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Dwelvers News

February Developer Report

Dear Dwelvers community,

This month I have been working on something extra. It wasn't my original plan but when it came to me I just had to pursue it.



So what is going on here? Do we have more than one Dark Mother in the picture?
Yes we do :D

[h3]Computer Dark Mothers[/h3]
Since the first time I started developing Dwelvers I always had the design in my mind that more than one player should be able to play the game at once, either it be in multiplayer, shared screen or just a computer player. Even if this was a long time ago and nothing I have prioritized during the 10 years of development I've always kept the original design intact. So when I tested to just add another computer player in the world another Dark Mother came forward!

[h3]Telling them apart[/h3]
Before I even wanted to go into all the bugs the new Dark Mother took with her into the underground, I first needed to be able to seperate the Wardens with all their creatures apart. So now we have rooms with green or red room flags depending on which player the Dark Mother belongs to.



And the creatures needed to be color coded as well.



Together with the roads.



And a very green Dark Mother!


(Perhaps too green??)

[h3]New Gameplay[/h3]
This opens up for a whole new campaign with the player fighting against, or cooperating with other Dark Mothers.

Scenarios that comes to my mind are the following:
  • Player fighting against other Dark Mothers.
  • Player fighting against other Dark Mothers and Humans (that are cooperating).
  • Player cooperating with other Dark Mothers to fight other Dark Mothers or Humans.
  • Player rescuing other Dark Mothers from humans.
  • And so on..


I also have this idea that if a Dark Mother is killed she will spew out her heart and her creatures will become neutral, and whatever imp takes the heart and feed it to their Dark Mother, gets the killed Dark Mothers' creatures. This could add a lot of tactics to the game play!

If you have more game play ideas please let me know here: Multiple Dark Mother's gameplay suggestions

[h3]In the far future[/h3]
This also takes the first steps towards actually being able to play the game in multiplayer! First I need to add supports for gamepads (which also increases the Steam Deck support), and once that is done we could have split screen multiplayer!

[h3]What is left to do?[/h3]
It went surprisingly well adding another Dark Mother to the dungeon, there weren't many bugs and most of them are already fixed! I bugtest by switching between players and make them build bases and fight against each other. Once all the bugs are fixed I will start working on the computer players AI, and I am not sure how long this will take because there will probably be a lot of tweaking and bugtesting.

I want computer played Dark Mothers to have different "personalities", like if they prefer to defend or attack and also how efficient they are at building up dungeons.

With that said, my mind is bubbling with inspiration right now, and I can see that this is very feasible to add into the game without it taking to long time to develop!


Thank you all for your support and I will see you soon again :)

Sincerely,

Rasmus Ljunggren
(The only developer of Dwelvers)

Dwelvers 1.0.2 Released - Hotfix version

Dear Dwelvers community,

A hotfix has been release to solve (or to get more information about) the issue some are having with the sound not working.

Sincerely,
/ Rasmus

Dwelvers 1.0.1 Released - Improved Productivity and Bug Fixes

Dear Dwelvers Community,

Between working on the big update that is going to be released in March or April, I have been trying to solve some of the most annoying bugs reported so far. So now finally the Steam achievements should be registered as the should and the sound should be working on all computer.

There have been something that has been annoying me for a while. The issue with a lot of imps standing idle while there are a lot of work available. After a lot of debugging I found the issue to be that the storage rooms didn't "hire" enough workers. So now we have a much more efficient way to hire workers to the storage rooms, the amount of workers hired are now based the amount of work available. Previously the hiring was based on how busy the workers were, but this has obviously not worked as good as I have intended. So please enjoy this version with a hugely increased productivity in your dungeon :)

I have also removed the squares with the storage capacity and the workload icons:


And added the information about the storage capacity here:


The hammer shown in the image represents the amount of workers vs the amount of jobs in the room. As long as the workers reaches 50% of the amount of jobs the room will have a really good productivity.

I may add that I am really happy about the last 10 reviews the 30 days was all positive! This has given Dwelvers another row with recent reviews being VERY POSITIVE!! :D


Hopefully this will last :D So please keep on posting great reviews and spread the news about Dwelvers so that we can reach out and make the game more visible!

[h3]Fixed bugs and new features list[/h3]


Thank you all for your support and I will see you soon again :)

Sincerely,

Rasmus Ljunggren
(The only developer of Dwelvers)

January Developer Report

Dear Dwelvers community,

It has been a really exciting month with a lot of work done. But as some of you may know I am also a father of two small daughters, and January is not a good month to stay away from sickness when all kids in preschool returns from their holidays. So perhaps there has not been as much work done as I hoped.

Nevertheless, I wanted to make this newsletter to show what I have been working on since the 1.0 release.

But first I want to tell you that I have sold about 300 units since the 1.0 release, which isn't much. But it seems that Steams full release marketing plan is not giving as much exposure to Dwelvers as I first thought, I guess this is because Dwelvers was first released in Early Access.

Now I have 4 out of 5 visibility rounds left to use, each round generate 500k+ guaranteed views. This is something like 700% more views each than Steam gave Dwelvers now when it was updated to full release. So there is still a lot of marketing potential!

[h3]New Way of Working[/h3]
As I have four visibility rounds left I plan to do at least 4 more major updates this year. Each update should have a new campaign level together with at least one new big feature, and while I am working on the major updates I will make smaller updates with with bugfixes.

[h3]Upcoming Major Update[/h3]
This month I have been working on optimizing Dwelvers and get rid of the FPS lock. This has gone really well and now the game actually runs 100% faster. The FPS lock is also gone and I have no issue running Dwelvers full screen on my 4k screen in 144hz.

With the speed increase I have been able to make the map larger, so now instead of having a cap on 75x75 tile large map we will have a new upcoming campaign which will now be 100x100 tiles large.

[h3]Keep Reporting Bugs and Coming with New Ideas of Features[/h3]
I have renamed the "Unsolved bugs" forum to "Unsolved bugs and features". This is because I also want to save your feature suggestions and don't forget to add them into the game.

[h3]How You Can Help?[/h3]
If you could post a review or consider changing a negative one it would be really helpful. I think the positive review rating strongly affects how many people are interested in even looking at the game.

If you know any Streamers that would like to play Dwelvers I would be happy to give them steam keys.

Post screenshots or videos.

Feel free to make lets play yourself, I will advertise them on the forum.

Or just keep on playing Dwelvers and give me feedback on your experience, it really helps me making good decisions for the future.


Thank you all for your support and I will see you soon again :)

Sincerely,

Rasmus Ljunggren
(The only developer of Dwelvers)

Dwelvers 1.0 Released

Dear Dwelvers community,

Today is a big day! After 10 years of development, Dwelvers has finally reached version 1.0.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Enter the decrepit lair of the Dark Mother, the powerful demon that rules the underworld. Prove yourself a worthy Dungeon Lord by satiating her endless hunger for domination, conquest, and the ultimate eradication of the human race. It is up to you to lead your minions to victory through an array of logistical challenges and brutal skirmishes.

[h3]Journey[/h3]
Dwelvers started as a small project but thanks to the love and dedication from the community Dwelvers has expanded beyond my wildest dreams. It has been an emotional roller-coaster where I had to balance my personal life and the development to make the best version possible of Dwelvers.

[h3]Thank you[/h3]
I want to thank the community, because without you this wouldn't be possible. You have helped me with everything from bug fixing, recommending great features to guiding me on the path to where we are now! Thanks to you Dwelvers has always been quality assured while I've been able to focus on the development.

I have spent thousands of hours developing this game over the years, iterating over all your feedback, suggestions and bug reports, and I would have never made it this far without all your support. Thank you so much for your patience!

And of course a massive thanks to all of you players, past, present and future. I hope you will enjoy this full release :)

[h3]Future[/h3]
Dwelvers is still not totally bug free, but it more than qualifies as a 1.0 version. I will continue fixing bugs that gets reported and add new features. My mind is still brimming with ideas that I want to bring to life.

One thing that have massive potential is the modding capabilities in Dwelvers, you can mod almost anything in the game or create new content, I am ready to explore the Steam workshop. We also have the Wraith creature that never got to show her full potential, she was going to hoard the ghosts.

So many ideas, so much to look forward too.

Rasmus Ljunggren
(The only developer of Dwelvers)