Hello everyone!
As we make it to the end of the year, I realise we have never really posted anything concrete about our plans regarding full release and what is left to do before that point. In case you don't know, we are just a two man team. That means your feedback, support and encouragement over this year has been beyond value to us.
I figured it would make sense to do now - as we're entering the phase of the games development where we look towards release (which is vaguely terrifying) and with so many people having joined us for the ride in Early Access, I wanted to share our plans with you all.
First off I just want to say thank you again if you're here already - we couldn't have made Dice With Death without your support so far. I also want to say that while this is about our plans for 1.0, it is not the end of our plans for the game. But we'll get more to that in a bit!
So far in Early Access, we've added The Witch, our second game mode Eternity, and about 60+ New Relics & Dice. We've got Steam Deck Certified, welcomed around 15,000 players to the game, and nerfed Glimmal Ring about 5 times.
With that all in mind, here's what is next!
New Character - The Adventurer
So, if you've been on our Discord, you might have seen us mention the mysterious Adventurer before. Like all heroes, she discovered that is a job with poor life expectancy. Fortunately for her, Death is always welcoming of new opponents at the table.
The last "core" bit of content remaining before 1.0 is the fourth playable character, The Adventurer. We went through a few names, before we settled on this, as in a way she is our love letter to the tabletop roleplaying games we both enjoy. We wanted her to feel as thematic as The Witch but in a totally different way. How are we aiming to do that? well...
So far, the game uses D6s. It is pretty hard to accommodate different dice into the existing characters without essentially rewriting them. Fortunately, when building a character from the ground up it's much easier. Of course, the most famous example of Dice used in RPGs is the legendary D20, so what would The Adventurer be without one as her Class Relic?
As the name implies, a roll of the D20 will greatly influence your upcoming Turn, and just as naturally as you may critically succeed in your roll, so too might you fail...
Oh and, look at how cool her armour is! (Shoutout to our amazing artist friends Carson and Meeral for their work on her design). It sure would be disappointing if we didn't introduce some sort of Armour mechanic for her (and others!) with her introduction wouldn't it?
We're still in the weeds working on The Adventurer, as she takes our main focus after Eternity Mode's release. She's still a couple of months (at least) away, but is currently planned to headline our 1.0 update in a few months! Needless to say, she will arrive with a whole host of new Relics both for her exclusive use and to share with the others.
Characters Beyond 1.0
When we decided to take the Early Access path of development - one of the first things we agreed upon is that while it takes as long as it takes, we had no intention of being in Early Access for more than a year. We also agreed that after release, whatever big bits of content we add will be added to the base game, for free. We won't charge for additional content unless it was essentially an expansion pack worth of content.
Having said that, please don't think 1.0 is the end of the game being added to! We don't want to go into too much detail yet, but as you can see above, we already know what the 5th Character we plan for is, and he will most likely arrive as the next major update post-release, for free.
More Relics, More Dice
As I mentioned above, we're a two man team. We love working this way as it means we can rapidly prototype, develop, and iterate on our ideas as a small intense unit. It also means that we end up with a big list of things we'd love to do, but the game is on fire and we have to fix it, or we need to focus our work on a much bigger part of the game.
The result is we have a long list of things we'd love to make, some of which we've mostly made and just aren't fit for release yet. Look we even have a Relic called The List! That's how serious the list is. We intend for as many of these to be in the 1.0 update as possible, and some may even arrive beforehand.
Polish, UI & Bug Fixes
Obviously the less fun part but arguably the even more important element to the 1.0 release is polish. At the moment, there's a lot of old UI functionality, lack of polish and minor detailing that's fallen by the wayside simply because it isn't as important as the core content on the game. Trust us, for as many UI suggestions/frustrations we see, we probably have twice as many between ourselves.
The unspoken Circle of Difficulty of game development is just how brutal UI work can be - it's a lot more complex and fiddly than you imagine. Having said that, 1.0 has a whole list of QoL upgrades and fixes that we'll be implementing alongside it. The recent controller revamp and collection overhaul was a good example, but there's a few areas we'll be polishing up to be more representative of a release-ready product.
Whatever you Want
Alright maybe not whatever, but I wanted to end with this as an important reminder that the largest guide, especially when it comes to polish and future features is our community driven feedback. Have a question or wondering whether something will be included in 1.0? Stick in the comments and we'll go through and answer as many as we can!
There's a lot of work left to do, but it's important to recognise and in a way, celebrate, that we're closer to release than we are away from it. It's been an intense 7 months but when we look back at what the game was on Day 1 and what it is now, we're very proud and grateful of all of the support that allowed us to do this. We hope you'll stick around for 1.0 in a few months time and enjoy it!
Cheers,
Connagh & Joel
Sea Glass Games