Dice 'n Goblins News

Dice'n Goblins is part of the Steam Next Fest!

With the game being close to its final form, it's the perfect time to try it (again?).
We worked hard on the demo, updating it relentlessly (7 times) with your feedback!

We even did a small update right now!

- Adding NPC and shops on the minimap and map menu.
- Adding filters for your inventory. Not very interesting in the demo, however, it was requested by testers who hoarded items at the end of the game.
- Adding VFX when you heal.
- Overhauling the japanese translation, and altering the font!

Please try the demo and share it around! It would mean the world to us!

Hello everyone, Ember speaking! The last month has been BUSY!

First we have a teaser trailer!

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

The game is advancing well this month too. Thanks to last month update and tackling performance issue, we have been able to alter a bit the dungeon feel by giving it a outline, which gives a more "crayon" vibe. This was not possible before because of an unforeseen limitation of FSR2.2 which have been removed from the game.

Thanks to your feedback, we also removed vibrations from the game, added an indicator if you forgot to equip skills to control your dices, changed where the dice would be thrown and altered the walking speed. We added a couple of new SFX and received music for later levels. Performance default settings, have been lowered for Steam Deck and Integrated Graphic Cards users.

The game have also new tutorials! Instead of showing pictures, it shows now directly the piece of UI and action you can make, instead of big screenshots of the game.

We finally got Japanese, simplified, and traditional Chinese and Korean languages for the full game! As a fan of games released in the eastern part of our planet, I am overjoyed with this.

The full game have been tested by our playtesters! We fixed most of the game breaking bugs and can focus on balancing skills, enemies, and editing the script. New energy recovery has been well received.
On another note, we and RogueDuck Interactive decided to stop working together. We wish them the best. What does it means for the game? Well not so much! We hired translators from our pockets and the release date won't be pushed.

On a final note, we'll be appearing in Steam Next Fest on the 28th of February! If you didn't try the game, it's the perfect time to! If you tried, I think there were enough changes in the past months, so you can revisit!

In the upcoming weeks, we have even more things to announce so stay tuned!

This month, the traditional two posts about demo and full game progress will be merged into one. We're doing well, after the Christmas holidays with our families. We hope the new year treats you well!

We're preparing to have the best demo we can for the Next Fest next month! That means we go over the feedback you left at the end of the demo.

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• A big concern was the poor performance at the start of the game. It is mainly due to Shader Compilation in Godot. In the next version of Godot 4.4, there exists a solution, but unfortunately, it won't be out before the game's release.
  
• Another concern was the transition to combat, which made you bump a monster, dissolve the dungeon around you, and make you enter the combat. I liked it a lot, but most people disliked it.
  
• We deactivated the default shadows. Their FPS cost on small computer was too important. You can activate them from the Settings menus.
  
• Similarly, you can tweak other graphical options such as FPS and FSR in the Settings.
  

We resolved both issues by implementing a new transition, that is less demanding, as well as hiding some compilation during loading time!



[h2]Feedback[/h2]

• Menus were poorly responsive with the controller. You can now navigate menus with a single stick flick! You can also close all menus with the cancel button (B or Circle by default) like most RPGs.
  
• Text is tiny for the Deck users, we increased the font size across the board.
  
• Chests now displays the item that is inside.
  
• If you don't have stars in combat, the combat doesn't require you to press for each phase anymore.
  
• Updated Tutorials. Hopefully, they are a bit more clear and the first combat requires you to ingest less information at once.
  

[h2] Gameplay[/h2]

• Star/Energy regeneration came a lot in the feedback, with requests of items allowing you to get back stars. While you have items to replenish your stars in the game, they are on other levels.
  
• We changed how you gain stars in the demo. You used to gain stars when you had none because the game is not funny if you can't do anything. Now, you gain stars if you don't do anything one turn. That means you can choose to not re-roll on certain turns, to amass energy for the good and bad turns. I hope people will feel more in control that way.
  
• If you're out of energy, the game doesn't require you to pass turns manually anymore.
  

[h2]Translations[/h2]

• We finally encoded all the strings of the game! We have a story content of around 10k words and a lot of item descriptions.
  
• Translations of Asian languages are about to start! I'm excited!
  

[h2]Misc[/h2]

• Our testers are finding bugs all over that we squash without mercy! The game is about 80% tested and playable right now!
  
• Steam Deck and Big Picture users can now use the gamepad to enter their notes on the map.
  
• Changes to some assets, like the fire.
  
• Added a bunch of VFX during combats.
  
• Plenty of little boring things.
  

We continue to work on the final version of the game in the meantime! Thanks for reading and thanks for playing!

We're deploying a new update of the demo, just for the end of the year!

In it, we're making mostly quality of life:

- After testing with more casual audience, we realized that many people missed the levers. We added a white outline around it to make it easier to spot.



- We also made some enhancement to the minimap. Locked and Unlocked Doors are showing, and when something is activated, the ping last longer:


- Locked Doors are now visually different as well:



- As the full game content is finished, we can finally think of polishing more stuff, starting with dice look.



We're also bugfixing the game, but if something is not right, please send us a message!

It's the end of the year, so I wish you happy festivities!

I completely missed this announcement, but Dice'n Goblins was nominated during the TGAGWCAGA.

It's a fun event for indies who can't throw money at big events. You can find the video recording of the event below (will you be able to find Dice'n Goblins amongst all those indie titles ?)

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]