Hey everyone,
It's been just over a week since Dverghold went into Early Access, and so far, the response has surpassed our expectiations. With us being a small team of people mostly working in their spare time, the final stretch before launch was rough to say the least and we did not know what would happen once I pressed that "Release" button...
Thankfully, the reviews have been overwhelmingly kind, sitting at Very Positive as I write this. The game has been received well by fans of the genre and, from what we can see so far, also by some people not so familiar with games in the "blobber"-tradition. One highlight certainly was being featured by Youtuber SplatterCat, a surprise for a project of our size for sure. To everyone who bought the game, left a review, reported a bug, or just told a friend: thank you, it means a lot to us!
The first week after launch
Since release, we've shipped patches every day, often more than once. We know the game is still in Early Access, there is still a lot of work to be done and we have a long road ahead to version 1.0. Therefore we instantly got to squashing bugs, smoothing rough edges, and putting in things people specifically asked for. A few of the things we've already addressed:
Various UI improvements, such as arrows on the side of the screen of the camp view to let people know they can scroll, fixed some UI elements with overlapping text etc.
Fixed some game breaking bugs that reared their heads once the game was running on systems it has never been tested before, such as a "red screen" bug that happened with certain older iGPUs.
Balancing changes to make things a bit less harsh for people getting stuck in the beginning of the game. This surely will be an ongoing task for months to come.
Improved post-processing and better support for various aspect ratios, including wide-screen.
And a ton more ...
If you've reported something, there's a good chance it's already in or on our list. Please keep it coming! This feedback is exactly what Early Access is for, and it's helping us improve Dverghold in a more efficient way than we could alone. Once we have ironed out the most pressing things, we will get to adding actual new content, which brings me to ...
What's next
Apart from our ongoing patches, we've got bigger two content updates mapped out over the coming months with a planned frequency of about 5-6 weeks per update:
Update 1: Get all the foundations in. Before we pile on new dungeon and main story content, we want the game you already own to feel more complete. This update focuses on fleshing out the camp with more elements (the priest's "blessings & covenants"-system plus the blacksmith will also get a new upgrade), various quality-of-life improvements, including making systems like injuries, battle wear and character states easier to read at a glance, a set of new sidequests and generally more to do in the existing dungeons, as well as more character portraits, so your recruits stop showing up as nearly identical twins (or at least less often...painting those portraits takes a lot of time ^^). In fact, we plan to add new portraits with every future major update. Speaking of portraits: as it has been requested many times, we will support importing custom portraits in this update as well!
Update 2: Deeper Down. A brand-new dungeon level that pushes the main quest forward ("The Sorgarn Mines"), along with new items and new monster variants. This is where the game's story takes its next real step forward.
After that, we're of course not going to stop: as mentioned, you can expect regular content updates roughly every 6 weeks as we build toward the full 1.0 release over the time of approximately the next year. Our goal is simple: keep shipping content while listening to you and turn Dverghold into the best game we can make, one that is worthy of representing the spirit of true oldschool Fantasy and dungeon delving!
A quick note on price
As the game grows and gets closer to completion, the price will rise in steps toward its final 1.0 value. So, basically right now is the cheapest Dverghold will ever be, so if you've been on the fence, you might want to take the opportunity ^^
Again, thank you for everything and drop your bugs, ideas, and feedback in the Steam discussions or our Discord ! Cheers!