Forsaken Castle is a 16-bit style, action exploration platformer, about a paladin and her fight against evil. Produced by Duck Block Games.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Monthly Update - July 2018
over 6 years ago
– Wed, Jul 18, 2018 at 11:54:55 PM
Hey Everyone!
It hasn’t been long since our last update but we just want to let everyone know how things are going this month.
More Improvements
We have many changes and fixes that will be coming in our next update but here are a few visual upgrades to look out for. First, everyone’s favorite flying skull throwing Lich is getting a big upgrade, and yes, there will be many more flying skulls
Here's a Lily for scale
Next you might remember those red blocks in the Abandoned Mine area that Lily’s whip doesn’t work on. Well, they were always meant to be a placeholder until we were able to create something better.
They might sting a bit
These mysterious little critters will be found all throughout the castle blocking Lily’s path. Even as a paladin that has studied evil creatures, she has never heard of this particular type of monster, but they seem to be affected by magical attacks.
Another mystery for some players has been some of the statues that appear throughout the game, these will ultimately be save rooms, we just needed to get them fully working with the upcoming changes to zone management.
So that's how they work
Music Track - Dungeon
We also have a new track from Zack to share that will ultimately be going into the 30-minute demo! Let us know what you think!
Once again, thank you everyone for your amazing support! We are really looking forward to the next update where we’ll have a lot of changes ready for you to check out! As always, we welcome any comments, questions, or suggestions!
Sincerely,
Lance & Clint Trahan Duck Block Games
Monthly Update - June 2018
over 6 years ago
– Tue, Jun 26, 2018 at 10:52:47 PM
Hello Everyone! Lily's jumping into it and so should we!
This is not just a run of the mill update, we have a new demo build to show today! It includes a number of new visual and technical changes that we've been hard at work on.
Pre-Alpha Demo v1.3.4 Available on Steam, GameJolt, Itch.io, and IndieDB
For those who want to skip straight to the fun, you can find the new demo available on the following sites:
As a baseline, any hot fixes and patches will be brought to Steam first and will then be rolled over to the other sites when the next major update is released.
Update Roundup!
We've been tearing at the core demo for a good while and now we have some much awaited updates that we hope everyone will enjoy! The both the Abandoned Mine and Lower Castle areas have been completely revamped with all new tile maps and monsters!
Many of the new monster updates are a result of a collaboration between Clint and local digital artist Brody Olivier! You can check out his project "The Book of Alex" and this other works over here: https://www.brodyolivier.com/ https://twitter.com/Bacrylic1
Below are some images of what you will find in the new demo.
Lily is rocking the new pixels!
If it looks like Lily is at a dance party, it's because Kickstarter squished some pixels when compressing an already small GIF.
Changing the size of Lily to give her pixels more detail and wiggle room required us to change a number of ground objects that she regularly interacted with, mostly in the form of torches, boxes, barrels, and the occasional slime or critter running about.
Watch out for flying axes!
In addition to the cozy new quarters, this mini-boss found some snazzy new armor. We've also added a handy boss health meter so you no longer have to guess how long the road will be until you've vanquished your foe. Pro tip: He still doesn't like taking a bath in fire, just saying.
Gift's in unexpected places!
That boring old stump? GONE! Someone's busy carving stone and left a bottle of Holy Water for good measure!
You want flying skulls? Because this is how you get flying skulls!
Everyone's favorite flying skulls are here to ruin your day once again! They're not bitter, they just want some love.
No spikes for you!
We figured we'd give everyone a break from the spikes and opened up a new area to explore! That slime's certainly enjoying it!
Now with 20% more spikes!
Sorry, we were kidding about giving everyone a break from the spikes. Why not throw a fire breathing bone dragon mounted to the wall in while we're at it?
Bug hunting season is open!
These guys love to go around in circles, so they should be easy pickings!
Cool Stuff
Occasionally I run into some awesome stuff and felt I just had to share it! First a little back story. A good friend (and backer) got me hooked on audio books around fall of last year and I have to say it's been perfect for me with dealing the rage inducing traffic monster that makes up the daily Baton Rouge commute to my day job.
After burning through a few stories my friend lent me, I decided to get an Audible account and start finding my own stories to get me through the day and I stumbled upon a real gem.
At first I was hesitant about jumping into the LitRPG genre because I like my fantasy, but didn't really fancy a bunch of numbers and stuff being spewed out at me, but this series made me a believer that the genre is great and it's here to stay!
The series is called The Land, written by Aleron Kong, a really cool dude online who loves mixing it up with his fans and is performed by Nick Podehl, who is an absolute genius with voices and brings such nuance to the characters that you can practically feel their emotions radiating off of them and each feel so unique!
It's not a referral link or anything like that, I'm not going to make a dime referring people to awesome stuff. Go check his series out if you're looking for a great way to deal with a terrible commute or for some much needed downtime. As for me, I'm anxiously wait for Book 7 to drop, which should be any day now. >w<
That about wraps up this update!
Once again, thank you all so much for your support! With some of the much needed changes that have been made under the hood of the game, we should have a much easier time moving forward and can't wait to share everything as it comes!
Sincerely,
Lance & Clint Trahan Duck Block Games
Monthly Update - May 2018
over 6 years ago
– Fri, May 04, 2018 at 01:14:22 AM
Hello Everyone!
We hope everyone is having a good year so far! It’s been way too long since our last update and for that we sincerely apologize. We’ve been working hard on the game, but for a few reasons that we'll cover below, we had some trouble with posting updates. Today we’d like to talk about what has been going on since our last update and our plans moving forward.
What’s Been Happening
Since our last update in October we have been working on many visual updates and fixing some design issues we had discovered. We spent some time working with a local pixel artist to help update some monsters as well as create some new ones! The holiday season was a little busy while getting ready for PAX South but we got most of our character updates done as well as a new UI system. Even with all this there were still some issues with the game that we didn’t have time to address yet and has taken us longer than expected to get done.
Since PAX we have been updating all of the level art to fix issues and better match Lily’s new sprite, as well as changing how we are building the levels in Unity. Some of the new pixel art was a challenge and was taking longer than expected, but is now coming along much quicker and will make creating content for future updates much easier. We are hoping to have an update to the demo with many of these changes soon, even though it won’t be our finalized vision of the full 30-minute demo.
Lily will encounter these statues where her progress through the castle can be saved
PAX South 2018
After having our first crazy and fun PAX experience with PAX South back in 2017, where we got to show off our very early prototype (i.e. bugs running rampant within the game) and got some great feedback, we were absolutely looking forward to going again in 2018. Tragically, both of us were coming off of a pretty bad cold, though I was further ahead in recovery than my brother Clint. Thankfully, the build for PAX South was very stable, so we didn’t have to jump in very often to reset or otherwise address any issues. This freed me up to spend most of my time tucked just under the screens working on the massive UI system revamp that I started as we were driving the 7 hours to San Antonio.
A quick look at some of the new UI screens coming soon
Last year, we had only one screen with the game running off of my laptop, so any issues effectively halted play for anyone passing by. This time around we managed to add an additional screen and make a build of the game which ran great on the tiny Nvidia Shield TV (Android). Using a small USB thumb drive, we were able to sort out any issues and live patch the build without disturbing either of the two stations except when needed to quickly upload a new build. This allowed us to dish out double the amount of playthroughs than our previous year.
Booth efficiency gains aside, we enjoyed the fact that we always had people at our booth stopping by to check out the game and as a result, the controllers were rarely inactive. Many people from across the country and even from abroad enjoyed playing the demo. We were also happy to hear from a number of online game streamers that were interested in playing Forsaken Castle on their streams as soon as they could. During many of our conversations with people passing by the booth, we also found a great many who showed up were also our backers! We loved getting a chance to talk with everyone!
Our banner became the backdrop for some interviews and the subject of a number of camera phone pictures ^_^
Gallery Music Track
We also have a new track from Zack to share that will ultimately be going into the 30-minute demo. Let us know what you think in the comments below or over on the SoundCloud page itself!
Timeline Changes and Update Schedule
While we have been working very hard to make improvements to the game, we have unfortunately failed to complete a number of our development milestones in the time we had originally estimated. Because of this, we have decided to make a few changes going forward.
First, our goal of having Early Access on Steam by Q2 2018 will not be able to happen and for that we are deeply sorry. We really wanted everyone to be able to enjoy the game by at least a year from our Kickstarter, but we’ve been learning a number of things for the first time and it has slowed our progress more than we had originally anticipated.
Second, because we have continued to miss our goals we decided it would be best to wait until we are closer to finishing the game before giving a firm release date.
Finally, we will be making sure we have an update post every month, even if it’s just a short update.
We reallyappreciate our backers and want everyone to keep everyone informed. We weren’t sure how much content would be enough for an update, but then too much time would pass and we got caught in a cycle of feeling we didn’t have enough content to justify the time between posts. Which is something we needed to deal with and change now to break the cycle and create a better feedback loop with all of you.
We hope you all understand and look forward to all the upgrades we have planned to make Forsaken Castle the best game it can be.
Sincerely,
Lance & Clint Trahan Duck Block Games
P.S. - Forsaken Castle Page on Steam
Just a quick reminder that Forsaken Castle is now available to be wishlisted/bookmarked on Steam:
We’ll be making the next update to the demo available there and the usual spot on IndieDB. I’ll also look at getting the demo uploaded to itch.io as well.
Release Timeline Update, New Music, Monster Designs, and more!
about 7 years ago
– Mon, Oct 23, 2017 at 06:46:16 PM
Hello Everyone! It's Lance here with an important update!
First, we sincerely apologize for the delay in posting this update. We have a lot to talk about, so let's jump into it!
BackerKit Surveys
A little house cleaning to get us started. We have about 32 unanswered surveys that need a response. If you haven't received one of the probably many remainder emails, please send us a message on Kickstarter or email us at [email protected] so we can get your selections finalized.
Timeline for Release
As everyone may be aware, I endeavor to be exceedingly transparent and thorough when answering questions, so I'll be doing the same here so that everyone may have a fuller understanding. Also, I'll certainly be happy to answer any additional questions in the comments or in private.
With that being said, I want to announce that the release of Forsaken Castle is being delayed until about early Q2 2018. First, I want to say as a backer of numerous other Kickstarter projects, that I do not take this lightly and sincerely apologize to all our amazing fans that are eagerly awaiting the release of Forsaken Castle.
I'll try to explain the shift in the release date as best as I can below:
First, going back to the close of the Kickstarter, we hit a serious case of burnout as we had pretty much been sprinting towards the Kickstarter from the end of PAX South back in January through the end of the campaign near the end of May. The whole ordeal left us completely drained and so we semi-unplugged for a bit until around the end of June.
Second, as time marched on, we learned that our goals were extremely aggressive. Our development workflow process was functional, but not nearly as accurate and efficient as possible because it lacked a number of details about the end goals for development of the project. For the last month and a half, we've spent more time working to clearly define these goals and break them into proper development milestones. Going off of our previous time spent developing, we've created estimates that have lead us to the current Q2 2018 release time-frame with far greater confidence. For some more details, check out the "Milestones for Release" section below.
Alongside this effort, we've been working this month to onboard an artist to help us with the bulk of the pixel animations for the monsters you'll encounter in the game. We'll be showing off some of them in the coming weeks as they are completed and refined.
But I'm not going to leave you empty-handed today! These are the monster concepts that will be going into the game, with the exception of the bosses and 3 monsters that will be designed by our top-tier backers.
Monster Concepts
We also have two new music tracks to show off!
Meryl's Theme
.
Underwater Ruins
.
Milestones to Release
I've mentioned development milestones, but what are they? Here is a high-level overview of our major milestones to release:
Milestone 1 - This is our goal for a full polishing pass of the current public demo. This will involve completing the update to Lily's character sprite, completion and polish of core user interface elements, visual updates of existing monsters and addition of new monsters, visual updates to some of the existing level tilesets and objects you'll find within them, additional refinement to the rain and lightning FX, and a new section added that will establish a number of the key characters in the game.
Milestone 2 - This goal will be to expand the scope of the demo to a full 30-minute experience by adding two additional areas of the castle, 11 monsters, 2 minibosses, 1 major boss, and Lily's first encounter with Meryl.
Milestone 3 - This goal will reveal most of the characters and add the remaining areas of the castle with all of the main bosses and most upgrades available for unlocking and experience the first and shortest ending to the game.
Milestone 4 - This goal is to finalize the complete experience of the core game and will be released into Early Access on Steam once it has been completed by early Q2 2018.
Milestone 5 - This goal is to add the remaining stretch goal content and begin finalizing the game package for submissions to consoles for release.
Why Early Access for Milestone 4?
Once Milestone 4 is reached, the floodgates are essentially opened. While we will do our best to release a bug-free experience, we fully expect some things will likely slip through the cracks and need addressing. This will give us a chance to address any major and minor release issues that occur ahead of our submissions for console certification.
What Does This Mean for Console Releases?
Obviously, this means the console releases will be impacted by this delay as well. The current plan is to begin early porting of the alpha game to internal test kits after we hit our Milestone 1 goal within the next couple of weeks. From there, the ports will be updated at each major milestone to ensure there are no issues and will go into console certification after the Early Access proving period and stretch goal content is added.
Forsaken Castle Page Available on Steam!
We have now opened up the Coming Soon page for Forsaken Castle on Steam. Here, you can add the game to your wishlist, so you can be notified whenever the game releases, major news or updates happen, participate in discussions, or ask us questions as we continue to head towards release.
Finally, we want to once again sincerely apologize and thank everyone for their amazing support! It's through your incredible support that we are working to make the best possible game we can make today and are learning a lot of important lessons along the way for the future!
Sincerely,
Lance & Clint Trahan Duck Block Games
New Audio Track: Underground Cave
over 7 years ago
– Fri, Aug 18, 2017 at 06:40:02 PM
Hey Everyone!
I've been sick since yesterday but I couldn't wait to release this awesome new track! This music will be going into the next demo update and will be played while you're adventuring through the underground caves. As we progress in development, the audio track names will get more appropriate titles, so for now these are just placeholders.
Take a listen and let us know what you think! You can even leave comments on which part of the music is your favorite directly on SoundCloud!
Once again, thank you everyone for your amazing support! <3
