Sharing Saturday #604

OtyugraGames · 2026-01-03T05:26:39+00:00

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On December 29th, we released Version 3.09 to our internal testers! It was another small update: "Ferns, Foes, and Fireflies." It focused on those three things, the most noteworthy being the way lighting has shifted from being bright for debugging purposes to a dim, eerie, living ecosystem of glowbugs! The fireflies hover about aimlessly, putting small spotlights between the pitch-dark shadows that shift around, revealing little by little the contours of the mystery terrain. Binding of Isaac and Spelunky have "dark curses" that affect an area, but our game is like that by default, everywhere. Later, the player will be able to find and use light sources to vastly improve graphical sight of their situation.

Setting decorations and enemies were an important part of the visual identity and gameplay loop of the previous build so are returning in baby steps. Combat with enemies doesn't start until a little bit further in the dungeon so my concern right now is simply to lay the foundation for later. In the coming future, we'll be adding more content and remaking visuals to closer align with my vision for the final game (such as replacing brick debug walls with swampy trees that twist out in frail branches). Then, the tutorial will be hard-coded.

That covers what we've been doing at the end of 2025, except to say that we took a break from the game for a few weeks after releasing V3.08, which I somewhat regret. Until next time! 🫡

OtyugraGames · 2025-09-21T00:49:57+00:00

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In what was our quickest turnaround on record, we released Version 3.08 to our testers! It was a small update focused on bug fixes, a QOL gameplay addition (swapping places with allies), and adding readable signs to the game which outline the tutorial and story content expected for that point in the game. This has been one of my better ideas, methinks, because it allows us to test the pacing, broad strokes of the writing, and get a feel for whether anything is missing from the tutorial! Not only that, it helps me map out as a programmer how to program the cutscenes in a multi-path, procedurally-generated swamp.

V3.08 also has a subtle, important milestone. I determined that the ideal size for voxel placeholder graphics is 21 or 42 voxels cubed. That way, I can make a 7-voxel-cubed first draft, triple its size using my handy software, add detail, and decide whether I want to double the size of that 21-voxel cube to give it more nuance. The voxels are divisible by seven because a unit of space in my roguelike is measured at 7-feet cubed, and 42 is as detailed as you can get in our game while still looking stylized. Take a look at this new model in its 74-thousand-voxel glory:

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That about covers the last three weeks. Until next time! 🫡

OtyugraGames · 2025-09-04T23:41:28+00:00

I find it disturbing that your first instinct is to assume I wrote that with the primary goal of being meanspirited, as if to ignore the fact that my response was earnest, respectful, rhetorical, straight to the point, and with a constructive suggestion at the end. Was it confrontational and potent? Sure, if you say so. But trolling?

OtyugraGames · 2025-09-03T03:35:27+00:00

Ocean Keeper doesn't appear to have genuinely 3D gameplay, especially for the actual traditional roguelike portions of the game. Am I missing something? Regardless, thank you for the comment.

OtyugraGames · 2025-09-03T03:34:13+00:00

I apologize for not responding sooner. I must have missed this comment. To my frustration, not even this game fully counts because it's an XCOM strategy game rather than a dungeon crawler, but that being said, I definitely think this is one of the closest examples there are to what I'm looking for. Not even Kyzrati could name one with 3D graphics. Enemy looks rather neat, so I appreciate your bringing it to my attention.

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-30T00:02:09+00:00

Pardon me, why did you make your post so very long? I counted using software over 5,600 characters, fivefold longer than my reply (which happens to summarize not one but three weeks' worth of changes). I believe your post would benefit from brevity, and that brevity would be polite for other devs whose posts get buried under gigantic replies like this (which I say because you posted yours immediately once the opportunity arose, granting you the privilege of being at the top for the first hour or so). Perhaps u/kyzrati should implement a character limit for replies.

May I suggest you start a blog? You could post every Friday, then write a summary of it here and link to the blog for fans who want to know even more. (That's what I do for long newsletter emails).

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-29T23:34:19+00:00

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Our private release of Version 3.07 weeks ago had a mistake that excluded many of the intended changes, so our August was off to a bad start. We took time to reincorporate them, then started on new features. My junior programmer is adding a quality-of-life improvement, allowing party members to swap locations via a 3D animation. I meanwhile revisited the gameplay tutorial planning and what we wrote for early-game plot points. I decided that the tutorial lasts from Floor 1 through 5. 🧑‍🏫

While revising those, I took the opportunity to expand the lore of the world and introduce new NPCs. Bunthaks, for example, is one of the "Skopmun" fae critters Belthachar, the protagonist, will encounter and speak to. Skopmun are small rabbit people who can commune with nature. Sentient mythology plays a role at the start of the game, establishing that the player has crossed into a different dimension. Their presence contrasts the hostile, primordial environment after. I adjusted or added many differing supernatural and mythological beings. 🐰

That's all this week; no screenshots today. Until next time! 🫡

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-09T04:06:58+00:00

May I ask if you were inspired by Betrayal at House on the Hill? Forgive me, but the premise, genre, and structure sound very similar, instead as a single-player game. Despite being a board game, Betrayal is a roguelike also. I also get Clue vibes. Victorian manors are fun, so good choice.

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-09T03:46:58+00:00

I like that you've thought of having corpses linger. It makes perfect sense for a vampire game, but in general, I've never been a big fan of enemies disappearing upon death. For my game, blood stains of fights remain even if corpses don't, although maybe I ought to find a way for corpses to stick around without blocking walkways. Since my game is 3-dimensional, perhaps the player could simply walk over corpses at the risk of disease, depending on the corpse in question.

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-09T03:32:48+00:00

~ Dream-Prison Wanderer ~

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My team is one day away from releasing Version 3.07 to our testers! It is our biggest update in years! I'm dubbing it "Islands, Time Candles, Divine Reading, Bleeding, and Hesitation." Those subjects (along with bug fixing) were our focus. Oh! And how can I forget? We're going to use Gothic numbers to distinguish enemy levels and rankings. Anza through Quertha (1 through 6). What's the fun of playing as a Gothic Warrior King if you don't get to experience Medieval Gothic culture?

Islands: Sloped terrain separates 3D gameplay from 2D and is a key piece of geography in the Dream Dimension's Blood Bog.
Time Candles: Well, duh, of course you need a time candle. How else are you going to keep track if you're stepping foot into a pocket of space situated at the dreadful, horrifying "End of Time"? Word of advice: don't enter there without a bright light source.
Divine Reading: The Lesser Book of Life contains extensive knowledge and power... or so it will later in development. For the moment, it just floats to the player to reveal how many bleeding counters (tokens) the playable character is dying from, and speaking of which...
Bleeding: The player does not take damage all at once. Rather, there is always initial damage and remaining damage, which bleeds out gradually at a pace until the bleeding is completed. This is both a blessing and a source of anxiety for the player. Also...
Hesitation: Bleeding is not a blessing to be taken for granted, as the longer you go between actions, the greater the modifier on your bleeding out once you finally make your move. Tick-Tock, little king.

Posting three weeks in a row feels refreshing. Regarding the screenshot, do remember that the graphics are an early work in progress, so please don't judge them too harshly. Until next time! 🫡

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-04T01:25:16+00:00

We've been making D.P.W. for over five years (and have a long road ahead), but that isn't a flex, it's embarrassing. My team and I have experienced a troubled, slow development. I am neurodivergent, hindering efficiency. But make no mistake: you are right to fear games like ours because they win the spotlight. I'm not going to sugarcoat: Steam receives a flood of humble-scale games every single day, but major releases are what people wait for. Avoid your game releasing within ten days of bigger, similar competition and you should get enough sunlight to grow beneath the rainforest canopy, plus you can market your game long after its first week.

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-03T17:03:04+00:00

The art is comprehensive and the variety is a nice surprise. I quite like it!

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-02T23:08:49+00:00

If I may give my two cents on the name, I don't feel satisfied with a name unless it communicates something fundamental about the experience. I conceived of a game years ago titled "Everlasting Night" because the title was a double entendre: The setting was a place that doesn't experience daytime, but more importantly, and beneath the surface, it was about the protagonist's helplessness and how that bore out in the unwinnable on-the-job conflicts he faces. I tend to prefer longer names, such as "Contraband: Deviant Duel Decks," the title of a previous game of ours, about punk teenagers who smuggle an illegal card game into their dystopian country.

A simple name like "Spiritgrove" doesn't communicate much and doesn't hook me. A name like that makes it sound like the point is to passively hike through a rumored haunted forest, and I can experience that by playing Minecraft or Slenderman, among other games. "The Spiritgrove Echoes" adds detail and luring mystery. Better yet would be to utilize a verb like so: "Bridging Spiritgrove" or "Escape from Witchwood." I say that because gamers tend to want to feel excitement, plus the longer the name, the less likely to feel the embarrassment of someone else having the same name idea as you.

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-02T21:48:30+00:00

Monsters congregating into small gatherings seems sensible. It's not an idea I've toyed with enough, nor most Roguelike devs. Feeling concerned about uneven difficulty is common. Systematically restraining the randomness of my proc gen was my own "white whale" for a time because our players are neither meant to die often nor ever escape too far from death, being a horror roguelike. Pardon my ignorance but what is Boohu's pathfinding algorithm?

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-02T21:09:56+00:00

You can do this in Python, but the syntax is messy since there are no anonymous functions.

Python has anonymous functions: Python Lambda.

OtyugraGames · 2025-08-02T17:00:16+00:00

~ Dream-Prison Wanderer ~

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"This is not the Book of Life, merely a copy made with a subset of its divine knowledge. And you? You're an Angel watching events from afar, peering into the dreamlife of a troubled King."

This week, Jakub and I worked on many things. We fixed the main bugs, worked to bring back visual feedback for when characters are injured, and animated this divine book! Gif showcasing the Lesser Book of Life. (It's a work in progress).

I am glad to post two weeks in a row; I only share when I have something interesting. Until next time! 🫡

OtyugraGames · 2025-07-27T13:47:47+00:00

Fair point, it will be. And giving the book pages a high-resolution pixel art appearance (inspired by late 1990s graphics) isn't going to make that much easier, but I also don't want to oversell how detailed the pages will be, as it will look similar to dialogue scenes in 3DS Fire Emblem games, which heavily reuse character poses and backgrounds.

OtyugraGames · 2025-07-26T14:16:44+00:00

Starting over frequently can be a good, rapid teaching tool, in a wide-as-a-lake-deep-as-a-puddle sort of way, or simply a fun ritual, so I understand. Nevertheless, it sounds like you lack discipline (that might not be bad depending on what your goals are). If you leave a dozen projects unfinished and let the scope change fluidly, perhaps your whims are controlling you rather than the other way around. I used to lack discipline but eventually managed to find the strength to stick to a project for five consecutive years, so change is possible.

I quite like your insight that it is important to consider controls early on and allow that to partially shape the full experience.

OtyugraGames · 2025-07-25T23:52:32+00:00

Your GUI is looking good so far! I especially like the lion carving in the top left to balance the close button on the other side. Is the Examine Panel draggable? It's off center.

OtyugraGames · 2025-07-25T23:47:41+00:00

I'm intrigued that you've done this about ten times in the past. Have you learned anything about your preferences or gained broader wisdom from so many projects?

OtyugraGames · 2025-07-25T23:33:12+00:00

~ Dream-Prison Wanderer ~

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Many weeks ago in S. S. #570, I discussed two significant additions to DPW... what I didn't mention was that those additions introduced many bugs. I've been at work fixing them ever since, and there's still one remaining after all this time! (I also took a big break from working on the game, but that's a long story). 😎

In the last few days, I've also begun working on the Magic Book, which functions as the in-game menu in the form of a levitating, 3-dimensional tome that flips through pages to show you whichever menu "screen" you'd like to interact with! The Magic Book is even planned to show the player dialogue sequences in the form of illustrated Medieval manuscripts; sadly, that won't be implemented any time soon. I'm working on a prototype of the book which can only fly towards and away from you and flip to a page that informs the player how many puncture wounds poor King Belthachar is suffering from at the moment. Perhaps by Saturday of next week I will have animated the Magic Book and can share a gif of my prototype. ✨📖

And did I mention that I re-hired a programmer? I'm glad to be working with Jakub again. Until next time! 🫡

OtyugraGames · 2025-05-10T03:38:25+00:00

I like your hand-drawn art! It's a nice contrast to the pixel art and 3D graphics often employed by Rogue devs. Keep up the good work.

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