A quick progress report: I’m wrapping up the last of the art on my end, which I hope to be finished with this weekend. After that, it will be on to implementation of the end game encounters.

Unsurprisingly, there will be a small amount of new work there since these aren’t exactly your usual encounters, but do not worry: I am mindful of the error committed by some games where the end game encounters, in a desire to be “different” end up being wildly different from what came before to the point of being a curveball that doesn’t follow the rules you’ve been learning and working with up to that point.

For obvious spoiler reasons, I can’t go into the few tweaks being made there; I mostly just wanted to underline that I won’t be trying anything completely out of left field. There will be powerful (and even some VERY powerful) demons, and heroes as well. They’ll have new abilities (even some not seen in the previous build’s giant pile of new abilities); some of these are pretty wild, but still balanced (after all, even at the end, you can gain access to them!) There will be a few possibly unexpected, but within fair bounds, quirks here and there. But overall, my goal is to make it a fair, challenging endgame for everyone’s runs going forward.

No new preview material this time, though I will reveal Part 2 of “These Creatures Are But Slaves Of The Gods” next week.

Another thing getting revamped in the next Demon build is character creation.

First, the “bad” news: as I have long promised (threatened? ) I am finally somewhat reducing the overall power level of starting abilities. Too many starting abilities were of a caliber that you really didn’t need anything else for quite some time (hello, Frost Ring, among others), or often gave such early access to powerful mechanics that the Tower finally getting around to revealing them 10 floors in wasn’t all that impressive (hello, Alluring Gaze, among others.) These factors combined to make the early game relatively dull for experienced players.

So… now you get one starting ability, not three, and the selection, while still hopefully interesting, is definitely less powerful overall:

I’ve tried to choose each ability to be somewhat representative of its element and distinct in at least one way from the other options. Obviously with only one element trying to stand in for elements that have dozens of abilities, the representation part won’t be perfect. I also tried to make sure none of them are “traps”: combined with your new starting ally (more on that in just a moment), all of these should be capable of helping you recruit a minimal party on the first two floors and get you rolling properly.

At this point, someone is probably about to ask “Which Relic is that list for?”: actually, it’s for all of them. Relic no longer determines anything but appearance and initial Relic Upgrades. Your ability choice determines your resistances (which are always one resistance and one weakness, now.)

What about stats? Well… nothing determines your starting stats: these always begin at 10/10/10/10/10 regardless of your choice: having to earn large bonus modifiers from stats is probably more meaningful than being given them upfront and just maintaining them. It also gives you the flexibility to choose your own stat build without being stuck with my assumptions about what someone would want to prioritize based on their Relic/ability choices. (Note: In the Upgrade revamp, coming later, I will probably add a relatively cheap Upgrade that lets you swap your stats around, for those folks who are grumpy about having to have 10 in stats that they feel are completely unnecessary for their plans… or for those who want to change their build later, for that matter.)

Now, about that new friend…

Meet the Homunculus. You only get one, so treat him well! You always get him though: you can no longer choose a starting ally, this is the one everyone gets. However, he has been designed to be of use to pretty much any build: Heavy Blow gives him a decent combat ability that is effective against the vast majority of early enemies. Draw Wounds lets him support melees, or anyone else who needs healing, without distracting him from attacking. Refresh lets him support heavy SP users, aided by the fact neither Heavy Blow or Draw Wounds uses up his SP. Finally, Low Profile lets him helpfully tank for anyone using projectiles without interfering with their attacks. His completely neutral stats make it possible to grow him anyway you want and get at least decent results.

Homunculus has other odd properties: He’s a bit of a semi-Unique. He is not technically Unique, but he has two of the strongest benefits of Uniques: the extra MaxHP and… a unique modifier.

The unique modifier in question, Artificial, adds Body and Mind resistance, “evens out” stats, and offers one ability of each element for its ability pool. The abilities offered tend to be generally useful things. Even if they end up not being appropriate for the demon you give the modifier to, it is almost certain someone in your group will appreciate learning them via Copy Ability.

So.. yeah. I won’t deny it: this is a pretty big change to character creation and the early game. It’s definitely less power. Could also say less choices, but I’d argue that one: There’s less up front choices, but I think the high powered starts were removing the need to make many real choices in the early game, so it may be a wash on that front. Another way of putting it: “character creation” now occurs more in what you decide to recruit/learn in the first few floors, rather than before you start playing. My hope is that this is more interesting and fun, both for new players and experienced ones.

That said, I don’t expect this to be universally popular. The only other thing I’ll add is a reminder that if this proves to not work out like I’m hoping, I *have* been convinced to undo unpopular things before. Granted, it’s been awhile since the last one (does anyone remember when incompatible demons couldn’t be in the same party? ), but I do pay attention and respond if something just plain doesn’t work out.

Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before you can try all of this stuff out yourselves. Cheers, and thank you!

As promised, let’s take a peek at some of the new demons that’ll be showing up in the next build! These are only half of the new demons being added: I want to keep some as surprises. The sprites shown for each are the versions done by Geminimax. Thanks Geminimax!

Aitvaras: A demon of Lithuania appearing as a black rooster or a small, black dragon, but in either case with a tail like a shooting star. Similar to some other mythical creatures, they take up residence in the homes of humans and then, in exchange for minor payment (in the case of the Aitvaras, omelettes!), they provide various benefits to the household. The Aitvaras brings wealth to the house of its master… but there are a couple of unusual catches. One is that the wealth it brings is actually being stolen from neighboring homes… the other is that (depending on which version of the myth you ask), the Aitvaras will either eventually steal the soul of its owner, or said owner had to give up their soul to acquire it in the first place. In game, these will be a new Dark ability using demon to provide more access to the new Dark abilities added in the previous build, and will usually be encountered in the mid levels of the Tower.

Ala: A witch or demon known in Serbian mythology. Ala can take many forms, but one of their most striking is that of a very large-mouthed humanoid. They are no less horrible than this particular form suggests: they control the forces of nature and wield them to destructive effect against the croplands of humans, and will eat children if they get the opportunity. Indeed, some myths even suggest that eclipses are caused by their attempts to devour these celestial bodies! In game, they wield some new Electricity abilities, as well as a life-draining touch. They will take residence in the mid levels of the Tower as well

Baphomet (Unique!): An entity of a rather complicated history, to say the least. Depending on what you believe of its past, it was either worshiped in secret by various groups, such as the Knights Templar, or was a construct invented to discredit and ruin such organizations. More recently, it has been associated with mysticism and Satanism. Its purpose in the Tower is unclear, but those who can reach the upper floors might encounter it either wandering about, or in its Sanctum… If you are forced to fight, beware: it wields a powerful combination of Dark and Fire abilities, including one particular Fire ability unseen before within the Tower.

Civatateo: A vampire of Aztec origin, created when a noble woman dies during childbirth. To the Aztecs, childbirth was considered a form of combat, and thus to die in childbirth was a high honor, equivalent to dying in battle. As a result, though these creatures are child-eating monsters, they are also blessed by their gods, and wield the powers of priestesses. Befitting this unusual nature, they wield an odd but effective combination of Light and Body magic, but only summoners who can reach the heights of the Tower will ever need fear running across them.

Tuofei: A Chinese beast, active during the winter. It appears as an owl with a human face, and only one leg. Its skin can be worn to give protection from the elements. That’s… actually about as far as the information I have goes on these critters, but this is instructive, because myths such as this one (vague and scanty on details) are useful when I need to fill specific gaps: in this case, I needed a new Ice demon that was specifically suited to some new Ice abilities I had designed. One like this, with clear connections to winter/ice but without specific details about its powers, was perfect for that role. Tuofei can be encountered in the lower half of the Tower, but closer to the middle than to the bottom.

And finally, as a special bonus, the ability icons for all the new abilities being added in this build. 4 of them are blanked out for… reasons.

I hope to get this build out pretty soon now, but as usual with content builds I got a little overzealous. Take care, and good luck in the Tower.

When I was a kid, I had a pet hamster that used to run in a very odd fashion. It would dash forward several steps quickly, then stop and wait for a few seconds before dashing several more steps. It’d wait again, dash again, etc.

Funny enough, my approach to game development is somewhat like that too.

Demon’s had a couple of big changes recently: the addition of currency and the systems that use it, and the shiny new relic upgrades. Think of those as one of the dashes.

Now it’s time for a period of consolidation and polish: look at what’s working with the new systems (and what isn’t), tweak things here, polish things there, add some content over here perhaps. Think of this as one of the waiting periods.

For the next period of development, the focus will be on:

• Tweaking the balance of the currency systems, mostly in the direction of making things a bit cheaper.
• Tweaking the balance of relic upgrades too, this will probably be a bit more extreme/varied than the currency tweaks since this system is newer and hasn’t really had a second pass yet.
• Some new content (whether this will be in the existing 20 floors, or will consist of new floors, or both is undecided)
• General polish and quality of life improvements (ugh, UI work.)

I’ll have some more details about what’ll be in the first polish phase build soonish, so stay tuned.

Currency implementation continues on schedule. In fact, most of the main system is done, at this point, much of what’s left are things like as negotiation changes related to currency, new player “suggestion” updating, testing, and balancing.

The new Transmutations button replaces the old Training button. It provides access to advanced relic functions, which include all of the ones that use currency.

In the first pass of this system, you will find:

Copy Ability: Copies an ability from a demon to another demon, or to the player.

Delete Ability: Permanently deletes an ability from a demon. You don’t get anything for doing this… but, it can serve as a way to “adjust” the behavior of demons, so long as you’re alright with it being a permanent adjustment (or requiring use of Copy Ability to fix )

Fuse Demons: Sacrifice one demon to give a modifier to another, just like Silver and Gold Matrices used to do. I say “used to do” because they’ve been removed from the game. Fusing Demons is somewhat expensive, but you will no longer need to rely on the RNG to give you access to one of Demon’s most interesting progression mechanics.

Restore Demon: Revives a previously slain demon, replacing the functionality of Spirit Chimes, which have also been removed from the game. Restoring demons is also very expensive, but provides a method by which you can claw back from what might otherwise be a catastrophic loss of a key ally. In a slight change from before, you can no longer Restore a demon that was used in fusion.

Delete Demon: Nothing much to say here, this simply allows you to delete a demon if you find some reason you wish to do so. Like Delete Ability, you don’t get anything out of this.

We’re closing in on the release point for currency. I can’t deny it is likely to prove to have changed things significantly, nor can I deny it is likely to require some tweaking to get the balance right. But, I wish to reiterate that my goal here is to make the game and the choices it asks you to make more interesting *without* making the game easier. Cheers!

Have a screenshot, and below it, a brief explanation.

Currency, found throughout the Tower, is in part being used to replace some older under performing or troubled systems. Two such systems are the “training point” system used to transfer abilities between demons and the “ability teaching” system used by the player’s main character to learn abilities from demons.

These systems were good first passes, but time and feedback had exposed some flaws in them: training points tended to accumulate both too slowly and too quickly. Players often felt obligated to keep demons around for a significant period of time just to transfer their abilities around, and yet also, well-used demons tended to end up with tons of excess training points that could be used to game the system by teaching an ability to them from a demon with only 1 point, then using their much larger pool to spread it around as desired

The new system of simply buying training directly with currency is much more straightforward. Generally speaking, you have much more control over ability copying now (since it is no longer tied to individual demons’ training point pools)… but counterbalancing that are the facts that currency is a shared resource with other systems, and that training has been priced such that the total number of ability copies available will be less than before. Fewer, but better, ability copies, is the outcome.

You may notice the main character has a training cost listed as well: direct purchase of training has also replaced the “ability teaching” system. However, one old rule still applies: while the main character can be taught by demons, they cannot teach demons. This allows starting abilities and abilities learned by defeating heroes to remain semi-restricted and powerful, since they still cannot be immediately copied around to an entire party just because the main character learned them.

More details about these systems, as well as information about the other things currency will be useful for, will be coming soon. Cheers!

One of Demon’s more annoying design bugs for awhile now has been the lack of control I had given myself over how enemy encounters behave in in the game. The most obvious example of this is when you run into to ridiculously large groups of enemies (actually two or more groups that happened to randomly find each other and stick together), but it also manifested in other problems: the extra large… and largely empty… levels I asked the game to create to try and minimize that problem, and the resulting easiness of “chase me” captureables and near impossibility without a Trouble Chime of “kill X other guys” captureables that this not fix caused.

I’ve been quietly working on a real fix to the original problem, and, I think it is almost ready to deploy.

The main, immediately visible results should be:
* Much, much smaller tower levels. (If current testing continues to bear out my current parameter choices, tower levels would contain about 75% less playable space and occupy a 60% smaller grid.
* Virtually no more initially double encounters…
* …but there will be more frequent mid-encounter intrusions, particularly during longer battles.
* Enemies are somewhat much less willing to expend resources aiding other enemy groups. This will be most noticeable with healers and buffers: they will rarely use their limited resources on enemies on other groups, preferring to save their efforts for their actual friends.

The main result of these change I’m hoping for, as a whole? A much leaner exploration experience, encounters that are overall fairer while still challenging (you will almost never run into two groups at once anymore, but extra groups joining a long fight in progress will be more common), more challenging “chase me” and (to a lesser extent) “wait” captureables, and fairer “kill X in Y turns” captureables.

Early testing has been going well, if that continues to be the case, this next build might be released very soon indeed. I’ll keep you posted.

(Note: I should stress that this, however, is not the remaining part of the captureable review that is still in progress. Further changes are coming on that front, including direct fixes to some of the issues with “kill X in Y turns” captureables. )

So, as previously discussed, I’m attempting to nudge melee a bit more towards the center line viability wise.

The biggest problem it has had up to this point is it required more investment (in terms of stats: Strength, Vitality, and Agility all being more or less required, with Cunning often riding along too) than most magic/support builds, which were free to focus on as few as a single stat depending on what they had in mind.

At first, I considered addressing this by adjusting how Strength, Agility, and Cunning behave by giving them special bonuses that only applied to physical/melee… but, I instinctively dislike the idea of “unbalancing” something to fix a balance problem. Strength and Magic after all were balanced numerically: both give a 25% damage increase per point per level spent. The problem is that Magic covered a better set of abilities than Strength.

In trying to decide what to do instead, the release of relics was a big help. Once melees had access to more melee-oriented starting packages, things looked much better for them. Even with the stat “problem” still in effect, the new offerings for melee were allowing characters to make good use of those diverse statistic requirements.

That was what helped me settle on the approach I’m taking for the ARRP/Melee Improvement build: rather than try to change the stat problem, make it a non-problem by making sure melee abilities reward the high cost and take advantage of the diverse stat expectations. To that end, I reviewed the existing melee abilities and will be making some tweaks (such as Pounce and Bull Rush no longer using Breath cooldown, but instead using their own Charge cooldown; and “support slash” abilities like Reviving Cut and Guarding Cut being able to heal/buff the user), adding new abilities (such as Bloodthrist, a passive that adds a 25% drain to all physical attacks) , and tweaking the ability sets melee demons in the Tower have both to make them more effective opponents (for example, Ogres will now be getting Oppressor, which boosts defense versus lower HP enemies) and to make sure melee players are getting good access to strong abilities like magic does.

All that said, I expect and want the end result of these changes to be a nudge. I think melee was a fair bit behind before relics, and post relics is only a bit behind. These changes are intended to push it even with the other types of builds and options available.

I’ll post again tomorrow with a list of the new abilities being added, for those who are curious and want a sneak peek. :) 

Hey folks! As promised, a few words about the desired challenge level for Demon, where we’re at now, where we’ve been, and where we’re going.

To start with: I want Demon to be a very challenging game, *most* of the time you’re playing it. Not quite all: it’s important to give players some easier stuff now and then, to provide a break mentally, give opportunities to experiment with new strategies in (relative) safety, and to see how much better they’ve become since the days when the now easy encounter wasn’t so easy.

But aside from that, yeah, I want Demon to be challenging, but fair. It can be pretty difficult to objectively define what things like “very challenging” and “fair” mean, but I’m going to try to lay it out here, at least for Demon. (If you’ve read Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup’s documentation, or are well versed on roguelikes in general, some of this may sound familiar to you.)

• Every death (and here I mean the player *or* even just an allied demon) can be traced back to a reasonable mistake. A mistake is reasonable if the player had access all the necessary information (presented in a clear and concise manner) and tools to avoid the mistake. Note: If the player passed on acquiring offered tools, or expended or lost them due to earlier mistakes, that does not mean they did not access! Mistakes can also be long-term in nature.

• No death (again, the player themselves or an allied demon) should ever happen without the player or one of his allies having received at least one turn at some point between when the trouble started and when the death occurred. (Note: It is left open whether or not the player will have an opportunity to escape that fate during the turn, it will likely depend heavily on what abilities they have chosen, which demons they have allied with, how they have trained those demons, and what consumables they have conserved. It’s also worth noting I don’t say the turn must be a player turn. I admit I would prefer that, but the only way I can assure it is to make the player immune to any multiple turn loss effects such as Paralysis and Charm.)

• A global win rate of anything greater than 0% is acceptable if all of the above facts hold true. If I have satisfied myself all of the above is true, I will be okay with where the challenge level is, even if only one person (not counting me) beats it. If it’s still completely unbeatable even when all of the above is true, only then I will consider further modifications.

All that said, if we condense down my overall goals for the desired challenge level to a number for abstraction’s sake, say, 100, the current 4/19 build is around a 105-110. Previous builds going back the last several months were probably more like 70-80. In short, I feel like the current build *is* a bit overly challenging… but not by a lot. There will be some changes, but they will be relatively minor: the current game is pretty close to what I’ve been aiming for in terms of the challenge it provides.

There will be plenty of players, even among those currently playing, who will not enjoy that level of challenge. That’s perfectly okay with me, and I hope it’s okay with them too. I consider taste in games to be no different than taste in any other sense: everyone has their own preferences, and all of them are right. Demon’s target audience is vanishingly small, but this one is for them, even if it’s no more than me and a few hundred or few thousand others.

Now, who’s ready for a nice bowl of beef vindaloo, extra spicy?