A quick update to the game:

• Damage taken was not properly tracked (as in not tracked at all) when playing as Swamp or Marsh. This is fixed now! Sadly all the damage you've taken as them in the past is gone forever.
• Similarly, damage taken in general was off by one for all characters. This is because no stats are tracked after you die aside from "Deaths", so the last damage you took just wasn't counted since the stat was counted after you died. That bug has been in place since the game launched, so that's neat. Fixed now, finally!

Also next week is Realm of the Ghost King's first birthday. Hooray!

[ 2019-01-10 03:40:34 CET ] [ Original post ]

Also known as 1.2.0, since winning a prestigious GOTY award I've put together a Game Of The Year Edition, as is tradition in gaming. 1.2.0 adds two new gameplay modes: Tourism and Endless. Tourism allows you to just play through the game without any enemies and Endless is played on a single map where you try for a high score. Both modes were fun to add and are hopefully enjoyable to play as well! The game should update on Steam and itch (via the itch app) when you start the launchers. The game will also run in "Game Of The Year" mode for the month of January, which is entirely cosmetic, displaying a fancy GOTY logo on the title screen (pictured above). You can also play as GhOsTY, who is exactly Ghost except purple (the official GOTY color). If you play the Steam version you can unlock an achievement by beating the game with GhOsTY! I hope you enjoy and have a happy New Year! Here's the full list of changes:

NEW FEATURES

• GOTY Mode, which is active during the month of January
• The logo in the menus makes note that it's Game Of The Year
• Play as GhOsTY, a purple version of Ghost, who replaces Ghost for the month of January
• GhOsTY is just Ghost, except purple

• NEW GAME MODE: Endless Mode
• Play on a single, randomized map with an infinite amount of enemies spawning
• Spawn rates (frequency and amount) increase over time until it's basically impossible
• You also have infinite bombs and killing an enemy automatically grants you a soul without the need to collect it
• New stats for best score, kills, and a couple more tracked specifically for Endless Mode
• Nothing to unlock, just play!

• NEW GAME MODE: Be A Tourist
• It's the normal game except no enemies (including bosses)
• You can explore or figure stuff out or whatever else you want
• You can still totally kill yourself with bombs if you want
• Also no achievements or stats count here (just like the tutorial)
• Steam Version: Four new achievements

GAME UPDATES

• A couple of stats that were glommed together are now tracked on their own (though not exposed yet)
• The ending screen (when you beat the game) will have a slightly different display if you defeat the second boss
• Yes, there is a second boss, she is a secret (some people have found her)
• Revised the "Play Game" menu a little bit since it has to fit four game modes in there now
• Various small menu tweaks

BUG FIXES

• The Special Ability mutator was always unlocked when it should have required you to cast 40+ special attacks to unlock. Now it does that.
• There are probably other bugs but they haven't been fixed!

[ 2019-01-03 03:11:17 CET ] [ Original post ]

Realm of the Ghost King is now on sale for 40% off! It will be on sale at this discount for the rest of October and probably for a day in November. It's a game with ghosts and monsters, so it's certainly a good October type of game in that regard.
If you need more enticing, I added something strange and weird to the game as well. If you play it at night (specifically after 7pm) for the last ten days of October you'll get a slightly modified version of the game with more pumpkins than the original. The main change is all the Spirit Bombs have been changed from skulls to pumpkins, which is kind of weird but silly. The second change is, if you manage to make it to the Ghost King he will be a pumpkin instead of a ghost. I don't know why I did this, but it's there. The changes to both the bombs and King are purely aesthetic, so everything otherwise works exactly the same. I know I said I probably wouldn't be doing more updates, but it just seemed too fun and weird not to do this. Other games have more in-depth Halloween updates, but have they ever replaced the titular character with a pumpkin? I doubt it!

[ 2018-10-22 17:56:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Log into Steam to grab the latest version of Realm of the Ghost King. 1.1.0 is a totally free update with new features, general improvements and bug fixes! Read on for the full set of changes in 1.1.0!

NEW FEATURES

• UPDATED LEVEL RENDERING. Added a background fade effect.

• NOW PLAYABLE: The Ghost King
• To Unlock: Defeat The Ghost King
• Will be unlocked if you've already done so
• Special Attack: Teleport to safety and leave a bomb
• Passive Ability: The Crown Protects

• NEW MONSTER: Swamp
• Unlocked by doing 80+ damage in one run
  • Will be unlocked if you've already done so
• Special Attack: Clone yourself (up to three at once)
• Passive Ability: Enemies attacking you will take damage

• NEW MONSTER: Phantom
• To Unlock: Freeze (Icecap), slime (Glob) or turn (Vlad) 40 total enemies
• These are newly tracked stats, so you'll need to accomplish it!
• Special Attack: Possess closest enemy for 10 turns (costs 3 souls)
• Passive Ability: Start with one soul

• FULL GAMEPAD SUPPORT:
• Auto-detects your controller once you press a button
• Button graphics for XBox 360, XBox One, Playstation 4 and Switch controllers
• Menu option allows you to select a specific button graphics if you want

• ADDITIONAL FEATURES:
• Daily Challenge countdown clock (or countup if you already participated)
• Player highlight is always on
• Added new resolution: Massive (1440x1080)
• Steam Version: Eight new achievements
• 6 regular, 2 secret!

GAME UPDATES

• Updated titlemap colors
• Improved camera movement/following
• Revised the way controls work (if you rebind movement the menu controls will match)
• Simplified keyboard controls menu
• Status changes (frozen, slime, possession/turning) now tracked
• Small balance tweaks to The Depths (level 7)
• Updated to latest version of Electron

BUG FIXES

• Fixed specific cases that caused camera jitter
• Fixed cases where Moai and exit would be spawned in the same place
• Fixed rare case where Moai could block off part of the map
• Improved text caching

[ 2018-06-21 04:23:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

For immediate release, Mantis-Eye Labs, LLC is pleased to announce:
After dozens of sales and a little time away I'm happy to announce the future of Realm of the Ghost King! In the near future an update with new content, bug fixes and other fun stuff will be released totally free of charge to current owners of the game!

So what content is in ROTGK 1.1.0, you ask? Well, here's how game development works: you think of all the cool shit you want to put in a game and then you completely cut like 80% of those things because otherwise you'd never release anything. 1.1.0 is my chance to add back in some of those things!

But Why?

Because I can! The game didn't exactly sell like hotcakes, which is fine, but the last year or so of development was quite a slog. It made me kind of dislike the game, and I don't want to end on that note. So I'm adding in a few features that I cut, some other good ideas I had, and tossing in a couple things I knew would be really fun to build. It's an update for me, the developer, as much as you, the player. So what's in it? Glad you asked!

Graphical Updates!

If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen this tweet with a mockup of some new "lighting". I always felt the levels were a little sparse around the edges, but it wasn't a high priority to fix them. The new look isn't quite as dramatic as that mockup, but I like the final result:

Playable Ghost King

Having the Ghost King be a playable character was something that seemed fairly obvious, but it ended up as part of that 80% I mentioned earlier. A lot of the 80% of stuff cut is for the better, but some of it is just a bummer. Unlocking the Ghost King awesome and I'm glad he's finally playable! Here's his character select screen:
I'll have more stuff on him in the near future. Keep an eye on Twitter where I'll probably post some videos or GIFs about this.

New Monsters

In the above image you might also notice there are twelve characters to pick from now instead of ten (nine plus the Ghost King). This is one of the fun things! Designing new monsters is a lot of fun! I'm so excited that I even made a graphic!
Both of these are still in the pretty early stages of development, and it's possible I won't even be able to pull off Phantom's special ability in the way I want to (which is why I'm being vague with "possess your foes") but maybe announcing it will motivate me. Like I said before, I'll put stuff up on Twitter when I have something I'm happy with and worth sharing.

What Else?

A couple less fun things that are still hopefully good! This is a small change but I like it. The Daily Challenge starts and ends at midnight UTC every day, which is more or less an obvious time to do it, but it's never actually communicated anywhere. Now there's a little countdown letting you know when the current challenge ends (or when the next one starts, if you prefer). I'd like to balance the last (non-boss) level of the game a little bit better. It's always seemed too hard to me. It should obviously be hard but something makes it feel a little too difficult in an unfair way. I'd also like to add controller support. I'm not sure if anyone actually wants this, but it seems cool to have and I don't think it will be too tough to do... might be famous last words though. More achievements for the Steam version! People like achievements, right? I thought I would hate them but I had fun implementing them and I'll try to think of a few more that are actually achievable.

Okay So, When?

No date is set yet! I'm hopeful for late April or early May, but I'm not going to promise a date just yet! So, for now...

There will be plenty more #content and #announcements to come regarding this version. I'm excited to build some (hopefully) cool junk for this game!

[ 2018-04-10 03:04:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

For immediate release, Mantis-Eye Labs, LLC is pleased to announce:
After dozens of sales and a little time away I'm happy to announce the future of Realm of the Ghost King! In the near future an update with new content, bug fixes and other fun stuff will be released totally free of charge to current owners of the game!

So what content is in ROTGK 1.1.0, you ask? Well, here's how game development works: you think of all the cool shit you want to put in a game and then you completely cut like 80% of those things because otherwise you'd never release anything. 1.1.0 is my chance to add back in some of those things!

But Why?

Because I can! The game didn't exactly sell like hotcakes, which is fine, but the last year or so of development was quite a slog. It made me kind of dislike the game, and I don't want to end on that note. So I'm adding in a few features that I cut, some other good ideas I had, and tossing in a couple things I knew would be really fun to build. It's an update for me, the developer, as much as you, the player. So what's in it? Glad you asked!

Graphical Updates!

If you follow me on Twitter you may have seen this tweet with a mockup of some new "lighting". I always felt the levels were a little sparse around the edges, but it wasn't a high priority to fix them. The new look isn't quite as dramatic as that mockup, but I like the final result:

Playable Ghost King

Having the Ghost King be a playable character was something that seemed fairly obvious, but it ended up as part of that 80% I mentioned earlier. A lot of the 80% of stuff cut is for the better, but some of it is just a bummer. Unlocking the Ghost King awesome and I'm glad he's finally playable! Here's his character select screen:
I'll have more stuff on him in the near future. Keep an eye on Twitter where I'll probably post some videos or GIFs about this.

New Monsters

In the above image you might also notice there are twelve characters to pick from now instead of ten (nine plus the Ghost King). This is one of the fun things! Designing new monsters is a lot of fun! I'm so excited that I even made a graphic!
Both of these are still in the pretty early stages of development, and it's possible I won't even be able to pull off Phantom's special ability in the way I want to (which is why I'm being vague with "possess your foes") but maybe announcing it will motivate me. Like I said before, I'll put stuff up on Twitter when I have something I'm happy with and worth sharing.

What Else?

A couple less fun things that are still hopefully good! This is a small change but I like it. The Daily Challenge starts and ends at midnight UTC every day, which is more or less an obvious time to do it, but it's never actually communicated anywhere. Now there's a little countdown letting you know when the current challenge ends (or when the next one starts, if you prefer). I'd like to balance the last (non-boss) level of the game a little bit better. It's always seemed too hard to me. It should obviously be hard but something makes it feel a little too difficult in an unfair way. I'd also like to add controller support. I'm not sure if anyone actually wants this, but it seems cool to have and I don't think it will be too tough to do... might be famous last words though. More achievements for the Steam version! People like achievements, right? I thought I would hate them but I had fun implementing them and I'll try to think of a few more that are actually achievable.

Okay So, When?

No date is set yet! I'm hopeful for late April or early May, but I'm not going to promise a date just yet! So, for now...

There will be plenty more #content and #announcements to come regarding this version. I'm excited to build some (hopefully) cool junk for this game!

[ 2018-04-10 03:04:53 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is a fairly minor update with some fixes for bugs that have been reported but I'm sadly unable to replicate. Hopefully more reliable trigger of "I Hate The Ghost King" achievement for those who have 3+ regicides. I was able to activate the achievement myself while testing but I put the code that executes it in a slightly different place. Hopefully this will be more reliable, but I can't promise it will work for everyone, obviously. Less cleverness with GPU detection that will hopefully make the game more stable on Linux? Again, the game runs for me on Ubuntu Trusty (in a VM) but it's using Electron so I can't make any promises. If the game is crashing for you, you could try running it with the --disable-gpu command line option. Many apologies if it doesn't run for you! More updates/fixes for the blocked exit bug which is one of the most frustrating bugs since I haven't seen it myself it in months and I've never figured out how to reproduce it. Lots of testing but not much progress. But, hopefully this helps out some people! Obviously let me know when/if any of these issues surface. Thanks!

[ 2018-02-10 21:57:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

This is a fairly minor update with some fixes for bugs that have been reported but I'm sadly unable to replicate. Hopefully more reliable trigger of "I Hate The Ghost King" achievement for those who have 3+ regicides. I was able to activate the achievement myself while testing but I put the code that executes it in a slightly different place. Hopefully this will be more reliable, but I can't promise it will work for everyone, obviously. Less cleverness with GPU detection that will hopefully make the game more stable on Linux? Again, the game runs for me on Ubuntu Trusty (in a VM) but it's using Electron so I can't make any promises. If the game is crashing for you, you could try running it with the --disable-gpu command line option. Many apologies if it doesn't run for you! More updates/fixes for the blocked exit bug which is one of the most frustrating bugs since I haven't seen it myself it in months and I've never figured out how to reproduce it. Lots of testing but not much progress. But, hopefully this helps out some people! Obviously let me know when/if any of these issues surface. Thanks!

[ 2018-02-10 21:57:57 CET ] [ Original post ]

Naturally 1.0.3 attempted to fix and improve things so it ended up creating some bugs.

Spawn Indicator Issues

The main issue that arose was from the new spawn indicators. Since I had to (slightly) change how enemy spawns worked for that change it ended up that you (or another enemy) could walk into a space an enemy was going to spawn on and they would still spawn there as if everything was normal. Overlapping monsters didn't break anything (though monsters generally have no idea what to do when they're on top of a target) but it was a tad weird. So that's fixed. You can still walk into a spawn spot if you happen to be standing next to one, but now you'll prevent that enemy from spawning (which could be either good or bad depending on your situation). Other monsters in the level should also avoid spawn spots entirely as well.

Achievement Issues

Someone also noticed that the "I Hate The Ghost King" achievement didn't trigger for their third regicide, and there was a bug that would cause it to never trigger. It will trigger now, so if you're on your second regicide then your third one will win it for you. I also added a quick check that happens when the game loads so you won't have to go and beat the game again if you already have three.

Exit Is Blocked, Sometimes?

This one is especially annoying because it's not easy to reproduce at all and happens very infrequently. I'm not actually sure what the cause was so I spent some time combing over the code that spanws the exits in each map. I changed a few things that could have been causing it, but it's hard to confirm, so if you happen to see it again please let me know! Hopefully everything is good and I won't need to put out 1.0.5 in the next two days. Fingers crossed!

[ 2018-02-01 02:54:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

Naturally 1.0.3 attempted to fix and improve things so it ended up creating some bugs.

Spawn Indicator Issues

The main issue that arose was from the new spawn indicators. Since I had to (slightly) change how enemy spawns worked for that change it ended up that you (or another enemy) could walk into a space an enemy was going to spawn on and they would still spawn there as if everything was normal. Overlapping monsters didn't break anything (though monsters generally have no idea what to do when they're on top of a target) but it was a tad weird. So that's fixed. You can still walk into a spawn spot if you happen to be standing next to one, but now you'll prevent that enemy from spawning (which could be either good or bad depending on your situation). Other monsters in the level should also avoid spawn spots entirely as well.

Achievement Issues

Someone also noticed that the "I Hate The Ghost King" achievement didn't trigger for their third regicide, and there was a bug that would cause it to never trigger. It will trigger now, so if you're on your second regicide then your third one will win it for you. I also added a quick check that happens when the game loads so you won't have to go and beat the game again if you already have three.

Exit Is Blocked, Sometimes?

This one is especially annoying because it's not easy to reproduce at all and happens very infrequently. I'm not actually sure what the cause was so I spent some time combing over the code that spanws the exits in each map. I changed a few things that could have been causing it, but it's hard to confirm, so if you happen to see it again please let me know! Hopefully everything is good and I won't need to put out 1.0.5 in the next two days. Fingers crossed!

[ 2018-02-01 02:54:31 CET ] [ Original post ]

The second post-launch patch. There's one quality of life change to the game itself but the major point of this release is...

Linux Version!

After a bit more of a struggle than I care to admit, the Linux version is launched. Mind you I only tested/built it in a VM, but it's all ready nonetheless.
It should work normally otherwise, though I can't guarantee things like the Steam Overlay will work (it also doesn't seem to work on my Mac), but the game itself will run and if you achieve an achievement that will unlock all the same. Let me know what you think!

Gameplay Changes

The only change to the game itself was to add spawn locations for enemies one turn before they spawn. You can see it in this screenshot (the green square):
Nobody ever actually brought this up with me as an issue, it's just something I've run into myself over the years. So I don't know if it's even required or desired but it seems to be nice to have. Enjoy!

[ 2018-01-30 04:58:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

The second post-launch patch. There's one quality of life change to the game itself but the major point of this release is...

Linux Version!

After a bit more of a struggle than I care to admit, the Linux version is launched. Mind you I only tested/built it in a VM, but it's all ready nonetheless.
It should work normally otherwise, though I can't guarantee things like the Steam Overlay will work (it also doesn't seem to work on my Mac), but the game itself will run and if you achieve an achievement that will unlock all the same. Let me know what you think!

Gameplay Changes

The only change to the game itself was to add spawn locations for enemies one turn before they spawn. You can see it in this screenshot (the green square):
Nobody ever actually brought this up with me as an issue, it's just something I've run into myself over the years. So I don't know if it's even required or desired but it seems to be nice to have. Enjoy!

[ 2018-01-30 04:58:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

The first post-launch patch! This is a fairly minor release with some housekeeping and typos (sorry, Devon!) but contains a few good things.

New Gameplay Options Menu

In the menus if you go to Help & Options > Game Setup & Info there's a new menu called Gameplay Options which contains the game mutators (which have to be unlocked) as well as two new options. The first is HUD Type which will allow you to select from the original HUD and a new compact HUD. The other option is the ability to show or hide enemy health bars. For the majority of development enemies had no health bars but during testing it was often suggested to me so I implemented it. However if you want to give yourself an extra challenge you can turn them off.

Achievements!

These were pretty low impact to add to the game and a couple people mentioned wanting them so here they are! There are eight (seven regular, one hidden) for you to unlock. Also note if you already played the game you won't retroactively unlock any of them, so you have to do the things again. Enjoy!

[ 2018-01-20 19:03:20 CET ] [ Original post ]

The first post-launch patch! This is a fairly minor release with some housekeeping and typos (sorry, Devon!) but contains a few good things.

New Gameplay Options Menu

In the menus if you go to Help & Options > Game Setup & Info there's a new menu called Gameplay Options which contains the game mutators (which have to be unlocked) as well as two new options. The first is HUD Type which will allow you to select from the original HUD and a new compact HUD. The other option is the ability to show or hide enemy health bars. For the majority of development enemies had no health bars but during testing it was often suggested to me so I implemented it. However if you want to give yourself an extra challenge you can turn them off.

Achievements!

These were pretty low impact to add to the game and a couple people mentioned wanting them so here they are! There are eight (seven regular, one hidden) for you to unlock. Also note if you already played the game you won't retroactively unlock any of them, so you have to do the things again. Enjoy!

[ 2018-01-20 19:03:20 CET ] [ Original post ]