Din's Champion early access month 4
Tuesday, 11 February 2025
Din's Champion is 20% off this week (02/10-02/17) on Steam!

Din's Champion has now been in early access for over 4 months and is currently available on Steam.

As of this post, we've released 17 patches with 735 total changes, which can be read here. This consists of a ton of small fixes and balance changes, but there have been a bunch of larger changes.


QOL: There have been lots of quality of life changes like smart mining, stack to all nearby chests button, crafting list sorting/filtering, easier to move windows around, a torch hotkey, and a surrender area option.

Better NPCs: You can now choose which house an NPC lives in, NPCs have more to talk about, married NPCs now live inside the same house, and there have been many UI changes to make working with NPCs easier.

More newbie friendly: There is now a very quick tutorial that helps new players learn the basics, the starting area is much safer, and way more things are phased in as you get to higher levels so it is not so overwhelming for new players (NPC fighting, dangerous liquids, dangerous gases, ambushes, monster enhancements, exploding objects, traps, world/level modifiers, etc).

New items: Many new items have been added like vials (can pickup liquids), decorations (paintings and banners), and 60+ new unique items.

Optimizations: FPS, memory usage, and network usage have been optimized better. Also many hitches have been tracked down and eliminated.

New item modifiers: Many new item modifiers have been added to give players more control over the environment and how they move, things like Water Breathing, Environmental Lava Protection, Coyote Time, Wall Climb, Water Walking, and many more.

Controller support: Controllers are now supported for those that prefer them over mouse/keyboard.
 

That's it for all of the major new changes, but there are still a lot of changes coming.

As always comments are welcome!

 
Din's Champion, Soldak's most dynamic world ever
Wednesday, 31 July 2024

Some people have wondered why Soldak would make a 2D scrolling, action RPG. Well, frankly it allows us to expand the dynamic world systems a LOT. I believe Din's Champion will have the most dynamic world of all of our games. Given that's one of the things that makes Soldak games pretty unique, that is saying something.

A quick background: all of our games (except Kivi's Underworld) have had very dynamic worlds. The worlds evolve based on what the player does or doesn't do, what monsters choose to do, what's happening in the world, what NPCs choose to do, and the interactions between everything. Like previous games, Din's Champion still has monsters getting promotions, things catching on fire, monster uprisings, wars, town attacks, weather, cataclysms, dangerous objects, and many other dynamic things.

But now all of these feed into new systems and work together even better than before.

  • The world is built from blocks that can be destroyed and placed. Mining, building, combat damage, and explosions will all transform the world.
  •  Gravity is a thing.
  • Liquids can be released, flow around, build up, and evaporate. 6 types: water, acid, poison, oil, pollution, and lava
  • Gases can be formed, rise,  and build up. 3 types: smoke, poisonous, and explosive
  • Loose solids will fall if nothing is supporting them: 3 types: mud, slush, and sand
  • Players can suffocate if their head is covered by a liquid, loose solid, or a harmful gas. So even if they aren't actively deadly, they are still dangerous.
  • Solids, liquids, and gases can mix and transform in many ways: dirt + water = mud, oil + lava = fire & smoke, oil + acid = explosive gas. There are many more of these.
  • Many systems and objects can release liquids and gases. Rain will add water, traps can release poisonous gas, and barrels can contain most liquid types, to name just a few.


So a possibility: the player uses a rain scroll, it starts raining, and water builds up in a ditch. The dirt turns into mud, that mud falls because there is nothing supporting it, and an exploding barrel in the ditch also falls and explodes on impact with the ground below. This explosion catches a pool of oil on fire and the fire creates lots of smoke. The burning oil flows down the cavern floor into an area filled with explosive gas. The gas explodes in a chain reaction through the cave and kills a nearby unique monster named Slag. Slag was a peacekeeper and now a war between the Torture Torvas and Gore Clan Orc Berserkers breaks out. This gives Valta, the active evil god in the area, enough power to release a Plagues cataclysm. And those plagues of course cause more issues.

This might be an extreme and complex example, but simpler chain of events like that are common and are just plain cool. And these are just some of the new dynamic systems and interactions that are in the game and more will likely be added when we start Early Access.

As always comments are welcome and encouraged!

If this sounds fun, go wishlist Din's Champion over on Steam now!

 
Next Soldak game (game 8)
Tuesday, 18 January 2022

This is still pretty unofficial, as in I could change direction still, but I'm pretty sure our next game is going to be kind of a hybrid between Din's Curse and a game like Terraria or Starbound. Since it will be similar to Din's Curse and take place in the same universe, it will feel somewhat familiar. However, it might at the same time be our biggest departure from the typical Soldak game, especially since it will most likely have a camera perspective change.

Some of the things that I want to carry over from Din's Curse:
* Fantasy action RPG (classes, skills, levels, attributes, etc)
* Dynamic, evolving, living world (quests, town attacks, monsters leveling, traps, hazards, clans?, etc)
* Protect the town from all of the dangers below

Some new things from Terraria/Starbound like games:
* Mine, destroy, and/or place every block of the world
* Much more extensible crafting system where you can craft most (or all?) items in the game
* Build structures for you and your NPCs
* Probably a 2d side view (even though everything likely to be 3d models)
* More exciting movement (basically like a platform game)

I already have a good working design for what I want to do, but of course it will greatly change shape as we progress further. As Helmuth von Moltke said: No game design survives contact with playtesting. Well at least he said something like that. :)

As always comments are welcome and encouraged!

 
Drox Operative 2 early access month 15
Thursday, 09 September 2021

Drox Operative 2 has now been in early access for over 15 months and is currently available on Steam and GOG.

As of this post, we've released 68 patches (8 since the last post) with 1,985 total changes (198 since the last post), which can be read here. This consists of a ton of small fixes and balance changes, but there have been a bunch of larger changes.

More playable races: Now random, young races that you have unlocked (emerged in the galaxy) are playable. The young races have random names, logos, story backgrounds, and skill trees so this greatly increases the options for new ships.

Race Relations: You can now vouch for a race (transferring some of your relations). You can also ask to adventure with a race that helps to form a bond between you and them, assuming it goes well. And finally, races actually care how you treat your crew.

Pirates/smugglers: Now pirates & smugglers can build starbases to cause more problems.

Storms: There are now geomagnetic storms and permanent versions of many of the storms.

Crew points: All of the crew attributes have been improved.

Bonus skills: All of the bonus skills you get from higher crew attribute levels are now each unique.

QOL improvements: There have been a bunch of quality of life improvements like increased regen rates when out of combat, increased ship base thrust, and a new auto scrapping system.

Art: And importantly from a progress standpoint, all of the required artwork is now completed and in the game.

 

That's it for all of the major new changes, but there are still a lot of potential changes coming up (which you can see here).

As always comments are welcome!

 
Drox Operative 2 early access month 13
Thursday, 08 July 2021

Drox Operative 2 has now been in early access for over 13 months and is currently available on Steam and GOG.

Well so much for my original estimate of being in Early Access for only around 9 months. :)

As of this post, we've released 55 patches (13 since the last post) with 1,787 total changes (360 since the last post), which can be read here. This consists of a ton of small fixes and balance changes, but there have been a bunch of larger changes.

Random races: They now each have a cool description that explains their background a bit. The description basically explains why they are the way they are and adds some more details.

Spying: We've improved spying with counterespionage, laying low, jump gate activation stealing, and better sabotage.

Race Dialog: Now races speak differently based on their traits, so their dialog matches their personality much better.

Relation Changes: Race traits now impact relation changes quite a bit more. Militaristic races value kills more, Economist races value gifts more, etc. There is less backlash when you solve quests that aren't directly benefiting a specific race. Also, races now get tired of war faster and take their fear into account more.

Better Rewards: Now attributes given by command count towards bonus skills, there is an XP reward for scanning anomalies, and the XP curve has been flatten quite a bit.

Maps: The system map is now much better looking, much easier to read, and easier to use.

Monsters: We added new weapon types to many of the monsters and rebalanced them quite a bit.

Stability: And last but certainly not least, we've fixed a few crashes. One of these crashes was happening when scanning anomalies and planets and due to the randomness in the game it was quite difficult to track down.

 

That's it for all of the major new changes, but there are still a lot of potential changes coming up (which you can see here).

As always comments are welcome!

 
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