The 2/1 builds (PC, Mac, and Linux) are ready! You can download them at the usual link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web

The update notes are pretty extensive this time, so I’ll stick to a summary of the major changes.

Major Changes
- The new style of dungeon art is in for the Tower, and it is quite sharp looking.
- Fire attacks now have a chance to cause Ignite, a brief damage over time status effect.
- Several significant balance tweaks have been made to smooth out several issues noted by playtesters. The general flavor of these has been towards making the game a bit faster paced, meaner tempered, and a bit better balanced overall between different demons.
- The base hit rate for damaging abilities has been raised, from 70% to 85%.
- SP costs for many abilities (damage abilities in particular) have been significantly reduced.
- Resistances and weaknesses now have a much greater impact: be *very* aware of your main character’s weakness and what enemies can hit it!
- Direct healing (Healing Charm, Mending, etc.) is somewhat more powerful, passive and indirect healing (Regen, Flesheater, etc.) somewhat less so.
- Scores now lean a bit higher, especially for early game deaths. Scores from this version onward should be considered to be on a different scale than pre-2/1 scores, and thus not particularly fit for comparison.
- You can now press ‘x’ to open up a targeting interface for examining characters (same effect as right-clicking them.)

And finally, a teaser screenshot showing off the new dungeon art and Ignite status:

Next up, time for a content push! Until next time, good luck (you’re going to need it more than ever!)

Build link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web

The new build containing a slew of new items and some good refinements to the game balance is finally ready! Also new: an attempt at a Linux build. I have no direct or even second-degree access to a Linux machine at the moment though, so I have no idea if that actually works or not. If you try it, let me know how it goes. Without further ado, here are the update notes.

Update Notes, 1/4/2015

Items
- Approximately 30 new items have been added to the game, some of which replace previously existing items, but most of which are new. Some of them can do some very interesting things indeed, like allow you to sacrifice one demon to bestow a modifier on another.
- Items that inflict status conditions no longer check the user’s cunning, they simply have a base (and usually rather high) chance to work.

Interface
- Selection lists now support a scrolling behavior, most often seen when looking in your inventory, or when discarding abilities when you have too many. Controls are up arrow and down arrow for line by line scrolling, page up and page down for page by page scrolling.
- Portal Search’s keyboard control is now just p, instead of Shift+p.
- Portal Search no longer has a hotkey button.

Balance Changes
- Global increase of about 15% to damage and healing.
- Made most “defeat the target” captureables slightly shorter in duration.
- Significantly reduced the effect of Level on combat effectiveness.
- Removed default immunity to Light from humans, including most starting player packages and most enemy summoners. Some humans may still have Light immunity (such as a certain red-headed paladin…), but it is no longer default for humanity.
- Adjusted T:1 and T:2 to be a bit more deadly. Wouldn’t want people to get the wrong idea at the start.
- OffDown, DefDown, AccDown, and EvdDown are now less effective.
- SpdUp and SpdDown are now considerably more effective, but have shorter durations.
- Life-draining a hero or minion now removes heroic defense/minion vulnerability from the healing you receive. In essence, you will heal more HP than before when draining heroes, and less when draining minions, but the damage they each take is unchanged from previous builds. Also applies to maximum health drains.
- Heroes now apply ‘heroic defense’ to Stamina drains.
- Heroes now apply ‘heroic defense’ to self-damage to health and stamina from abilities such as Draw Wounds and Refresh. Minions also apply ‘minion vulnerability’ to these abilities.
- Fireball can now be “shot over” a low profile.

Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug that gave characters with Lucky Dodge or Evade Step two chances to Dodge projectile attacks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be hiding from everyone who ever died to Raiju packs (all of two people, almost nobody gets to T:13+ anyway )
- Fixed a bug that caused the maximum number of items possible to spawn on each dungeon level.
- Fixed a bug with the Bane ability that caused it to behave suspiciously like Exorcism.
- Fixed a bug that caused the shortcut keys shown for viewing your recently killed allies at game over to be “off by one.”
- Fixed a bug where auto-explore did not always stop after picking up an item (usually if a second item was also visible.)
- Improved the AI’s ability to evaluate abilities that give buffs or debuffs.
- Fixed a bug where NPCs Vitality gains for a given level did not contribute to their maximum HP until the next level (in essence, from Level 2 on, they were always short a small amount of maxHP.)
- Yet another attempt to get Adria’s AI working right.

Enjoy, and don’t forget to drop a post in the high score thread if you do particularly well.

First, an updated build link: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web

There’s no new build as of 11/9, but Dropbox finally ticked me off enough to ditch it after they started bugging people downloading things to sign up. Compared with the false positives web browsers rarely gave about any download from Dropbox being malware, I reluctantly went back to Google Drive and its somewhat terrible interface for actually downloading things. Boo.

Persona Q has proven quite the lengthy distraction (70 hours played so far and still not done), but given Demon is in part based on Shin Megami Tensei, I suppose it’s fair to call this research. Despite that, I have still been working on the items and their related interfaces, just taking a bit longer than expected.

One of the major parts of that that I just completed is scrolling support for list interfaces, which is required now that Demon will be supporting over 30 item types (way more than could fit in a non-scrolling list.) Here’s a screenshot of the new list support in action (if a screenshot can ever be said to be in action ):

Link to builds: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/akfvy4z8fmsavdm/AACrg9QrE7tcXDtLQOsYb_7Ga?dl=0

This post is actually a bit late, with apologies, the build’s been up for a few days. Finally got laptops and Retina displays working by adding support for a smaller resolution (1080 x 720 in addition to the previous 1152 x 864) and tweaking my sprite code a bit. (“Sprite code?” you ask? Yeah, Demon started before Unity 2D was around, so I still use my own stuff. )

If you tried playing before on a laptop or Retina display and had trouble, give the new build a go and things should be much better.

One note: The resolution Demon runs at is chosen by Demon itself when you run it: it will pick the best of the two your system can support. No need to select it manually.

Here’s a couple of screenshots of the two resolutions (1152 x 864 followed by 1080 x 720):

NEW Build Link (older links no longer valid!): https://www.dropbox.com/sh/akfvy4z8fmsavdm/AACrg9QrE7tcXDtLQOsYb_7Ga?dl=0

Switched to Dropbox for build hosting because even I was tired of Google Drive’s “how do I download the thing” interface issues. Dropbox can occasionally cause Chrome to throw ridiculously overblown warnings about downloading .exes, but I’m hoping that won’t happen much. And now, to the update notes!

Update Notes, 11/1/2014

Interface
- Continuing to adjust ‘new player help’ features, such as hint banners for summoning and
recruiting on the party display, and glowing buttons in the hotkey bar when there context
is relevant.
- Recruit, Item, and Train now display glowing hotkey buttons when appropriate.

Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug causing Distract, along among debuffs, to not target through enemies.
- Fixed a bug with the grammar engine that caused improper pronoun usage in some cases for uniques.
- Fixed a bug with Poison Needle’s icon.
- Fixed a bug with how enemy summoners reacted to player portal usage.

A screenshot of what some of the new player help features look like in action:

Build link as always: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web

Added some very minor “new player help” functionality to address issues players have had picking up on the summoning mechanics, as well as fixed a number of minor to moderate bugs.

Update Notes, 10/25/2014

Interface
- Added purple “hint” glows to Summon, Dismiss, and Rest when you should consider using them
to help new players get a bit of a nudge in the direction of Demon’s summoning mechanics.
- Will probably add more of these and/or make adjusts to how they work in future builds.

Bug Fixes
- Bloodlust no longer falsely claims to restore SP on missed attacks.
- Improved Adria’s AI further, maybe this time it will stick
- Fixed several interface/AI bugs related to “protect the target” capture mechanics.
- Sleep no longer sometimes gives a double turn to the victim once they wake up.
- Spin Slash now uses the correct messaging ‘verb’.

Link to PC and Mac builds: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web

Adjusting the manual and the very early game a little bit to be slightly more welcoming to new folks. Demon does have some fairly unique and interesting mechanics to learn after all, even for roguelike veterans.

Update Notes, 10/21/2014

Interface
- Did a moderate revamp of the manual, adding a tips section and consolidating party
management (recruiting, summoning, etc.) into its own section.

Balance
- Adjusted the encounters on Tower:1 slightly.
- Adjusted Cunning, making it more important to have it if you want status effects to land.

Bug Fixes
- Fixed an incorrect icon bug on Terrifying.

Hi there! Welcome! Sit down and have a build of Demon, a new monster collection roguelike for PC and Mac!

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web

Demon is a game born from a rather odd pair of parents: roguelike dungeon crawlers such as Rogue, Tales of Maj’Eyal, and Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup; and monster collection/breeding games such as Pokemon and Shin Megami Tensei.

Players take up the mantle of a Summoner, a human who by finding one of many strange Relics has gained the ability to use monstrous powers as well as the capacity to recruit and summon monsters as allies. The Relic eventually learns to mimic the specific powers of these companions and can also be used to pass powers from one monster to another. But with these gifts comes a curse: Relics invariably draw their owners to a mysterious tower from which none ever seem to return…

Demon is currently late pre-Alpha (which means not quite all game systems are implemented yet, to say nothing of content!), but there is more than enough put together where you can have some fun… and many, many deaths.

Here are some screenshots of the game in action, but really, I gave you the build link almost two hundred words ago. Go see for yourself!

Barely a half-dozen steps in, a new summoner encounters two goblins lurking around a corner…

A straight fight is certainly an option, but in Demon it is not the only one…

Well that went well.

It isn’t all about talk when it comes to recruiting. Different demons require you to do different things to convince them to join you.

Learn new abilities from your chosen allies…

…and customize theirs in turn.

Will you survive to reach the tower’s top floor?

Link to builds: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web

This build changes up the stat system in Demon significantly. You still have the same five primary stats (formerly called traits): Strength, Magic, Vitality, Agility, Cunning. However, they are now represented by numerical values, have much simpler effects, and go up when your level goes up. More interestingly, when the main character’s level increases, you can assign the points yourself, in whatever manner you choose.

The new simpler effects of each stat are:

Strength: Increases physical damage.
Magic: Increases magical damage and healing.
Vitality: Increases maximum HP.
Agility: Increases accuracy and evasion.
Cunning: Increases chance to apply negative effects.

The new system gives you much more control over your main character’s development and is hopefully easier to understand and more rewarding in terms of progression.

What an Ice/Electricity character’s starting stats are.

And a zombie’s stats in the new system.

Nothing too major, just some small bug fixes for some of the new content. Sorry for any trouble, and I hope folks are enjoying the new builds. Same link as 9/8: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B-sx_4eW-B5hWnhNZlRPclZLeUU&usp=drive_web