I Answer Your Questions

First of all:
THANK YOU for 255 PLEDGES! THE TINY ROGUES DEATH PLUSHIE WILL HAPPEN!

Hello fellow Tiny Rogues,

it's time to answer your questions!

I slightly rephrased some questions and bunched up similar ones.

Achievements

Are you planning on adding additional achievements to the game? Yes

I would like to see achievements that don't depend on items, stats and characters. I'd like to see stuff like "complete Floor X without taking damage" or more achievements regarding the new endgame bosses and so on! Sometimes it is hard to come up with good achievements. Last patch didn't add achievements because, it wasn't a content update. When new content comes, new achievements will also come. I think future achievements will keep being a mix of challenges, content and unlocks.

How did you get the idea of having your achievement names be songs? It's brilliant and I'd love to have a ton more! I actually don't remember how this happened. I think it was an attempt of invoking some feelings of nostalgia. I think it's a cool easter egg and makes for a good playlist too! It also makes me laugh so much. It's always hilarious to find a fitting song title.

If you do add more achievements, you should use a song by the strokes! I am actually one of the persons who rarely remembers band and song names. I'm sure I'll recognize at least one song when I listen in.

Since you have good taste in music, got a link to a playlist you listen to? I don't know if I have good taste in music. I very often spam 1 song until I am sick of it. I don't really have a playlist to share but I like this one YouTube video called "some 80s music my dad still listens to".

0.2.5 Update

I feel like the newest update reduced build variety. Is increasing variety of builds something on your radar to improve, or are you happy with the status quo? I feel like it actually increased build variety. Yes some obscure stuff like "on taking damage" got removed, but some other builds are a lot stronger now. At this point I am quite happy with the status quo. I don't have any huge mechanics or archetypes on my list. Orbitals might need a bit more support.

I have trouble spotting Weapon Enchantments since the last update! Will you revert it so that the enchantment shows as a prefix before the name again? As mentioned in the patch notes, I will add an option to the game that adds this feature back to the game.

Will you ever revert removed mechanics? (e.g.: Ammo and Mana Flux) Probably not. I think this game specifically is a lot better without these mechanics.

Why do the alignment rooms only offer charms now? I felt that having them sell thematic items was more fitting and more natural as I'd be less incentivized to visit a room if I already have 4 charms. Charms are just a good replacement until I finally get around to adding a unique feature to these shops.

Plushie

If this plush release goes well can we get an Amon plush as well? I think it would be cool to do Amon and Eden. Let's check the quality of MakeShip and then evaluate future collabs together in the community.

Unfortunately I can't make a donation. I can't help financially in any way except buying the game. That's completely fine. Thank you for buying the game!

I have made my $2 pledge! Thanks!

I've never pre-ordered anything faster. Thanks!

Does Death watch anime? Only with you.

Content Questions

Will you add any new weapon types to the game or new classes this year? I have plans for a new magic weapon type called Sorcery. I also got plans to rework Scrolls and possibly also Scepters. At some point I want to add yoyos.

Will you add more characters with each additional update or these are all the characters we will get? Characters are added with expansions. I want to add at least 17 more characters.

New unlocks related to the unlockable classes would be nice! You only play them to unlock them but then you are kind of done with unlocking things. I also think there is something missing. I definitely want to incentivize playing the roster-2 characters a bit more.

There are alternate characters, but have you played The Binding Of Isaac? In that game there are also tainted characters. But there's mod for the game that adds tarnished characters like 1 more layer of alternate characters! You can maybe add more characters that are more challenging or unique. I think it would be fun if the game had more characters. I actually only played a bit of Isaac way back when it was a flash game. I was really bad at the game.

Have you been considering adding more to the alternate character classes? Like Evil and Good variants, perhaps? The plan was that Between Heaven & Hell adds 34 characters, 17 'Good' and 17 'Evil' characters. The scope was too big so I cut it down to just 17 alternate characters.

Love this game, was wondering if you plan on adding either more characters or perhaps alternate skills for classes in the future? I think I came to the conclusion that I will add subclasses to some classes. You will be able to ascend during a run and choosing a subclass will also change your skill. This way I can add skills to characters in a fitting way, War Cry for Barbarian, Meteor for Sorcerer, Teleport for Wizard and stuff like that.

Will there be any form of alternate paths? Yes, Into the Abyss will offer new paths.

Any plans to add class specific endings or paths? There are currently no plans for class specific endings or paths. I think about Enter the Gungeon when I hear this. I plan to add a lot more classes to Tiny Rogues and I think it would be too much work to add a unique ending for every class.

It'd be fun to have moral based routes, e.g.: evil being more cursed items and tougher enemies while good gives higher odds for blessings and more favorable enemies. I actually have plans to tie stats to the alignment points. So very soon the alignment will have a slight effect on your run.

Meta Progression

What's up with Paragon Levels? Will there be any updates to the system or is it currently just a flex thing? Paragon levels currently only serve the purpose to track your progress while there is nothing else to unlock.

Will paragon levels be practically useful in the future? Will meta progression be reworked? I don't know exactly yet what I will do with paragon levels but I have some ideas. At some point I want them to serve a purpose of unlocking something. We will see! In the past I thought maybe cosmetics but I also have some other ideas.

Do you plan on adding more progression systems, especially for the endgame? I have some ideas for more meta progression systems. They will most likely be tied to alternate game modes and not to the main game. I don't want to overload Tiny Rogues on meta progression.

Will there ever be mastery for specific characters or a bigger mastery or meta progression system as the runs get longer and the difficulty ramps up? In general I am not keen on making the runs even longer and increasing enemy health more. I think runs in Tiny Rogues will never go beyond floor 13 for that reason. Currently I am against giving more points and introducing more meta power. I think the current amount of meta power is fine. I am not a fan of matching meta progression against artificial enemy health increases. I like getting some perks and getting a bit stronger but I don't want to create a giant artificial treadmill. I always want Tiny Rogues to be a game that you can beat in it's entirety without any meta progression at all.

Any chance of extending the meta perk talent tree? I really like what's there and cant help but want more! The Mastery Tree is basically still in it's first iteration. I am very happy with it but I definitely want to expand upon it.

Will there be more perma-progression? For example: individual classes with their own skill trees! I think the aforementioned subclasses will be something you have to unlock. So that's a bit of class progression.

Expansions

When do I get to go Into the Abyss? Next year!

How will the game be updated after Into the Abyss? More free early access expansions and free updates!

Will you still continue to update the game after 1.0? E.g.: with a DLC? We will see. I have an idea for a DLC but I can imagine after 1.0 multiple years will have passed and I will finally want to work on something new.

Modding

Will you add workshop or official mod support? Tiny Rogues is made with Unity. Currently I compile the game in a way which is not modding friendly, it's called IL2CPP. In my experience this way of compiling the game leads to better performance. It should not be a lot of work to change the compilation method to Monogame, which as far as I know, sort of enables modding. Unity games have been around for a while so players have developed ways to mod them. This will be the minimum modding support with version 1.0. Until then, I would personally prefer to not have modders interfere with my vision. Depending on the motivation I can imagine to add more modding support. I'd love to add in-game systems which allow people to create classes, items and more, even without having any programming knowledge. That'd be ideal.

Can you add? Would you add?

Are you planning on adding a housing feature? Maybe.

Can you add a social mode in which all unlocked characters can interact with each other and, for example, work, play or maybe even flirt with each other? 🔥 Chances are slim.

Can you add Skibidi Toilet? No

Can you add me into the game? No

Can you add Hatsune Miku to the game or a reference to her? Please! Your chances are better than Skibidi Toilet.

Would you be open to letting the players design a handful of items? Before the last update some players actually "won" the ability to design an item for Tiny Rogues. Maybe there will be more of these opportunities in the future on the Discord.

Would you consider adding percent health damage to the game through a weapon enchantment or some other way? We had that in the past and right now I think I will not add it again because it's not very balanced.

Any chance that you add something to secure acquiring certain items during a run? Somehow I find it hard to complete set items. Even when I try really hard! Yes, though I am not sure how universally available this will be. I plan on adding a Wish skill to Tiny Rogues which will be the ultimate one time use cheat code. Overall I think the completion rate of set items is in a good spot.

Would you consider making more evolving equipment, weapons or even pets? I actually have a ticket to give every weapon type at least 1 evolvable weapon. I find that really cool, so an evolving axe, an evolving cannon, an evolving Spellbook and so on. Evolving pets are a good idea but I got nothing planned right now. Equipment items will likely never evolve.

Would you ever add an unlockable item that lets you choose specific items early, similar to the console? Yes, I had some ideas in the past but nothing really stuck yet. I think in another roster version of Doppelganger and Chaos it would be cool for them to be a sort of "build-a-bear" class.

Will you ever add a chocolate milk item, and do you like chocolate milk? (The person goes into great detail how they love chocolate milk.) I like chocolate milk. What could the consumable do in-game?

Can you please add an option to turn off the blood effects when the player dies? I have never thought about this. I guess I could maybe add this. No promises.

Would you do equipment sets that include weapons? Maybe. I generally like Weapons to be flexible pieces, but I can also see it being cool.

Can you add a button that actually lets us pet the dog? Hmmm. I'll have to think about this.

Would you ever allow for an option to disable equipment load? Yes! I have this idea for a Game Rules tab in the options menu. Similar to the game rule commands in Minecraft. I think it would be cool to let players modify some aspects of the game to their liking.

We have the obligatory fishing minigame, when is the obligatory vehicle section coming out? I have not thought of a racing or vehicle mini game yet. Could be cool but I got nothing planned.

Would it be possible to make something like the cheats menu to totally customize a build, traits, weapons and items. To make it easier to test builds and weapons? It would be possible but I got nothing planned so far. I feel like it's part of the game to go with the flow. If anything I'd like Tiny Rogues to be more random and less sandbox-y.

I would absolutely love the ability to save between floors. Runs can be 40-60 minutes and I don't always have time to play a run from start to finish. On game over the save should be lost, of course. Do you plan to implement something like this? Yes. Fun fact: When I made Tiny Rogues I didn't know roguelikes need this feature. I originally planned to make a roguelike so I don't have to program save state functionality. I was wrong. At this point it's very hard to implement this feature but I hope I can get it into the game in some day. Maybe I let players quit in every spawn room or something like that. I don't have it on my radar for 2024 but you never know.

Game Mechanics

Do you plan to make Flails and Bibles distinctly different from each other? No plans, I like Flails and Bibles.

Does Power affect my total damage or just magic? Power affects all damage.

I think the epic ring that let you complete any set with only 1 item should be a charm, because some sets require the accessory slot. To be honest, I am starting to think it could be a trait. That'd be a really cool trait. Maybe the ring can stay and I can add a trait with a similar mechanic in the future.

For some reason my game has forgotten a lot of things I've done, a lot of my characters are locked once again, and I know I´ll do it again but just wondering why! I am sorry that happened. The save system still has some flaws and sometimes Steam Cloud can also mess with it. It happens very rarely. The game actually makes backups but they are hard to access and understand as a player. I plan to add a backup browser into the game in the future.

To me the dice system is a bit convoluted and dice never show up when I really need them. Any thoughts on simplifying this with a "Master Dice" or something that you can attune during your run to a dice color of your choosing? Also, a dice to reroll boss offerings would be rad! The reason dice come in different colors is because they do different things which have different levels of power. Rerolling boss rewards is a lot stronger than rerolling rooms, so Gold Dice are rarer than Red Dice. And yes, you can reroll the boss offerings with Gold Dice.

Endless Mode / NG+ / Looping

Is there an endless mode planned? Or a mode with additional floors? Or looping or a NG+ mode? I do have plans for an endless mode system. It will be a pseudo loop / NG+ called Eternity. This feature will allow you to quit after floor 12, take a break, close the game and then at some other point resume into an extra run with the same character. If you die in Eternity though, the character will be lost. It will be more like an endless amount of rooms and floors. The rooms will rise in difficulty until you die. A random mix with all enemies from all floors and random bosses. This is currently all the design work I have done on this feature so it might change drastically in the future. In the past I had other ideas but right now this is the main idea.

Multiplayer

Will there ever be an online or local co-op mode or any multiplayer features? Tiny Rogues will never get multiplayer. Neither online, nor offline. Unfortunately the game is programmed with an ungodly amount of programmer sins which make it near impossible to turn this game into a multiplayer game. I heard people say "modders will add multiplayer" and I can already say, the modder that tackles this issue will basically have to do an entire rewrite of Tiny Rogues. So you might as well just make your own game. That being said, I am interested in adding multiplayer features. E.g.: asynchronous features that allow player interaction. I have nothing planned right now but I can imagine that at some point I'll add some social elements.

Difficulty

Is there anything planned past Cinder 20, or will that be the final non-self-imposed difficulty for the game? I technically have designs for many more Cinder modifiers. I can imagine at some point Cinder 24 will be a thing but let's focus on making Cinder 20 happen first. I also had an idea for a secret masochist mode which just giga nerfs the player in all aspects. Will probably happen at some point.

Some character specific Cinder scaling going above 16, especially with less RNG heavy mechanics would be cool! I don't have any plans for character specific Cinders. In general I am quite happy with the amount of RNG that current Cinder modifiers add and future ones probably will be around the same.

Would you consider adding a Cinder modifier that doubles the game speed? No.

Have you considered a Cinder that adds a damage cap to Floor 10-12 bosses so we can hear their themes for longer? I have considered it. I actually think the health values of the bosses are quite decent since the last patch. Cinder 20 might add additional mechanics similar to damage caps.

Controls

Any plans to make context sensitive menus? It's very frustrating to drop something and then not be able to do anything else in my inventory until I move away to avoid picking up the item i just dropped. Yes, I want to add this.

Any plans to add aim support to mouse? At least slight one. Playing with controller is waaaay easier! Yes.

Consume from floor with gamepad is more of a text bug, it works with up+action button, not right+action button like the text says! Thanks, I'll make sure to fix this.

Localization

Do you intend to launch translations for other languages? Like Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese, German or French? At first I developed Tiny Rogues without localization in mind. At this point it is very hard to add it. There is no technical foundation to translate the game currently. The game has grown so big though, that I am sure I have to add localization. It is planned for 1.0.

Copyright Questions

How does copyright and ripping off work? Can you sell that plushie legally if it's so similar to a character from another franchise? I hope you don't get in trouble for the plush! I made an in-depth post on this topic here.

Music

Why does Eden's theme go so hard? I get disappointed when Eden dies quickly and I can't listen to the music! Up the Cinder! Also, you can listen to the OST on YouTube.

I absolutely love the OST. MiguelAngell did a fantastic job. He uploaded some beta themes on his channel, King of Hell in particular. This is such a good track, it would be really unfortunate to not include it in the official OST. Is it possible to include it and possible other unreleased tracks as alternative tracks in the game? Not sure yet. Personally I like the new theme a lot better for Amon. I don't know yet if I ever find use for it, sorry. I agree though, Miguel is amazing. Please go support him on Fiverr. Tip well, he charges way too little.

Very Important Questions

Can you tell us how tall are all the playable characters? This is top secret information, all I can say is that Esper is the shortest character and Druid is the tallest.

Will you come to the father son day this time dad? Sorry I'm busy making a video game.

Development

I am curious are you a solo developer or is there a team? I am a solo developer with occasional help from freelancers and the community.

Do you have any sort of rigid design rules when making the bullet hell for enemies and bosses? For bosses I have the rule that I should be able to do a full rotation of all their attacks without taking damage with only 2 Stamina and no Stamina Recovery upgrades.

How do you deal with coding the randomness of the level? Honestly I just wing it. I very often work with ranges, e.g.: Centurion Hunter appears every 7 to 15 rooms.

How do you balance the scaling of weapons and items versus enemies? When Tiny Rogues first released I did rough calculations for balance. E.g.: ~20% more damage per trait, +X% amount of damage from scaling, added it all up and then typed in health values of enemies. After that I did a lot of playtesting. I also work with spreadsheets and editor scripts.

How did you get into game development? Since kindergarten I dreamt of making my own video games. In elementary school I drew Pokémon maps and translated letters with Google for my mom to send them to Nintendo. I've always wanted to make games. In my teens I worked a lot with RPG Maker. Eventually I learnt programming at the University of Applied Science Salzburg. I studied Multi Media Technology there with the minor of Game Development. It's a CS bachelor degree which taught me how to program. We also had to create game projects in teams which taught me a lot.

Is this your first big project, or have you created other games before this one? Tiny Rogues is my first big solo project, yes. In university our finals project was called Happy Funtime Labs. You can find some of my smaller projects on my Itch.Io page.

Do you have employed experience or was this a passion you taught yourself? I have no employed experience. After university I worked as a web developer for a short while.

Do you wish you had colleagues or do you like the way it is? I think it could be fun in the future to have employees or a team to work together on a game. Right now I want to finish Tiny Rogues by myself. I plan to reevaluate myself, my career and my company when I turn 30 years old. (I am 27 right now.) At that point I want to decide if I want to expand my company to a small studio or keep being a solo developer. Right now I don't really miss having colleagues or employees. I feel like it's a lot of management work and I really enjoy not having to deal with that.

Any advice for aspiring game makers?

1. Learn to program. It's not enough to be a backseat game designer. You NEED to get into the thicket and develop your own game and learn by doing. Yes, I know you have played 20.000 hours of Path of Exile, but that does not make you a game designer. Trust me, being in the thicket is way different. (And it's awesome!)
2. Fight scope. Manage your project. Your first game will not be the WoW killer. Make something small but still set yourself up for success. Some genres live from content, so you need to calculate a minimum amount of content to entice players. Focus on the things you like as a player.
3. Don't get distracted by How To Market Your Game Articles and YouTube Indie Dev Logs. Make a game. Put it on Steam. After that, you'll be ahead of 99.9% of aspiring game developers. This should be your first goal. Learn what it takes to release a game and get into the habit of finishing projects. For me, university projects taught me what it means to finish projects. We had a final project every semester so I made more than 4 games while studying.
4. If you are serious about making a successful game, work with Esty8Nine. He offers a special kind of service that is unique on this planet and it will put you miles ahead of all competition. I am not paid to advertise for Esty, in fact, advertising his service hurts my own business actively. He helps you making better games which levels up my competition! The man helped people like Blobfish from Brotato, he is working with people like BenStar from Revita. This is not a scam, this is not about how to get wishlists, this is not how we can abuse the Steam algorithm, this is a service that makes sure your game is up to industry standards.
5. The bare minimum amount of marketing you should do is sending E-Mails to content creators that might be interested in playing your game. Check out Wanderbot or ZiggyD on Twitter, I think they got tutorials on how to phrase a good "first contact" E-Mail. Do research on who has potential to play your game.
6. Don't read reviews. This is my hot take of the day. Let somebody else do it for you, a friend, a consultant, your mom. Let them give you a rough vibe of the situation at hand. Don't fall into the trap of listening to what a single review says. Follow your own vision. This is one of the most important things. Don't stray from your path to please random people.

Story and Lore

Will you add more story and story elements to the game? Yes. Story and lore have been very low priority so far but at some point I want to spice things up a bit.

Personal

What's your favorite enemy and why! I'm talking lil guy enemies too, not just the floor bosses. My favorite enemy to fight are the Fallen Angels in Floor 10. I think it's a lot of fun to dodge their attacks. They shoot these volley of arrows and no matter how many arrows they shoot I feel like it's so satisfying to weave through the projectiles. My favorite boss is probably the Red Dragon or Primal Death. They are just very cool fights.

What's your favorite color? I like pastel pink a lot. Then black, then red and then probably some sort of dark-grey-blue tone.

What is one of your biggest inspirations making this game? Tiny Rogues has a lot of inspirations. The main one was "I need a break from my main project, let's make a small roguelike for fun." A lot of other games influenced Tiny Rogues. I suck at playing Gungeon and had a dire wish to level up in the game and get some stats like in Path of Exile and brute force my way through the game without needing to dodge things. Archvale was a huge moment of enlightenment for me showing me how fun and creative bullet hell combat can be. Also, I really liked the idea of playing Isaac but I hated that you can only aim into 4 directions. I don't find the gameplay very fun. I was also inspired by how simple Hades dungeon generation is. Just generate 2 paths! All of these feelings kind of lead me to making a roguelite that I'd enjoy.

What class do you think most needs a rework? Why is the class not to your satisfaction and would you consider going back to them and fine tuning them? I think Chaos should be way more chaotic. Other than that I am quite pleased with all classes right now. I will rework Chaos in a future patch.

Do you ever play the game just for fun, if so who's your favorite character? Yes! And Demon Hunter is my favorite class.

Don't over work yourself please. Trying my hardest! Just took a week off!

How can we help? Be nice to indie developers. Spread love and positive reviews. Don't hate, don't rally, don't make developers life hard! If you really really like an indie game, tell your favorite content creator about it, type in chat, leave a comment. You are the best marketing tool that indie developers have.

I don't particularly have a question, i just think the game is great and appreciate you for making it! Keep doing good work! You're welcome!

How has your development philosophy changed over the games success? P.S: I work in the industry so if you want something from Gamescom let me know! This is a deep question and I think I haven't reflected enough upon this to tell you. I definitely learnt a lot but overall I am still quite convinced of all my developer ways, no matter how weird they sound to industry veterans. I'd still go early access, I'd still launch without localization and I'd still go without a publisher. Oh, and I'll hopefully be at Gamescom NEXT YEAR!

I hope you are happy with my answers. It actually took way longer to answer all of them than I expected.
Next week I will evaluate all your input on the gamepad controls. You still have time to leave feedback!

Now I will work on bug fixes.

Have a strong week

,
RubyDev