The wait is finally over!
After several weeks of development, we are excited to release one of DemonCrawl's most hotly-anticipated features: a new difficulty setting called Casual Mode that generates 100% solvable boards and completely removes omens from item chests.
Whether you are new to minesweeper or simply don't enjoy risk management in your puzzle games, Casual Mode will allow you to fine-tune the gameplay to your exact preferences.
Here's a look at all of the options that Casual Mode ships with - these are all turned off by default:
- Show Timer - Toggles the HUD timer.
- More Monsters - Increases the monster count to match that of Normal Difficulty.
- True Random Boards - Toggles the need to guess while solving boards.
- Omens in Chests - Toggles whether omens may appear in item chests.
We encourage you to try enabling these options one-by-one as you become more familiar with DemonCrawl's unique mechanics and the different patterns in minesweeper. If you enable all 4 options, Casual Mode is virtually identical to Normal Difficulty.
Some Other Notes About Casual Mode
- Since Casual Mode is all about customizing your gameplay experience, we will probably use it as a testing ground for experimental changes in the future. Well-received changes may find their way into the other difficulties!
- Stage mods and objects can still create situations where you have to guess; our algorithm only tests the board for monster placement, which accounts for the vast majority of 50/50s. We may test other conditions in the future.
Other Features
As promised in our previous blog post, The Casual Mode Update is not just for new players! Let's take a look at some of the other cool things we've added:
We have expanded the item pool to address a few weaknesses in certain builds. The full details are available in the patch notes below, although it might be more fun to discover the new tools as you play...
Two New Awards & Balance Changes
There are two new ways to earn XP as you complete stages:
- Flagless: Gain XP for not using a single flag.
- Thrifty: Gain XP for skipping special stages.
Since XP is directly tied to your overall score, we are very interested in seeing if these new awards have any impact on the leaderboards. In particular, Thrifty could lead to some cool moments where players have to decide between improving their build with an Item Shop or maximizing their score.
We also buffed a few underperforming items and increased the droprate of items set to Favored.
Solvable Boards in Classic Mode
Classic players deserve a bit of love too.
A new stage mod
We have added a new positive stage mod called Trusty that guarantees solvability. The mod can show up in ANY difficulty, but it's pretty rare!
Last but not least, the Christmas Event is officially over.
Press F in chat for Christmas.
What's Next?
We're shifting our focus to bug fixes now. Expect a few stability patches this week, and keep sending us those amazing error reports. :)
Patch Notes
New Features
- Casual Mode has been added to the game
- Solvable boards can be enabled or disabled in Classic Mode
- New beneficial stage mod: Trusty (stage is solvable without guessing)
- New award: Flagless (earn XP for completing a stage without using flags)
- New award: Thrifty (earn XP for skipping special stages)
- You can now choose to start a quest with no mastery
- Christmas is dead... for now
New Items
- Head armor: Frozen Helmet - [3 Armor] All Frozen cells are gleaned. Fortify whenever a monster becomes frozen.
- Body armor: Electric Chestplate - [5 Armor] Monsters in Electric cells deal normal damage. Fortify whenever you collect loot from an Electric cell.
- Leg armor: Burning Boots - [2 Armor] Burning cells do not hurt you. Fortify whenever an object is destroyed by Burning.
- Leg armor: Batwing Boots - [3 Armor] Every 50 turns, gain a random omen if you just clicked on a 3 or greater.
- Consumable item: Fortune Cookie - The selected stage gains the Trusty mod.
- Consumable item: Molotov - Apply Burning to random hidden cells until it lands on one without a monster.
- Passive item: Hero Brooch - When you enter a stage, reduce the max power by 1. If you have a legendary item, cut the max power in half instead.
- Passive item: Dark Amulet - Guarantees 3 additional Dark Hearts per stage. Collect Dark Hearts to restore 1 life and gain a random omen.
- Magic item: Ice Scraper - [50/50 Mana] If target cell has Frozen, remove the aura, then solve it and all nearby cells.
- Magic item: Medusa Head - [400/400 Mana] Convert all visible strangers into Spawners of the same type, then unseal an inventory slot for each stranger converted this way.
Balance Changes
- If you visit an Item Shop with at least 10 coins, it will always have at least one item you can afford
- Dirty Soap now blows up orbs in a 3x3 area instead of 1x1
- Totem now activates every 30 turns instead of every 20
- Pyromancy, Cryomancy, and Electromancy now give souls instead of restoring life
- Frozen cells can now be gleaned
- Somewhat increased the droprate of Favored items
- Odds to find Favored items now automatically scales with the total number of items in the game
- Sign messages are less likely to show the stage-specific message
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a crash when using Ancient Coin after reloading a stage
- Fixed a crash when using Sundial on an area with no visible cells
- Pressing escape while the help screen is open no longer opens the stage quit menu
- Can no longer autoflag concealed cells
- Fixed Heart Key spawning new familiars instead of converting visible monsters
- Increased the opacity of gleaned cells from 0.65 to 0.80
- Fixed a potential issue with explosions still being able to destroy hidden immutable objects
- Fixed Halo not reducing lives to match max lives
- Removed irrelevant options from escape menu in Classic Mode
- Nomads that want to buy your items now have a different set of greeting messages
- DemonCrawl is now better at remembering your difficulty setting
Enjoy, and Happy New Year's!
Hotfix #1 @ 9:00 PM: Speculative fixes for invisible monsters in Casual Mode and "Done" button not returning to main menu. You may need to restart Steam to get these fixes. If you find yourself still running into either of these errors, please let us know and we will continue to investigate. Thanks!