What's Next for Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition?

18 Nov 2020Developer post

Source: Steam Community (opens in a new tab)

Hello Hunters!

So, last week we finally released Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition upon you all. Thanks to your support, it’s been our most successful launch in the history of Nomad Games - it’s really blown us away how much feedback, love and suggestions we’ve received from you all. (As the person responsible for looking at all our social media, I can tell you that release day and the following days were pretty overwhelming!)

Now that we’ve had some time to get over the initial release, I’ve sat down with the rest of the team to properly outline what we’ve got planned for the future of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition. Here at Nomad, we’ve been doing our best to be transparent during development of the game, and we’ll keep that up going forward too! This is one hell of an update, so grab yourself a drink and some snacks and get set for the long haul! We have a lot to cover, so we’ve divided it into sections if you want to skip to specific features.

But as a starting point for transparency, we want to address something that a number of people have already brought up:

Why have you released the game now, instead of holding off until these features were finished?

To answer that question, we need to give you a peek behind the indie game development scene. We have a staff of around 20 people, who we pay to make our games, and we rent out an office here in the UK. When we’re looking at our finances, we look at how much we’re hoping to earn throughout the year and how much we’re going to be spending. If we work out that a certain month is going to be rocky for us, we can rest easy knowing that we have an upcoming game release that will help bolster our finances and keep us afloat - something that we’re more aware of than ever during the Covid-19 pandemic.

As soon as we start pushing back a big game release like Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition, we’re left with a big gap in our financial plans. Remember, we’re only a small studio - it’s not like we can release other content that a different team has been working on. So instead, we made the decision to release the base version of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition now, with the promise of future updates to add features we know players will want.

And we know that this is a decision that relies on you, the players, trusting us to come through on that promise! We’re well aware that the video game industry is under more scrutiny than ever before, with headlines about loot-boxes, crunch and mistreated workers seemingly hitting front pages with no end. So we know it’s a big ask for you to put your trust in us, but we hope that by fulfilling our promises, we’ll be able to show you we’re deserving of that trust! Also, updating a game as time goes isn’t something new to us at Nomad - 7 years on, we’re still adding new features to Talisman: Digital Edition after community requests!

Turns out giving a transparent answer takes a while! So without further ado, let’s go through everything we’re currently working on and are planning to work on:

Steam Achievements

Probably the most finished thing on this list for Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition, our Steam achievements were just slightly unfinished when we hit release day.

We’ve already got most of the coding done in the back-end, and we’ve now finished making all those lovely little icons that you’ll see when you unlock them in game. Our next step will be to test them to make sure they unlock as they should and are bug-free, and then you’ll be able to get bragging rights over your friends!

1v4 multiplayer

Definitely the most requested feature so far (across Steam reviews, our Discord and social media) is 1v4 multiplayer. We’ve heard you loud and clear, and know that this is the feature most requested across the board.

So, the first thing to do is let you all know exactly where we’re currently at with 1v4. The good news is that we already have 1v4 online in a state where we can test it internally with our QA team. Right now it technically works, and you’d be able to play through an entire game of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition online if you know what doesn’t work. The moment you start trying to do something that doesn’t work though… that’s when things start to get ugly.

So right now, we have a list of things that need to be updated to properly work in 1v4 multiplayer. This makes our jobs easier, as we can just work through that list and make it smaller and smaller.

A good example of this is the card ‘Speedy Telegraph’. Suddenly throwing out the set order of activations when you need to keep track of 4 different hunters on completely different systems causes a whole heap of edge-cases and issues to arise. This is something we need to make sure works before we roll out 1v4 to you all.

Also, our list of things that need to be updated doesn’t account for bugs and issues that we can’t possibly foresee - which makes it hard for us to judge exactly how long this update will take to come out. As we continue crushing bugs and getting closer to finishing the update though, we’ll be able to give you a definitive release date.

Speaking of, one of the key weapons in our arsenal of bug-crushing are the lovely team of beta testers we’ve had helping us with Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition before release. We still have some things we need to update before we can give the 1v4 multiplayer mode over to our beta testers, but we’re hoping they can start sinking their fangs into it starting in early December.

Now that Steam has rolled out new features to help people beta test their games (you can read more about it here if you’re interested!) we’ll also be in a better position to add more beta testers to the game so we can thoroughly thrash out bugs in 1v4 multiplayer. If we decide we need more beta testers, we’ll be sure to put out a call to the community!

Rejoining Games

Something we’ve got planned to add to Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition after we roll out the 1v4 update, is improving the ability for people to rejoin online games after disconnecting. The reason we’re bringing this up now is that it’s a good example of how adding 1v4 multiplayer is a complicated process!

Right now you can rejoin a disconnected game of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition up to one minute after you disconnect, unless you quit or close the game. But we need to make sure that we code and design 1v4 multiplayer so that it plays nicely with rejoining games. We don’t want to code ourselves into a corner, so we need to do the groundwork now for rejoining online games, which adds time to the development of 1v4 multiplayer.

So, ahead of the 1v4 update we’re going to be looking at things like:

How big of a window we’ll allow for people to rejoin after disconnecting
Looking at ‘player states’ and how we define whether a player is ‘idle’ or ‘away’ online
Giving people the option to wait for disconnected players or swap them to AI if they fail to reconnect

These are all things we need to take into consideration and work on before we can roll out 1v4. We’re confident that we’ll be able to get all these things done, it’ll just take time.

Text chat

Something else that we’ve heard your requests for is text chat! This is slightly lower on our priority list, but is also easier to implement. We’ve already got this feature in a number of our other games, so we understand the process of implementing it very well.

We’re going to add chat to the game room and in game, so you’ll be able to chat before the game starts and during the game as well.

Something we’ve already discussed is if we’d need to keep any chat hidden from Dracula, but we’ve agreed that most of the chat done during a game of Fury of Dracula is open anyway so we don’t need a filter. This fits with how you’d play the physical board game too!

iOS and Android versions

Something else that has been highly requested over the past months has been a release date for the iOS and Android versions of the game. The good news is that we’ve been making the mobile version of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition in parallel with the PC version, so a huge amount of the work has already been done.

So what still needs to be done? Well, at the moment, we need to:

Optimise the user interface
Update a bunch of assets so they work better on mobile
Fully implement touch screen support
Add support for dragging certain items across the screen
Add push notification support
Implement a ton of smaller updates that pile up

Now that the Steam version has been released, we can start looking at making our way through this list. We know roughly how long things like adding push notifications will take, as we’ve done it in other games before. However, there are still a number of unknowns as we go into the Christmas period and people start taking holidays. So at the moment, we’re still not in a position to share a firm release date, but as we whittle down the list of things that need doing, we’ll be able to share a firm release date with you all!

House rules

Something we heard a lot of people request before the game launched was in-game house rules! Fury of Dracula is a game that has been around for 30+ years at this point, so it’s had plenty of time to pick up some community favourite house rules over the years. When making the digital version, we also came up with some of our own ideas for good rules that would enhance the game.

So far, some of the house rules we’re looking forward to implementing the following:

‘Pirate Dracula’ discouragement/prevention measures
Allowing hunters to view facedown discarded cards in certain situations
Allowing delayed hunters to use their whole turn to become undelayed when Renewed Vigor is in play
Dracula being able to choose to not mature cards when a hideout slides off the trail
Bat tokens being removed from Hunters when they’re defeated
Roadblocks not affecting Dracula moving hunters

We know you all will have suggestions for house rules, so in December we’ll be rolling out an official ‘What House Rules do you want to be added’ questionnaire so your feedback isn’t missed!

This is a feature where we’ll be happy to continue updating Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition with more house rules as time goes on too, so don’t worry if your favourite rule isn’t put in straight away.

Variations in AI difficulty

Something that we’ve had a lot of player feedback on is the AI difficulty in the game. Especially in our Steam reviews, players have been pointing out that the AI in Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition doesn’t pose enough of a challenge for experienced players.

Our plan currently is to release regular updates to the AI that will improve it over time, as we have more information to work with and more time to improve it. This means that if you play Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition every single day, these changes might be harder to spot - but as time goes on, the AI will become more robust and intelligent.

We’re also going to be adding 3 different difficulty levels for the AI! We’re ready to test this internally, and while we’re working on the game we can have an AI vs AI match up on a second monitor to keep an eye on what they’re doing. This is quite therapeutic actually, as we can just watch the AI do their best to outsmart each other.

The Journal

What is a hunter without their journal? We’re currently working on a ‘log’ feature for Fury that will keep track of every action that has happened in the game. We’re hoping that it’ll come in handy if you miss something or need a reminder of what happened a few turns back.

However, we don’t just want something that gives you a list of actions - not in a game like Fury of Dracula! Our idea for the Journal is that it’ll be a narrative tool as well, inspired by the fact the original Dracula novel itself was composed of news reports and letters.

Instead of just saying “Mina Harker moved to London and entered combat with a Reckless Vampire. The Reckless Vampire was defeated and Mina Harker suffered 3 damage due to combat.” we want something that captures the theme of the original novel! So in the journal, this would appear as “Mina Harker arrived in London, following rumours of Dracula from local police. The rumours proved to be true, as we can report she was attacked by a Reckless Vampire while investigating an abandoned apartment in Whitechapel. Luckily she escaped with her life, only suffering minor injuries (3 damage).

We’re going to spend a good amount of time making sure the Journal flows correctly, so that each game of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition ends up creating a unique story for you to read through once you’ve finished the game.

Also, unlike games where all information is publicly available, the log in Fury of Dracula is going to be different for every single player, and we don’t want hunters deducing anything from an update that should only be seen by Dracula for example. So this does add a bit more extra development time!

Friends Support for User Accounts

As part of bringing the game to mobile, we want to make it super easy to play with your friends in whatever way works best for you. We know it’s not easy to expect 5 people to all have PCs and to all be online at the same time, which is why we’re working on adding cross-platform friend support to the game.

Once you’ve signed into your Nomad Account, you’ll be able to see and add other friends, regardless of the platform they’re on. Not only will this mean you’ll be able to compare your stats with your friends, you’ll be able to invite them to games!

Translations

Once we have the time to do so, we’re planning to properly sit down and evaluate what languages we want to translate Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition into. The good news is that we have a whole heap of information to inform that decision, including:

How well the physical game has sold in different languages
How well the physical game has sold in different countries
How many members of the community have requested different languages
Languages the physical board game has already been translated into
How well languages have been adopted in our other games

So we’re very confident that we’ll be able to make smart decisions about where to focus our efforts for translation so that it’ll have the most positive impact!

Other platforms

At the moment, we’re focusing on bringing the game to mobile because we know for sure that there is a large audience there. We’ve also had a lot of historical success on mobile, which means we can be confident that Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition will perform well there.

When it comes to other platforms like MacOS and Nintendo Switch, we’re a lot less confident in how Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition will perform. Because of this, we need to take the time to sit down and properly evaluate the risks and benefits of bringing Fury to each platform to make sure that it’s a decision that makes sense, business-wise.

As soon as we have time to do that (on top of everything else we’re doing), we’ll be in a much better position to confirm or deny what platforms we want to bring Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition to. Of course, letting us know you’re keen for a certain platform puts it on our radar too! So if you’re holding out for that Sega Game Gear version, let us know!

What else are you working on?

Right now, our immediate concern is squashing bugs that you’ve all been kind enough to point out over the past week. We’ve still got a few to get though, but thanks to everyone who submitted detailed reports of what issues they’ve encountered, we’ve been able to make great progress.

We’ll hopefully be pushing out bug-fixing patches regularly between now and Christmas, so stay tuned to our Steam announcements for patch notes. We'll also be keeping a close eye on the community - so if there is anything that hasn't been answered here, please let us know! We'll do our best to answer any questions you have. You can reach out to us here on Steam or via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Or if you’d like, you can bolster the ranks of hunters on our Discord and chat more directly to the devs!

We've already asked for questions from the community here on Steam, and I'll be making a separate post that answers community questions.

And finally, I want to thank everyone who has purchased the game and supported us on behalf of the entire Nomad Games team. This has been the most successful launch in the history of the company, and that wouldn’t be the case without you telling your friends, leaving Steam reviews and generally supporting us.

So from the whole team, thank you! ːheartː