GOOD NIGHT!: Dead Estate's final update is here!

Artwork by Hibachi! (@HibachiX1)

Artwork by Pkettles! (@PitooKettles)

THE FINAL UPDATE IS HERE!

I had a LOT more written here originally, but for brevity’s sake I think all I really have to say here is thank you all for sticking with this project and seeing it through to its end with us. I’m sure that if you’re reading this you wanna know what’s in the update, so here it is!

NEW STUFF, CHANGES, AND FIXES

• New ending route with 3 full floors!

  Includes three full-fledged new floors: the Dream, Mindscape, and Nightmare; including unique enemies, bosses, and environments along with a new final boss and ending cutscene.

• New optional floor: “The Shrine”!

  An additional full-sized floor completely separate from the new route!

• 70 new items!

  Brings the game’s final item count to 300 (from 150 on initial Steam release or 69 on original Newgrounds release). - Sleeping Pills - Stoic Bust - Bullet Time - Jar Brain - Severed Toe - Brittle Spine - Anointing Oil - Rocket Boots - Mosquito - Deadly Spores - Divine Armor - Game Breaker - Hellfire - Fish Tank - Blindfold - Photo of a Boy - Hand Mirror - Chicken Hat - Nail - Cold Heart - Balloon - Basement Key - Hot Sauce - Magic Map - Li’l Piggy - Green Mold - Bag of Wind - Haunted Bracelet - Living Bullet - Detonator - Soul Slots - Cardboard Box - Wrist Watch - Valentines Chocolates - Pop Can - Spent Casing - White Pearl - Broken Stool - Glowing Bone - Sulfur - Pricey Necklace - Horseshoe - Quartz Chunk - Someone’s Nose - Toy Helicopter - Sponge Cake - Ice Box - Spray Bottle - Essence of Greed - Essence of Gluttony - Morton’s Fork - Loplop - Aporia - Useless Hand - Useless Ear - Useless Eye - Two-Leaf Clover - Toy Chest #1 - Toy Chest #2 - Jules’s Choker - Jeff’s Beard - Cordelia’s Hat - Digby’s Cap - Mumba’s Skeleton - Lydia’s Tie - Luis’s Mustache - Fuji’s Mask - BOSS’s Eyepatch - Axel’s Sunglasses - The End

• 31 new weapons!

  Brings the game’s final weapon count to 150 (from 67 on initial Steam release or 26 on original Newgrounds release). - Knife - Nail Bat - Bubble Wand - Magnetic Mine - Magnet Gun - Rail Gun - Multi-Rail Gun - Flame Rail Gun - Explosive Rail Gun - Charge Shotgun - Flame Charge Shotgun - Distraction Bomb - Hunting Rifle - Jetpack - Candy Cane - Poison Crossbow - Poison Staff - Hot Iron - Boom Cannon - Cursed Shovel - Flare Gun - Power Hammer - Charge Handgun - Crossbow Gun - Volcano - Whisky Bottle - Breath Mint - Punt Gun - Gumball Gun - Rad Charge Shotgun - Blow Gun

• 10 new challenges!

  A whole new set of challenges, mostly related to the new floors. One for each character with a nice reward at the end of each one! - No More Running (Jules) - Mental Power (Jeff) - Triple Digits (Cordelia) - Time Attack (Digby) - Death from Above (Mumba) - Year of the High Roller (Lydia) - Uselessness (Luis) - Bulking Up (Fuji) - Weak Throw (BOSS) - Ununundead (Axel)

• D-costumes!

  A brand new set of entirely beach-themed costumes unlocked by clearing the new challenges! No spoilers here, beat the challenges and find out!

• 56 new medals!

  200 medals total! - “Acolyte” - “Deep Sleeper” - “Soul Seeker” - “Survivor” - “The Lifeguard” - “The Fisherman” - “The Sunbather” - “The Sailor Boy” - “The Captain” - “The Swimmer” - “The Beach Bum” - “The Pirate Queen” - “The Model” - “Costume Party 3!” - “Darkness on the Edge of Town” - “Man of Constant Sorrow” - “Let’s Find Each Other Tonight” - “Time Passages” - “Waiting Around to Die” - “Blood on the Dance Floor” - “Falling off the Face of the Earth” - “One Hour Ahead of the Posse” - “It’s Gonna Be a Long Night” - “Don’t You Worry About a Thing” - “In Ruins” - “Happily Ever After” - “Future Legend” - “Commencement” - “Road Warrior” - “Family Reunion” - “Freshman Orientation” - “Lady’s Man” - “Pay Day” - “Big Promotion” - “Fit as a Fiddle” - “The Bad Sleep Well” - “Big Kahuna” - “Fully Actualized” - “Every Nook and Cranny” - “Dirty Dawg” - “Glutton for Punishment” - “Uh-Oh…” - “Unbound” - “Nice Doggy” - “Keen Observation” - “Cracked” - “Bone Meal” - “Swift Execution” - “Power Nap” - “Globetrotter” - “Dreamer” - “Deathly Premonition” - “Awakening” - “Milkbar Lads #0.1 Fan!” - “Goodnight”

• Chunks mutations

  Upon looping or when playing on painful mode, Chunks can now mutate into several different possible forms upon death which are much fiercer than usual: Dog Chunks and Tentacle Chunks.

• Small additions, balance changes, and adjustments

  - Filia, the Curse shopkeeper, now sells powerful weapons in exchange for Chunks Medallions. - Added an inventory screen to the pause menu which displays all of your items in one neat place. - Added an additional menu under “Extras” for some new cutscenes. - Added new artwork and music to the gallery and music sections. - Settings
  - Added "Remove corpses" under game settings, which when enabled causes enemy corpses to fade away and vanish after a few seconds. - Added “Show items” under video settings, which allows you to toggle the item display at the bottom of the UI. - Added functionality to support binding multiple inputs to one action. - You can now bind actions to mouse buttons 4 and 5. - Moved all options related to gamepads to a submenu under control settings. - Moved "Input accessibility" from game settings to control settings. - Renamed "gamepad auto-aim" to "gamepad aim assist." - Renamed "joystick deadzone" to "thumbstick deadzones."

  - Characters

  - Updated all of Cordelia’s in-world sprites to be consistent with her canon skin tone. - Digby no longer loses combo time while waiting in challenge rooms. - Changed the unlock requirement for Digby. - Changed the unlock requirement for Cordelia’s B costume. - Re-recorded and updated voice lines for Lydia, Roselia, Diavola, and Cybil at the request of the voice actress.

  - Items

  - Lowered the price of the Map item. - Lowered the chance for Gold Ring to activate. - The Vault is now a chance-based item. - Reworked the Needle: there's now only a 20% chance to take double damage if your HP is over 2 and it deals way more damage to enemies.

  - Enemies

  - Lengthened the vulnerability window for Gold Mask. - Looping now increases enemy and boss HP by a greater amount. - Increased Diavola’s HP (both phases). - Gold Worms now vanish after a few seconds. - Chest and Weapon Box Mimics no longer despawn upon exiting the room. - Toned down the effects of flooded floors on all enemies. - Significantly lowered the chance for Mimic Chests to spawn on loops.

  - Difficulty

  - You can now view the differences between difficulties from the character select screen. - Raised coin drop rates on Painful, Nightmare, and X Must Die difficulties. - Raised red pot spawn rates on Painful and X Must Die difficulties. - Lowered the chance for buffed enemies to spawn on Painful, Nightmare, and X Must Die difficulties. - Chunks no longer instantly chases you on X Must Die difficulty and he no longer "locks in" on the player.

  - Challenges

  - Massive Attack: Longleg, Wormy, Worm Egg, and Mutant Blue are no longer affected by resizing.

  - Curses

  - Nerfed BOSS's "Curse of the Maniac" so it further decreases your fire rate.

  - Gamepad/controller support

  - Gamepads now use vibration/rumble effects. - Gamepads now have unique input icons in tutorials, etc,. - Gamepads now allow variable jump height.

  - Misc.

  - The game now remembers what costumes you have equipped. - Treasure and weapon rooms no longer appear as secret rooms on loops. - Overhauled map generation to be significantly faster and smoother. - Cleaned up some code related to medals to make some screens (including the main menu) load much faster. - Heavily optimized the loading sequence at the start of the game; the loading screen has been entirely removed since it's no longer necessary. - The map no longer becomes invisible after multiple loops (both this and the above change were originally a result of the game’s difficulty increasing by 1 every time you looped. Now, map visibility and treasure/weapon room visibility are based on your starting difficulty rather than looped difficulty). - You now receive more Chunks Medallions based on how many times you looped on a normal run (previously you only received bonus Chunks Medallions per loop on true ending runs). - Added some more tips to the level transition screen. - Swapped the "level loading" text with a proper icon during level transitions. - Added cute little crows to the Balcony and Dark Mood Woods floors. - Also added tiny spiders on the ground to a handful of floors. - Added some new easter eggs, be on the lookout! - Updated the requirement for unlocking the "Dead Estate" medal; it is now unlockable by clearing the game on any difficulty, not just normal. - Toned down fire particle effects on the "Ultra Hot Pepper" item. - Toned down fire particle effects on all burning projectiles. - Lowered the opacity on all fire particle effects. - Changed the game's window icon to a zombie's face. - Added some new posters and portraits to the mansion.

  - Fixes

  - Fixed a crash which would sometimes occur while holding the flamethrower weapon. - Fixed a crash related to minimizing the game when a cutscene begins. - Fixed a bug which required the player to unlock “Some Time to Reflect” and “Disarmed” in order to unlock “Milkbar Lads #1 Fan!” - Capped the amount of screen shake caused by increasing Digby’s combo. - Fixed a bug where some text would display incorrectly after leaving and re-entering certain rooms. - Fixed an error which caused BOSS to use some of Jules’s sprites for her damage animations. - Fixed a bug which allowed players to start challenges with curses activated. - Fixed a bug where the "Super Glue" item would not work correctly after quitting and continuing a run. - Fixed a bug where "Chrysus Medallion" would effectively allow the player to live forever even at 0 HP. - Fixed a crash caused by switching your weapon several times after continuing a run. - Fixed tips occasionally appearing off-screen during floor transitions. - Fixed the game momentarily freezing when opening certain menus in Assignment Anya. - (Potentially) finally fixed the white room softlock in Assignment Anya (this one has been really hard to replicate so bear with me). - Fixed potions being infinitely reusable if your inventory is completely full in Assignment Anya. - Fixed Axel high-jumping when performing charged axe throws while using a gamepad. - Fixed "The Abomination" medal being unlockable on normal difficulty. - Corrected a typo with the Chunks medallions popup. - Removed one little stray pixel from Cordelia's shop art on the Upper Story. - Fixed some tooltips for Curses in Filia's shop menu being way too tall. - Fixed one of Axel's B-costume walking animations being shirtless. - Fixed the can't buy/leave voice lines in shop menus overlapping by spamming. - Fixed Chunks Medallions being visible from the character select menu after clearing the normal ending rather than after clearing the true ending. - Updated some of the normal ending polaroids to correct their line art color. - True ending credits now correctly list Katarina C. as Cybil's voice actress. - Fixed all of Dr. Cordelia's voice lines being too quiet. - Fixed rain sound effects getting spammed while entering the Balcony or Dark Mood Woods. - Flame particles and light particles no longer spawn while the game is paused on burning and dark floors respectively.

  - Finished developing the game!
  

WHAT’S NEXT?

Nothing!....
…not in terms of new content for Dead Estate, anyways. It pains me a little to say it, but this update really is the end of the line for this game. We’ve done pretty much everything we wanted to do with Dead Estate; it’s all out there now. There are some things we still have left to do with this project, but just don’t expect any new additions. We’re sailing on uncharted waters now, but this update should hopefully demonstrate that we have a firm idea of where we plan on going.

Our work on this game officially started in August of 2020. Over the course of the following four years, we released the game on Newgrounds in a much smaller form, then we launched it on Steam with close to triple the content of the original, and then we launched six free content updates for the game. I don't think any of us expected us to stick with Dead Estate for as long as we did, but I can happily say that none of us regret the time we devoted to making it happen. Thanks again for joining us throughout all of Dead Estate’s development, we hope you’ll join us again for our next game!

- Milkbar Lads

MORE FROM 2 LEFT THUMBS

THE NEXT BIG ROGUELIKE?

This collection of 3 games will keep you entertained for 100s of hours! This is a "Complete the set" bundle, meaning you'll still get the discount without needing to re-purchase any games you might already own.

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/44737/Ultimate_Action_Roguelike_Variety/

Picayune Dreams, a bullet heaven + bullet hell surrealist action fantasy
Schism, an incredibly deep gun-modding bullet hell RPG that takes inspirations from both traditional and action roguelikes.

CROAK CRUSADER

The Milkbar Lads and myself first connected over Newgrounds. A site I've always considered my home on the internet. So it should come as no surprise that I've continued to work from Newgrounds-borne talent!

Croak Crusader: Spawn of the Spore Spectre is a grapple-based action platformer, and will be released entirely for free! Coming from Tunaware, you can play the demo on Steam today! Be sure to add it to your Wishlist so you don't miss out on the full release.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2997920/Croak_Crusader_Spawn_of_the_Spore_Spectre/

And on a more personal note. Thank you all so much!!
Dead Estate was the first game published by 2 Left Thumbs. That joint risk between the Milkbar Lads and myself paved the way for this entire publishing enterprise. Being able to pay that forward, supporting more and more indie devs, has been an absolute dream!

My heart goes out to this team who have poured everything into Dead Estate, Newgrounds where it all started, and to all the fans who have allowed us to support this game for all these years. We hope you have an absolute blast playing, and that our story inspires a new generation of devs.

-Graeme