability affects, only magic does.
• Small chance for Gorgons to spawn on high level floors
• Bones have been made tougher
• Tweaked item generation in chests to be less ridiculous. Previously, top tier equipment could be found on Floor 3.
• Fixed an issue with the quasi-status "Hidden" seeming to get removed by Cleanse/Panacea
• Fixed a game breaking bug with Panacea

Please let me know if you find anything else. It's easy for bugs to fall through the cracks with only one pair of eyes on it.

[ 2017-02-05 15:54:58 CET ] [ Original post ]

Version 0.7 is here! There's a tutorial, a new branch (the Gallery), new monsters, a new boss, and level generation has been rewritten completely.

Changelog

• A tutorial has been added.
• New branch: The Gallery.
• Gorgons have been added. Their combination of GAZE and BLAST is quite deadly....
• A new boss, the Gorgon Queen. There's now 5 rings to collect, meaning one is optional.
• New class: warp mage
• The level generation system has support for "prefabs" (hand drawn templates that are combined procedurally) - each branch now feels a lot more unique and the regular floors are more interesting too. Hopefully fewer pointless loops and wacky dead ends.
• Pits. They can be a great escape, but be careful not to fall into them accidentally
• Since spells were still quite overpowered (and too safe), spell failure has been added. Failing to cast a spell can cost both HP and MP
• Double doors that open simultaneously
• Monsters refuse to swap places with you if doing so would hurt them
• The summoning ability of the Strigoi has been reworked to use mana, so that he can't endlessly summon enemies
• Fixed a bug with eels climbing stairs (thanks bozar!)
• Water is brighter on the mini map, chests now show up as green
• Minimap rendering has been optimized
• Jack 'o lanterns have been turned off for now. In several Let's Plays, it seemed that people had confusedly started with them on even though they were intended to be off by default.
• Soul elixir wording clarified
• Compressed saves were removed as there was a major bug with them and they were quite slow anyway
• Some more music for different branches
• Fixed a game ruining bug that could happen if a boss died in water

Enjoy and please let me know how you like the update.

[ 2017-02-01 02:58:55 CET ] [ Original post ]

The first big update for Golden Krone Hotel has been released! Version 0.6 includes several content additions, control enhancements, and a save system.

Changelog

• Save system added
• Renown System added - Unlock disguises (classes) by leveling up your renown level
• The game is now fully playable with mouse: mouse can be used for all actions including movement and selecting magic directions
• Sharpshooter class added
• New branch: The Grotto. Stairs to this branch will appear much earlier than others.
• Two new monsters: Electric Eel and Crocodile
• Auto-run has been added. Hold down shift and a direction to move up to 7 tiles.
• Mouse movement and auto-running is cancelled when taking damage or when first seeing a monster
• All magic damage has been toned down by about 15%
• Fire damage now has a chance to cause Burning
• Monsters now attempt to get closer even if they don't have a direct path to the player
• Reduced the number of gold coins and bullets generated
• Clicking outside of a menu closes it
• The class table has been refactored to prevent erroneous descriptions and several typos were fixed as a result
• Death menu improved
• Fixed the issue where the last few seconds of your death weren't shown
• Fixed a bug with the throw ability
• Fixed an issue with 0 damage attacks not being logged
• Fixed an issue with the tile selector flickering
• Added some additional error handling functionality

A note on the save system: It was quite complex to write, so there's currently no bells and whistles. You're allowed one save at a time, for now. Given how complex the code is, there may be bugs lurking in there. If you want to totally avoid the system, then don't save or exit a run before it ends. If you run into any problems with loading a current save, there's a button to delete your save in the options menu.

[ 2016-12-03 17:17:25 CET ] [ Original post ]