Hello Rabbits.

I come bearing great news. The netcode... is finally finished.

I hope you won't mind a (maybe boring) blog post covering it. It's basically all I've been working on for the past month and a half. I'm quite proud of how it turned out as well; the result is much cleaner and straightforward than my previous game.

Where shall we start?

Rabbit & Steel's online play is lobby-based. From the menu to begin a run, you can flip through the options to either open up to online play, or simply stay offline.

And of course, you can browse through the public lobbies as well. Each lobby has a name, a description of the party's goal, and how many players they're looking to fill. Additionally, you can lock your public lobby behind a password, if you're looking to keep the lobby between a group of people who might be in a Discord together without necessarily being Steam friends.

Joining a lobby brings you here, to the preparation screen where you can select characters and try out your moves on a training dummy.

However, you don't actually need to pick a character after joining! By simply letting the party move on without you, you become a spectator.

You don't need to limit yourself to one character per computer either.

If you've got a friend sitting next to you IRL who also wants to play in your online lobby, they can join simply by picking up a controller and tapping in. Couch co-op and online play can be done at the same time!

In the above screenshot, we have 4 different computers connected to this lobby.

Player 3 and Player 4 are playing from the computer this screenshot was taken from. If Player 3 wants to quit, they can do so by clicking on their name in this menu.

Player 1 and Player 2 are playing from a different computer called "Client 1" that's connected to this lobby.

The lobby's host "mino", as well as another "Client 3" are just spectating.

...Uh, hopefully that's not confusing. The point is, you can spectate, play your own character, play with people sitting next to you, and play with people on the other side of the world, all in the same lobby, and it'll work just fine. You can even spectate someone doing the single player campaign, if you want.

...Phew! Glad to be done with all of that.

I suppose this is as good a place as any to share other random news about the game's status.

First off, I'm moving the release date to Early 2024. Sorry!

I think if I tried really hard I still *could* get the game out by late 2023... but honestly, I think that the result of doing that would be a pretty bare-minimum kind of game. What's advertised on the tin, and nothing more.

As much as I wanted to get the game out during the Year of the Rabbit, with just a few more months on the schedule I think I could make the game something much more special. I'd have space to add in the features and content that would truely make the game shine. So I'll be taking that time.

Second, the game is now being classified as a Roguelike! Rather than a Roguelite.

There are still going to be a few things you unlock over the runs, but the game's design has come to emphasize a consistent difficulty, rather than something you could progress your way out of.

Even when I was calling it a Roguelite the progression elements were pretty minimal, and they've only become more minimal over time, to now being just a collection of unlockable items and cosmetic baubles. So, not wanting to give people expectations of Hades-esque strength progression (or something of that sort) I'll be updating the terminology in various places as I go.

Third, and maybe least important; I'll be updating some art assets and screenshots in the coming weeks. A lot of the stuff on the store page is a little bit old.

Maybe the art updates will give me an excuse to introduce some characters... that sounds like a fun topic for next time!

See you then!