Neverlooted Dungeon News

Hello looters, here is the news from the dungeon’s depths.



First of all, let me wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, and most of all an Happy Dungeon Looting.






The sound of hammers echoes in the depths of the dungeon, where I continue to work hard to prepare for the release of Neverlooted Dungeon. You probably already guessed it from the current date, the game will not be released in 2024 as I had planned. But I have not been idle, the game has progressed well. I even played last year’s version before writing this post, and the gain in quality is palpable. I tell you again, it would have been a shame to release the game last year, without these improvements.

In this end-of-the-year devlog, let’s review some of the major work accomplished in 2024 and discover my latest work.




This spring, I created a lot of new textures, using the amazing Material Maker software. I created a large number of textures for floors, walls, tapestries, stained glass windows, paintings, sculptures, and other decorative elements. This decorative and narrative elements really make the game more interesting to explore.












This spring too, I added several new monsters. Not only does this add some welcome variety, but their inclusion also greatly improved the atmosphere of the levels, making them feel more alive and immersive.









Some of the tested monsters didn’t made it to the game, for instance I decided not to include this cute gelatinous cube.



This is my last creation. If you love to devour books, know that in Neverlooted Dungeon the books also love to devour you :)






This summer, I focused on the creation of the game ending, in particular to make it an interactive playable scene. I obviously can’t tell you anything about it, but I put a lot of effort into it to reward looters who will reach the end. I had to create a lot of elements to do it, it took some time, but I’m very happy with the result.

I even added hidden alternate endings and small variations to reward the smartest among you :)

The ending is almost in its final state, but I still have to find a voice actor to dub the voices, because I want it to be fully voiced. I have already received quite a few applications but, as always, recruiting someone always takes me a long time.




This fall, I have thoroughly reworked the behaviors of the monsters so that they finally can fight each other. Why? Well, attracting one enemy to another can be a good way to get rid of them. Also, the rat summoning flute or the charm wand now allow you to give attack orders, which makes them even more useful. Do you want an army of rats to devour your enemies? Well, you can! Besides, the charm wand allows you to do really cool things in the last level, will you be able to discover them? ;)








For the past year, I’ve been in the “polish” phase. The game is complete and playable, and with each version I improve different aspects according to certain priorities, whether it’s visuals, systems, level design, difficulty, narration, bugs, etc., until I am satisfied with the result.

To do this, I created several custom evaluation grids, and with each iteration I play and evaluate the whole game, and I define the improvement priorities for the next build.

For example, one of my current priority is a level design task that I call “add more sand”. Indeed, with all the systems and gameplay, the game is providing a large amount of “toys” to be played in the “sandbox” levels. But I find that some levels still lacks situations of use. My mission is not only to continue to improve the levels on various domains, but above all to ensure that they are all largely provided with interesting situations with which you can exploit the great possibilities of the systems.

For example, but not limited to, more situations for climbing, searching, burning, breaking, physically interacting, sneaking, disarming traps, etc.












In the last devlog, I already presented you my work this spring of the whole rework of the level 2. And as I was working on the level 3 for my “more sand” update, I was still very bothered by the fact that this level structure was not exactly what I wanted.

Indeed, for a long time this level was supposed to be two separate levels. Two years ago I had started to slit it in two separate levels but I had to put this project on hold. Then, this summer, I went back in this direction with some “extensions” of the level, to include the “must have” elements I had in mind, but also to test if the level split was still doable. Finally, this Fall, after a few day of prototyping the level split, I re-dedicated a few weeks on it to re-do it in depth and finally create the two levels that I had in mind from the start, using the different versions of the level, its extensions, and the stuff on hold. And now that I have finished this task I am really happy with the result, as I was also able to “add more sand” as I wanted.









These new levels are now really solid, and this task ends my “major rework” tasks. I still have minor improvements of the other levels to do, but nothing as radical as a complete rework.

With all these changes, I sometimes think that it would be interesting to publish one day the different versions of the game in a kind of playable making of, where you could play the various versions of the game with some dates and explanations, to discover its evolution. What do you think?




Among the flaws criticized in the game, it was often the combat that came up. I spent some time to correct some aspects, in particular on the reactivity of the inputs to chain attacks and parry. There is still work to be done on the balancing of stamina. Do not hesitate to tell me what you think.




I worked with Alexandre Sciré on the music, in order to give him relevant feedback to finalize the soundtrack. I also created new mixing and fading tools to make the loops as invisible as possible and further enhance the immersion.




As always, a lot of bug fixes and various improvements. In this regard, I would like to thank everyone who take the time to report bugs. I was a bit behind in support and a major bug was reported over 40 times in September! I finally released an update to fix it. Please continue to report bugs, I always end up fixing them :)




The demo has exceeded 178 reviews, and they are 99% positive! Thanks to everyone who left a review! If you didn’t yet, don’t hesitate to do it to help. I read them carefully to know what you like and what needs to be improved.



All these positive reviews confirm that my particular game, mixing several genres and influences of classic games, seems to convince you, and I am working hard to make the rest of the game live up to your expectations :)

LEAVE A REVIEW -> https://store.steampowered.com/app/1394770




This fall and winter, it was the occasion to re-enable the (optional) Halloween-special and Christmas-special versions of the demo.

If you missed Halloween … change your computer date ;)



The Christmas special is still available throughout the month of January !






Finally, here are a bunch of screenshots to show you a little bit of what awaits you in the depths of the dungeon.


















There’s still work to be done before release, including level improvements, final texts and localization, voice acting, some illustrations, optimization, debug, and finishing up small additions here and there. I won’t risk giving an approximate date anymore, so it’ll remain “I’ll release it as soon as possible”.

Thanks for reading this long devlog. See you soon, Arnaud

Hello looters, here is the news from the front.

Development of Neverlooted Dungeon continues and the game gets closer and closer to its final form. I feel like a sculptor finishing his work, the sculpture is almost finished, its general form is already great, some places are already perfect but some others are still a little rough. I have to continue refining here and there, until the final experience of the game is as close as possible to my vision.

Some people tell me that I’m stuck in an endless finishing loop, but when I show them the evolution and improvements of the latest versions, they admit that indeed the result is much better and that it was worth it. This is the main problem with working alone, everything is very slow. A little more patience, it will soon be done.




Before we begin, I would like to announce that following changes on Steam, the demo now has its own page, on which it is possible to leave a review. So if you liked the demo and want to support me, I invite you to go to the demo page and leave a review. This is very important to help me gain visibility.

[h3]LEAVE A REVIEW -> https://store.steampowered.com/app/1394770[/h3]






Lately, I’ve been particularly focused on storytelling, in all its forms. Whether it is the writing of dialogues, books and notes, the creation of visual elements, tapestries, paintings, sculptures, and other visual elements, narration has made a big leap forward and I am delighted about it. I also continued my effort to make the place more alive and plausible by adding many small elements and details. I still need to work on some parts, especially the ending sequence, but the bulk is in its near-final form.








I started my improvement work on levels 3 and 4. A first pass is done and its very encouraging result proves to me that it was a good idea, and that I need to go a bit further for these levels. They’re not quite in the “dungeon raider” experience I envision, but I’m getting closer and closer, and I’m confident that I’ll get there very soon.










The polish is also done on the entire game, the other levels, the features, the visuals, the audio, etc. In particular, I continued to fix bugs and improve features. I also do a lot of things that are invisible to you, including reducing “technical debt”, for example by completely recoding certain elements that were problematic for me, like the player controller which, extremely rarely, slipped on the stairs.




This summer is a bit complicated for me, for various reasons I don’t have many long periods to work, which slows down my pace quite a bit. Regarding the 2024 release date, I still think the game will be finished at the end of 2024, but I may postpone the release by a few weeks to avoid this already very busy period. I’ll let you know.


Have a good summer, and see you soon :)


Arnaud

Hello Dungeon Raiders, I hope you are doing well.



At the occasion of the Games Made In France 2024 festival, I will be live on twitch Saturday 18th May 2024 at 11pm (Paris, UTC +2) to present Neverlooted Dungeon during an interview (in French). The stream will be broadcasted on twitch MisterMv channel.

You can also discover a lot of other awesome French games during the whole event by looking at the Games Made In France Steam page.

Arnaud

Hello dungeon raiders,

I hope you are well since last time. It’s time to take a look at the development of Neverlooted Dungeon.


[h2]Still polishing the game[/h2]

As I announced last time, the game is now in the polish phase. The game is almost finished, but I continue to improve it until it finally reaches my level of requirements.

My process is quite simple at the moment: I play and analyze the latest version of the game, I do some playtests and analyze the feedbacks, then I sort things to debug, improve, change, add, delete. Then, I work on a new version with the aim of improving the things with the most impact in a limited time. Once the deadline is reached, I finalize the game version, and I start the analysis and improvement loop again.


[h2]Full level 2 rework[/h2]

One of the big challenges I tackled was the complete rework of level 2. For a very long time I found that this level was well below the others in terms of interest, because it was one of the oldest levels that I had created. And as it is important to “confirm” the interest of the game after an already very appreciated first level, it became urgent to take care of it.

I started out simply reworking it, but it ended up creating a completely new level. The best parts of the previous level have been reused in this or other levels. It was a big challenge but according to my own tests and playtests, I think it was largely successful. I’m also very happy to have completed this work in just a few weeks.




[h2]More life in the dungeon[/h2]

Among the important improvements of the latest versions, I worked on the creation of new unique creatures, especially for the last levels. Indeed, certain levels were really lacking “their creatures”, whether for novelty and variety, but above all for the atmosphere and narration that they provide.



I started by creating a lot of creature placeholders with very coarse geometry and place them in the levels, and made a lot of tests. I finally really created several of them, including also some variations. There are now crabs, zombies, living statues, and many others which I will not talk about so as not to spoil their discovery. I am very satisfied with the result. In a future version, I will improve their animations, behaviors, and adjust their difficulty, in particular some of them are much easier to defeat than they should be.

Here is a glimpse of some of them. You can find the cute crab in the latest version of the demo.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h2]Stronger focus on epic traps[/h2]

Part of my goals in polish is to improve the “Epic Tomb Looting” aspect, particularly by improving and adding “Indiana Jones”-style “epic trap rooms”. I am improving and adding small puzzles too, more for the narrative and atmospheric contribution than for the real challenges, but don’t worry, some optional puzzles will be real challenges. I have actually done things that I find really nice in the new level 2, here is a short preview:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]


[h2]New trailer in progress[/h2]

In order to better highlight the latest developments and the work on the atmosphere, I started to create a new trailer. It’s always the same structure based on the same musical track, on which I replace the clips with new ones. I think almost all the clips have been changed in this latest version. When the trailer is done, I will officially publish it and promote it.

However, I have already put it on the Steam page, so if you visited the page lately you may already have seen it.

Here is the current trailer, what do you think ?

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]



[h2]Overall improvements[/h2]

I also work on many things that are not necessarily visible, notably on fixing bugs or improving certain design elements.

I also continue little by little to improve the art style, notably with work on textures and lighting. I would love to have time to improve some atmospheric elements, like adding a waterfall in the first level, more particle and light effects, more visual scene elements.




[h2]Visibility and festivals[/h2]

In terms of the game’s visibility, I’m happy because I feel like I’ve finally managed to break through a bit. I’ve been part of some festivals lately, and I started being really noticed, for instance with an article from Rock Paper Shotgun during the FPS Fest. I must now focus on making the best game possible, so that this visibility has a use when the game is released.


[h2]Demo update[/h2]

I recently updated the demo to include the last improvements. There is also now a new small creature below the big stone bridge.


[h2]Roadmap[/h2]

I am currently focusing primarily on improving the narration, with the addition of dialogues, notes, books, indirect and environmental narration, which I had always left at a minimum to concentrate on the gameplay.

My other priorities are improving the UI to have something cleaner and more professional, and finding an illustrator to create the introduction art and various visual elements of the game. Besides, if you are a freelance professional 2D artist specialist in fantasy, do not hesitate to send me your references.

My last really big challenge will be working on level 3. Several months ago I created a new version of this level, but I was never really satisfied with it. I would like to be able to combine the best of the existing level and this new version, to make it one of the best levels in the game.

Then, there are still a lot to do, like improving the combat, balancing the economy, improving the art, and many other things to round out the corners and have the best possible experience.

In terms of release, my current schedule is to aim for the end of the year around November/December. I think I’m still on time, but with the incompressible delays for the localisation and its testing, I can’t guarantee anything. There may also be the issue of overload of game releases at the end of the year that I should take into account.


[h2]Wishlist[/h2]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1171980



Have nice dungeon looting and see you later :)

Neverlooted Dungeon is an rpg game in which you can shoot a crossbow from a first person perspective. This, I imagine, was the pitch it used when trying to blag its way past the thermodynamically powered golem wearing a Daikatana t-shirt that guards the gates of Steam’s currently-running FPS fest. Whatever the excuse, this silver tongued rascal succeeded, and is now nestled comfortably between umpteen boomer shooter revivals, trying to squeeze Ultima factoids into the conversation.

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