All Good Things

Hey folks. :) I hope you’ve been enjoying the new battles at the top of the Tower (or at least enjoying your attempts to get there if you haven’t made it quite yet.)

As of the most recent release, I consider Demon to be feature and content complete. Therefore, I’m announcing the end of active development for Demon. Going forward, I will still fix bugs and balance issues (in fact, I’ve got a collection of fixes that will be in a new release here soon) and work to keep the website, forum, and server in working order, but there are no further new feature or content releases scheduled at this time.

 

Before I get into a bit of Q&A, I want to thank some folks without whom, Demon would have been a much lesser game than it turned out to be:

Geminimax, you hopefully knew you’d be first on a list of this sort. :) When I started Demon, I never imagined in my most optimistic moments that not only would someone volunteer to contribute character sprites to the game, but that they would keep up that effort for more than six years. I cannot thank you enough for what you’ve done for Demon, and I am happy to see a game of your own (Candela) coming to Steam soon. :)

Ontoclasm, thank you again for your major contributions to Demon in the form of your interface and other icons, including most astoundingly for all of Demon’s over 900 abilities. These were a major upgrade for the appearance and polish of the game, and I greatly appreciate them. :D

I have also had massive assistance with the website, forum, and server from a good friend of mine who wishes to remain anonymous, but that does not make my gratitude to him any less.

I would also like to thank my friends for their support, encouragement, and playtesting throughout Demon’s development, but particularly at the beginning when I probably sounded crazy for wanting to take a year off of working to start making a game I planned from the beginning to give away to anyone who wanted it. Most of you are as crazy as I am which probably helped with understanding why I wanted to do this, but I appreciate you all. :D

Last but definitely not least, I want to thank all of you who played Demon, especially those who have been playing for years and years. When I started on Demon, I told myself I was making it for me and that I would be happy even if I was the only one who ever enjoyed it. That may well have been true, but I have been much happier that other people have also enjoyed it. :) Your feedback, suggestions, game reports, and bug reports over the years have been a huge help and Demon is far better off for your involvement. :D

 

Now, some Q&A:

Q. When will bug/balance fix releases occur?
A. These will happen as needed. There will be one coming up here shortly with a handful of fixes I’ve been working on.

Q. Is there any possibility of future content or feature releases?
A. None are planned; if these do happen in the future, they would not be announced until released.

Q. Will you be releasing the source code?
A. Not at this time, but that is not a final or permanent decision and I may still do so at a future date.

Q. Why are you ending active development of Demon?
A. While the past eight years have been awesome, and I have loved working on Demon and there would always be more I could do with it, there are also other games I want to make and I felt the time was right to switch to working on the next one now that Demon is feature and content complete.

Q. What is the next game?
A. Sorry, I’m nowhere near ready to talk about that yet. :) For reference, I did not tell anyone about Demon until the first playable versions were available, and that seemed to work out well, so I will probably do the same for the next game.

Q. Will the next game also be free?
A. Yes.

Q, I have a question you didn’t answer here.
A: Feel free to post it in the comments below then. :D But, I may decline to answer some questions, especially if they are about the next game. If I answer a question from the comments, I’ll edit this post to add the question and answer here.

 

The last eight years have been an incredible ride. Thank you again, everyone, for coming along, and I hope you continue to enjoy struggling towards the top of Tower. :)

- Herbie

18 responses to “All Good Things

  1. Loved being a small part of this project, thanks for all the hard work over the years!

    I’ll be looking forward to the next project.

    • “small” :P Not even close to small. :D Thank you again for everything, your character sprites have been a major boon for Demon!

  2. It’s been a wonderful ride! I look forward to eventually climbing the tower to its top, hopefully it won’t take another 8 years for that! Thank you so so much for creating this game, and to everyone who helped work on it and who contributed to the forums. Demon is still up there vying for the title of my favorite video game, and I wouldn’t surprised if it stayed that way my whole life!

    • Thank you for the awesome words. :) I hope you continue to enjoy Demon… and I hope I can give you another game to vie for the right to be your favorite video game in the future. :D

  3. Thank you for this great game! I will treasure it as one of my favorite games of all time!
    (I will also miss reading your updates, but I’m glad you finished your vision for this game!
    By the way, hope you will send a notice here when you’re ready to share your next game. I will keep this site’s RSS active. :D )

    • :D Thank you for the very kind words. And yes, I will post something here when the next game is ready for sharing , no worries on that. :) I hope you continue to enjoy Demon for years to come. :D

  4. I would like to thank you sincerely for making Demon. I’ve been playing it on and off for several years. It’s helped me both fight the tedium of boring workdays and fill hours of idleness. And despite the frustration, anger, and annoyance it has caused, it’s a game I’ve kept coming back to. When I learned about Demon being content complete, I strapped in and set forth once more into the Tower. After several unsuccessful playthroughs, I had the pleasure of making it to the end, and I honestly couldn’t quite believe it myself. After so many years, it feels like a crowning achievement.

    And now, learning about this announcement, it all feels all the more bittersweet. I know that there’s nothing to be sad about (you finally completed this game, and it’s an awesome thing!), but it still feels like a chapter is closing. Congratulations for seeing this beautiful project through across so many years. Whatever you work on next, I would be glad to learn about it. Here’s hoping to another great game to sink my teeth into!

    Though I know that a game like Demon can be a hard sell, I’ve been plugging it in a few Discord servers I’m in, and I’m happy to say that it’s garnered *some* interest, so there’s that! If I can make more people interested in your work, I’ll be glad to have been able to give back in some small way, after getting to enjoy the fruits of your labor for free.

    Again, many thanks for your work, and best wishes for the future.

    • :D Congrats on your win in the completed Tower! Thank you for the awesome message, and don’t worry, I’ll definitely be noisy about it once the next game is ready for folks to play. :D

      I appreciate your effort to spread the word too. :) Demon can definitely be a bit of a tough sell: even in roguelike groups, the emphasis on a party of characters is sometimes a dealbreaker. But at this point, thanks in part to folks like you spreading the word, these days anyone looking for a roguelike with monster collection and/or party gameplay is usually steered towards Demon with strong positive recommendations, and that is as much as I ever hoped for. :D

  5. It’s truly been a pleasure to follow development of this project. Glad to see it achieve such an enjoyable gameplay loop. Furthermore, kept me engaged more than many a game.

    It’ll certainly outlive it’s own development. That, and the amount of fun one can have with it, speaks for the quality and effort.

    With this already being such a success,
    I’m looking forward to see what else you come up with!

    • Thank you, I’m glad you’ve enjoyed playing Demon and following along with its progress. :D It will be awhile yet, but I’m as eager to share the next project as you folks are to learn about it, so I’ll get us there ASAP. :D

  6. I fell off of playing Demon for a few years just due to playing so much I burned myself out in the earlier builds, but now that it’s largely complete I’ve got to see all the new content and get a win or twelve.

    Great thanks for your industrious work, it was really cool to see this game develop into its final form.

    • I’ve temporarily burned myself out on many a game I’ve loved too, so I understand completely. :) Thank you for all your feedback and game reports over the years, and I hope you enjoy your return to the Tower. :D

  7. Congratulations with a completion of your work.
    I’ve been silently keeping eye on your development updates for the past couple years and seeing it finally reach its grande finalle leaves a pleasant bittersweet aftertaste, like an ending of long treasured book series. And makes me really happy, that I’ve found this little gem of game (actually, it would probably take me at least 50 hours to complete, now so “hunk of a diamond” would be more apt description).
    Thank you for this and best of luck in your next project whatever it would be!

    • :D Thank you for the kind words, and I hope you enjoy your 50+ hours with Demon! Having Demon’s conclusion compared to the end of a great book series is particularly awesome; I read quite a bit so I understand exactly what you mean. :)