Dwelvers News

Dear Dwelvers community,

I am thrilled to announce that we have reached a milestone for Dwelvers! After years of development, Dwelvers is now in Beta. This means that it is feature complete, and the only things left to fix are some bugs before we have a full release.

These news posts usually start with me being sorry for not updating in a while, and this post is no different. I had high ambitions when I started developing Dwelvers. I added feature after feature, I listened to the community and tried to add their suggestions as well, not thinking about how each new feature exponentially drove the estimated time for finishing the game far into the future.

Dwelvers is a game that is really close to my heart, and it has been painful not being able to develop it in a faster phase. I read the forums once in a while and find some heartwarming comments, but also comments from people who are disappointed, which is well understood.

I would not have put Dwelvers in early access if I had known that it would take almost ten years to complete it. Ten years is a really long time, and the only excuse I have is that this game is huge and has taken at least 4-5 years of full-time development to finish it. The income I’ve gotten from the game has barely lasted one year. Despite having a family with kids, a house, and a private life I’ve managed to squeeze time into development to finish Dwelvers.

The reason why I have not kept you all updated about the development process is that I got tired of making promises over and over again and then not being able to develop or show any progress in months. Instead, I wanted to show that I actually have the game finished enough to back my words up, like I have now!

The plan now is to have a full release before the end of the year, and I would love to get your feedback if you find any bugs. Or just tell me if you enjoy the game.

Dwelvers has a pretty bad rating now, and if we look at the reviews, it is almost only because of the lack of updates or disbelief that the game would be finished. It would be really helpful if you would find the time to balance these bad ratings out by actually writing that the game is near to finish. Or if you have written a bad rating because of this reason, please reconsider so that Dwelvers can get a good reception when it is fully released.

Sincerely,

Rasmus Ljunggren
(The only programmer of Dwelvers)



[h3]New Trailer[/h3]
A new trailer has been released and can be seen on the store page


[h3]Full Campaign[/h3]
We now have a full campaign that consists of 9 missions in total


[h3]Skirmish Levels[/h3]
Skirmish levels with specific victory conditions


[h3]Template Generated Levels[/h3]
Levels are randomly generated with some base conditions


[h3]More Spells[/h3]
Added Poison Cloud, Magical Barricade, Flappy Vision


[h3]More Traps[/h3]

• Added the Stone Thrower, Scare Trap, Lava Trap, Water Trap
  
• Dynamite trap is now the Stun Trap
  
• Removed the Movable Wall
  

[h3]New Realm Editor[/h3]

• Create your own realms with different settings
  
• Shape your terrain and adjust its size and depth to your needs
  
• Add or remove creatures, rooms and other different objects
  

[h3]Fully Voiced Dark Mother[/h3]
Fully voiced-over campaign and messages from Dark Mother


[h3]A More Efficient Production Chain[/h3]

• Tasks are better prioritized
  
• Imps are better assigned to rooms
  
• Imps are not forced to stay in the same room forever
  
• Creatures can pick up more items from nearby area and carry more items
  

[h3]Improved Trading System[/h3]
More trades can be done in one tent


[h3]Improved Rally Flag Pathfinding[/h3]

• Creatures now choose the closest portal owned by a player to go through
  
• Creatures would stop their tasks immediately when the Rally Flag is called
  
• Creatures are better at avoiding obstacles
  

[h3]Creatures Can No Longer Climb Blocks[/h3]

• You'll now need to use Ladders to climb to higher or lower levels of terrain
  
• Some natural ladders will appear after the realm is created
  
• Ladders are now more easily placed in all directions

[h3]Levels With Custom Victory Conditions[/h3]
Levels can now have various victory conditions set for realms to be finished


[h3]HUGE amount of bug fixes and more to come until the final release[/h3]
To many to count...

ːsteamhappyː Hope you enjoy this update and please comment or review if you like the game ːsteamhappyː

Hi all,

The fourth campaign has now been released. Here the player will learn how the prison and the squad system works. Besides that the skirmish maps have gotten a little upgrade, you can now choose victory conditions. The way this works is not final yet as I want to create different skirmish maps based on these victory conditions.

For those of you that want even more freedom in generating maps I have now added an extra start game option, that is "Custom Game". Here you can change almost every map generation parameter there is and then play the map you want to play. Just remember that you have the option to remove fog of war by pressing ALT+T and then click the "Remove fog of war" option.




In a week or maybe two I will release the next campaigns that will give the player access to traps and catacombs. I also want to include some more skirmish maps that has specific goals.


Thank you all for wanting to be a part of this wonderful game :) Please let me know in the comments section below or in the forum if you have any suggestions that you think would improve the game. The more feedback I get the better game Dwelvers will be!

Hi all,

So now the third campaign has been released. Here the player will not only learn how to craft weapons and armor, but also how to expand his territory in the most efficient way possible, and that is by building storage rooms. The battles are getting stronger and stronger, but for those of you that would like jump ahead and get some real competition should try out the skirmish maps.




For the last week I've been working a lot on the skirmish maps, as I want to give the player as much replay-ability of the game as possible I'm starting to give the skirmish maps some different objectives. Such as killing all humans, being able to survive for a certain amount of time and stacking up on certain item types. That combined with randomly generated levels that can give the player totally new game experiences each time they play.


Thank you all for wanting to be a part of this wonderful game :) Please let me know in the comments section below or in the forum if you have any suggestions that you think would improve the game. The more feedback I get the better game Dwelvers will be!

I will be back in a week with the next campaign and hopefully some more upgraded skirmish maps.

Hi all,

I've been working a little behind the scenes and have almost finished all the campaigns planed. From now I will release one new campaign each week until we have eight campaigns. On the side of the campaigns I've also upgraded the terrain generator, so with the future releases I will also include a lot of new skirmish maps with exiting new goals.




Besides creating new maps I've tied up most of the loose knots in the game.

• We now have a spell system where the spells require mana and experience. (We will have more spells introduced with upcoming versions).
  
• The UI is complete.
  
• Easier to use squad system.
  
• Easier to use trading system.
  
• Easier to use creature equipment system.
  
• Traps are independent and hydraulics will no longer be needed to fire cannons (We will have more traps introduced in upcoming versions).
  
• Evil meter remastered and are now also bound to mana generation.
  
• Prison room is now also a torture chamber where torturing enemies increases the evil meter.
  
• Guard rooms now attracts Cyclotaurs
  
• Imp generation is now based on the amount of mana the player generates.
  
• And much much more changes and new features...
  

Why I decided to release one campaign a week instead of all campaigns at once is because I want more focused feedback. This way we can make sure that all campaign keeps the same quality.


I hope you all enjoy this new version, and if you have any feedback, please let me know- The more feedback the better end-game!

Also, I would like to put out a reminder to all of you that we still are looking for translators and voice actors for the Dark Mother. Any help is appreciated :)

Hi all,

As usual my news post begins with me saying that I'm sorry for the lack of updates. But I promise you all I'm doing my best to find the time doing what I love which is developing Dwelvers :)

As I've said before the company Divine Robot (where I work) has invested in Dwelvers, this has enabled me to get a lot of help with the UI from UX designers. They have also had artist working on the game meaning that I have about 200 hours of graphics just waiting to be implemented in the game. This includes creatures such as a king, princes, archers and a lot more, these will be presented in future news posts as they get implemented in Dwelvers by me. Unfortunately I've had a lot of other projects that needed to be finished which has forced me to de-prioritize Dwelvers. But now things have calmed down and it seems that I now have a lot of time on my hands to continue with the Dwelvers development.

So enough about that and on to what's new.





I've said before that my focus right now is to create campaigns and polish the game after the campaign needs. For example the UI still needed to be updated so that it is easier to understand for the player. So we now have a second campaign where the player learns how to build training room, metal works room, use the rally flag, dig and explore and kill all enemies in the way.





A question I've gotten more frequently lately is "How do I take over a portal?", and that is a good question! It isn't all that clear that you have to build a road up to it. So now I've changed it so that the player instead can attack the portal, and when it gets destroyed the player is the new owner.





The UI has been updated even more since the last version. The resource bar that was in the top has now been replaced with non-equip-able, and in the bottom right menu bar we have two new buttons which opens a buildings menu and a items menu.





The buildings menu has four tabs which are:

• Rooms - Including Bar Room, Bed Room, Catacombs room etc.
  
  
  
  
• Objects - Containing anything that the player can build that is not directly related to traps or rooms. This includes Well, Statues, Doors etc.
  
  
  
  
• Traps - Including Cannon, hydraulics pipes, Dynamite etc.
  
  
  
  
• Unbuilables - Including buildings that you as a player can own, but can not build, such as portals.
  

The items menu has two tabs which are:

• Crafting - Here you can select what equipment to craft, you are also able to see how many items of that certain item type you have, and how much materials are available for crafting that item. This was something that was lacking in the old resource bar. One new cool thing about this menu is that you are able to see the supply and demand, meaning that when the bar right to the item image is green, then you are supplying enough equipment of that type to your creatures. But if it is red, then it means that you don't have enough equipment of that type to equip your creatures, and they have to go for their second or third equipment choice.