Hello dungeon raiders,

I hope you are well since last time. It’s time to take a look at the development of Neverlooted Dungeon.

Still polishing the game

As I announced last time, the game is now in the polish phase. The game is almost finished, but I continue to improve it until it finally reaches my level of requirements.

My process is quite simple at the moment: I play and analyze the latest version of the game, I do some playtests and analyze the feedbacks, then I sort things to debug, improve, change, add, delete. Then, I work on a new version with the aim of improving the things with the most impact in a limited time. Once the deadline is reached, I finalize the game version, and I start the analysis and improvement loop again.

Full level 2 rework

One of the big challenges I tackled was the complete rework of level 2. For a very long time I found that this level was well below the others in terms of interest, because it was one of the oldest levels that I had created. And as it is important to “confirm” the interest of the game after an already very appreciated first level, it became urgent to take care of it.

I started out simply reworking it, but it ended up creating a completely new level. The best parts of the previous level have been reused in this or other levels. It was a big challenge but according to my own tests and playtests, I think it was largely successful. I’m also very happy to have completed this work in just a few weeks.

More life in the dungeon

Among the important improvements of the latest versions, I worked on the creation of new unique creatures, especially for the last levels. Indeed, certain levels were really lacking “their creatures”, whether for novelty and variety, but above all for the atmosphere and narration that they provide.

I started by creating a lot of creature placeholders with very coarse geometry and place them in the levels, and made a lot of tests. I finally really created several of them, including also some variations. There are now crabs, zombies, living statues, and many others which I will not talk about so as not to spoil their discovery. I am very satisfied with the result. In a future version, I will improve their animations, behaviors, and adjust their difficulty, in particular some of them are much easier to defeat than they should be.

Here is a glimpse of some of them. You can find the cute crab in the latest version of the demo.

Stronger focus on epic traps

Part of my goals in polish is to improve the “Epic Tomb Looting” aspect, particularly by improving and adding “Indiana Jones”-style “epic trap rooms”. I am improving and adding small puzzles too, more for the narrative and atmospheric contribution than for the real challenges, but don’t worry, some optional puzzles will be real challenges. I have actually done things that I find really nice in the new level 2, here is a short preview:

New trailer in progress

In order to better highlight the latest developments and the work on the atmosphere, I started to create a new trailer. It’s always the same structure based on the same musical track, on which I replace the clips with new ones. I think almost all the clips have been changed in this latest version. When the trailer is done, I will officially publish it and promote it. However, I have already put it on the Steam page, so if you visited the page lately you may already have seen it. Here is the current trailer, what do you think ?

Overall improvements

I also work on many things that are not necessarily visible, notably on fixing bugs or improving certain design elements.

I also continue little by little to improve the art style, notably with work on textures and lighting. I would love to have time to improve some atmospheric elements, like adding a waterfall in the first level, more particle and light effects, more visual scene elements.

Visibility and festivals

In terms of the game’s visibility, I’m happy because I feel like I’ve finally managed to break through a bit. I’ve been part of some festivals lately, and I started being really noticed, for instance with an article from Rock Paper Shotgun during the FPS Fest. I must now focus on making the best game possible, so that this visibility has a use when the game is released.

Roadmap

I am currently focusing primarily on improving the narration, with the addition of dialogues, notes, books, indirect and environmental narration, which I had always left at a minimum to concentrate on the gameplay.

My other priorities are improving the UI to have something cleaner and more professional, and finding an illustrator to create the introduction art and various visual elements of the game. Besides, if you are a freelance professional 2D artist specialist in fantasy, do not hesitate to send me your references.

My last really big challenge will be working on level 3. Several months ago I created a new version of this level, but I was never really satisfied with it. I would like to be able to combine the best of the existing level and this new version, to make it one of the best levels in the game.

Then, there are still a lot to do, like improving the combat, balancing the economy, improving the art, and many other things to round out the corners and have the best possible experience.

In terms of release, my current schedule is to aim for the end of the year around November/December. I think I’m still on time, but with the incompressible delays for the localisation and its testing, I can’t guarantee anything. There may also be the issue of overload of game releases at the end of the year that I should take into account.

Have nice dungeon looting and see you later :)