What's next for Tiny Rogues?

Hello fellow Tiny Rogues,
it's been a while since the last "What I'm working on" post.

The Past

First let's quickly look back on what has happened in 2022.

• The game released in September 2022.
• There has been 3 big patches so far.
• The game can now be played without mouse and is even Steam Deck verified.
• Steam Cloud saves have been configured.
• The weapon enchantment system has been added.
• Class abilities have been refined. Looking at you, Pyromancer and Doppelganger.
• The Gunslinger class, a bunch of new firearm weapons and traits have been added.
• The Cinder system finally made the game difficult. It more than doubled the amount of enemy enchantments and even added new automaton enemies into the game.
• You finally can sell equipment and weapons in pawn shops.
• You can actually repair the Broken Hero Sword.
• Many achievements have been added.
• Many balance tweaks for weapons, equipment and traits increased variety by a lot.
• The latest patch added a bunch of new unique and fun equipment items.
• Many many bugs have been added fixed.

When Tiny Rogues released in September I was still working my part-time job. I am incredibly grateful that the success of the game enabled me to quit my job and to become a full time developer. I can not emphasize this enough. I've been full time developing Tiny Rogues since late November and I think the last patch truly showed what I am capable of in a small amount of time when I am able to fully invest my time into this project. The last updates patch notes almost didn't fit because Steam would limit the amount of characters I could type. I am really proud of the Christmas update and I think the game is in it's best state ever. I am having so much fun playing the game myself. I even reset my save state and am currently working on unlocking all achievements again. I even beat Cinder 16 which I didn't think I would be able to do.

The Present

In the Christmas update I started to improve 3 important shortcomings I noticed.

1. Difficulty: A lot of players wished for Tiny Rogues to be more difficult. I promised a solution to this problem with the Cinder system. The Cinder system introduced malleable difficulty to Tiny Rogues. You can toggle up to 16 different modifiers. I evaluated ideas for difficulty modifiers in a community survey beforehand and I tried to add interesting and challenging modifiers that aren't just "Increased enemy health" and "Increased enemy damage". A few instances of those type of modifiers can still be found but in general I think we did a pretty good job at coming up with unique and interesting difficulty modifiers for the game. As of right now there is no extrinsic motivation (e.g.: souls, unlocks, rewards, ...) to play at higher difficulties. Even if you are not a fan of increased difficulty I can recommend you to check out some of the modifiers and challenge yourself as the mayhem introduced by turning on a bunch of modifiers is very funny to experience at least once.
2. Choice: I wanted to improve choices in Tiny Rogues across the board. So I reworked Blood Chests, Blood Shrines, Cursed Shrines, a lot of traits and I did a massive weapon balance overhaul. Every patch I try to make choices matter more. That is why I still care about game balance a lot even if the game is "just" a non-competitive single-player game.
3. Loot: Before the last update I have noticed the RPG part of the game came a bit short. In order to amp up the RPG-feeling of Tiny Rogues I added over 30 new equipment items, including powerful legendary and epic items. I also reworked ton of already existing equipment items to make them feel more enticing to use. By now, equipment and weapons also reveal their rarity tier to you. All of these changes in the last patch already have had a big impact on strengthening the RPG aspect of Tiny Rogues. Funnily enough, I am not even close to being done yet.

Now, finally, let's talk about the future. After all that's what this post was supposed to be about.

The Future

Here comes the bad news. I want to take it slow with the next update. 0.2.0 will be what I will call an expansion for the game. We had 3 big patches so far. I imagine an expansion to add more content and changes than 3 big patches combined. Expansions are not DLC. Expansions are free. Tiny Rogues is still in Early Access and expansions are just fancy names for GINORMOUS patches that bring the game a lot closer to 1.0.

On this note, why is Tiny Rogues still in early access?

To me the reason is simple. When I started working on Tiny Rogues I had a plan for the game. I had a goal in terms of floors, bosses and general content I want the game to have. Tiny Rogues is at like 20% of the final amount of content I have planned for the game! So in my mind it is not done at all.

Tiny Rogues 1.0 is planned to release before 2023 ends. I personally expect 1.0 to hit in December 2023.

I do not want to give a release date for the first Tiny Rogues expansion though. I want to really take my time and enjoy working full time on the game. A rough estimate of the maximum amount of time before the 0.2.0 expansion releases will be 4 months.

I know it is a long time but I want to expand the game beyond your wildest dreams.

I try to not over-promise, but let's phrase it like this: If Tiny Rogues 0.2.0 will add any less than 25 new boss fights, 10 new floors, 100 new weapons, 100 new equipment items, 30 new traits, 10 new classes and 40 new event rooms, I will be disappointed in myself.

I especially am looking forward to expand the equipment pool with even more unique and powerful items. I really love what the impact the new rare drops have had in the Christmas update. The most fun part of any RPG truly is to find awesome loot.

I want to make weapon types feel even more unique and together with smarter drops I hope these new items will truly spike enjoyment from time to time.

I also plan to add a new equipment slot to the game: Gloves. It's been about time, right?

Additionally I am aware that there are players, that play the game so much, they accumulate millions of souls. The game is in dire need of a new soul sink. I want Tiny Rogues 0.2.0 to add a multitude of ways to spend your souls. It might even be a good opportunity to rework the boring Blessings skill tree with a new and more exciting system, no promises yet though.

I am also aware that Tiny Rogues seriously needs some new end bosses and endgame content. Mega Death is the pinnacle obstacle right now. This will change in Tiny Rogues 0.2.0.

Ever since the game released players have been asking how to open these:

Tiny Rogues 0.2.0 will at least open one of these doors. I personally really want to open both at the same time but we'll see how development speed goes.

Last but not least, I have a little teaser for you:

I say it again and again.

Thank you so much for supporting me and the game.

It's a pleasure to develop this game for you (and for me, lol) and I am looking forward to introduce you more and more to the ever expanding world of Tiny Rogues.