Draft of Darkness News

Hello! I'm the solo developer of Draft of Darkness, the surival horror roguelike deck-builder and dungeon-crawler game! In this livestream, I'll be attempting to complete a run in the game! I'll be also chatting with you and answering your questions. Feel free to come along and join the livestream!

You can also play the demo version of Draft of Darkness until the end of the Steam Game Festival!

In Draft of Darkness, you will be:

• exploring procedurally generated maps,
  
• fighting enemies in "Slay The Spire" inspired card combat - with unique twists,
  
• recruiting new allies to aid you in battle,
  
• making decisions to change the outcome at the end of your run.
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

It's been a while since I could get a chance to write a blog, but rest assured that there has been a lot of improvements to Draft of Darkness in the last months. In fact, there has been so many that I decided to split the blog into two parts! These changes and the ones in part 2 are already in the Alpha version, so join our Discord and try them out!



Let's not waste any more time and get right into part one!

[h2]Renewed UI[/h2]
I went over the UI's design to adjust it a bit since I wasn't happy with the previous one's color scheme and big pixels. I was torn between changing to a more "post-apocalyptic" style or keeping the futuristic computer interface style; but I decided to go for the latter since that fits to the story of the game as well.



While working on the UI, I've also changed how some of the windows' functions as well. The biggest change is merging the party, gear and deck windows. All the functionality of managing your party, editing decks and equipping gear is now under a single window. It's now much faster to switch between party members, see their decks and make quick changes.

There are also the new "!" indicators to notify you that there is something new! For example, when you get cards during the run, the character edit button will have this icon, as well as the new card, once you open the deck window. Same thing applies for newly acquired gear, booster packs, notes in the library, achievents etc.



[h2]3D Encounters[/h2]
With the switch to 3D in the exploration phase, I started feeling like the styles for the 2D encounters and 3D exploration did not match anymore. After a test I've put together, I liked the 3D encounter style more and decided to keep it. I've added a transition animation to the encounter phase. Also, the camera rotates in a similar manner to "Darkest Dungeon" for entity turns, which enhances the 3D perspective.



[h2]Encounter Animations[/h2]
Characters now have attack, hurt and death animations during the encounters. This was a task I was dreading to work on since it was a lot of work to make separate attack animations for each weapon type and hand. New animations are definitely an improvement over the "slightly slide towards enemy" animation they were doing before.

I've also added blood (and poison) decals, meaning the blood will splatter onto the floor and stay there. This adds some juice (literally) to the combat and makes shooting zombie rats a lot more satisfying. Also there is a twist: if you kill an enemy with a critical hit, you will see a special effect! (Works only on streets area enemies for now.)



[h2]Map System[/h2]
With the new 3D exploration, the "Detector" item had been removed from the game. That item was the main way to find your way in the "dungeons" of the game. I've originally aimed to give player a more organic way to explore the map, by seeing something they want to explore rather than an arrow pointing to things. But with the Detector's removal, keeping track of where everything is in the map got harder. To solve this, I've added a mini-map that can also be expanded to see the whole level. It shows where the events are and you can see the parts of the floor you haven't explored yet. And it was easy to implement for me since it's actually mostly reused code from the old 2D exploration. That's always a plus!



[h2]Tile Grid[/h2]
Something I've noticed with people playing the game is that, the movement in the exploration phase felt very wonky to them; as if the character is getting their input in a delayed manner. This is very apparent with people that are not very familiar with the true movement mechanics of the roguelike genre. Since players don't see the "tiles" while they move, they expect to have free control over the character's movement. As a possible solution for this issue, I've added a grid that shows the tiles during exploration. This is hidden by default, and can be enabled by pressing a key or in the options menu. This grid also highlights tiles that will trigger an encounter, in other words, tiles that are next to enemies. This might be useful for players that prefer to have clear vision on the mechanics instead of trying to immerse themselves in the game's atmosphere. I personally prefer playing with the grid off, but I won't hold it against you if you enable it!



[h2]Huge Performance Boost[/h2]
If you're in our Discord server and have read my recent devlog messages, you're probably aware that I've recently lost my precious GPU. As grim as it is, this technical issue actually turned out good for the game. I've been literally forced to optimize the game to be able to continue development on my Intel onboard GPU. I'm happy to announce that the game now works on Intel integrated GPU on 60 FPS on low settings!

I don't want to go into technical details but I've made many changes to what the preset quality settings actually do. For example, "Low" setting now completely removes shadows, which brings huge performance boost. There are also separate options to disable taxing post processing effects like "ambient occlusion", "color bleed" etc. Other than these options, I've also worked on dynamically merging game objects after generating the level. Since static batching is out of the picture for the fully procedurally generated levels of Draft of Darkness, this method of merging meshes on the fly was a huge improvement for a big performance increase.

[h2]Are We Done?[/h2]
We are not done yet, but since there are a lot of changes, I split the blog into two parts. If you want to see all the changes yourself, you can play the game for FREE in our Discord server. Draft of Darkness is in the last stretch of the Alpha phase of development and will soon evolve into it's Private Beta phase. So catch it while it's available by joining our Discord server! See you on the next one...

This week's patch was focused on the input system of Draft of Darkness. These changes make the game controls customizable and adds some quality of life improvements here and there.

This update is also applied to the demo version on Steam, which will be deactivated on October 18th! If you miss the demo or want to continue playing, you can join the Discord server to play the Alpha version:



[h2]Customizable Key Bindings[/h2]

I've updated the project's input system to a newer method, making it a lot easier to customize. I've cleaned a lot of the code for the input handling while doing this. As a result, we have rebindable inputs with a much more resilient framework.

You can now assign keys to many new shortcuts like directional card switching, numerical card selection, end turn, flee etc. These shortcuts make it possible to play the encounter phase only using the keyboard. This system also makes it easier for me to possibly add gamepad support in the future.

[h2]Better Buttons For Encounters[/h2]

With the brand new pristine buttons, you now won't accidentally click the flee button or you won't be frustrated why the end turn button doesn't work. The "Try to Flee" button will now require you to hold it for 1 second before triggering. The "End Turn" button will now remember that you clicked it, even if you did during the card play animations. I call these smart buttons!

From this point on, I'll be continuing the development with bi-weekly updates. This means that the next update will be on October 30th. That update will be focusing on the UI Overhaul. I've also been experimenting with improving the visual style further. It's possible that I'll roll those changes into the update as well. If you want to try out the game after the demo expires, please feel free to join our Discord server. Until next time!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
The Alpha demo for Draft of Darkness is now playable for a limited time (7th October to 18th October) on Steam! It's a survival-horror roguelike deckbuilder with party and resource management. Recruit survivors to fight infected creatures and government robots in an eerie post-apocalyptic world. This demo comes with the huge dungeon exploration and character art update.

If you want to get more updates and follow the game progress more closely, I invite you to join our Discord server below! By entering the server, you will get bi-weekly updates through the Alpha version of the game. You can also gain access to the future closed beta by being an active tester or unlocking the "Savior" achievement in game!



[h2]Journey from 2D to 2.5D: A New Horror Dungeon Experience[/h2]
While the overall gameplay loop of Draft of Darkness was pretty much complete, the exploration phase of the game was always one step behind the rest of it. The card combat mechanics, namely the encounter phase, was really fun and strategic; but the dungeon exploration part, which occupies a significant portion of the play time, did lack in both of these aspects. You basically walked towards wherever your "Detector" points to, and face whatever events randomly occupy the tiles on your path.



This design of the exploration tries to invoke "fear from the unknown", but the problem is that it leans into this premise 100% and completely discards the decision making. You can't choose between a shop and an encounter, because they are all in the dark! Granted, it's possible to utilize items such as flares to see a part of the hidden tiles, but by default, you were effectively blind. This resulted in almost fully eliminating the player choice during the dungeon navigation.



The second problem was that everything you encountered during the exploration was "one time only". You encountered a shop; well, guess what? That was your only chance to buy something you'd seen there. You weren't able come back to any event unless it's an ally you had rejected, or an encounter you had fled from. This was another missed opportunity to introduce player choice to the exploration.

Lastly I wasn't really happy with the top-down visual style, since it limited my range of adding details to the maps to invoke the eerie feeling through atmosphere. I know that this is a subjective point, since there already are really good examples of such atmosphere implemented (ex. Darkwood). Nevertheless, I wanted to go for a new perspective, giving me more space to work with (hopefully another whole dimension will be enough space, am I right?).



Before I started working on this, I organized a poll in our Discord server to see what people think about the state of the dungeon exploration. I split the matter into two questions, one regarding the visual style and one for the gameplay aspect. Although the results weren't cut-and-dried, players were in favor of the 3d visuals and more adventure style gameplay instead of going for a more strategy game approach. I also participated in a roundtable with some fellow game developers, where I got great feedback about Draft of Darkness. Big part of the feedback was on the exploration and all that helped me finalize my decision.



Three months later, I am proud to announce that the big exploration rework is complete! The switch from 2d to 3d was totally worth it. I feel much comfortable with working with 3d models and I'm really happy with how the game's atmosphere turned out.



I'm also really happy with the new mechanics. While there aren't huge differences in the gameplay, how the vision and events are handled really changes the feel of the game. You can now see three tiles around the player instead of being completely in the dark. In addition, shop events are now re-visitable, meaning you can now go back to buy something you couldn't afford before. Similarly, in some of the decision events, you can come back to resolve it after finding a key item.

During the rework, a lot of the development time was actually spent on the map generation algorithm. I've basically re-coded the whole system for a much more flexible procedural generation. The new algorithm includes room themes, event generation on top of other scenery, exterior style scenery placement (demonstrated with the streets area) and other cool stuff. I would be happy to write a more detailed article on the generation algorithm itself, if anybody is interested.

[h2]Character Art Redo[/h2]


Even though the exploration rework was complete on the two months mark, there was another blocker for the update to be released: the sprites did not have the movement animations in the map. Since I was already thinking of replacing the sprites, I didn't want to bother with adding temporary animations. As a result, another month of a huge transformation had begun: replacing all the character art.



I am satisfied with how the new sprites turned out (although I gotta admit the old ones had their own charm in a way). Ultimately, the new character art fits the rest of the game going with a more realistic, grungy style. I was having a bad time replicating that style with the traditional pixel art so I think the new sprites turned out pretty good in comparison!

[h2]Future of Draft of Darkness[/h2]
All in all, it's great to be freed from the heavy feeling of working on a huge update, instead of being able to put out small patches. As a solo developer, working on reworks like this completely stops the game content and mechanics from advancing. After this point on, I'll be going back to bi-weekly updates and I don't plan to do another two or three month update. There are a few more overhauls that I want to take on, including the UI and input system updates, but I believe those can be completed with regular two-week patches.

For now, my short term goal will be to work on the polish of the game, do a lot of improvements and get the game ready for the Steam Winter Festival. I'm planning to continue focusing on the look & feel at least until December. This means that the game won't get a lot of content updates for the time being. Rest of the content for the early access version will be added after switching to the private beta.

[h2]How to Gain Access to The Closed Beta[/h2]
If you want to play Draft of Darkness in it's full glory, join our Discord server to become an alpha tester. I'm planning on switching from open to closed testing for the beta phase, so join now and become an active tester (or get the "Savior" achivement in-game) to keep your access to the game during the beta as well!