Another year, another monthly Dev-Blog!
First off, Happy New Year to everyone!
What’s to Come?
Let’s start with the 2 big announcement:
Rogue: Genesia 1.0 will be released on March 7, 2025, with a 33% discount
Price increase on February 3, 2025, to the game’s final price
The reason the price increase happens one month earlier is due to Steam’s 30-day cooldown period before applying discounts after a price hike.
Additionally, there will be one final Early Access 25% discount from January 27 to February 3 your last chance to get the game at its Early Access price.
Finally, the first beta for 1.0 will launch early of February. As usual, it’ll include placeholder bosses and unfinished graphics, along with the A-rank world.
A-Rank World
The biggest addition in 1.0 is the A-rank world, completing the game’s core content.
A-rank marks a significant step up in difficulty compared to B-rank, serving as the ultimate challenge. I want players to *feel* this escalation.
I’m debating whether A-rank should require reaching Infinity in Survivors Mode to ensure mastery, but worry it might exclude too many players. Feedback is welcome!
Thank you for the numerous feedback about it, It is clear Reaching infinity is not a good requirements,
I believe now, having the player complete 20 challenges is a much better requirements (about half of the non-hardmode challenge in the game)
A-rank introduces a new enemy variant: Corrupted Enemies. rare and powerful variants of non-elites enemies, being a great source of danger, but also of reward.
It also unlocks the final zone:
The Void Dimension
Reactive Card Weight
Cards repeatedly ignored in selections will have their drop rates reduced. For example, skipping a card three times lowers its spawn chance, making desired cards more likely to appear.
Planned Changes
The above changes will debut in the next beta. Other 1.0 goals include:
-
Improved Equipment Crafting UX/UI
Overhauling the confusing modifier system (especially Knight Pendant crafting) based on player feedback. -
Run Looping
Post-B-rank, players can loop completed runs. Mechanics TBD. -
Custom Runs
A post-launch possibility: runs with player-defined settings/parameters. - Add a Tutorial menu in the Encyclopedia for revisiting guides in-game.
- Better Gamepad/Steam Deck menu navigation.
- Bestiary-completion achievements (unlocking cards/artifacts).
- The usual new cards, equipment, challenges, and soul-shop upgrades.
What’s Missing?
With March 7 approaching, some features may be postponed.
Why releasing on March 7 if the game is not ready?
After the 0.10 update boosted sales, Steam offered a Daily Deal front-page promotion too valuable to pass up.
Daily Deals offer massive exposure for any game, especially critical for a solo developer like me. Passing up this promotional opportunity alongside the 1.0 release simply wasn’t an option.
Steam lets developers schedule Daily Deals up to 6 months after approval. I chose the farthest date (early March) assuming the 6-month window would give me enough time to complete and polish everything for 1.0.
Unfortunately, the second half of 2024 hit hard. Shortly after the 0.10 update, personal matters left me sidelined for months
(though it did push me toward a healthier lifestyle, which I’m grateful for).
By October, I was back on track… only to face four back-to-back illnesses and a week-long CPU issue during my only healthy stretch in November/December. Being bedridden piled delays atop delays.
This means February will be a crunch month, with some features delayed to post-launch.
However, I'm still very glad to the state of the game at the moment, and I also know that a perfect game is one that is never released, I initially never hoped for the game to reach this state when I initially started to work on it 3 years ago.
Post-1.0 Plans
I’ll continue updating Rogue: Genesia post-launch, albeit at a slower pace. Ideas include:
- Weekly Challenges Procedurally generated challenges that refresh every **Monday**, tied to the date, with leaderboard support. Designed to boost the game’s **long-term longevity**.
- Talent Loadouts Save and swap talent configurations—similar to Equipment Loadouts.
- Card Pinning (QoL Pin cards in the Encyclopedia to highlight them during selection.
- Boss-Specific Equipment Unique gear tied to defeating bosses.
- Cursor Menu Rework Revamp one of the game’s oldest menus for better customization and in-game visual previews.
- Manual Melee Avatar A dynamic, high-skill avatar focused on melee combat—similar to Gunslinger but using default weapons. A rough prototype of the avatar can be download from this mod I've made