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Trophy Trial

Here's how it's going to work. You start a new Trophy Trial run by choosing which region you want to play in. You then do a little bit of pre-Trial preparation by picking from one of two possible Dungeoneers, Blessings, Loot upgrades and the special twist that is Fates. More detail on these below. The challenge then is to take your chosen dungeoneer & upgrades and take on an ever-more-difficult series of boss fights. As usual you start each boss fight at level 1 and need to level up and find the right equipment to emerge victorious.

Every time you beat a boss you gain a Trophy towards your high score, and then we alter the rules to make things more difficult. Just simple little things like adding health to every monster from here on out, that kind of thing. You are then given a choice, do you think you can take on another boss with these new rules, or do you want to head home with your current haul of trophies? If you push your luck and die in the next dungeon you score NOTHING!

It's all about knowing when to quit!

High Scores

For each class of dungeoneer in the game we will keep track of the highest Trophy Trial score you managed with that class. We also give you a global score that is made up of your four best classes at each tier.

Trophy Trial will be the perfect way to show your friends just how good you are with that class they keep saying is terrible! (none of these screens are finished by the way, hence the unusual amount of Chumps you see here!)

What are the special rules of a Trial?

When you start a new Trophy Trial you need to make four choices that define the rules of the Trial. Remember, this is all completely separate to any saved games you have where you might have unlocked classes & loot for your guild. In Trophy Trial mode everyone competes from the same blank slate.

First, you need a hero. You are given a choice of only two volunteers who were willing to undertake this Trophy Trial. They will be of two different classes of the tier that matches the region you are in. So if you are doing a Trial in the grasslands you might get to choose between a Mime and a Cat Burglar. They might also be carrying some Battle Scars, too, so you'll have to factor that into your choice!

Second, you get to unlock some loot. For the duration of the Trial the loot that shows up will be the basic starting loot, plus any loot upgrades from lower tiers than the region this Trial is in, plus ONE upgrade of your choice out of two we offer at random. By loot upgrades I mean the ones you can build in your guild in the single player campaign, each of which adds 4-6 new items. For example, if you are doing a Trophy Trial in the Jungle then all tier 1 upgrades will be added to the loot pool, and you can pick one of two possible tier 2 upgrades to add to that.

Third, you get a blessing. We will pick two possible blessings at random and you pick the one you want. The strength of blessing will again be tied to the tier of Trial. So running the Dwarven Mines will give you maxed out tier 3 blessings and running the grasslands you'll only have a choice of the starting blessings.

Finally, it's time for a twist. The final choice is the one that changes everything. You will be given a choice of two possible Fates and must choose one. Each Fate has a helpful positive effect AND a terrible negative effect. They change the rules of the game slightly and will be in effect for the entire Trophy Trial run. I've listed some of the effects we're thinking of below.

Then you start the trial with a random boss fight suitable to your tier. Just like in the campaign, you'll need to build out your dungeon, place monsters, and get strong enough to take on the boss or die trying. If you succeed you gain a Trophy, we turn up the difficulty, and it's time to choose: take your Trophies home and commit to this score, or risk it all and take on another boss!

Fate effects

We're building up a set of positive and negative Fate effects. One of each is chosen at random and combined to form that Fate. You must take both the good AND the bad effect together, but maybe you'll be able to work around them thanks to your class or blessing choice. Or just by being that good at dungeoneering!

Here are some of the positive effects:

• Nimble: All monsters gain the Predictable trait
• Resourceful: Hero gets one more loot choice than normal
• Piercing: Hero’s Unblockable attacks gain 1 magical damage
• Prepared: Hero’s starting hand size increased by 2
• Overachiever: One of the loot choices is at +1 level than normal

Here are some of the negative effects:

• Prey: All monsters get the Aggressive trait
• Cursed: All monsters get the Blessed trait
• Clumsy: The first card in every fight is concealed
• Stupid: Hero gets +2 Stupidity
• Nihilist: Hero gets one less loot choice

So in a given Trial you might be choosing between one Fate that is (Nimble AND Clumsy) and a second Fate that is (Prepared AND Stupid). As you can see these are really going to change how the entire Trial plays out!

Daily Challenges

We are also going to use the wonderful Daily Challenge idea in this new mode (hat tip to Spelunky!). Once per day you can have ONE attempt at the daily challenge Trophy Trial. Everyone in the world will get the same set of four choices to set up their Trial and then we will see who gets the highest score!

Questions?

We're still building Trophy Trial but hope to have it ready sometime in the next couple of months. Got suggestions? Feedback? I'd love to hear what you think about this new game mode! Here's the thread to tell me about it.

Thanks for supporting us!

Finally I'd just like to take a moment to say THANK YOU to everyone out there who has given our tiny team a chance on our first game. You have really made 2015 a wonderful year for us here at Gambrinous! Have a wonderful Christmas & New Year's celebrations wherever you are.

Thanks,
Colm Larkin

Guild of Dungeoneering: Pirate’s Cove is the first Adventure Pack we have created for Guild of Dungeoneering. What’s included?

• A new region of the world to explore with 21 new quests to take on, all set in a new watery cave tileset
• Rescue 3 new classes of dungeoneer to adventure with: the Drunken Sailor, the H20mancer and the Swashbuckler.
• Battle 29 new monsters including Merfolk, Giant Crabs, Three-Headed Monkeys and of course more pirates than you shake a wooden leg at!
• Find 27 new equippable items like the Eye Patch, the Barrel O’ Rum, or the Newspaper Hat.
• Listen to a brand new background track & 5 new musical asides from the Bard

This represents about one third more content compared to the base game.

Where do you find Pirate’s Cove ingame?

To find the entrance to the Pirate’s Cove region you need to first reach the Jungle in the main game. Once there you will find a Pirate’s Map that unlocks the new region.

The reason for this is that difficulty-wise the new quests and monsters are at the same tier as the rest of the jungle area. Think of these new quests as an optional extra area within the Jungle (that is about the same size again as the Jungle itself).

While adventuring in Pirate’s Cove you will have the opportunity to rescue the three new classes of dungeoneer to permanently unlock them for your guild. This is a change from how classes are unlocked in the main game (paying for them with gold).

If you have previously beaten the game and just want to check out the new quests straight away we’ve added a shortcut. When you start a new game simply choose the ‘Jungle Shortcut’ option and we’ll skip the whole Grasslands starting region and land you straight into the Jungle.

How does it tie into the existing Guild of Dungeoneering experience?

The idea of the Adventure Pack is to extend the entire Guild of Dungeoneering experience. It’s not just a standalone series of quests to take on. The main mechanism for this is all the new equippable loot you can find.

All of the loot included in Pirate’s Cove can be found anywhere in Guild of Dungeoneering, not just in the new region. We’ve split up the Pirate’s Cove loot between all the existing Guild upgrades that add loot, plus thrown some of them into the starting loot deck. So you will be finding new Pirate’s Cove loot throughout your game, unlocking new pieces as you unlock loot upgrades for your guild.

For example this is the Steel Anvil upgrade which unlocks four new items in the base game. If you have Pirate’s Cove installed a further two are added.

Show us some of the new classes!

Sure thing! First the Drunken Sailor. Their defining feature is the new ‘Rum’ trait: the first time they reach exactly one health in each combat they will swig their rum and heal themselves for two. This is an interesting twist because you want to reach exactly one health to avail of it, which can be risky!

Their starting deck also has a couple of attacks that do self-damage. Turn this disadvantage into a way of triggering Rum exactly when you want it to be successful with the Drunken Sailor!

What about the H2Omancer? This magic based class uses a new battle mechanic called Recycle. The H2Omancer’s cards have self-recycle, but you’ll also find some enemies that cause you to recycle as part of their attacks. A recycle makes you discard a card at random but lets you draw a bonus card to replace it. It can be bad (losing a key card you need to win the next turn) or good (turn that stupidity card into something good, or to dig through your deck for your power cards quicker).

The H2Omancer also has a ‘High Tide’ trait that interacts with the recycle ability. Whenever you have 4 or more cards in your discard pile the enemy you are facing gains the ‘Predictable’ trait, letting you see the card on top of their deck that they will be playing next turn!

I’ll leave the details of the third class you can find in Pirate’s Cove, the Swashbuckler, as a surprise for you. I will say if you enjoyed the Bruiser’s playstyle you’ll also like the Swashbuckler!

Thanks again for your continued support and we hope you enjoy this new content!
Colm Larkin

We also have a wonderful new trailer for you to enjoy. And yes, that song IS in the soundtrack included in the Deluxe Edition.

It's been an incredible two year journey putting the game together and I'm very proud of what we've built. I sincerely hope you all enjoy it!

Thank you everyone for all your support!

What's Next?

We're going to keep working on Guild of Dungeoneering. We have plans for new features, some DLC, ports, lots of things. I'll be sharing a roadmap of our goals very soon.

A note on the Mac version

We ran into a problem at the very last minute with our Mac build so unfortunately we've had to delay it. We're working on it right now and will have it up as soon as we possibly can. More info here.

Time For An Adventure

You start the game with a tiny guild and a single loyal follower, the Chump. And there's just one Adventure available, which is a pretty easy one that acts as a nice introduction to the game. Adventures are places you can send your dungeoneers to try and tackle Quests. Most adventures feature a series of quests you need to tackle in order, though there are some that just have a single quest. The final quest in an adventure is always a boss battle.

Here's what the world map looks like when you just have that introductory adventure to attempt.

Cloudy with chance of tutorial.

As soon as you beat this first adventure, taking down your first boss, you unlock three further adventures. So from now on you have a bit of choice about which ones you want to try next. And as you beat these ones, more unlock!

OK that's more like it!

Always Be Questin'

Click on any adventure icon on the world map and you get to see the current quest for that location. Multi-part adventures should be revisited after each victory until you beat the boss and clear the adventure. Here's that starting adventure… of course since it's your first task we couldn't resist sending you off to deal with some rats!

Seriously? Rats??

This is also where you select which of your dungeoneers to send on the quest, and of course where you pick a blessing. Blessings are part of the unlock system – make sure to unlock at least one early on. They give your dungeoneer a bonus for that particular quest run.

Here's an example of a multipart adventure before you beat the first Quest and then just before taking on the final boss Quest.

Embro! I remember him from the playable alpha!

Time for revenge, Embro!

So How Do I Win Again?

Within any particular quest you'll see your objectives at the top right. Sometimes they are simple, like this one where you just need to kill any three monsters (with some rats pre-provided).

Please, no more rats!

Sometimes they are a bit more involved. Here we need to steal the Orb of Nosiness, which is protected by that scary looking Eye Beast. And to make it worse we only have 8 turns before he turns us to stone!

Just how nosy can you be without a nose?

Exploring The Campaign Map

As you plunder your way through the campaign map you will get to explore new regions. At first you'll do your questing in The Grasslands, but once that's thoroughly looted you'll get to try the Azca Jungle:

Jungle Fever!

Each region has it's own unique tileset when you are questing there. Check out this sweet jungle action!

Try and get them alone!

Woah! A two-headed ettin, right behind you!

Our third region in the game is the Dwarven Mines, which is full of nasty contraptions.

So. Much. Adventure.

Doesn't look that masterful to me!

Showdown!

And of course we have a finale adventure once you've battled your way through all three regions. I won't spoil it for you!

Character Classes

Hero archetypes aka classes are as old as the hills. It's a concept that lets you say that this hero is good at healing and that one is better at smashing faces and basically everyone gets it straight away. So naturally we're using classes in Guild of Dungeoneering! We do have a couple of twists. Firstly a lot of our classes don't sound like the regular fantasy RPG classes as we're willing to let a little humour invade this sometimes overly serious genre. Secondly since heroes always get reset (you can level-up in a single dungeon run, but once you are back in the guild it's back to their starting stats) we are using the unlocking of new classes as a replacement for how you might level-up a single hero in other games. Essentially your guild is the hero you are role-playing as in Guild of Dungeoneering, and thus that's what you level up and customise.

But lets talk a bit about the actual hero classes you'll be filling your guild with. Lets start with the Chump which is the not-very-good dungeoneer you start out with.

The Chump

The Chump. Not the sharpest tool in the guild's toolbox.

Every character class comes with six cards comprising their starting battle deck. These are the moves you'll be using in combat, and you are able to add to them by finding equipment on dungeon runs. But those starting six are very important. Unfortunately the Chump's battle deck is pretty lackluster.

Keep your eyes open when you're punching!

So that's three weak attacks (that's the icon for 1 physical damage), one ok attack and then two weak blocks. And to add to that Chumps have no special abilities. Better find them some sweet loot as soon as possible if you want to beat any bosses. On the plus side they are so awful that they make everyone else look pretty good!

The Cat Burglar

I hope you like cat puns. I meow I do!

The Cat Burglar is one of four classes you can unlock quite early on in the game, what we call the Tier 1 classes (the chump is the only Tier 0 class). Each of the four has it's own special playstyle, strengths and weaknesses so you are very likely to find some of them are better for particular adventures. What does the Cat Burglar's combat deck look like?

Who throws a cat? Honestly!?

So the Cat Burglar is specialised around dealing out physical damage only, including an unblockable attack (pounce), a quick attack (scratch) and two self-buffs (catnip) which let you bide your time before striking even harder – ie when a monster's guard is down and they don't have a block ready. Their downside is that they have absolutely no blocking in their starting deck. Maybe something you could shore up with some equipment? Or you could push their specialty even more with some more quick attacks. The choice is yours! And they do have one starting trait called [Covetous] which gives them one additional choice of loot card after each battle – so you will be more likely to be able to specialise them in a given dungeon run.

The (Aging) Barbarian

A barbarian? Sounds pretty powerful! Woah – this one seems a bit OLD

The Barbarian is one of our Tier 2 classes that becomes available a little further into the game. It sounds like a regular fantasy class but we've decided to make the ones that join YOUR guild really, really old. Well, beggars can't be choosers you know! So what's their battle deck look like?

Remember: every time you play the howl card you should also howl in real life!

Ok, that's a LOT of damage output with 4 cards dealing two physical damage and one even doing three, though a lot of them come with a penalty where the barbarian also hurts themself. Withstand is a unique card which stops them dying for the next two rounds – very powerful! They also start with a special trait called [Deathwish] which gives them +2 health in any battle against a monster of higher level. Finally their AI is special in that they are drawn to attack monsters that are of higher level than themself (most dungeoneers try and avoid these monsters). These things all add up to a class that can take down monsters other classes wouldn't have a hope against early on in dungeon runs. But do Barbarians have the late-dungeon staying power those other classes have? Well I guess you'll have to see!

Adventures & Quests

That's just a quick peek at three classes. There's 14 different ones in the game for you to enjoy! Join me next time when I talk about the Adventure & Quest system and the world map.

Thanks!

Colm

Release Date: July 14th!

The game is coming out on July 14th! Get excited! Do a little dungeoneering dance. Roll some dice! Yeah!

New Trailer!

Feast your eyes and ears on this beauty. And then share it with your friends!

Preorders, with a lovely little bonus!

You can preorder the game right now from Steam, GOG or Humble for $14.99 | €14.99 | £10.99 or so. And as a very special thank you to everyone who does so we are going to give you our first Adventure Pack for free when it comes out a few months after launch. It's called Pirates Cove and will add some extra adventures, loot and dungeoneers to the mix.

Yarrr. Not a looker among them.

Grab yourself a copy, then high five the next person you see!

Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/317820/

GOG: http://www.gog.com/game/guild_of_dungeoneering

Humble: https://www.humblebundle.com/store/p/guildofdungeoneering_storefront

Oh and if you want the full press release it's right over here.

Just wanted to show you guys a little bit from the Guild side of the game as til now we've been so focused on the Dungeoneering side.

The whole metagame / strategic side of things is about your guild. You get to upgrade it by using the spoils of successful (and unsuccessful) dungeoneering by your hapless heroes. How you specialise your guild is up to you though. There are three main branches of upgrades: Might,Magic, and Loot. Might and Magic both give you new character classes and special blessings with a general theme of physical vs magical styles. Loot on the other hand tends to unlock more equipment your dungeoneers can find in dungeons, so it's quite different.

Click for bigger

A lot of upgrades give you new rooms for your guild! These can be placed anywhere you like so how your guild looks is up to you. We tried to make the guild look quite distinctive compared to the usual dungeons. What do you think?

Wait.. is that a mime!?

There's also some special rooms you need to earn: the Graveyard and the Trophy Room. It's very likely that by the time you finish the game your graveyard will have quite the collection of former dungeoneers.

Not to worry, we can hire plenty more!

And taking down bosses gives you a fun little keepsake in your trophy room!

Bravely stealing shampoo from bosses' treasure chambers.

Since your dungeoneers never permanently level up, how do you progress? Well it's all via levelling up your guild instead. Unlocking more powerful classes is how you get better dungeoneers (or in some cases, just differently specialised ones). I'm going to show off some of the character classes in more detail in the next update.

Also on the RELEASE DATE, stay tuned we should have an announcement on that very soon!

Thanks!
Colm

Just gotta keep promising more!

At the start of February I flew into Amsterdam to attend Casual Connect as an Indie Prize finalist. At the time I was happy to spend a few days with our composer Steve who was living in Amsterdam and to meet some of the other devs showcasing their games. I didn't expect to get anything else from the rest of the show, in all honesty. However we got a very nice surprise when Guild of Dungeoneering scooped up the 'Most Promising In Development' award! Oh yeah!

A fancy bit of glassware!

This is our first time winning any kind of award so it was super exciting for us. Here's myself and Steve up on stage accepting the award.

Woot!

Casual Connect? Sounds Legit.

Casual Connect sounds more like a speed dating event than a games show. The name comes from the casual gaming genre which blew up in the 2000s. Nowadays those games have essentially moved to mobile, but the name lives on. The show itself is very business oriented, with most exhibitors and talks focused on monetisation strategies for F2P games and the like; ie not exactly a match for my kind of game development. However a couple of years ago they started the Indie Prize showcase which is really cool. They selected 120 game devs to be able to showcase their games in a prominent spot in the middle of the show floor, and on the final day they handed out about 10 prizes.

That's a LOT of indie games!

That's a whole LOAD of games in the indie prize zone so as you can see you only get about half a table of space each. We just turned up with my laptop showing the game (that's a far cry from the heavily branded setup we had at PAX). There's no space for anything more than that, which is a shame, but on the other hand it means there is an absolute butt load of games on display. It took me all three days to get around and try and chat to most of the devs, but it was very worthwhile for that alone. There's some really great games out there that you have never heard of!

There's an entire separate hall to queue in at PAX

Two weeks ago I was able to attend my first ever PAX, which is a massive and beloved consumer gaming show. The kind that attracts real gaming fans who will happily give up their weekend, pay for tickets, and queue in their thousands to be the first ones into the show. The kind that sells out of tickets on a regular basis. Just attending would have been extremely interesting to me but I had the opportunity to do something even more incredible: I was able to showcase the game I'm working on to thousands of potential fans. WOW. Read on for my full postmortem.

How did we get to exhibit at PAX anyway?

As we recently announced we have now signed with Versus Evil to publish our first game Guild of Dungeoneering. One of the main reasons I partnered with a publisher was to be able to bring the game to big consumer shows like PAX. And VS Evil certainly delivered on that promise. Within days of signing I was flying to Texas to help showcase Guild of Dungeoneering in their booth. It was also a great opportunity to meet the VS Evil team in person at last – the entire deal had been done over Skype and email!

Dungeoneering never looked better

I flew in on Thursday evening with the show floor opening to the public on Friday morning. This is not something you can normally do if you are exhibiting at a big show like PAX. Setting up your own booth usually means weeks of organising and days of work before the show starts. So it was wonderful to be able to simply turn up in person and have the entire thing already set up for me! Score one for going with a publisher!

The Versus Evil booth

I was really impressed by the booth Versus Evil had set up for the event. It was very professional looking with large amounts of branding dedicated to the games (rather than themselves). It was set up to allow folks to wander right into it with PCs at standing height with various VS-published games available to play. Guild of Dungeoneering had four PCs taking up one entire side of their booth. As a bonus this was the side that faced towards the show entrance, and the VS Evil booth itself was in a great spot: right in the main corridor from the entrance just after the really massive booths (like Twitch). This meant a huge amount of people saw the game as they wandered into the show.

Their setup & location meant that for basically all three days there were four people playing the game at once, with a few people watching (and sometimes a big crowd of people watching). We actually have a special ATTRACT MODE built into our build of the game for shows like this where if you idle on the title screen for two minutes the game starts playing itself (like an arcade game). For three eight-hour days I barely saw it happen at all – there was basically someone playing at all four machines at all times.

Our side of the booth was like this for eight hours a day

I would generally hang out nearby and watch people play. Occasionally we had a crash bug in the demo we had people playing so I'd have to restart the game if that happened. When folks were waiting I'd chat to them about the game. If I saw people play for a long time (like a half hour+) I'd approach them when they finished to ask them for feedback. Feedback itself was incredibly positive. People loved the aesthetic, really liked the concept, and generally really enjoyed playing the demo we had brought. That last bit surprised me as I guess I see all the negatives of it (it's not deeply fun yet!). I guess since it was people's first exposure to the game everything was new and interesting and they didn't quite get stuck in enough to see the problematic parts. Also it's a bit awkward giving negative feedback to one of the makers of a game in person! No need to be so polite when your feedback is real, folks!

Now in totally sweet HD

We were showcasing the game in 1920×1080 resolution for the first time and it looks totally hot. A lot of passersby were drawn to folks playing just because it looks so wonderful. This was something we had always intended for the game but had only put together for the first time the week before PAX.

Click for massive

We were also showcasing our battle mode for the first time. No more autofighting; now you choose an attack move each turn. This first attempt was ready just in time for PAX, but it needs a lot of work. We've now reworked it to be MUCH more interesting (less like a paper/rock/scissors guessathon) while still retaining the essential idea: you gain attack moves from your equipment, thus building your character depending on what loot you place for them.

Click for massive

Overall I was very happy with the build we were showing, even though we were already working on improving the game for our next event.

Press & Influencers

Now there were lots of potential fans at the show and it was really great to meet them and hopefully they will see the game when it comes out on Steam and be that little more likely to try it out. But the real win for us at a show like this was reaching some press and other influencers. For example check out this tweet:

I'm going to print out this tweet and stick it on my wall

Yep that's Randy Pitchford the president of Gearbox randomly checking out our game and telling his 288K followers that it's cool. Eh.. thanks!

We also had Dodger and Jesse Cox drop by the booth and play the game. They both seem to really like it: see this video. That's two youtubers with really big followings. Hopefully when we finish the game they'll be streaming it.

This video has over 400K views already!

Finally all this attention got us some great new press articles. Firstly from TouchArcade (we plan on going to tablets after the PC launch), with whom I got to have a little chat while the writer was playing the game. Secondly from Rock Paper Shotgun, who I don't think were even at PAX but must have been reminded of us because of it.

Nice!

Is PAX worth it?

So what did we really get out of being at a big game show like PAX? Was it worth it? One of the problems with this kind of game marketing is you really cannot quantify exactly what it does for your game. I will say it was incredibly interesting to see what spending the big bucks on promoting your game can get you: immediate attention from gamers and influencers that I had serious trouble reaching on my lonesome. I still think every lone-wolf indie dev should spend around half their time on marketing and outreach without spending anything, but you should also seriously consider what partnering with a publisher could do for your game.

Also it's really nice to bask in the positive potential of your game in the hearts and minds of your fans for once, rather than being mired in the day-to-day problems of making your special snowflake of a game happen. And for that, I thank you, PAX South.