Hello Everyone! This is going to be a short update today, but we want to check in and let everyone know how things are going. First, were still working hard on the Alpha 1 demo, implementing new features and squashing some old and some new bugs. We wanted to release the demo in time for Halloween, but alas, its not quite ready for it to go out yet. Part of the reason for the delay is that we have been spending a bit more time with our family this month after our mother was diagnosed with a recurrence of her cancer near the end of September. She just recently went through her first round of treatment and is doing well. Were working hard to get the demo update out as soon as possible, so please look forward to it! Until then, enjoy this adorable Halloween Lily!
Trick or Treat!

Support Us On BackerKit!

We couldnt do this without everyones awesome support! If you missed out on backing us on Kickstarter, its not too late to be a backer on BackerKit with many of the same rewards still available such as getting your name in the credits among many others! Support us here: http://duckblock.com/forsaken-castle/back Thank you all again for your patience and support! It means so much to both of us! Sincerely, Lance & Clint Trahan Duck Block Games

[ 2018-11-01 00:16:33 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello Everyone! Since we missed posting back in August, we're giving you a double dose update for both August and September! Let the info barrage commence!

August Update

Changes Under the Hood Besides integrating the new Blight monster and Lich, we’ve been hard at work on the core systems that connect all areas of the game. Many bugs found since our last demo update have been fixed or are close to being addressed. We’ve implemented a new workflow for managing each content area within their own scene and seamlessly loading between them. This change in scene management required a massive overhaul to the current save system, which has also been fully implemented and will now have the save points being used going forward. We’ve also started construction on the Test Wing of the castle that will be accessed by a super secret button combination, pursue at your own risk. User Interface Changes While we were working on the save system, we felt it was a good opportunity for us to clean up and redesign the UI beyond its initial prototype state. First, are the changes to the Health/Mana bar as they are now represented by icons instead of a meter.
The math still works the same, but we feel this change will give a better representation of Lily growing in strength as she finds more items. The effect will feel less cheap to us than simply extending a bar. You will initially start with 3 hearts and 2 mana (with each then being cut into 4 sub sections) and it will expand from there. For now, the mana will still regenerate over time, but will be scaled appropriately. Though we are also looking into ways to balance forgoing regeneration and make mana more accessible in other ways, but we definitely need more time before we reach a final decision on it. Next are the changes to the pause menu.
You may be surprised, but mushrooms are quite useful The old menu was thrown together very quickly, so we were happy to finally give it some much needed love. Just as before, our goal is a menu similar to other adventure games that focus on key items, upgrades, and abilities. Next we have our new Journal and updated Map.

Maps! Now with 700% more color! During Lily’s adventure through the castle she will find several Books and Notes that give some insight into the world she lives in, as well as clues about current events in the castle. This is also where Backers from our Lorekeeper tier and above will have some of their own lore added to the world. There will also be a Quest Log to record events that have happened and a Bestiary of all the monsters encountered in the castle.

September Update

Engine Upgrades Lance here! If engine upgrades and lots of text isn’t your thing, head on down to the next section to see some sweet art! Since the launch of our Kickstarter we have been building the game on Unity 5.6.4. This was the last version before Unity moved to their Unity 2017/2018 naming convention. In general, it’s not advisable to change or otherwise upgrade your engine unless some fix or feature is made available that you absolutely need. About a week ago I decided to upgrade the engine to Unity 2018.2. While there was no particular fix or feature that brought on this change, I felt it was worth spending some time to entertain the possibility of updating the engine. Thankfully the update wasn’t too harsh on the project. I was able to eliminate build errors in the first day. There were a number of warnings that have since been cut down significantly and don’t otherwise affect gameplay. The only semi time consuming issue was that our TextMesh Pro text boxes in our core scene had lost their script references and needed to be remade. Currently, I’m almost done addressing a few quirks in the weather system and then things will be back to 100%. Even if this engine update wasn’t driven by a specific need, this process did still have two side benefits: [olist]

Keeping the engine up-to-date helps keep us in step with on-going API support such as Steamworks and for additional support for eventual console porting. As an example, Unity’s documentation for 5.6.4 has already been archived and has been difficult to reference at times because many links are outdated or otherwise broken.

It also gave me a chance to take a good look at where points of failure were lurking and to clean out things that were no longer used or needed. Because of this, I decided to reverse our usage of a third-party UI package that was unnecessarily complex and bulky to work with. Going back to my previous custom UI system was pretty simple and only needed a few minor adjustments to accomplish what we already have. [/olist] Ultimately, the upgrade to Unity 2018.2 has been a net positive and will allow us to gain access to new improvements and fixes made in the engine and make it easier to maintain the project by not letting the engine fall too far behind. Character Updates Clint here! With all of the under-the-hood changes to things like scene management, UI, levels, monsters and the engine itself, it was long since time to nail down some character designs. I have a few more characters to finish, but for now, these two are the most important.
Early on, we had some pretty rough ideas, but when making original characters it’s important to have some character sheets made so we can lock things in and so we can consistently apply their design going forward. Now that we have a clear design for each of them, the next step is to ‘pixelize’ their appearance in the game. Here is a comparison from our original pre-alpha when Lily first shows up to the castle at the start of the game.
Some pretty big differences Scaling down the illustrations does help a little, but it produces some artifacts that still need to be cleaned up after. The changes will also give the characters a much needed increase in screen real estate. Doing this will make it easier to implement different poses and facial expressions along with adding some extra refinement to their details. The dialogue box has now also reached its final design to go along with the other upcoming UI updates. Now you may have wondered, who is Evelyn?
Quite the drastic change indeed Evelyn is a dark elf sorceress that Lily meets in the castle before fighting the Lich. She has been a part of the game since the beginning, but her design was really rushed and for a long time she didn’t even have a name. We hope everyone likes the new designs and look forward to the rest of the characters showing up in the near future. We’re working hard to get all of these updates pulled together for a new demo release that will be coming very soon. Once these touches are in place, we’ll be able to move forward with building the rest of the castle and its content.

Support Us On BackerKit!

We couldn't do this without everyone's awesome support! If you missed out on backing us on Kickstarter, it's not too late to be a backer on BackerKit with many of the same rewards still available such as getting your name in the credits among many others! Support us here: http://duckblock.com/forsaken-castle/back That's it for our mega double post! Once again, thank you so much for your support and patience as we continue our momentum into October and consequently, our favorite time of year. Bring on the cooler weather! Sincerely, Lance & Clint Trahan Duck Block Games

[ 2018-09-25 18:01:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hey Everyone! This update is cross-post from our Kickstarter update so everyone here can also keep up on the current development of Forsaken Castle. If you would like to see our previous updates you can check them out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/duckblockgames/forsaken-castle/updates

More Improvements

We have many changes and fixes that will be coming in our next update but here are a few visual upgrades to look out for. First, everyone’s favorite flying skull throwing Lich is getting a big upgrade, and yes, there will be many more flying skulls!
Next you might remember those red blocks in the Abandoned Mine that Lily’s whip doesn’t work on. Well, they were always meant to be a placeholder until we were able to create something better.

These mysterious little critters will be found all throughout the castle blocking Lily’s path. Even as a paladin that has studied evil creatures, she has never heard of this particular type of monster, but they seem to be affected by magical attacks. Another mystery for some players has been some of the statues that appear throughout the game, these will ultimately be save rooms, we just needed to get them fully working with the upcoming changes to zone management.

Music Track - Dungeon

We also have a new track from Zack Parrish to share that will ultimately be going into the 30-minute demo! Let us know what you think! https://soundcloud.com/zack-parrish/forsaken-castle-dungeon

Support Us On BackerKit!

If you missed out on backing us on Kickstarter, it's not too late to be a slacker backer on BackerKit with many of the same rewards still available such as getting your name in the credits among many others! Support us here: http://duckblock.com/forsaken-castle/back Once again, thank you everyone for your amazing support! We are really looking forward to the next update where we’ll have a lot of changes ready for you to check out! As always, we welcome any comments, questions, or suggestions! Sincerely, Lance & Clint Trahan Duck Block Games

[ 2018-07-20 15:56:41 CET ] [ Original post ]

Hello to all our fans on Steam! Going forward, we will be cross posting our Kickstarter updates on Steam so everyone who doesn't fancy going to Kickstarter can keep up with the latest news about Forsaken Castle. If you haven't seen the original campaign on Kickstarter, you can check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/duckblockgames/forsaken-castle Please enjoy the update message below: Hello Everyone! We hope everyone is having a good year so far! It’s been way too long since our last update and for that we sincerely apologize. We’ve been working hard on the game, but for a few reasons that we'll cover below, we had some trouble with posting updates. Today we’d like to talk about what has been going on since our last update and our plans moving forward.

What’s Been Happening

Since our last update in October we have been working on many visual updates and fixing some design issues we had discovered. We spent some time working with a local pixel artist to help update some monsters as well as create some new ones! The holiday season was a little busy while getting ready for PAX South but we got most of our character updates done as well as a new UI system. Even with all this there were still some issues with the game that we didn’t have time to address yet and has taken us longer than expected to get done. Since PAX we have been updating all of the level art to fix issues and better match Lily’s new sprite, as well as changing how we are building the levels in Unity. Some of the new pixel art was a challenge and was taking longer than expected, but is now coming along much quicker and will make creating content for future updates much easier. We are hoping to have an update to the demo with many of these changes soon, even though it won’t be our finalized vision of the full 30-minute demo.
Lily will encounter these statues where her progress through the castle can be saved

PAX South 2018

After having our first crazy and fun PAX experience with PAX South back in 2017, where we got to show off our very early prototype (i.e. bugs running rampant within the game) and got some great feedback, we were absolutely looking forward to going again in 2018. Tragically, both of us were coming off of a pretty bad cold, though I was further ahead in recovery than my brother Clint. Thankfully, the build for PAX South was very stable, so we didn’t have to jump in very often to reset or otherwise address any issues. This freed me up to spend most of my time tucked just under the screens working on the massive UI system revamp that I started as we were driving the 7 hours to San Antonio.
A quick look at some of the new UI screens coming soon Last year, we had only one screen with the game running off of my laptop, so any issues effectively halted play for anyone passing by. This time around we managed to add an additional screen and make a build of the game which ran great on the tiny Nvidia Shield TV (Android). Using a small USB thumb drive, we were able to sort out any issues and live patch the build without disturbing either of the two stations except when needed to quickly upload a new build. This allowed us to dish out double the amount of playthroughs than our previous year. Booth efficiency gains aside, we enjoyed the fact that we always had people at our booth stopping by to check out the game and as a result, the controllers were rarely inactive. Many people from across the country and even from abroad enjoyed playing the demo. We were also happy to hear from a number of online game streamers that were interested in playing Forsaken Castle on their streams as soon as they could. During many of our conversations with people passing by the booth, we also found a great many who showed up were also our backers! We loved getting a chance to talk with everyone!
Our banner became the backdrop for some interviews and the subject of a number of camera phone pictures ^_^

Gallery Music Track

We also have a new track from Zack to share that will ultimately be going into the 30-minute demo. Let us know what you think in the comments below or over on the SoundCloud page itself! https://soundcloud.com/zack-parrish/forsaken-castle-gallery-2

Timeline Changes and Update Schedule

While we have been working very hard to make improvements to the game, we have unfortunately failed to complete a number of our development milestones in the time we had originally estimated. Because of this, we have decided to make a few changes going forward. First, our goal of having Early Access on Steam by Q2 2018 will not be able to happen and for that we are deeply sorry. We really wanted everyone to be able to enjoy the game by at least a year from our Kickstarter, but we’ve been learning a number of things for the first time and it has slowed our progress more than we had originally anticipated. Second, because we have continued to miss our goals we decided it would be best to wait until we are closer to finishing the game before giving a firm release date. Finally, we will be making sure we have an update post every month, even if it’s just a short update. We really appreciate our backers and want everyone to keep everyone informed. We weren’t sure how much content would be enough for an update, but then too much time would pass and we got caught in a cycle of feeling we didn’t have enough content to justify the time between posts. Which is something we needed to deal with and change now to break the cycle and create a better feedback loop with all of you. We hope you all understand and look forward to all the upgrades we have planned to make Forsaken Castle the best game it can be. Sincerely, Lance & Clint Trahan Duck Block Games P.S. We hope to have an updated demo ready by the next update and will be hosted here on Steam for anyone interested in trying it out. We're working hard to get it to the fully polished 30-minute experience, but this next update may fall a little short of that mark but it will still be very close to completion and in a good enough state to release it.

[ 2018-05-04 21:01:05 CET ] [ Original post ]

Forsaken Castle is a 16-bit style, action exploration platformer, about a paladin and her fight against evil.

Inspired by classic metroidvania games, you will discover new abilities, fight deadly creatures, and explore a handcrafted world created in a retro pixel art style.

Story

Lily is a newly appointed paladin sent to investigate the appearance of undead near a village. Her search leads her to an old castle that is known to have been long abandoned, but there are lights visible and the drawbridge is closed.

Being new to her order, she has a desire to prove herself a capable paladin, thus she decides to find a way into the castle and destroy the source of the undead, but doesn't realize the evil she is ultimately about to face.

Features

• An SNES inspired adventure through a handcrafted pixel art castle.
  
• Challenging Battles, Epic Bosses, and Multiple Endings!
  
• Explore dungeons and catacombs filled with secrets, traps, and puzzles.
  
• Discover items and spells to become stronger but also to reach new areas.
  
• Metroid Gameplay and Level Design but with Castlevania visual aesthetics.