You may remember The Swords of Ditto, the Zelda-like action RPG with the utterly charming art style from a year ago. While we quite liked the game , there were complaints about its punishing permadeath system. Developer onebitbeyond has released a big new update for The Swords of
You may remember The Swords of Ditto, the Zelda-like action RPG with the utterly charming art style from a year ago. While we quite liked the game, there were complaints about its punishing permadeath system. Developer onebitbeyond has released a big new update for The Swords of Ditto, and permadeath is now a thing of the past.
The update, called Mormo’s Curse, touches most of The Swords of Ditto’s systems.
“The game structure has been totally gutted, and the divisive permadeath feature has been removed,” the developers write in an update on Steam. “You will still fail a story if you die while climbing Mormo’s Palace at the end, or if you play in Hero Mode, but otherwise, if you fail, you will collapse and wake up in your house having dropped some cash and fragments.”
The studio says it has also improved Ditto’s overworld, added new areas, and reworked the endgame to give players more to do after they defeat Mormo. Once you’ve beaten her once, she will add a curse to your next story that acts like a mutator for that playthrough.
This reminds me a bit of the adjustments Tribute Games made to Mercenary Kings last year that wound up finally drawing me into to the game, and it’s a perfect opportunity for players who were put off initially by The Swords of Ditto’s permadeath to give it another go.
Charming roguelikelike The Swords Of Ditto today launched a big ol’ free update, Mormo’s Curse, adding and reworking heaps of stuff. You’ll find new areas, new enemies, new items, performance improvements, bug fixes, and big changes to the overall structure of the game. Our forme
Charming roguelikelike The Swords Of Ditto today launched a big ol’ free update, Mormo’s Curse, adding and reworking heaps of stuff. You’ll find new areas, new enemies, new items, performance improvements, bug fixes, and big changes to the overall structure of the game. Our former John (RPS in peace) liked a lot of the game’s elements in our Swords Of Ditto review but wasn’t sure of how it all came together, so a big ol’ brush-up sounds grand.
Hi everyone! It's here! The Swords of DItto: Mormo's Curse releases today! Since the release of the Timeless Update in July, we've been beavering away adding a host of new features, as well as reshaping and reworking the game. It's here today as a FREE update for all players! If
Hi everyone!
It's here! The Swords of DItto: Mormo's Curse releases today! Since the release of the Timeless Update in July, we've been beavering away adding a host of new features, as well as reshaping and reworking the game. It's here today as a FREE update for all players!
If you are an existing player, we recommend that you start a new game to experience Mormo's Curse as it was intended.
But what's changed in Mormo's Curse? While the short answer is "most of it", here are a few of the more obvious things to expect.
Revamped Structure
The game structure has been totally gutted, and the divisive permadeath feature has been removed. You will still fail a story if you die while climbing Mormo's Palace at the end, or if you play in Hero Mode, but otherwise, if you fall, you will collapse and wake up in your house having dropped some cash and fragments. The game is now more forgiving and easier to enjoy.
The end game has been drastically improved, with much more to do, and more variation in the game's rules. For example, when you defeat Mormo, in the next story she will cast one of her curses on you, changing the rules of the world for that story. (The Time Curse that was cast in the Timeless Update remains as one of those curses).
New Areas & Improved Overworld
The Overworld has been drastically overhauled, to be denser, more engaging, and more focused. We've also added four unique areas with their own specific features, two of which are chosen for each story.
New Toys, Enemies & Stickers
The new areas bring bespoke enemies, and dedicated shops which sell new Stickers with amazing abilities and unique Toys of Legend (such as the Axe, the Book of the Dead, the Vampire Ring and many more). We've also added a number of support items to the player inventory, such as the Inflatable Decoys, Mines and Kick Me Signs.
Bug-Fixes and General Improvements
Most of the game has been looked at and smoothed over, including room layouts, item carry over at the end of a story, all menus and user interface, the integration of the Air Kazoo map into the main map, memory management, NPC dialogue and localisation and more.
Port to GameMaker Studio 2
The previous version of the game was running in GameMaker Studio 1.4, which was deprecated by YoYo Games last summer. The move to GMS2 means many technical improvements. For Windows players that means no more DirectX 9, improving compatibility across the board, including for many integrated GPUs. Ubuntu support is now at 18.04, with audio and gamepad issues fixed. There's also much-improved performance, and, crucially, YYG will now be able to offer support for any engine-based issues we come across.
These are just a few of the things that we've been busy with, however. The general goal throughout the development of Mormo's Curse was to make it a much better game; one that we are much happier with. We hope you enjoy all of the improvement we've made, and look forward to seeing what you think!
While I’ve my issues with Amazon’s global mega-monopoly, I can’t deny that the monthly sack of games that Twitch gives out to Amazon Prime subscribers is an oft-impressive bunch. This month more impressive than most – it’s a bundle of Devolver Digital’s best , including Broforce
While I’ve my issues with Amazon’s global mega-monopoly, I can’t deny that the monthly sack of games that Twitch gives out to Amazon Prime subscribers is an oft-impressive bunch. This month more impressive than most – it’s a bundle of Devolver Digital’s best, including Broforce, both Hotline Miami games, Strafe (much improved by updates), Crossing Souls, The Swords of Ditto and recently lauded ninja platformer The Messenger. You can grab a month of Prime (even the free trial) and once it lapses you get to keep the games, to be launched through the Twitch desktop app.
Update:Until December 31st, Twitch Prime also gives you the SNK Bundle, Hacknet: Complete Edition, Smoke & Sacrifice and Poi, all of which you get copies for yourself to keep and a spare to give to friends. The Devolver pack doesn’t come with extra gifts, but is available until January 31st.
Today sees the release of the Timeless Update! We've been busy working away on updates for Ditto all summer adding new features and addressing feedback received from the community. It's resulted in two large updates over the last month. Here are the details! Summer Update In this
Today sees the release of the Timeless Update!
We've been busy working away on updates for Ditto all summer adding new features and addressing feedback received from the community. It's resulted in two large updates over the last month. Here are the details!
Summer Update
In this update we largely focused on addressing a lot of the feedback that we received since launch, and generally improving the game and its rewards systems. We looked at the time limit, the structure of the level system, streamlining the start of the game, and improving the end game.
Timeless Update
This is the second of our updates, and is now live on the default branch! Amongst other things, we have finally implemented the two most-requested features: selectable characters and save slots!
Check out the full changelist for both updates in the pinned post here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/619780/discussions/0/1694920442943116800
Please note that there is still more to come! We're beavering away on a more fully-featured game update that will feature new areas, toys, enemies, and more! This will be released before the end of the year, and it will be free for all existing owners!
Hey everyone! We've been busy working away on updates for Ditto since the last build went out at the start of June. The result of which is the first of our Summer Updates, live now on the default branch. We've largely focused on addressing a lot of the feedback that we've receive
Hey everyone!
We've been busy working away on updates for Ditto since the last build went out at the start of June. The result of which is the first of our Summer Updates, live now on the default branch.
We've largely focused on addressing a lot of the feedback that we've received since launch, and generally improving the game and its rewards systems. Broadly we've looked at the time limit, the structure of the level system, streamlining the start of the game, and improving the end game. There are also a bunch of extra things thrown in there, but this is only the start. We'll be doing another update in around a month or so, with some new features, aimed at improving things even further. And after that there will be a more substantial update later in the year with some new content, free for all existing players. More details to follow!
Meanwhile, check out the changelist in the pinned post here: https://steamcommunity.com/app/619780/discussions/0/1694920442943116800
The Swords of Ditto has been updated to 1.04.07-110 with the changes below. Thanks to everyone for their input and help, the team is still hard at work on more updates and tweaks to improve The Swords of Ditto! Please follow this link to submit tech support issues, doing so will
The Swords of Ditto has been updated to 1.04.07-110 with the changes below. Thanks to everyone for their input and help, the team is still hard at work on more updates and tweaks to improve The Swords of Ditto!
Please follow this link to submit tech support issues, doing so will help our team identify and fix the game to remedy your issue quicker and more efficiently.
Perhaps ~~you re~~ the robot? Did you ever think of that, huh? No, it s fine, you re a human, a human who likes the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show . This week, we’re chatting about our favourite mechanoids, cyberfolk and rust-buckets. Alec likes the robo-ostrich from W
Perhaps ~~you re~~ the robot? Did you ever think of that, huh? No, it s fine, you re a human, a human who likes the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. This week, we’re chatting about our favourite mechanoids, cyberfolk and rust-buckets. Alec likes the robo-ostrich from World of Warcraft, a bird capable of great speed (and good for showing off). Brendan is fond of the abandoned bots of Hackmud, and their tragicomic existence on a humanless earth. Meanwhile, John loves little BUD of Grow Home and his wobbly walking animations.
Speaking of large, bi-pedal machines, we’ve also been playing strategy mech-em-up Battletech. Well, Alec has. He’s been stomping around, slowly firing missiles. But is it any good? (more…)
The Swords Of Ditto has perhaps 378 good ideas in it. That’s over 80% more good ideas than most games. My problem on approaching this review is trying to work out whether I think a barrage of good ideas is necessarily a good overall game. (more…)
The Swords Of Ditto has perhaps 378 good ideas in it. That’s over 80% more good ideas than most games. My problem on approaching this review is trying to work out whether I think a barrage of good ideas is necessarily a good overall game.
The Swords of Ditto has launched on Steam and off to a enormous start - thank you for all the love and support you've given the game during development and now into the launch day! We hope you enjoy it (alone or with a friend) and keep an eye on the forums for updates from develo
The Swords of Ditto has launched on Steam and off to a enormous start - thank you for all the love and support you've given the game during development and now into the launch day! We hope you enjoy it (alone or with a friend) and keep an eye on the forums for updates from developer onebitbeyond on updates and fixes for any issues arising during the launch week.
Please share with friends and, if you enjoy the game, make some time to write a review to help other Steam users determine if The Swords of Ditto is a game they might enjoy as well.
The Swords of Ditto is Now Available on Steam! The Swords of Ditto is a compact action RPG that creates a unique adventure for each new hero of legend in the relentless fight against the evil Mormo.
The Swords of Ditto is Now Available on Steam!
The Swords of Ditto is a compact action RPG that creates a unique adventure for each new hero of legend in the relentless fight against the evil Mormo.
The Swords of Ditto is Now Available on Steam! The Swords of Ditto is a compact action RPG that creates a unique adventure for each new hero of legend in the relentless fight against the evil Mormo.
The Swords of Ditto is Now Available on Steam!
The Swords of Ditto is a compact action RPG that creates a unique adventure for each new hero of legend in the relentless fight against the evil Mormo.
Devolver Digital's "compact action-RPG" The Swords of Ditto , which as we noted last year stands out from the crowd by rejecting the retro-pixelated look in favor of a sharp, more detailed visual style, will be out tomorrow. To mark the coming of the big day, Devolver and develop
Devolver Digital's "compact action-RPG" The Swords of Ditto, which as we noted last year stands out from the crowd by rejecting the retro-pixelated look in favor of a sharp, more detailed visual style, will be out tomorrow. To mark the coming of the big day, Devolver and developer onebitbeyond have whipped up a launch trailer that shows off the lovely look and teases its promise of "unique adventures linked together."
The game's description is a bit vague about how those heroic tales will come together, only saying that each adventure will become a legend "distinct from those that came before it and part of a heroic legacy that bind together. The deeds, successes, and failures of each hero's adventure have implications for those that follow including the ability to find weapons and recover loot from history’s fallen heroes."
Swords of Ditto writer Ed Fear revealed more about that aspect of the game on Twitter. He described it as actually having two stories tied together in a sort of before-and-after format, but added that if you don't care about such things and just want to bang around inside some pretty dungeons, that's fine too.
"The story has been designed to be unobtrusive, because this is a rogue-like, and not everyone cares about that stuff," he wrote. "But it is there! A dark underbelly, hiding just beneath the cute-as-pie surface."
Aside from the usual dungeon-splelunking gear like swords and bows, The Swords of Ditto will offer up more exotic items including vinyl albums (something by Dire Straits, I would assume), a magic golf club, and a colossal foot from the Heavens. You can also bring a friend along for some co-op play, if you don't want to go alone. The Swords of Ditto is available for pre-purchase for a 20 percent discount off its regular $20 price on Steam, GOG, and Humble.
The Swords of Ditto is now available for preorder with 20% off ahead of the April 24 launch date! There will be no launch week discount so take advantage of this offer if you can - we appreciate the love and support!
The Swords of Ditto is now available for preorder with 20% off ahead of the April 24 launch date! There will be no launch week discount so take advantage of this offer if you can - we appreciate the love and support!
There's a fairly famous story about the creation of Mario 64 that explains how the team at Nintendo figured out 3D movement for its revolutionary platformer. "We were working on something really simple—deceptively simple, even, from the perspective of the team that would go on to
There's a fairly famous story about the creation of Mario 64 that explains how the team at Nintendo figured out 3D movement for its revolutionary platformer. "We were working on something really simple—deceptively simple, even, from the perspective of the team that would go on to finish the huge, final game," said director Shigeru Miyamoto in a roundtable for the game's strategy guide, handily replicated here. "There was a room made of simple Lego-like blocks, and Mario and Luigi could run around in there, climb slopes, jump around, etc. We were trying to get the controls right with an analogue 3D stick, and once that felt smooth, we knew we were halfway there."
That makes me think about the one unifying element of all great Nintendo games—basic actions always feel good. It might be the way throwing a boomerang feels in a 2D Zelda game, or running up a wall while transformed into a cat in the Wii U's Super Mario 3D World, or moving in morph ball mode in any Metroid Prime. Great Nintendo games start with that, for me, then the rest of the magic comes from art, sound and level design. Its games come from a wide range of studios, and yet it's something I notice about them time and time again.
"For me personally I think Nintendo are just the masters of putting a smile on your face," says Finn Brice, CEO of Starbound developer Chucklefish. I visited the studio late last year to check out the Advance Wars-like Wargroove. "And I think that’s what we try to bring to our games, it’s what we’ve learned from Nintendo. We want people to buy our games and not just appreciate the mechanics and not just tell a good story, but we want the moment-to-moment experience to make them feel good."
Nintendo-style games felt like they lived outside of the PC's sphere when I was a kid in the '90s—a few platformers like Jazz Jackrabbit and Earthworm Jim aside, it just wasn't where you found the types of games that you'd see on the SNES or N64. We now live in a very different time. Indie games and the digital marketplace mean we've seen a ton of games with Nintendo DNA, made by creators who grew up with those old consoles. From Metroidvanias to 2D platformers to Zelda-likes, there's a variant of pretty much every old Nintendo game type. Hell, there's even a pornographic WarioWare-like.
Super Meat Boy has over 2.8 million owners on PC, according to SteamSpy.
"Before there are any levels made or anything concrete is created for a game I'm working on I always make the movement feel right and I finalise it before I do anything else," says Tommy Refenes, co-creator of Super Meat Boy, when I relay Nintendo's process of figuring out Mario's movement in three dimensions. "For Super Meat Boy it took three months of figuring out how I wanted Meat Boy to move and what I wanted him to be able to do and how I wanted the player to be able to accomplish those things. Super Meat Boy Forever was exactly the same. I believe it's crucial that level design and controls fit together perfectly and I'm hard pressed to find a Nintendo game where it appears they don't share the same belief."
"Something that marks Nintendo’s games out for me is their commitment to fun," says Jonathan Biddle, whose next game is the lovely-looking co-op game The Swords of Ditto, out next month. Biddle previously worked on Stealth Bastard. "They treat the pursuit of fun as being a worthwhile endeavour in and of itself. In fact, they take it very seriously! While other developers might focus on storyline, or impressive cutting-edge technology, Nintendo instead double down on squeezing as much enjoyment out of their gameplay as is possible. Because their teams are smaller than their competitors, if they focus on this type of quality game design, they can punch above their weight—something they have been doing consistently well at for decades."
"My work has typically been structured in the same way," Biddle continues. "I've always worked from the small details outwards, trying to make something that is enjoyable on the lowest level, and built the larger systems in support of that, rather than, for example, creating a world and setting a game within it. Also, as much as I enjoy it in other games, I'm not one for putting complex meanings in my games. I generally like to make something fun; a toy, something to be played with, something that hopefully makes people smile."
'Small details' is something that Chucklefish picks up on as a Nintendo trademark, too, citing how Luigi would whistle the Luigi's Mansion theme tune in both of those games as you played. "The tiny attention to making you entertained in every aspect of the game, I think it’s what really defines [a Nintendo game]," says Rodrigo Monteiro, lead programmer and producer on Wargroove.
For Chucklefish, too, the team finds players gravitating towards smaller details in Starbound. "The things people discuss when we see them discussing areas of the game, are weird tiny interactions or quotes in the game rather than grand experiences," says artist and designer Jay Baylis. "It's like, 'I stumbled across a graveyard and someone happened to be crying near it, and I thought that was a relative and I thought they were really sad about their relative dying', and that’s a random interaction in the game. But that's a small thing they remembered the most."
"The main quality I think Nintendo brought to game design, if not innovating it than at least doing it the best early on, is having games teach players how to play games while playing," says Thomas Happ, creator of Metroidvania game Axiom Verge. "The important thing to remember is that games are a learning experience from beginning to end. I always try to keep the player learning new things and applying what they learned. You never want to bring in some difficult element before you have trained them to surmount it because that leads to frustration. And before the player achieves mastery of something you need to have something new come up or there will be a period of boredom, which is what kills games."
Andy described Axiom Verge as "a massive, challenging retro-flavoured shooter that takes the Metroid formula and runs with it."
How it was, or how you remember it?
You can see the look of series like Metroid, Zelda and Mario filtering down to other indie games—and not just from the SNES era. Last year's Rime reminded me of Wind Waker before anything else, and Owlboy developer Simon Stafsnes Andersen cites the cel-shaded GameCube game as an influence in giving his game's characters a recognisable shape, as well as ensuring that each environment feels interactive.
If you're going to make a SNES-looking game for the modern age, though, it's never as simple as borrowing a style. "I think when people try to make games look like old games, it’s often to their detriment," says Chucklefish's Baylis. "I see a lot of 16-bit RPG-looking games, and they’re objectively nice, but they don't look inspired because they look like a SNES game, rather than looking how you would remember a SNES game. I think that’s key. You've got to find people’s rose-tinted memories."
"For example, Stardew [Valley] to Harvest Moon," says Monteiro. "I can’t speak for how Eric [Barone] was thinking when he developed it, but I think that Stardew captures the experience you remember having in Harvest Moon but not necessarily the experience you actually had in Harvest Moon."
Wargroove, which riffs heavily on Nintendo and Intelligent Systems' long-dormant Advance Wars series, offers a similar challenge to the team at Chucklefish. "People have said with Wargroove, the graphics are basically the same as Advance Wars," Baylis says. "When it's not actually the same as Advance Wars—they remember Advance Wars being that good, and then you look back and it just doesn’t look anything like the same—it looks very different to it." While the colour palette and style immediately puts you in the mindset of Advance Wars, the detail on the map is a world apart. Nostalgia only gets you so far.
It's interesting to see the ways this has looped back around for Nintendo. Indies are now swarming to the Switch, and there can be real benefits to developers getting their games on that platform. It means those console owners are getting the types of games that Nintendo isn't releasing at this point in time—games that made the PC their home years ago.
The procedurally generated dungeon crawl has come a long way in my lifetime. I grew up practically learning to read by playing the original Rogue. Whole worlds constructed of letters and symbols, full of strange new words like Q for Quaff (a fancy word for drink) and K for Kestre
The procedurally generated dungeon crawl has come a long way in my lifetime. I grew up practically learning to read by playing the original Rogue. Whole worlds constructed of letters and symbols, full of strange new words like Q for Quaff (a fancy word for drink) and K for Kestrel (a cave-dwelling, face-hating murderbird).
Thinking back to those early memories, it feels all the more surreal to look at The Swords Of Ditto, a game taking some of those core concepts – random dungeons and permanent death along them – and for it all to look like a pin-sharp, smoothly animated cartoon come to life. It’s still a ways off, but the game now has a release date, and a new trailer to go with it.
Devolver Digital announced today that The Swords of Ditto , the game we described last summer as "randomly generated co-op Zelda" designed to be played from the comfort of your couch, will be out on April 24. Naturally, the launch date news includes an updated trailer and some ne
Devolver Digital announced today that The Swords of Ditto, the game we described last summer as "randomly generated co-op Zelda" designed to be played from the comfort of your couch, will be out on April 24. Naturally, the launch date news includes an updated trailer and some new screens showcasing the game in action.
The Swords of Ditto is a "compact action-RPG" that sets players, alone or in local co-op pairs (thus the pluralized "Swords" in the title), against a great evil plaguing a top-down fantasy realm. Success results in a statue paying tribute to your efforts, while failure leaves your items in a grave, to be found and used in the next adventure. Either way, evil is never fully vanquished, and your story carries over from one journey to the next.
But your actions will have a more direct impact on the land as well: "Take down Mormo and the world is a happier, brighter place," Devolver said, "but failure puts Ditto and its poor citizens into a dark, crumbling version of their world."
The Swords of Ditto will be available from Steam and GOG, and there's a website up at swordsofditto.com. Pricing hasn't been set.
Developer onebitbeyond has announced that its silly, cyclical RPG The Swords of Ditto will be heading to PlayStation 4 and PC on April 24th. The Swords of Ditto, based on onebitbeyond's new PlayStation blog post , comes across as a blend of Zelda, Half-Minute Hero, Rogue Legacy,
Developer onebitbeyond has announced that its silly, cyclical RPG The Swords of Ditto will be heading to PlayStation 4 and PC on April 24th.
The Swords of Ditto, based on onebitbeyond's new PlayStation blog post, comes across as a blend of Zelda, Half-Minute Hero, Rogue Legacy, and Infinity Blade, all smooshed up and festooned with an endearing art-style reminiscent of Adventure Time.
Core to the experience is its cyclical structure, designed to encourage repeated, iterative play-throughs. Each new play-through, described as a "micro-adventure", marks a new attempt at completing an overarching quest to defeat the nefarious Mormo, and brings with it a randomly designed new hero, and a new version of the world.
