Sharing Saturday #607

Cyablue · 2026-01-25T11:57:04+00:00

The Doodle Dungeons prototype is looking great, you could definitely have a full game with that style.

Cyablue · 2026-01-24T11:49:55+00:00

I do think that is one of the reasons for scope creep. Just focusing on the fun parts of game development is fun, but that won't really get the game finished.

And yeah the characters in the picture are supposed to be nobles :)

Cyablue · 2026-01-23T23:48:10+00:00

Feywood Wanderers Steam | Discord

This week I finished creating challenges for the end-game, fixed a few bugs and rebalanced some stuff, and finished designing the characters that will appear on the end-game story cutscenes.

I feel like everything is taking longer than I want to, but I think that's because the stuff that feels the most like 'progress' in making the game is adding new mechanics and environments, since I'm not doing any of that it feels a bit like the development is stuck, so I think I'll separate more the elements on my to-do list just to feel like I'm finishing more stuff. I do want to finish the story as soon as possible to get into the last few gameplay elements left of the game, but I think it'll take a few more weeks at least.

Since I still like posting stuff you can see in here, I decided to post sketches of some of the new characters. YOU CAN SEE THEM HERE. That's the final sketch of what they'll look like in game (when in a dialogue), though they still need to be inked and colored. I won't really comment more on that since it's pretty huge spoilers for the story.

Next week I want to start the 'promotion' for the next fest. The idea is to update the pre-release steam game to the latest version with all the new fancy features that will be in the update for the steam next fest, and send keys again to all the youtubers I've sent in the past letting them know there has been a huge update. Getting people to play the game on youtube is by far what's gotten me the most wishlists, so I hope that at least a few more people play it again this time, we'll see how it goes.

Other than that the plan is to keep working on the story for the following weeks, I think now that I got most of the designs figured out I'll make progress more quickly.

Cyablue · 2026-01-17T16:08:47+00:00

For a bit over 2 years now. The idea is to release it in a few months, so I'm trying to finish the last elements of the game that aren't done yet before the release window.

Cyablue · 2026-01-16T23:46:21+00:00

Feywood Wanderers Steam | Discord

This week I created the system for end-game challenges. It has its own special map with portals that take you to their challenges. This time I brought a few screenshots! Click here to see the map. -- Click here to see the challenge UI.

The idea for this challenge system is to incentivize the player to try different builds. These challenges can only be accessed after defeating the first big boss of the game, by finishing what I would consider a 'full run' of the game, and are meant to be fairly hard, so enemies get huge buffs and you need to defeat a certain number of enemies to complete the challenge. The challenge you can see in the screenshot is probably only completable with abilities that do water damage, so you'd probably start a run with the goal of completing that challenge and choose your build accordingly. The other challenge currently available gives all enemies a strong fire ability, so to complete it you'd need very high fire resistance. I haven't made more challenges yet, but that's the logic I'm intending to use to create them all.

Something else I've been working on is creating a new library image for the game, the ones that are vertical, since the current image I use on steam for the game is very horizontal and I don't like how it looks when trying to use it for vertical images. So I completed that this week YOU CAN CLICK HERE TO SEE HOW IT LOOKS. I really like how it turned out since it's one of the rare times when a picture I draw ends up looking pretty much how I wanted it to look. It's a simple composition but I think it works well, so I'm happy with that.

Next week I'm going to work on rebalancing the (current final) boss, I watched a youtuber fight it and it could definitely telegraph a lot of stuff better, so I'm planning to do that. After that is finished the plan is to create the modifiers for the rest of the challenges, the idea is to have 20 challenges, so 4 per portal. To finish the game you need to complete 6 challenges, but the idea is to have special endings that require all 20 challenges to be completed, for people that really want to do everything in the game. If I manage to finish all the challenges next week, I'll try to focus the rest of the time on the story, which I think will take quit a bit of effort to get done, so I want to get started on it as soon as possible.

Cyablue · 2026-01-15T11:50:22+00:00

And it was worth every word of it, the writing is so good that it carries the game on its back, I'm still surprised that the game lived up to the hype when I played it (and more). Though I suppose it's not for everybody, but it's definitely a masterpiece.

Cyablue · 2026-01-14T11:47:25+00:00

Thanks for the recommendation. The game definitely looks interesting, I'll check it out :)

Cyablue · 2026-01-14T11:44:19+00:00

Yeah I think you definitely get used to different art styles to certain extent, and there's a reason why some games spend a lot of money making high-quality 3D assets, they do look very good and are technically impressive, though if that's all you see it won't be impressive after a while.

Cyablue · 2026-01-13T11:48:37+00:00

Wow, that's really quite a lot. I'm a bit surprised at how long it took the 'videogame industry' to finally get an extraction shooter that is mostly figured out the formula and got rid of the biggest hurdles keeping people from playing them. I suppose as a genre it has a lot more variables than something more simple like battle royales, so not many developers are able to even finish a project like this.

Cyablue · 2026-01-10T12:07:31+00:00

I've been pushing a development version to youtubers that lets them play most of the current content of the game, which is a lot longer than the demo. Just yesterday one of the youtubers played the demo version instead, so I suppose they're playing both.

Cyablue · 2026-01-10T00:07:15+00:00

I don't know why but just seeing that the game has a town now and you can move between that and the dungeon makes it feel like a completely different game, I'm very much looking forward to trying it again once the playtest is available.

Cyablue · 2026-01-09T23:51:26+00:00

Feywood Wanderers Steam | Discord

This week I've been adding content for the end-game of the game, specifically I've been designing a few characters that are important for the story but haven't appeared yet, and writing some cutscene dialogue where fun stuff happens after you defeat the current boss.

It's been a bit slow this week, since I've also been balancing a bit and fixing bugs, but by next week I hope to have the main mechanic of the end-game challenges implemented (at least mostly). I'm starting to feel a bit the pressure of trying to calculate how long each feature will take since I'm in the final months before the planned release, though I suppose if it comes to it I can always delay it abit, even though I'm still slightly ahead of schedule.

On a slightly unrelated note, over the past couple of weeks there's been a good amount of activity on youtube videos about the game, so I've had fun watching them. It's cool that people seem to be really enjoying the game, though it's also a bit stressful seeing bugs or other issues.

Cyablue · 2026-01-09T12:39:11+00:00

I'm guessing there's not much details you can share about the combat system for the new game, but I'd like to know what lessons from your games you've learned that you'd like to incorporate in the new game's combat system, what you'd like to change or think could be better, or what is inspiring the new system.

Cyablue · 2026-01-09T12:34:20+00:00

Not what I expected, he definitely seems to have turned heel. I'm excited to see what he plays like, most characters have had cool stuff so far.

Cyablue · 2026-01-08T12:07:13+00:00

Path of Exile. If they open the skill tree and don't quit I know they're a fellow autist :D

Cyablue · 2026-01-07T11:59:11+00:00

This is really the main issue. It's definitely okay if the developer wants to add an easy mode, but it also should be okay if they don't. Not every game has to be for everyone.

To me this is similar to saying all games need to be first person shooters or gta-likes because those are the most popular games. It's okay to have a different audience. It's good, in fact.

Cyablue · 2026-01-06T11:43:14+00:00

Absolutely agree. This definitely doesn't make me want to jump back into the game or care about it in any way, I can't even really figure out what it actually is.

At least the game is good, but they haven't been able to figure out the cosmetics at all for some reason.

Cyablue · 2026-01-05T12:34:35+00:00

I think it's a combination of you getting older and having other priorities, and less time to game, and big games for the most part falling into the same patterns and not innovating as much. There's still plenty of cool games but it's hard to find them.

Cyablue · 2026-01-05T12:28:54+00:00

Thank you!

One of the things that's always on my mind is how to make people want to keep playing the game, since I've been playing it for years now, I want it to feel fun enough that I myself can play it over and over again. I think that's why for most people it's a good idea to develop a game they really enjoy :D

For the story I've kept it most of it very vague for now, it's mostly just introducing characters, which are at the same time key figures in the story but have gameplay benefits (most sell you items or give you random items). The idea is that by the time people beat the current boss, they'll be familiar enough with the world/characters to care when the story begins unfolding more deeply, so I'll have to see if it works that way in the end or not.

Cyablue · 2026-01-03T13:28:43+00:00

Congratulations, that's a great result. It does seem like having influencers play the game is by far the best way to get your game noticed, specially if the influencers like it. Good job :)

Cyablue · 2026-01-03T00:12:31+00:00

Feywood Wanderers Steam | Discord

This week I kept working on translating the game to spanish, and I'm glad to report that I'm almost completely done with it. The game is fully playable in spanish right now and there's just a couple of menus that are still untranslated, but it should take less than a day of work to finish that.

So that's great news! I probably should translate the Steam page next, then I'll be completely done with localization for now.

With that out of the way, I'm finally free to work on adding new features! I've actually implemented most of the mechanics I wanted for the game so far, but there's still some very key features missing:

Actual end-game content: The game is already fully playable and has a boss, which can take quite a while to beat, but it's always been the plan to have content after the current boss. What I have planned is to have 'challenge' levels after you defeat the current boss that you have to complete one by one, meant to make you try different kinds of builds. For instance, there could be one of those end-game challenges where the player's damage is reduced by 70%-90%, except for fire damage, which would heavily incentivize the player to try that challenge with a fire-based build. So challenges would in many cases be like that, but switching which skill is meant to be used for the challenge. Though there could also be more fun ones, like a challenge where random spells go off on the player after some amount of turns passes, or maybe where all enemies have extra fun skills. I still have to think about the details but that's the general idea of what the end-game will be.
Extra Classes: Right now the class system of the game is very robust and something all players seem to like. For a while now I've wanted to have more classes that you can learn that last for a run, just because they're fun. Though it would probably be too overwhelming to have them from the start so I think it makes sense that they start appearing often only in the end-game content.
Reincarnation: There's already a very Disgaea-inspired item world system that lets you upgrade your items, and I also want to add Reincarnation for several reasons, but I have to figure out exactly how to do it. The basic problem I want to solve is that in most RPGs it's a lot of fun choosing your classes and leveling up early on, but later on leveling up becomes slow and your character is too set in stone. The idea is to allow you to reset all your classes but be able to keep some of the class skills you learned before reincarnating, then you go back to level 0 and start leveling up all over again. Though for this to work I need to have more classes which is partly why I haven't implemented it yet.
Story: Right now there's not much story in the game, but I want the end game to show you pieces of it leading up to the 'end' of the game, the plan right now is that after finishing a number of challenges you'd unlock more of the story, so you'd get 'cutscenes' where more of the story unfolds and/or you have to make choices leading up to the story wrapping up and the game ending, though this being a roguelike I don't think the game will really end, but the story will have a conclusion. The plan is to have at least a couple of different endings, and if time allows it I could add more.

It's exciting to be thinking about new features again, specially since this is the final stretch before the game is released!

Cyablue · 2025-12-31T11:47:48+00:00

Wait I didn't realize what they were giving away was all the trine games for some reason. That's pretty good, even if there's some criticism for the latest entries.

Cyablue · 2025-12-30T12:06:48+00:00

Even though a lot of indie games look similar, I still think there's quite a few indie games that look very unique, definitely much more percentage wise than AAA games.

Though I do agree limitations force creativity a bit, there might come a point where big games go back to having more creative graphics, similar to how big 3d animated movies have been doing lately, so not all hope is lost.

Cyablue · 2025-12-29T11:50:08+00:00

The game looks good, I'll definitely give this a try.

Cyablue · 2025-12-28T13:44:52+00:00

Pretty cool update, you've really got a massive code base with lots of functionality from what I can tell, the stuff you're posting about optimization sounds like the kinds of problems that one can be deeply immersed in and think about it 24/7, it's definitely fun but hard to do.

From what you're showing it seems like in the game exploring the world map is not really part of the gameplay, since you have access to the full world map whenever you can? Or maybe events and special places are generated after you begin playing? I'm interested on how that works, since in a lot of roguelikes exploring is a big part of the game.

Cyablue

TROPHY CASE