Journey of Deck of Haunts and the 5-headed Mantis team, from prototype to 1.0
Hello world... we did it, we made a game and shipped it!
First of all, we cannot express our gratitude enough for all the players that joined us on this journey from prototype to Deck of Haunts 1.0. (And now beyond... V1.01-1.02-1.03-...)
You have given us motivational and energy boosts along the way and are making sure we're going in the right direction with all the feedback that you're sharing on Steam, Discord and social media.
We are still actively working on making Deck of Haunts better every day, and are committed to keep pushing out updates in the near future and beyond. For all of you that left all those nice reviews and messages on the discussions forum, a big thank you from the entire team! ❤️
Now, how did we get here?
It started off in late 2019, where the very first concept of Deck of Haunts was laid out, right before the strangeness of 2020 came to haunt us all.
We felt we were onto something with that concept. Mind you, it was a time before the market was flooded with a ton of deck builders.
Of course it would have been nice to start work on Deck of Haunts right away, but at the time we didn't have the budget or ideal team configuration to bring it to completion.
During 2020-2021-2022-2023 we, as so many other indie studios, went full throttle on work for hire for other companies and game studios. Starting off with all the assignments we could get (think VR training for factories to configurators for conventions), we luckily could transition fulltime into the games industry with all of our work for hire assignments.
Then... at the turn of the new year, 2024, we felt we were finally ready to tackle that concept that we had been dreaming of since late 2019, Deck of Haunts.
After securing the budget that was needed to sustain our 5-headed team during a little more over a year development, we released the breaks on the production train and started work on our haunted domain!
The first publicly playable build of Deck of Haunts at GDC
The important milestones we hit during 2024:
Now, we've just passed our most important milestone... the Deck of Haunts 1.0 release!
As a team we feel like we were able to make a fun core game loop, dressed up in a neat gritty Art Deco styling.
We definitely want to steadily push out updates for the game, and build on it, together with the player base.
We have a ton of ideas of where to go from here, so, lets go!
Some thoughts after we asked ourselves the question: What did we like the most during the road from prototype to Deck of Haunts 1.0?
I loved to see how we, as a freshly put together team during the work for hire years, grew into a well oiled game production machine during the work for Deck of Haunts.
We learned really well how to communicate with each other and streamline our individual thoughts and ideas into 1 vision. (And I loved to make humans explode in to bloody mists when you harvest them, of course.)
- Philippe, Producer & VFX Artist
What I enjoyed most during the development was the rapid progress we made in the first couple of months with the full team. We started from a simple prototype and it seemed like every week we had so much more than the week before. It's mind-blowing looking back at some of the early builds and seeing how far we have come today.
- Tim, Senior Programmer
One of the most interesting and also most difficult aspects of the development of Deck of Haunts is its rather unique concept. It certainly is mostly a roguelike deckbuilding game, but also has many elements of a tower defense, of house building and on top of that, you play as a stationary villain.
That means a lot of tropes and design ideas might not necessarily work for this game and thus most design decisions cant simply lean on "what has worked before". Which has meant that team meetings and discussions about which direction to take the game have always been great fun and filled with so many ideas.
Pushing out the demo was also a huge help in that regard. There was so much feedback which helped steer the direction of some of the ideas that were more difficult to nail down. Like the house building.
- Bram, Programmer & Designer
There were a lot of cool things that happened during the production of Deck of Haunts. I had the opportunity to present Deck of Haunts to the public together with San on GameForce which was definitely a fun experience. It was my first time to stand at a booth, and to see people playing the game you worked on as a team was really cool to see. One more thing that stands out for me is that we tackled each step together, every member of the team has a voice in the design of the game which I think was very valuable and also an enjoyable process. We built this game together and it really felt like that. Kudos to the team for that one, it was a fun year!
- Willem, 3D & SFX Artist
What I liked about the development was the incredible speed at creating new mechanics and iterating on existing ones. Every meeting felt like we were heading another step in the right direction.
- San, Senior 3D Artist & Card Designer
If you have any questions for us, regarding the game, the team or the weather here in Belgium, feel free to ask them here or on our Discord, and we'll make sure to respond.
And as always, if you like the game and want to support it, make sure to leave a review, it helps more than you can imagine!
First of all, we cannot express our gratitude enough for all the players that joined us on this journey from prototype to Deck of Haunts 1.0. (And now beyond... V1.01-1.02-1.03-...)
You have given us motivational and energy boosts along the way and are making sure we're going in the right direction with all the feedback that you're sharing on Steam, Discord and social media.
We are still actively working on making Deck of Haunts better every day, and are committed to keep pushing out updates in the near future and beyond. For all of you that left all those nice reviews and messages on the discussions forum, a big thank you from the entire team! ❤️
Now, how did we get here?
It started off in late 2019, where the very first concept of Deck of Haunts was laid out, right before the strangeness of 2020 came to haunt us all.
We felt we were onto something with that concept. Mind you, it was a time before the market was flooded with a ton of deck builders.
Of course it would have been nice to start work on Deck of Haunts right away, but at the time we didn't have the budget or ideal team configuration to bring it to completion.
During 2020-2021-2022-2023 we, as so many other indie studios, went full throttle on work for hire for other companies and game studios. Starting off with all the assignments we could get (think VR training for factories to configurators for conventions), we luckily could transition fulltime into the games industry with all of our work for hire assignments.
Then... at the turn of the new year, 2024, we felt we were finally ready to tackle that concept that we had been dreaming of since late 2019, Deck of Haunts.
After securing the budget that was needed to sustain our 5-headed team during a little more over a year development, we released the breaks on the production train and started work on our haunted domain!
The first publicly playable build of Deck of Haunts at GDC
The important milestones we hit during 2024:
- GDC: The first publicly playable (by press & publishers) build of Deck of Haunts during a pre-mixer
- Publishing deal with Dangen Entertainment
- Game Force: The first player based convention where the game was playable for 2 days
- Release of the Steam store page
- Throwing out the first iteration of the demo into the world (scary!)
- Growing interaction on the Deck of Haunts Discord
Now, we've just passed our most important milestone... the Deck of Haunts 1.0 release!
As a team we feel like we were able to make a fun core game loop, dressed up in a neat gritty Art Deco styling.
We definitely want to steadily push out updates for the game, and build on it, together with the player base.
We have a ton of ideas of where to go from here, so, lets go!
Some thoughts after we asked ourselves the question: What did we like the most during the road from prototype to Deck of Haunts 1.0?
I loved to see how we, as a freshly put together team during the work for hire years, grew into a well oiled game production machine during the work for Deck of Haunts.
We learned really well how to communicate with each other and streamline our individual thoughts and ideas into 1 vision. (And I loved to make humans explode in to bloody mists when you harvest them, of course.)
- Philippe, Producer & VFX Artist
What I enjoyed most during the development was the rapid progress we made in the first couple of months with the full team. We started from a simple prototype and it seemed like every week we had so much more than the week before. It's mind-blowing looking back at some of the early builds and seeing how far we have come today.
- Tim, Senior Programmer
One of the most interesting and also most difficult aspects of the development of Deck of Haunts is its rather unique concept. It certainly is mostly a roguelike deckbuilding game, but also has many elements of a tower defense, of house building and on top of that, you play as a stationary villain.
That means a lot of tropes and design ideas might not necessarily work for this game and thus most design decisions cant simply lean on "what has worked before". Which has meant that team meetings and discussions about which direction to take the game have always been great fun and filled with so many ideas.
Pushing out the demo was also a huge help in that regard. There was so much feedback which helped steer the direction of some of the ideas that were more difficult to nail down. Like the house building.
- Bram, Programmer & Designer
There were a lot of cool things that happened during the production of Deck of Haunts. I had the opportunity to present Deck of Haunts to the public together with San on GameForce which was definitely a fun experience. It was my first time to stand at a booth, and to see people playing the game you worked on as a team was really cool to see. One more thing that stands out for me is that we tackled each step together, every member of the team has a voice in the design of the game which I think was very valuable and also an enjoyable process. We built this game together and it really felt like that. Kudos to the team for that one, it was a fun year!
- Willem, 3D & SFX Artist
What I liked about the development was the incredible speed at creating new mechanics and iterating on existing ones. Every meeting felt like we were heading another step in the right direction.
- San, Senior 3D Artist & Card Designer
If you have any questions for us, regarding the game, the team or the weather here in Belgium, feel free to ask them here or on our Discord, and we'll make sure to respond.
And as always, if you like the game and want to support it, make sure to leave a review, it helps more than you can imagine!