Slayer's Summer: Dungeonmans 1.4
Adventure for Everybody!
A big update with some meaty changes -- all additions, we're not finally banning all Rangermens. Let's dive in!
New Difficulty Modes
When you start a new Academy you'll have a choice of four difficulty modes:
Heroic Adventure: Dungeonmans the way you remember. Death is permanent, the Academy grows as you play, adventure and danger around every corner.
Soft Adventure: For those who don't care for permadeath. Death is a crossroads -- you can choose to let the fallen hero pass on to glory, or have them wake up at the Academy, ready to deliver revenge beatdowns. Up to you!
Desperate Adventure: Meta-progression free! The Academy simply explodes when you die, no carrying anything from one hero to the next because the story ends the moment your HP drops below 1. This is the hardest difficulty for Dungeonmans.
Fallen Academy: Play without the Academy, which means missing out on a boat load of features. There are crutches to make things easier to get by. This mode is boring, don't play it. The hardest mode is Desperate Adventure.
Daily Danger: Heroes of Legend and Leaderboards
At the Academy, right near the Headmaster, is a tome of great legends, stories of Dungeonmens past. Every player gets the same seed: The same hero, the same adventure, the same dungeon layout and monster placement. From there, it is up to you.
Play for score! Either beat down the boss with as few turns and as little damage taken as possible, or scoop up as much loot and XP as you can within the turn limit. Challenge changes every day, and you can play as many times as you like. There's a daily leaderboard so you can dunk on your dozens of scrubby friends who also play Dungeonmans.
Summertime Fun
A simple but delightful event that kicks off today and runs until 4 August. The Academy staff is wearing summertime gear, palm trees adorn the main walkway, and as you adventure you may discover scrolls that summon mighty... beachballs? Yes. The regular fun time beachball bounces around a dungeon as you kick it along, and every enemy bounced rewards greater loot and experience on death. Simple! Harmless! What a good time!
There is also Xespera's Orb of War.
Autoexplore: Yes Really
You can turn it on in the options now. Press a button to have your hero move around the dungeon, picking up loot, opening chests, and seeking out unexplored areas. Autoexplore stops if there's danger nearby, you still have to fight the monsters yourself.
MonoGame Conversion
Thank you XNA for a dozen plus great years! Dungeonmans has made the conversion to MonoGame, hopefully ensuring additional longevity and the ability to run on more machines as time and operating systems march on.
"Wait so does this mean there's a Ma--"
I can't promise that any Mac or Linux builds will see the light of day, but I can say that I'm actively working on getting dmans running on a Mac. I have to figure out the logistics of it all and, yeah, we'll see. It would be great to see dmans running on everything.
Bug Fixes / QoL Updates
"Too many to list" lol I just didn't write them all down. But here's some major fixes/changes:
Updated some double secret edge case deep lore dungeonstuff involving a truly uncommon interaction between 1) swearing too much 2) a very dangerous book.
Fixed a bug with Seize Opportunity if your first jump tile is the one you started in.
Detonate Deadpulse is more effective now. The damage type changes if you have a Wizard Staff equipped, and in all cases the more Deadpulses you have on you, the bigger the damage from the detonation.
Increased Trevor to 9.
Added a confirm dialog to alt-f4 and the close button, but you can tell the dialog to go away forever if you like.
Ironbound Foomcrawlers shouldn't slow things down as much as they did before. The full animation of firing the purple shell will only play if you're going to get hit by it. They also rocket jump less when far away.
Soft Adventure? Autoexplore? What gives?
I had someone come by the Twitch dev stream a few weeks back and talk to me about their experience. They've been playing since the kickstarter days, a true decade-long Dungeonfan. They asked about autoexplore, knowing my stance on it was very much Against, but they told me that they'd gotten older now and their hands hurt so much it that playing games like dmans started to become quite difficult.
That was the critical hit, the arrow that found Smaug's one missing scale. I re-evaluate my stances often, and this time I realized I could make more people happy if I changed some things, so I did.
Games are meant to be fun, and while I fully believe in a stiff challenge, I know sometimes you just want to get away from the world for a little bit. And there's a part of me that always felt bad for that one player who had a crummy work week and was just looking forward to kicking back on Friday night with a relaxing beverage and their favorite dungeonmans... only to die carelessly in the first 20 minutes of their session. Ruins the whole night, maybe the weekend!
For some players, that sort of challenge lights the desire to get back on the horse and crush monsters anew. But for others, dang they just wanted to have a relaxing night after taking it in the sweetbeef all week from the VP of Accounts Mungeable or whatever work situation they're in. Now I can make both sets of players happy.
Sale this Week!
To celebrate all this new excitement, it's now as easy as possible to get your friends to play Dungeonmans: give them a link to the store page and five dollars. The sale runs until next Tuesday (I think) but you can also choose to act like you only have minutes to spare and gift as many copies as possible.
Feedback / Bugs / Critique / Adulations Welcome
The easiest and best place to communicate with me is at the Dungeonmans Discord:
Dungeonfans Academy
But I will also be checking steam forums -- primarily this post, you can comment here too.
Thank you all once more for years and years of grand adventure and fun, I hope this summer is being good to you!