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Catacomb Kids News

Scrubbin' Trubble is OUT NOW!

[p]HEY! Remember a little over a year ago when I said that I started a company and we were working on a different game for a minute?[/p][p]Well, that game is Scrubbin' Trubble, and its out TODAY![/p][p][/p][p]Sometimes to get clean, you have to be willing to get dirty. Grab your sponge and your fists — and anywhere from zero to three friends — and fight your way through levels chock full of Nasties to ultimately take down one of the Four Filths of the Apocalypse![/p][p]We designed Scrubbin' Trubble to be an approachable roguelike set up for quick gameplay sessions, while still delivering on challenge. Beat, splash, and blast your way through enemies like the Dust Devil and Refusphynx, and level up your chosen cleaning agent from a scrub to a power-washer to write your name on the walls of history (in washable ink, of course)![/p][p]In addition to the friends by your side, wield an arsenal of weapons, armor, and cleaning products to tackle challenge levels; rooms obscured by darkness, survival stages that continuously spawn enemies, and the gradual accumulation of deadly difficulty modifiers like “Haunted”, “Crusty”, and “Australian”, and more. [/p][hr][/hr][h3]So What Now?[/h3][p]So that's the new game spiel! But what does this mean for CK?[/p][p]Well, we wanted to make Scrubbin’ Trubble for a few reasons, the first being that I love traditional turn-based roguelikes, and making a co-operative roguelike that fits within that turn-based paradigm has long been a goal of mine. I'll probably do it again at some point, and you can't stop me.[/p][p]The other major reason is that we, as a new company, wanted to figure out how the nuts and bolts of actual day-to-day studio operation should go before committing to anything heavy or long-term, and the best way to do that was - we figured - to see a game through completely from start to finish. Scrubbin' Trubble has been an experiment in a lot of ways, both in terms of the game design itself as well as in helping to build a ton of new skills that I can now bring back with me into any future projects with more confidence and understanding. (Skills such as: Making and managing task-lists, delegating work to others, keeping to a schedule, better team communication, managing scope creep — all of which are things that CK could really benefit from...!😅)[/p][p]Now that the new game is done and Odd Object has a game under our belt, I've got some life stuff to take care of over the next several weeks (including moving house and taking a much-needed break) but beyond that, Odd Objects' next endeavor will bring us at last back to Catacomb Kids — for the first time ever as no longer a solo-dev project, but as a team effort. Still a tiny team, but a team nonetheless![/p][p]Thanks a ton to you all for your patience and continued support! I hope y'all give Scrubbin' Trubble a try and enjoy it, but even if it's not quite your speed I hope you appreciate what we've managed to make![/p][p]- Tyriq P.[/p]

0.2.4b

Don't mind me, just a few more bugfixes.

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
  • Crash: Upon eating food after drinking water to clear your food queue
  • Crash: A couple crashes relating to a few shopkeeper interactions in Co-op*
  • Bug: Charged Magic 101 book does not work
  • Bug: Chain lightning fails to cast at odd MAG values of 7 and above
  • Bug: Game softlocks if one player descends the stairs in Co-op while the other player's controller is disconnected
  • Bug: Only one player can control the quit game dialog box
  • Bug: Portal only works when placed on floors and ceilings
  • Bug: Enter/Return key doesn't work as a fallback default to confirm in textbox pop-ups


*Multiple players talking to the shopkeep at once may still act strangely but it at least shouldn't crash any more.

Bugfixes and Big News

Ahoy, you!

It's been a while (as ever) since last we spoke, but I have news aplenty.

Firstly:
Many of you may know that I've spent a decent chunk of the past few years working on UFO 50. Which is finished now! Hooray! You should definitely go play it if you haven't yet: It's a wonderful game and I'm very proud of the work that I and the rest of the UFO 50 Recovery Team did on it.

So, now that I'm finished with my work on UFO 50, what does the future hold for Catacomb Kids?

Well that brings me to the second and more relevant bit of news:

I started a game company!

Catacomb Kids composer Stevie and I have teamed up to form Odd Object. I'm super stoked! But more than just stoked, this move opens up a number of opportunities for me to grow and evolve as a game dev.

This has a couple implications for the future of Catacomb Kids:
  1. We're working on our studio's first game, which will result in another lull in CK updates as we put together something new. We have an ambitiously short development time for this new project though, so my attention will only be turned away for a short while. I can't talk much about it just yet but I'm excited to share more details soon.
  2. Once that project is launched I plan to return my focus to Catacomb Kids along with a wealth of new resources and an intensity of attention that I haven't had the ability to muster in many long years. The intention then will be to push the game - finally - to 1.0.

Part of the decision to start this company has been to ensure that I have a stable plan for myself and my work that allows me to properly support CK's development long-term.

In the meantime, this most recent 0.2.4 update is intended to iron out many of the most egregious outstanding bugs and crashes with the game so that you all can continue to enjoy it until I can once more give the game my full attention as it deserves.

I thank you all for your trust and time thus far, and truly appreciate your support and what you've invested in Catacomb Kids.

We shall speak again erelong!
- Tyriq (aka. FourbitFriday)

0.2.4

[h2]Changes[/h2]
  • Blood crystals are now worth more based on their quality.

[h2]Fixes[/h2]
  • Crash: Crash upon dying while the corpse loot menu is open
  • Crash: "obj_passage_barrier .loops" crash
  • Crash: When eating or tracking gorhound or burrah-boi corpses
  • Crash: Crash upon non-player characters getting "lucky!"
  • Crash: Crash when melting a bottled ice bolt
  • Crash: "Unable to find instance for object index -4 at gml_Object_sys_view_Step_0" while playing co-op¹
  • Bug: Frozen allies reanimated with Raise Dead still follow the player while frozen as though they were walking normally
  • Bug: Examining undead warriors focuses on their boots instead
  • Bug: Exiting the floor while carrying another player in co-op softlocks the game
  • Bug: Cannot quit game without saving, when presented with the option
  • Bug: Cannot charge tomes when using gamepad
  • Bug: Rapidly using booksmack on keyboard causes the attack to self-interrupt
  • Bug: Anticropolis moving platforms can kill the player unexpected
  • Bug: The frozen door in the anticropolis stage 5 can still be walked through as if it weren't frozen
  • Bug: Meal queue sometimes takes more than 5 food items to progress
  • Bug: Rapidly pressing confirm during co-op level-up can level the same stat twice
  • Bug: Low hp music plays even when you're at full hp, if your max hp is 3 or less
  • Bug: Tracking armor shows its mask sprite instead of the sprite
  • Bug: Accidentally left a debug key enabled that swapped the jump and roll inputs
  • Bug: Gust propeller has wrong sprite origin
  • Bug: Furnace-slime premade rooms generate with only a single furnace tile
  • Bug: Game does not properly save after loading from an existing run
  • Bug: Narrow passage transitions are led to with the text for grumbul encampments
  • Bug: Game softlocks upon returning to character select after dying in a loaded co-op game
  • Bug: Meal queue does not display in co-op
  • Bug: Frozen door in transition stage to anticropolis can still be traversed without melting it first
  • Bug: Anticropolis shortcut passage frequently generates as an inaccessible space
  • Bug: Addressed several issues with level gen that frequently made incompletable levels²
  • Bug: Cleaned up some collision issues with geyser elevators
  • Typo: Potion of Vanishing still named Potion of Invisibility


¹ I'm pretty sure I've fixed this one but I haven't been able to replicate it.
² Impossible levels will still happen from time to time but they should be much less frequent now

0.2.3b

Just a quick fix!
[h2]Fixes[/h2]
  • Crash: Loading a game or retrying a floor in the Continues or Generous modes.