Hi folks,
We have deployed the long-awaited DemonCrawl v2.0.0 on the Windows stable branch!
This update includes 52 new items, 3 new masteries, a new stranger, a landmark, a special stage, 7 new stage mods, numerous balance changes, and many visual/system upgrades.
Note: We are monitoring DemonCrawl's online features such as leaderboards and Arena Mode to ensure full compatibility with the update. These features may be intermittently unavailable over the next few days. Thank you for understanding.
Mac and Linux builds will follow once we are confident that the game is free of any major bugs.
Let's check out some of the highlights below (full patch notes are at the bottom):
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In terms of mechanics, the Jock is one of our favorite additions to DemonCrawl! He will wander around the board for free, pushing visible objects out of the way. This already makes him somewhat useful, but should you decide to pay him, he will launch himself in a direction (turning into a projectile) and destroy anything in his path - including hidden monsters! Just keep in mind that the Jock projectile won't wrap the screen or return to his stranger state, so you have to choose the right moment for his launch.
The Honeypot is less flashy but still useful: it pulls in a number of objects, prioritizing those closest to it. Build up the charge counter and try to "dislodge" as many hidden monsters as possible. It's particularly strong when combined with some of the new items in v2. Speaking of which:
50+ New Items
We won't spoil all the surprises, but there's a pretty good spread between support for old archetypes and items that aim to establish new ones. For example, if you find the "Wasp Nest," you can turn your Honeypots into something of a win condition:
Oh, there are also a couple of new Divine items... but it's more fun when you guys figure those out on your own. 👀
New Masteries
Springtime is almost here, and it definitely inspired these new DemonCrawl masteries.
The Gardener mastery acquires copies of the new Hungry Seed item at the start of each stage. You can plant seeds in targeted cells and benefit from creating "chains" of Hungry Plants. Notably, we also added "solve x cells" as a possible reward type for the Hungry Plant - very useful for Gardener.
The Beekeeper creates targeted Honeypots and charges them faster. This mastery's playstyle is straightforward but fairly unique, which is a design I often strive for.
If you're the type of player who wants to turn the game on its head (we're looking at you, Marksman enthusiasts), you might enjoy the new Monk mastery. The Monk is hard-locked to 1 slot, and it starts with the "Transcendence" item, converting all heart drops into souls. Monk can't pick up coins or diamonds, but all ground loot is transformed into damage mitigation. Also, the Tier 3 ability frees up your one and only item slot, in case you want to swap to something other than Transcendence. Yeah, it's a weird one.
New Special Stage: The Bank
This is an exciting one. The Bank lets you deposit up to 3 items (including omens) and accrue coins over time. Like the Smithy, the Bank remains open even after you leave. It permanently closes only when you decide to withdraw your interest.
Endless Multiverse was updated to guarantee 1 Bank per dimension, and your items will persist between dimensions. So basically, this is the Dimensional Vault on steroids.
New Visuals and Music
Some of DemonCrawl's visuals haven't changed since launch. In fact, some of the backgrounds were created almost 15 years ago when I had no idea if the game would even resonate with anyone. So for v2, we wanted to take a stab at improving DemonCrawl's overall presentation:
- Stage background color count increased from ~10 to 16, re-exported from the original high-res graphics. This alone makes the game look a lot nicer.
- Re-worked approach to dithering. More consistent, more "pixel art-y," less noisy.
- Recreated every single Mastery sprite in a consistent style. Someone once joked that the game had about 6 different art styles for Masteries, and it stuck with me because it was so true. So I remade them from scratch; they follow the same color palette and style as most of the game's avatars now.
- Wrote an algorithm to harmonize stage cell graphics with the background; I used to do this by "feeling" but it caused inconsistencies in contrast levels, color counts, etc. The algorithm we're using now is a work-in-progress, but it's a step in the right direction.
Plus new holographs! Who doesn't love new holographs?
Oh, you can also make your own stage skins now. Check the game's `docs` folder for more information. So you can make your own "Quest 6" if the wait has been absolutely killing you. 😂
There are also a few new music tracks. In particular, we wanted to swap out the music for Tribe and Bloodway because those tracks had unusual licenses and would often get flagged on places like YouTube and Twitch. As far as we know, the rest of DemonCrawl's soundtrack should be "stream-friendly."
Here's the new Bloodway tune:
"And More"
We could go on for a while, discussing the finer points of the new Zombie stage mod, or how liberating it feels to increase DemonCrawl's Max Framerate to 500. But we'll let the patch notes speak for themselves.
On a personal note: Thank you for all of your support over the years. I never imagined DemonCrawl would have appealed to so many people - it was and continues to be an incredible project to work on. It might interest you to know that v2.0.0 only represents about half of the DemonCrawl-related things I was working on in the last few years. I had to cut the other half from this release because, let's be honest, this patch is already enormous and I think it's important we "battle test" some of these changes before moving on to... more exciting things. But I've said too much already.
Enjoy the patch notes.
New Features
- New mastery: Gardener - "Grow an army of plants and let nature takes its course."
- New mastery: Beekeeper -"The monsters simply can't resist your honey."
- New mastery: Monk - "Worldly possessions are overrated."
- New stranger: Jock - "Get out of the way, bro!"
- New landmark: Honeypot - Relocates the closest living objects to this cell, including hidden objects
- New special stage: Bank - "Store your items and earn coins over time."
- New stage mod: Guarded - "At the start of the stage, spawn monsters in a random hidden column or row."
- New stage mod: Scattered - "Whenever a visible object spawns or is revealed, relocate it to a visible numbered cell."
- New stage mod: Poverty - "Coins are half as common, diamonds are worth 3 less, coin chests only have half as many coins, and the cost of each stranger is doubled."
- New stage mod: Mystic - "The stage has an additional Mystic Statue. Whenever a Mystic Statue appears, it activates immediately."
- New stage mod: Captive - "At the start of the stage, spawn monsters near your guaranteed objects."
- New stage mod: Secular - "Lose 100 mana at the start of the stage and 50 mana whenever you make a mistake."
- New stage mod: Zombie - "Visible monsters chase strangers. When a stranger dies, they return as a zombie and attack you."
- 7 new inventories
- 10 new holographs
- New avatar for reaching Lv300
- Added Library research subjects: Evasion, Chord, Revive, Diamond, Plant
- Hungry Plants can now solve cells as a possible reward type
- Updated droptables for monsters and strangers
- Preliminary support for stage skin mods (check `README.md`)
- Migrated multiple stage properties to the ini file, including cell colors, description, prefix, and sign message
- New video setting: Max Framerate - DemonCrawl now uses delta timing calculations everywhere to run at framerates above 60
- New video setting: Timing Method - The GameMaker timing method to be used for rendering the game
- New video setting: Sleep Margin - Helps prevent stuttering and maintain a consistent frame rate
- New gameplay setting: Excess Flag Warning - Turn visible cells red if they have too many flags (on by default)
- New gameplay setting: Prefer Modded Content - Exclude vanilla stage skin content whenever possible
- New gameplay setting: Dictionary Speed - How quickly the dictionary text scrolls by (default speed increased)
- New gameplay setting: Solvable Timeout - After this many seconds, the autosolver takes aggressive measures to find a solvable board more quickly
- New legendary item: Heart Container - "When you gain this item, double your max lives. Your max lives cannot be reduced."
- New legendary item: Gardener's Memento - "Start the next dimension with a Hungry Seed for each Hungry Plant in the Metagate."
- New legendary item: Beekeeper's Memento - "Increase your life cap for the next dimension by 3 for every 3 objects you have pulled using Honeypots."
- New legendary item: Monk's Memento - "Increase your life cap for the next dimension by 3 for each item on the ground."
- New consumable item: Hungry Seed - "Spawn a Hungry Plant in target visible cell if it doesn't have one already. Feed the Plant in this cell a number of times equal to the cell value, without losing any items."
- New consumable item: Lucky Barnacle - "For the next 100 turns, chests cannot contain omens."
- New consumable item: Honeycomb - "Spawn a Honeypot in target visible cell and relocate all visible living objects 1 cell closer to it."
- New consumable item: Energy Drink - "Every 40 turns, gain a mastery charge until you make a mistake."
- New consumable item: Protein Powder - "Spawn a Jock in target visible cell. For the next 100 turns, your Jocks destroy objects instead of pushing them and you gain a soul whenever an object is destroyed by a Jock."
- New consumable item: Ifrit Contract - "Spawn a familiar on target visible cell. For 10 turns, your familiars create a Burning trail and are immune to Burning. Afterwards, convert all Burning auras into strong familiars." (suggested by player juh9870)
- New consumable item: Leafy Helmet - "When equipped, fortify by 1 for each visible Hungry Plant. When you feed a Hungry Plant, reduce the durability of this armor by 1 instead of losing an item."
- New consumable item: Leafy Chestplate - "Fortify by 2 whenever you feed a Hungry Plant."
- New consumable item: Leafy Boots - "Every 30 turns, spawn a Hungry Plant in the cell you just opened and increase the reward of all visible Hungry Plants by the value of the cell."
- New consumable item: Bag of Wind - "Relocate all visible objects on numbered cells to non-numbered cells and gain souls equal to the number of objects relocated this way."
- New consumable item: Crawler Key - "Uncomplete every stage, lock all stages except the first."
- New passive item: Book of Faces - "Pick up hearts at full life to spawn a random stranger in the same cell."
- New passive item: Emergency Hotline - "Whenever you take damage, spawn a Doctor on a random visible cell. Doctors give souls instead of restoring life."
- New passive item: Stick of Fetching - "Use Stick at the start of each stage. When you use a Stick, get it back in 10 turns if you have a Minion."
- New passive item: Green Thumb - "Spawn a Hungry Plant in the first cell you open each stage. Your Hungry Plants are almost full when they spawn."
- New passive item: Dandelion - "At the start of each stage, spawn a Hungry Plant in a bubble. When you complete a Hungry Plant, kill it and spawn 2 Hungry Plants in bubbles."
- New passive item: Piranha Flower - "When you feed a Hungry Plant, it sends a flare in a random direction. When you discover a 5, spawn a Hungry Plant in that cell."
- New passive item: Gardener Doll - "Gain Hungry Seeds equal to your mastery charges at the start of each stage, and when your ultimate ability is activated."
- New passive item: Beekeeper Doll - "Spawn a Honeypot at the start of each stage, and when your ultimate ability is activated. It gains charges equal to your mastery charges."
- New passive item: Monk Doll - "Drop a number of items on the ground equal to your mastery charges at the start of each stage and when your ultimate ability is activated."
- New passive item: Jock Medal - "Stages have an additional Jock."
- New passive item: Treadmill - "At the start of the stage, launch a Jock in a random direction from the first cell you open. Your Jock projectiles can wrap the stage."
- New passive item: Lifting Buddy - "Whenever you make a mistake, spawn a nearby Jock. If a Jock sees an incorrect flag, he will activate himself immediately at no cost."
- New passive item: Gym Membership - "Every 20 turns, spawn a Jock. Gain 1 defense whenever a Jock pushes an object."
- New passive item: Wizardly Whistle - "Whenever you use a magic item, spawn a Mage who knows how to use that item."
- New passive item: Diamond Dessert - "After you open a chest, spawn a diamond in that cell."
- New passive item: Hot Honey - "Guarantees an extra Honeypot per stage. When you activate a Honeypot, apply Burning to the cells of relocated living objects."
- New passive item: Lil Buddha - "When you abort a stage, it gains the Trusty mod."
- New passive item: Big Booty - "Chests contain double coins."
- New passive item: Wasp Nest - "Spawn a Honeypot in the first cell you open each stage. When a Honeypot gains a charge, reveal cells in a radius equal to the charges, then any living objects within flee."
- New passive item: Geyser - "At the start of each stage, apply Ethereal to all visible cells."
- New passive item: Flood Light - "Whenever an object spawns on or moves to a numbered visible cell, reveal nearby cells."
- New passive item: Fire Spinner Stick - "If a flare would collide with a stranger, the stranger relocates to a nearby cell out of the way."
- New passive item: Queen Wasp - "Honeypots are more common. When a Honeypot gains a charge, spawn a strong familiar nearby."
- New magic item: Bag of Marbles - "[50 Mana] While charged, your orbs are invisible. Your cankers might auto-discharge this item when you discover a 4 or greater."
- New magic item: Fertilizer - "[60 Mana] Enchant target visible cell: Spawn a Hungry Plant in this cell if it doesn't already have one. Every turn, feed the Plant in this cell without losing an item. If a Plant eats this item, activate his effect 5 times."
- New magic item: Weight Bench - "[100 Mana] Enchant target visible cell: Spawn a Jock nearby. Reveal and kill a random monster whenever a Jock moves into this cell."
- New magic item: Dog Collar - "[100 Mana] Gain a Minion. While charged, your Minions cannot sacrifice themselves."
- New magic item: Beehive - "[100 Mana] Spawn a Honeypot on target visible cell, then increase the charges of all visible Honeypots."
- New magic item: Tectonic Plate - "[300 Mana] Relocate and unflag everything."
- New magic item: Demon Gauntlet - "[500 Mana] Reveal half of all hidden monsters, then kill all visible living objects."
- New magic item: Particle Collider "[200 Mana] Automatically discharges when two orbs or projectiles collide in a stage. They explode in a 7x7 area."
- New omen: Caution Tape - "You cannot enter a special stage unless the stage after it is complete."
- New omen: Haunted Headstone - "When a monster dies, add a monster to the next stage."
- New omen: Broken Shield - "Monsters roll twice for damage and use the greater result. Your other shields don't work."
- New omen: Toxic Rainbow - "When you apply an aura, 50% chance to apply Toxic instead."
- New omen: Limp Wand - "Your projectiles fizzle after 1 second."
- New omen: Sloth - "50% chance to negate object movement effects."
- New special chest: Honey Chest
- New glint: Baby Glint - "Random stage mods are limited to difficulty 1."
- New glint: Super Mega Glint - "If you win the quest, receive a full artifact and Token refund. If you start a Beyond quest without this glint, you lose this glint."
- New mythic emblem: ???
- New mythic emblem: ???
Quality of Life
- DemonCrawl now uses semantic versioning for better compatibility with various distribution platforms
- When picking up a legendary item with a full inventory, the game will attempt to replace your existing legendary instead of telling you that your inventory is full
- When you left or right click a visible cell without opening any new cells, nearby visible monsters will briefly pulse to draw your attention
- Added "Loadout" tab to the glossary for convenience; shows favored, disfavored, and divine items
- Added search filter phrases in the loadout editor: lv1, lv2, lv3, locked, unlocked, broken
- You can now copy all loadouts to your clipboard via the Codex
- Updated main menu graphics
- Updated nearly all stage graphics, including backgrounds, cell colors, and holograph effects
- Updated several item sprites
- Remade all Mastery sprites in a more consistent style
- Masteries are now sorted alphabetically
- Token Shop now shows new content badge, similar to Codex
- Improved our production pipeline to fix problems in graphics files (ensure sRGB mode, expected color counts, etc)
- Wrote new algorithm to harmonize the cell graphics with the background
- Stages can now define a cell number inner color, instead of always white
- Stages can now define a `bg_holograph_mask.png` to mask the holograph effect
- Similarly, stages can define `bg_shader_mask.png` to limit the shader effect
- Added pulse effect on Mastery activation
- The Beyond Quest overworld screen now shows the current emblem and glint
- Replaced music on Tribe stage
- Replaced music on Bloodway stage
- Replaced music on Lighthouse and Waygate special stages
- Re-recorded Gambler sound effect
- Replaced Doctor sound effect
- Improved audio timing of cell release sound effect
- Improved visibility of the loading spinner sprite
- Renamed "Chemical Rainbow" to "X Chemical"
- Renamed "Dessert" to "Ice Cream"
- Hook Hand text-only change: "Your guaranteed chests will be Special Chests. Activate Special Chest effects an extra time."
- Added new dialog for the Shopkeeper
- Added message on activation of Mutant III
- Added `docs` folder with a few helpful articles
- Retired `checking.png` stage asset: the mouse-down cell graphic is now generated programmatically based on `full.png`
- Upgraded to GameMaker beta runtime `2024.1400.4` to take advantage of raw mouse input and improve performance related to surface cleanups
- Optimization pass for cell evaluation logic, moderately improving performance
- Improved performance of explosion effects by batching cell recalculations
- Caching of mod and item ids for performance
- Retired flattened Special Stage title sprites in favor of rendering the text programmatically
- Adjusted Endless Multiverse logic to improve readability and aesthetics of hybrid stages
- Improved autosolver performance and implemented perturbation-based fallback to dramatically speed up generation of dense boards
- The autosolver now uses a confidence threshold to determine if it's possible to find a solvable board and will abort early if the confidence is too low
- If the autosolver can't find a solvable config, it will give you the board that was closest to fully solvable instead of a random board
- Effects that check for guess situations, such as Novice mastery, will take better advantage of the autosolver's deductive capabilities
- Added "please wait..." message while autosolver is generating board
- Scaffolding for DLC support on the Quests screen
Balance Changes
- Rite of Passage now offers `DESTINY` to increase legendary item cap instead of `SPELLBOUND` to increase mana
- Lighthouse now targets the next incomplete stage
- Endless Multiverse now has a guaranteed Bank stage, and the Bank will keep your items between dimensions
- Dimensional Vault renamed to Dimensional Tabernacle and now lets you give up an item to add a Guide to the Metagate
- Omen chance in Normal difficulty reduced from 11% to 5%
- Omen chance in all other difficulties reduced from 11% to 10%
- New omen rule: if your inventory is empty, omen chance is zero
- You can now favor up to 10 items
- Items that are disfavored will no longer appear whatsoever
- Specialist Token cost scales with tier
- Reduced prices of Doll Nomads
- Banker II rework: "Visit the Bank after each stage."
- Commander I buffed: "For 3 coins, left-click a flagged cell to recruit a familiar to a nearby empty cell and pass a turn."
- Ghost II buffed: "If you're in ghost form at the end of a stage, revive with 1 life."
- Ghost form buffed: Strangers and monsters you scare away can drop loot
- Mutant I buffed: "Begin the quest with 3 Cankers that have Brainiac and Conjoined mutations."
- Prophet II buffed: "You are twice as likely to find items you haven't acquired before, blueprints, special chests, and rare loot."
- Prophet III buffed: "Gain 5 Tokens."
- Bookworm I nerfed: "Gain a Book item whenever you enter a special stage. While in a special stage, you can change your research subject by clicking on a Book item."
- Spark III nerfed: increased ability cost from 2 to 3 charges
- Overwhelming stage mod nerfed: slightly reduced numbers of monsters added
- Dog Food buffed: "Gain a Minion, then upgrade your Minions."
- Ectodrop buffed: "You can become a ghost. After 30 turns as a ghost, you lose."
- Neoplasm buffed: "[100 Mana] Spawn a Canker. Add a random mutation to each of your Cankers, plus a mutation for each of your Poisons."
- Pheromones buffed: "Every 200 cells opened, gain a copy of an item that you have two or more of."
- Climbing Claws buffed: "Whenever you discover a cell of value 6 or greater, gain 3% evasion."
- Fossil buffed: "Convert target living object into a landmark. Does not work on bosses."
- Candelabra buffed: Mana cost reduced from 300 to 200
- Brain in a Vat buffed: Mana cost reduced from 80 to 40
- Bonfire buffed: Mana cost reduced from 120 to 70
- Hurricane nerf: Its effect will destroy the Wishpool as well (text unchanged)
- Molotov rework: "Reveal and apply Burning to random hidden cells until it lands on one with a monster."
- Friendly Fire price increased from 15 to 22 coins
- Banana price increased from 14 to 22 coins
- Handaxe price increased from 10 to 14 coins
- Urn price increased from 17 to 19 coins
- Godmonger price increased from 23 to 35 coins
- Astral Spike price increased from 50 to 70 coins
- Event Horizon price increased from 50 to 70 coins
- Battleaxe price reduced from 40 to 36 coins
- Using reveal effects on a Dark mod stage will increase the radius of your vision
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Auramancer I generating more auras than intended
- Fixed a crash that could occur when a sigil loses all durability
- Fixed an Item Tree crash related to Midas Glove
- Fixed missing heart sprite in Item Tree
- Fixed a rare crash related to pathfinding and mastery swap effects
- Fixed a rare issue that could prevent the final stage from being selected as the valid next stage
- Fixed visual issue related to tooltip height calculation that caused the Hero Trial modifier text to clip out of the box
- Fixed an issue where the stage title graphic could get stuck on the screen if the quest is restarted too quickly
- Fixed a z-index issue related to the "Cell Background" option covering up the blue outline of enchanted cells
- Fixed an issue related to Hero Trial alt-score toast alerts
- Fixed a lasting performance drop that could occur if too many UI elements were created at once (particularly noticeable with Codex search)
- Fixed a visual issue related to board-based particle effect misalignment after taking damage
- Guarded tween target fetch against stale instance references
- Adjusted "Cell Background" draw logic to solve compatibility issues with other effects like enchantment backgrounds
- Adjusted audio system to work around a GameMaker race condition that can cause audio to briefly play at full volume