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dotAGE News

dotAGE is in the Turn Based Carnival festival!

Hello Elders!

I'm happy to announce that dotAGE is part of this week's Turn Based Carnival 2024 festival, and with a discount of 25% to boot! If you have been waiting for a chance to get the game, or to tell friends how cool it is, now it's the time! The game will be also on discount during the coming Steam sales, so it's going to be a very merry period!



Now, where were we? I'd like to update you on what I'm doing these days! Let's see what is going on in the world of dotAGE!

Work on the DLC has started!
If you have been reading my updates, you might know that I've been quite busy lately as I am working on an expansion for dotAGE! I decided to work on that as I have so many ideas saved up and having an expansion is a good opportunity to add all that without overcomplicating the base game, and for me to finally add all the stuff I've been itching to add while taking the time to do it correctly!

I am working on adding... new mechanics, new memories, new buildings, new terrains, new resources, new actions, new boons, new events, new ailments, new VIPs, new creatures, and of course new elders! The goal is to increase even more the variation you find in your games, but to counterbalance that I am also prototyping a new mechanic (which will come to the base game) that lets you reroll some buildings. This should give players that do not wish to embrace dotAGE's randomness some more choice (at a cost!). I also plan to make some of the new buildings available for the base game if they make more sense there (for example, I know many people have requested alternate Altars, so I am prototyping that too!)

I am currently doing various prototypes and estimating the amount of work and, given my solo-dev efforts and the amount of content, it will take some time for me to wrap up the development, so I'll keep you updated as more things are defined, and also give you some teasers once I have stuff set in stone!

Balance & Design tools
With the game exploding in complexity, I've been very busy lately re-organizing all my notes and improving my tools for design and balance. Things like tools that allow me to analyze the research tree and produce the efficiency of each resource given the current buildings, or compare multiple buildings with all their costs (hidden or otherwise), or measure the chance for a specific resource to appear throughout a run, or measure what changes in the whole game if I add a new resource. It's not flashy stuff, but it can be quite fun to make and is giving me a lot of insights (such as realizing in a sleep-deprived flash of insight that the game has a lot of ties to quantum physics...), and it will be very useful in managing the added complexity! I am taking the chance to also cleanup the code and the design of various parts that concern gameplay, so you can expect some more changes and balance coming to the base game alongside the DLC. The only issue is that I need to contain myself from rewriting everything!

Switch release is going great!
Last update I announced that the game was out on the Switch, and I'm very happy with the reception! Thank you for the feedback! I've been working a bit more on touch controls (as you might have seen in the latest patch), and those improvements are now on the Switch version too.

Now, back to work, I need to complete my inference tool to analyze the chance for a resource to be produced in the whole game based on rolled buildings. Fun.
So, in the meantime, you too have fun!
- Michele

V 1.4.1 b

Balance
  • Revised "Lucky Dice" multiplier sorting so to make it cleaner, and actually double level 1 mini-boons (due to sorting, level 1 mini-boons had no visible difference)
  • Handmade Stew: threat range from 3-3 to 2-2, to make it work better with "Lucky Dice"
  • The Lucky One: level from 2-3 to 2-2, to make it work better with "Lucky Dice"


UX
  • Moved Dynamic UI on top of other UIs so it does not get hidden by warnings
  • If resources are produced only by passive means (i.e. only Mountain Springs), the resource cap warning won't be shown anymore
  • Touch: Added pinch to zoom functionality
  • Touch: Touching a button will now no more move the cursor automatically
  • Touch: You can now interact with the grid even while choosing a building to build
  • Touch: Improved building menu navigation
  • Touch: Improved research tree navigation


Bugfixing
  • Fixed "Boon: Strong Crops" also refilling non-planted crops
  • Fixed bug with the camera when playing with all-zoomed out mode and an event happening not correctly resetting to zoomed-out
  • Fixed bug with reloading multiple times burials multiplying the dead placed inside
  • Fixed visual bug with some orchards and giving up a game
  • Touch: Fixed some buttons not reacting correctly due to the scroll taking precedence
  • Touch: Fixed not being able to exit Settings screen
  • Switch: Fixed tutorial text being completely skipped with the first action
  • Localization fixes

Out on Switch!

Hello Elders!

I am happy to announce that dotAGE is out today on Nintendo Switch, so that it will be even harder to stop playing! The game is available at 15.00 at your local time, so check out in a few hours if you do not see it available yet!

Seeing the game appear on a Nintendo console is a dream come true, I think the game really fits the Switch (well, maybe it's a bit bloody at times)! Somebody please invent a time machine so I can tell little me!!!

You can find it here: Nintendo Switch eShop Store



Have fun!
- Michele

V 1.4.1

Balance
  • Minimum resource cap with no buildings is now 0 instead of 30
  • The 'Base' cap trait of Santa is now a starting cap (i.e. buildings will increase it)
  • Reduced 'Base' cap trait of Santa from 100 to 60 (with the Bivoauc, this remains at 100 still)
  • Warehouses can now become Abandoned like other buildings
  • Abandoned buildings do not increase the resource cap anymore
  • Bad events unlocked through mechanics during a run are now set on cooldown, thus avoiding making them potentially appear soon after you unlock them


UX
  • You can now hold CTRL while placing a building to force it to be placed in the middle of the tile


Bugfixing
  • Audio: fixed event SFXs being added to the UI audio channel instead of the SFX audio channel
  • Visuals: fixed a rare bug where starting a Captain map could start with a zoom of 0, resulting in a black screen
  • Controls: fixed being able to use zoom controls in the main menu sometimes causing weird interaction when the game is started
  • Localization fixes

V 1.4.0 e

Various fixes, thanks for the reports!

Bugfixing
  • Fixed "Shade" event sometimes blocking the scared Pip in place
  • Fixed a rare bug with removing Pips using side-actions from buildings sometimes causing them to be re-assigned to that same building on load, causing a soft lock
  • Fixed bug with "An Offer You Can't Refuse" event making the Trader join the village on some specific choices
  • Fixed a small rounding error in the Pixel shader for Pips that sometimes made them look a bit weird
  • Fixed bug where Pips kept trying to return to previous buildings even if they were manually unassigned
  • Fix phase text not being hidden if quitting mid-pass turn
  • Fixed warning on auto-Pip removal not being shown anymore during the turnx
  • Localization fixes
  • Minor optimizations