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A Wizard's Lizard: Soul Thief News

Sorry everyone, we can't finish this game

Hello all, this is Matt ...

(Oof, this is tough. This post has been a long time in the making, so buckle up cuz it's gonna be a rough ride ...)

Right off the bat, we are very sorry to announce that we cannot finish A Wizard's Lizard: Soul Thief. We've spent countless hours and tens of thousands of dollars of our own money on trying to make it happen, and after years of toil, we're ready to throw in the towel.

I can't tell you how awful we feel for letting you down, and we're deeply sorry. Being unable to finish an ambitious game is sadly pretty common in this industry, but the lack of communication is not cool, and normally unlike us. Traditionally we've been very open on our blog and podcast, but we flubbed this one. LDG fans deserve better and we didn't deliver the communication you deserve.

We know most of the fans of our work are developers yourselves, and may be curious about the take-aways, and what we could have done to help avoid this situation. Here are some of the high level points:

1. Should have made a more traditional sequel -- Geoff and I are ambitious, and we wanted to solve ALL the significant problems that the original A Wizard's Lizard suffered from. We also wanted to experiment with interesting new mechanics, like melee attacks, mana resources, and a new undead mechanic. Sigh ... man, in retrospect we just did not have the resources for that, as much as we wanted it all. Scope is a killer and we should have just made a game very similar to AWL, but improved as much as we could in the little time we had. Sorry about that.

2. Should have understood the Kickstarter results -- Honestly you guys, the Kickstarter failed, and that should have sent us a message. "Hey, Geoff and Matt, not enough people are willing to finance this game. It's over." But we ignored the message, strapped in, and charged forward. Leeroy Jenkins indeed. Sorry about that.

3. Should have had funding lined up before Early Access -- This is where we truly dropped the ball, because an unfinished EA game just sucks for everybody. We knew we could finish the game "eventually" but we did not have nearly enough cash in the bank to make it so. Blindly following our passion, we pushed forward anyway, hoping that an EA audience would find the game, help fund it, and we could fill in the gaps by working extra on contract work. That was a fool's errand and just bad business. We suffered for it and so did you, the fans and players. Ugh, sorry.

...

Eventually LDG ran out of money (we essentially had to fire ourselves), and Geoff and I started picking up contracts. These kept us apart and very busy, and so our time for this game took a huge hit. We should have been more communicative on Steam around this time ... all I can say is that we felt a lot of shame, and were embarrassed that we couldn't pull it together. We've felt the shame for years, and still feel it ... Naively, we also felt like we'd eventually finish it. Somehow, we'd find the time and money. Somehow, eventually ...

Once the writing was on the wall, I even tried making a small game-jam type game to see if it could pull in enough interest to further fund development for this game. No dice. I reached out to publishers, I pitched at GDC ... sadly, nothing panned out. Eventually the contracts picked up enough that I had no time for LDG at all anymore.

This is another time when we should have been communicating this to you, and we're sorry we didn't. Eventually the contracts turned into jobs and we tried to focus on that. Geoff and I are now employed and happily making mobile games, but we still feel regret about not being able to finish this game.

... damnit ...

...

What's next? Well, it's understandable if you're sore with us, as you have every right to be. The shame runs deep, and writing this has been difficult. The reason I've finally found the time and mental state to write this post is due to the worldwide pandemic -- in isolation, I feel somehow closer to my past work and the LDG audience ... maybe because I've been online more, or more nostalgic ... IDK.

But next we're hoping to take the game down from Steam. We cannot do this on our own, but we've reached out to Valve for help ... it's an ongoing process. I'll actually check this post in the future, I just need to step away for a while to recover and clear my head ... wish I could go for a walk ...

...

I don't want to leave you completely empty-handed, so here are some cool things that might be relevant to your interests:

* Noita is an amazing action roguelike where every pixel is simulated.
* Sparklite is a beautiful overhead action game with roguelike elements, made by longtime Lostcast listeners.
* The Spelunky Showlike is a podcast about one of AWL's biggest inspirations, Spelunky.
* Spelunky 2 is coming this year and it's going to be incredible.

...

Geoff and I are very sorry for letting you down. We thank you for your interest in our work, your generosity and support over the years, your patience and understanding ... and we hope you stay healthy, safe, happy, and ... as always, ship it.

Tiger hats for all,
-Matt

Massive redesign available in the Beta channel

Sometimes you need to take a step back before you can take two steps forward. That's what's up right now, and although I hate hate hate going backwards, I'm excited about all these new changes.

TWIN-STICK SHOOTER GAMEPLAY IS BACK!



This should be good news for fans of the original A Wizard's Lizard! And for the fans of the melee combat, I am sorry, but it just wasn't working out. Many of you guys requested this change so I you're into it!

Along with the twin-stick shooting comes a way-more-fun POSSESSION mechanic (use it to zoom around!). We also have MANA (!) now, and better harmony with items. One of the downsides to this redesign is that it's still not done yet -- I've "upgraded" the Library and Kitchen, but for now the Courtyard and Lab are no longer accessible.

PLEASE PLAYTEST AND SEND YOUR THOUGHTS!

There are many rough edges in the new content, and I could use your guidance on smoothing them out. ESPECIALLY since I'll soon be revisiting the other two dungeons to "upgrade" them with the new mechanics, as well. So if you can provide your feedback pretty soon here, I'll be able to use those thoughts on the new monsters and items.



HOW TO SWITCH TO BETA

1. In your library, right-click A Wizard's Lizard: Soul Thief
2. Select Properties
3. Select the BETAS tab on the right
4. Under "Select the beta you would like to op into:", select "beta"

LASTLY

I know this is a big change and it sometimes feels like we're flailing around trying to find the best game we can, hidden somewhere in this marble ... Game development is messy! I guess this is what Early Access is for, so, thanks for bearing with us and please do play the update!

GAME ON
-Matt

Update #20 -- Soul Thief 0.26.0

Hiya! Many of you have been reporting bugs here on Steam, via email, and on LDG's community forums. Thanks! These reports are super helpful and better enable me to fix issues.

Sometimes you have mentioned that a particular bug might be hard for you to explain to me, since it involves a specific monster and, since the game is randomly generated, you can't always find that monster. To help you help me, I've added what I call Debug Mode, which lets you spawn whatever you want and interact with it.



For now you can spawn a collection of objects and monsters, but in the future I'll be adding other things like traps, wands, and trinkets If you have ideas for Debug Mode, I'm all ears!



There are also some new achievements in this update, and I simplified the tail whip mechanic. It still feels like the tail whip is missing something, something to make it more fun, but I'm not sure what that is yet ...

Anyway thanks for playing! More soon.

-Matt

Soul Thief 0.25.0 -- Achievements and Inventory

"Man, I love working on user interface!" said almost no developer ever, and certainly not me. But a good user interface goes a long way in making a game more enjoyable, so I spent a good chunk of time redesigning things for this update while other stuff percolates.



There are also ACHIEVEMENTS now! However:

1. There are only a few so far (many more to come).
2. They are not hooked up to Steam yet (but they will be soon).
3. When the Steam achievements are hooked up, the achievements you earned will be sent to Steam.



That's it for now! Our time is still necessarily split between Soul Thief, paying the bills, and our other projects (like Indie Game Sim), but there are some cool updates on the horizon, like another final boss pass and some ending story elements.

More to come! Thanks for playing and your tremendous support
-Matt

Soul Thief 0.24.1

Hiya! If you experienced a crash in 0.24.0, I have good news! It shouldn't do that anymore.

When I added the Chicken Storm Wand recently, I accidentally ruined the Killer Bee Wand. Since in my last post I suggested that the Chicken Storm is the best weapon, I think this was the killer bees' way of telling me I was wrong ... So I restored the wand, patched the code to catch this error in the future, and uploaded build 0.24.1.



Anyway should work now, happy gaming! Thanks to Meg and Geoff for spotting this one.