Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition News

Hi Hunters!

Hopefully you’ll have seen that a while ago we announced a call for beta testers for our upcoming title, Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition! Well, thank you to everyone who applied to be part of the hunt, we massively appreciate it.

[h2]How we’re going to be running the beta[/h2]

Our plan for the closed beta is to run it in ‘waves’. So we’ll be starting by giving access to a small number of beta testers, and then as time goes on we’ll be rolling it out to more and more people. If you’re part of this first wave of beta testers, you should have an email from us in your inbox!

If you’ve not heard from us yet, don’t fret - it’s possible that you’ll be included in the next wave of beta testers as we roll it out further.

[h2]What are you going to be working on during the beta?[/h2]

One of the key things we’ll be looking at is how new players interact with the game, and how the ‘new player experience’ works.

We’ve spent a lot of time developing this game, so we know that we have a very skewed view of it by now. To steal a phrase from an amazing movie about bending spoons: “You get used to it, I don’t even see the code.” So that’s why we want some fresh eyes to take a look at the game and point out what works and what doesn’t - after all, it’s not just us who are going to be playing the game when it launches, it’s all you lovely people!

[h2]I missed out on the closed beta, how can I keep up with the game?[/h2]

We’re very glad you asked!

The best way to keep up with the game is by wishlisting it on Steam - not only will Steam notify you when the game is available, you’ll also see our updates directly and you’ll be helping us out too by bumping us up in the Steam algorithms, which is massively important to a tiny indie studio like ours.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/958530/Fury_of_Dracula_Digital_Edition/

Or you can always follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to see what we’re up to in general. If you want to chat with fellow vampires and vampire hunters on our Discord, you can join it here - it’s full of lovely people so we definitely recommend it!.

While I understand that you have the right to question the way I use the financials that my late father left me, there are certain things I’m not in a position to explain. Whatever Dr. Van Helsing has requested, ensure that he is able to procure it, no matter what the cost. I don’t care if it bankrupts me, I refuse to let that unholy beast ‘live’ another night.

• Letter from Lord Godalming to his accountant, dated 1885
  

Hi Hunters!

We’ve had another exciting few weeks developing Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition! Now that beta testing is fully underway, we’re getting lots of great feedback from our testers which we’re using to improve the game for release. So far they’ve had a lot of nice things to say, which is definitely a good sign!

As usual, below we’ve outlined some of the exciting features we’ve been working on over the past fortnight, along with some things we’ve fixed too!

[h2]Avatar Selection[/h2]

We’ve been working on implementing everything that is needed for you to be able to select your avatar that will be associated with your profile. Once everything is up and running in the back-end, we’ll be able to start putting in the avatars.

We’ve already got a good idea of the different avatars we’re going to let you choose from, but if you have any ideas feel free to reach out to us on social media!

[h2]Profile UI[/h2]

In our last blog, we showed you the profile system we’re going to be adding to the game where you can track your statistics and change your avatar too. Our art team have been doing a great job at sprucing it up, but there is still work to do, so take a look at their latest progress below:



[h2]Challenges and Rewards[/h2]

Now that we’ve got stat tracking into the game, we can start putting those statistics to good use! We’re starting work on adding challenges to the game for you to complete related to these statistics, along with different rewards for completing them. We want to encourage you to experiment and experience all the different things that Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition has to offer, and implementing challenges means we can help push you towards trying new tactics.

We’re not quite ready to share more details about what exactly these rewards will be just yet, so stay tuned for more information!

[h2]QA looking at specific issues[/h2]

The past two weeks have been very busy for our QA team, as they’re starting to delve into specific issues and the more unique interactions between different cards. With all the different ways that cards can interact with each other in different scenarios, there is a lot of potential for things to not quite work as they should.

To give you all a good example of this… Our team encountered an issue where the Dracula AI managed to get himself trapped in Ireland due to the Consecrated Ground token being placed down and not knowing how to deal with the situation it had been placed in. These are exactly the kind of specific situations that we’re going to iron out before the game releases.

[h2]Card Revealing[/h2]

Something that comes up while playing Fury of Dracula is the need to reveal cards. Not only that, but sometimes cards need to be revealed once and other times they need to stay revealed until something changes - when a hunter has been weakened for example!



So for the past two weeks we’ve been busy implementing everything the game needs to properly reveal and hide cards at the right times. There are a lot of different situations to account for, which is why we’re hoping that our beta testers and QA team will be able to tell us if things get shown when they shouldn’t be!

[h2]Tutorial[/h2]

We’re still cracking on with getting the tutorial together, and we’ve made some awesome progress with getting the tutorial up and running now.

Thanks to our save system being fully functional now, we can start creating pre-made save games that each tutorial will load into. This is a good example of how we need to develop certain features before we can start others, because a lot of the games systems are dependant on each other.

However, things haven’t been smooth sailing when it comes to getting the tutorials set up! We recently updated to a new version of Unity, which our tutorial system didn’t appreciate. It didn’t take long to get things fixed, but sometimes updates just don’t want to play nice with ongoing projects - this is something that is encountered a lot during game development, so we know to look out for issues whenever we perform an update.

We also encountered a different bug that meant that the tutorial would only accept controller inputs, and wouldn’t accept any other form of input. Again, we managed to get this fixed fairly easily but it was definitely a head-scratcher when it cropped up!

[h2]Online Play[/h2]

Following our announcement that Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition will support online play at launch, we’re happy to share details of what we’ve been working on to get it implemented over the past few weeks!

Our master of online play, Sam, has been hard at work getting the entire front end of the online system up and running, meaning that you can select game modes and press all the different buttons you’ll need to press to select how you want to play online. We’ve also got the lobby system up and running, but both of them need our art team to look at them to make sure they look as nice as the rest of the menus.



The next step is making sure that all of the online features work so that our beta testers can start actually trying it out, which will take a bit more time!



[h2]Browsable discard piles[/h2]

Want to check what cards have already been played? Have we got exciting news for you! We’ve been working on adding the functionality to browse your discard pile during the game, and we’ve nearly got it ready to go!



[h2]How can I keep up to date with Fury of Dracula?[/h2]

Add it to your wishlist and follow the game on Steam! That way you’ll get all the updates posted straight to you, and you’ll get notified when the game is available to purchase and play. Check it out on Steam here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/958530/Fury_of_Dracula_Digital_Edition/

You can also stay tuned to our social media. We’re going to be sharing updates more and more as we get closer to the release of the full game, including more blogs like this one!

Join us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to hear announcements as they happen. Or if you’d like to bolster the ranks of hunters on our Discord, you can join it here.

Hi hunters!

We know you’re all excited to have Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition in your hands, so we’ve decided to make it easier for you to keep track of everything Fury of Dracula related!

Today we’ve launched furyofdracula.digital, where we’ll be putting all the updates for the game. You’ll also find all the information you could need about the game, all in one place.

Check it out now!

Go check it out, and let us know what you think on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Or if you’d like to join the ranks of the vampire hunters on our Discord, you can join it here.

“A rage grips me that I have not felt in aeons. The passage of time does little to quell my anger, as I can still feel the sting of that cursed night when they drove that blade through my heart. But soon I shall make them know true despair. They’ll know what it feels like to have every ounce of life drained from their weak, mortal shells. And when nothing is left but an empty husk, then I shall bask in my assured victory.”

• Second entry in the recently discovered diary of Count Dracula, 13th November 1884
  

Hello Hunters!

We’re heading towards another milestone build right now in the development of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition, which means that we’ve got a whole heap of exciting features to talk about in this update. And if you haven’t seen it already, we’ve also made the Steam page for Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition live, which has meant we can see people wishlisting our game - it’s lovely to see so many people are excited for when the game launches!

[h2]Player State Icons[/h2]

Fury of Dracula is the kind of board game where there are a lot of things to keep track of, so we want to make sure that you can tell at a glance what is happening to each character. As characters suffer from different status effects, icons will now appear above them to symbolise what effect they’re under.



In order to do this, we’ve created a number of different icons that will represent different possible player states.

[h2]Trading Dialogue[/h2]

Trading items between hunters is a key tactic if you want to make sure that everyone is prepared to face Dracula - so we’ve put extra effort into making sure that trading works perfectly.



Early into design, we had it so that only the player initiating the trade would be able to confirm the trade. As Fury of Dracula is a cooperative game, we know it’s important that both players agree and communicate before making decisions. We didn’t want players to be able to ‘steal’ from each other, as that goes against the spirit of the game!

[h2]More Music[/h2]

Our super cool in-house sounds man, Dan, is still hard at work making more tracks for Fury of Dracula! We've also been talking about potentially adding a soundtrack to Steam - how many people would be interested in that?

[h2]Sound Effects[/h2]

Along with more music for your hunt, Dan has also been working on sound effects for the game! These include the sound effects when you select options in menus, along with combat sound effects for when you play certain cards.

One of the benefits of playing the digital version of a board game is that we can add extra immersion to the game through things like sound effects, so we’re definitely doing our best to lean into the gothic horror theme.

[h2]Power Cards[/h2]

We’ve now implemented the logic needed for power cards to work in the game! These are an important part of Dracula’s arsenal, so the lives of the hunters just became a lot harder.



Now that these are working, our QA team can get to work testing them and making sure they do exactly what they should be doing. This is exactly why the debugger tools we’ve mentioned in previous developer blogs are so handy - being able to set up the exact situation we want to test each power card in is far easier when you can manually do it through our debugger tools.

[h2]Nomad Account + Stats tracking[/h2]

A few weeks back we announced that the next update for Talisman: Digital Edition will involve an overhaul of the profile system. You can read more about that here!

We’re going to bring the same system that we’ll be implementing into Talisman over to Fury of Dracula. This means profiles and stats tracking, logged across all your devices.



Right now we’re testing the system in Talisman, and starting to implement it into Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition too - it’s still in the early stages, so look out for more information in future developer blogs!

[h2]Tutorials[/h2]

Right now Carl, our Design Director, is getting started on the Fury of Dracula tutorial! Having talked to the Fury of Dracula development team, he’s now figured out what order information will be presented to players.

For our tutorials we are using a hybrid approach - this means players will be able to choose if they want tutorial messages to appear as they use features, while also offering more dedicated tutorials that walk you through the game step-by-step. The more options the better, right?

Setting up these tutorials will also require a bit of work from the development team, as they will need to make sure the tutorials highlight UI elements, add boxes for the tutorial text, setting up a specific deck/game to be played, etc. We’ll be sure to share more information as they progress!

[h2]What are we working on next?[/h2]

As we work towards the next milestone build, our main focus will be on getting the tutorial up and running, along with further work on the AI for both Dracula and the Hunters.

We’re also slowly rolling out the closed beta version of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition to the lucky people who applied to be part of the closed beta. If you applied but we haven’t got back in touch with you yet, don’t worry - we’re planning on rolling the closed beta out in waves!

[h2]How can I keep up to date with Fury of Dracula?[/h2]

Add it to your wishlist and follow the game on Steam! That way you’ll get all the updates posted straight to you, and you’ll get notified when the game is available to purchase and play. Check it out on Steam here:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/958530/Fury_of_Dracula_Digital_Edition/

You can also stay tuned to our social media. We’re going to be sharing updates more and more as we get closer to the release of the full game, including more blogs like this one.

Join us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to hear announcements as they happen. Or if you’d like to bolster the ranks of hunters on our Discord, you can join it here.

Hi there Hunters!

Something that our community have repeatedly brought up since we’ve started showing off Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition is one question: “Will I be able to play this game online?”

Originally we’d planned to release Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition without online functionality at launch, and would have added it at a later date. However, two things have happened that made us reconsider that decision:

1. We got a lot of great community feedback
   
2. A big increase in people playing Talisman: Digital Edition online
   

This led to a lot of internal debate here at Nomad, as we reconsidered our decision to add online multiplayer post-release. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, but after readjusting our deadlines and priorities, we’re now happy to confirm that Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition will be launching with online multiplayer available from day one!

If it wasn’t for the feedback and comments from our lovely community, we wouldn’t have been able to realise how much of a priority this was for our players. So thank you all for sharing your thoughts!

[h2]So, how will online play work at launch?[/h2]

When we launch Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition, you’ll be able to choose from playing online or offline.

When you play online, you’ll be pitted in a 1v1 match where one player takes on the role of the hunters, and the other takes on the role of Dracula. When playing offline, you’ll be able to choose which roles are handled by local players, and which ones are controlled by AI.

[h2]What about local multiplayer? How will that work?[/h2]

We will support local (offline) cooperative multiplayer (aka pass-to-play, hotseat and couch coop) from launch with up to 5 players. Obviously Fury of Dracula is a game about hidden information, so Dracula will need to be trusting when taking their turns!

[h2]Are we planning on adding more online modes after launch?[/h2]

Yes! We’re planning to add a 1v4 mode at some point after launch - this will allow for realtime online play with up to 5 players, just like you would have around a table. We’re not sure how long this feature will take, but we’ll be sure to announce once we have a better idea.

[h2]How will players communicate with each other?[/h2]

There will be an in-game text chat that you’ll be able to use to communicate with each other.

In addition to the in-game chat we are hoping to get a ‘marker system’ into the game to allow Hunter players to mark locations where they think Dracula is. This will speed up communication between players a lot, as one of the most commonly discussed things is “where do you think Dracula is?”

[h2]Will there be matchmaking?[/h2]

You’ll have two options for playing Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition online - you will be able to join a listed public game or an unlisted private game that you can only join if you know the room code.

We’re hopeful that we will be able to support adding friends to your game directly via Steam at launch, however that might come slightly after depending on how development progresses.

[h2]If someone leaves during an online match, will they be replaced by AI?[/h2]

They will indeed be replaced by AI, so you can continue the hunt if you so desire.

[h2]Will there be support for asynchronous play?[/h2]

We won't be supporting asynchronous multiplayer at launch. Don’t be too disheartened though, we’re open to adding it later down the line if the game is successful and there is demand for it.

[h2]Will I be able to use Steam’s ‘Remote Play Together’ feature?[/h2]

You will! From launch day we’ll be supporting this feature, which effectively allows remote users to play as if they were in a local coop game. Note that you’ll still need to be trusting of whoever you play with as hidden information will be shown during each player's turn!

[h2]This all sounds great, how do I find out more about the game?[/h2]

The best way to keep up with Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition is by wishlisting it on Steam - not only will Steam notify you when the game is available, you’ll also see our updates directly and you’ll be helping us out too by bumping us up in the Steam algorithms, which is massively important to a tiny indie studio like ours!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/958530/Fury_of_Dracula_Digital_Edition/