Long Time No See

Lots of stuff to cover in this here Devlog. It's been over a year since the last update for the ol' Auto Dungeon, but that's not for a lack of work. Allow me to take you through a little rundown here of whats changed since June 12th, 2022.

Visual Changes:

We've taken the regular rooms with grey tiles and turned them into real thematic areas that relate to the story of the game. Each of the 6 regions on the map has it's own set of bridges, rooms, and tiles that distinguish them from each other, which was completely invisible before. Additionally, the areas each have their own set of post processing to give them better vibes. Adding on to that are the UI changes. Now the UI is less generic and has more of a polished look and feel to it. And we added some nice shading to the lil' creatures!

All of this comes together to make the game look better than it ever has. Each area has it's own character to it now making the world feel more expansive. Lots of these changes are subject to change in the weeks ahead as we fine tune to get the look and feel perfect.

Gameplay Changes:

Since the last update we upped the number of trait type cards, and added in those ranged weapons we were talking about. The bosses now don't move on to the next phase until you have actually cleared the room of their creatures. No more cheesing bosses with chump runs! Speaking of the bosses, we added new cards and more rings that they can drop. Rings can only be gained from the bosses, but some of the cards they drop can be found in various shops around the map.

One of the biggest gameplay changes that we added was the Primordial Pouch. This pouch lets you keep the cards you stash in there even after death. The catch is that you can't play them from the pouch in the same life that you put them in there. So this feature moves the game from a Roguelike to more of a Roguelite. You don't have to use it, but it's there if you need it.

Other Changes and Additions:

When you boot the game up, instead of jumping right in you'll be greeted with this super sick main menu:

And you may have noticed the existence of the "New Game" and "Continue" buttons. The game has saving now! Which isn't in the web build unfortunately, but it will be there in the final builds for the various platforms.

A tutorial slideshow was added right to the beginning of the game that you can skip or click through. It's mostly there to mitigate some of the confusion over little things that we noticed people had in our playtests. It's not very long, but it gives any new player the information they need to get up and running.

Last but not least, we added in sound effects! Now there's a bit more juice when you're fumbling with the cards and handling your little dudes. Also helps clear up some of the confusion in battle as you can hear what is going on and not just see it.

Things to Come and Bugs:

We're working on some cutscenes for the intro and the outro. Just something to get the player to see what they're working for and why. We're also working on localization, and finishing up the settings menu. The game should get releases on Android, Steam, and here on Itch.

For bugs, we have a couple known ones that we're working. At this point in development bug fix updates on itch don't get a devlog, so if you check back occasionally some of these will have gotten fixed along the way.

Our big known ones are:

• Unit preview not showing correct numbers
• Unit quick view (the eye) doesn't go away or shows through weird stuff
• Mountain biome bridge tiles are messed up
• Swamp biome rooms have gaps when they shouldn't
• Some traits can cause infinite loops