Pre-Alpha v1.2 Released! Weather Effects, Fixes, and More!
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Aug 08, 2017 at 12:50:48 AM

Hey Everyone!

I missed the weekend mark a little for this release, but I have little surprise update to the demo to include. (Link to download the latest demo is listed at the bottom of this post)

Weather Effects!

I'm including the initial implementation of weather effects for this release! This is just a first pass, but expect to see some more of it as it becomes polished later.

While there are a number of subtle features added, the content and story haven't been expanded yet. Our first milestone is to complete the first true 30 minutes of play and polish that as much as reasonable, then go nuts expanding the content.

In addition to weather effects, here are the other changes for this release:

• Fixed a bug where, while hanging from a ledge, pressing down and towards the ledge and then pressing jump would drop the player from the ledge and lock player input control.
• Fixed a bug where the pause menu could be brought up at inappropriate times, such as just before the title screen loaded or when the company logo is showing.
• Pause menu now properly layers in front of active dialogue windows when activated.
• Active dialogue/cinematic sequences now properly stop if “Return to Title” is called from the pause menu.
• Fixed an issue where the pausing then unpausing during an active dialogue would cause player input controls to be inappropriately restored.
• Cleaned up the pause menu and active UI fade out when loading to back to the title screen to look tidier.
• You can now bring up the pause menu with the "Escape" key on the keyboard in addition to the "Enter" key.
• Fixed a bug where repeatedly returning to the title screen from the outside starting area and immediately restarting the game would cause all spawner based items to duplicate without limit.
• Armored Knight's attacks now properly boomerang. Watch out after dodging!
• A message window will now appear and pause the game to explain new sub-weapons as you acquire them ala Metroid/Zelda style. (Final message window design is still in development)
• Changing “zones” will now cause a zone title box to appear. (Art and text for the display are placeholders as the final form is still in development.)
• Lily will now experience being stunned temporarily if she takes a hard fall from a high place. She won’t lose health from the fall, but could be in danger should a monster be near where she lands. (Animations for this are placeholders and will be updated when Lily’s sprite is revamped.)

You can download the updated demo here:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/forsaken-castle/downloads

Status Update! (AKA, We're Still Kicking!)
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Aug 01, 2017 at 10:53:09 PM

Hey everyone! It’s been some time since our last update and I want to apologize for that! Our sprint into and out of the Kickstarter struck us with bad case of burnout, but we’ve definitely gotten back into the swing of things and are hard at work getting some good updates ready to go out!

BackerKit Status

First a bit of housekeeping! We have 47 outstanding surveys that haven’t been completed yet. Reminder emails should have gone out sometime on July 31st. If you haven’t completed your survey yet and either haven’t received it or can’t find it, email us at [email protected] and we’ll get you sorted. We’ll be reaching out to people who haven’t responded by around August 18th at the latest. If you can’t decide, don’t worry, we can help you change your answers if you so desire, but we need everyone to at least supply their initial information.

The Kickstarter closed out with 943 backers. Since then, through BackerKit, we’ve now taken in an additional 52 backers, which brings us to 995 backers! In addition to that, we roughly have almost $3,900 in BackerKit pledges. This brings us very close to our $40k Vincent “Knight” playable character stretch goal!

We will be leaving the BackerKit option open until we are ready to take a final headcount for physical rewards. Which will happen shortly after Forsaken Castle goes into Early Access on Steam (we don’t have a set date yet). At that point we will be closing all BackerKit physical reward tiers. So if you know anyone that would be interested in supporting us, point them to our BackerKit page before they miss out.

https://forsaken-castle.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Demo Update

Here are a few things that will be going into the next Pre Alpha v1.2 demo update. Expect the updated demo to be released by this weekend at the latest.

Fixes:

• Fixed a bug where, while hanging from a ledge, pressing down and towards the ledge and then pressing jump would drop the player from the ledge and lock player input control.
• Fixed a bug where the pause menu could be brought up at inappropriate times, such as just before the title screen loaded or when the company logo is showing.
• Pause menu now properly layers in front of active dialogue windows when activated.
• Active dialogue/cinematic sequences now properly stop if “Return to Title” is called from the pause menu.
• Cleaned up the pause menu and active UI fade out when loading to back to the title screen to look more tidy.
• Fixed a bug where repeatedly returning to the title screen from the outside starting area and immediately restarting the game would cause all spawner based items to duplicate without limit.

Features:

• A message window will now appear and pause the game to explain new sub-weapons as you acquire them ala Metroid/Zelda style. (Final message window design is still in development)
• Changing “zones” will now cause a zone title box to appear. (Art and text for the display are placeholders as the final form is still in development.)
• Lily will now experience being stunned temporarily if she takes a hard fall from a high place. She won’t lose health from the fall, but could be in danger should a monster be near where she lands. (Animations for this are placeholders and will be updated when Lily’s sprite is revamped.)

Coming Soon:

• Demo will soon be available on Steam once we fully transition the Greenlight project to its very own Steam page!
• Save Slots and Save Points! (This will fix the boss room door glitch once implemented.)
• Breakable walls!
• Improved Sub-weapon selection!
• Controller key/button rebinding!
• Map functionality!
• Upgraded Lily sprite!
• Meryl Encounter!
• Werewolf (Boss) Encounter!

Some More Comic Love

Man, I’m on a kick for some comics!

This one has less than 24 hours left, so if you’re interested you better act fast!

Patriotika is the first in what looks to be the beginning of the Mount Olympus Comics Universe and I gotta say it looks like they are off to a strong start! The premise of an Earth at war with gods and monsters gives a lot of room to run and they kick it up a notch by way of the gods only being able to maintain their presence on Earth by bonding with humans, as a force that originally banished them saps their life without a host of sorts. In the case of Patriotika, a college student Erin is bonded with a descendant of the goddess Athena, granting her a bevy of powers and a mental connection to the goddess.

What really caught my attention was amazing artwork! They’ve already exceeded all of their stretch goals and are about to wrap up their Kickstarter so give them a look by clicking the image below or click here!

Thanks again everyone for your incredible support!

 

BackerKit Surveys Starting to Go Out, Part 2
almost 6 years ago – Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 11:59:24 PM

Alrighty! We hadn't encountered any issues with the initial round of surveys we had sent out yesterday. So we're good to go and all survey emails should now be live to everyone! Please be sure to check your spam folder just in case.

Drop us a comment here or a message if you have any questions or issues completing your survey and we'll get you taken care of!

Thanks again everyone for all the amazing love and support!

BackerKit Surveys Starting to Go Out
almost 6 years ago – Mon, Jun 12, 2017 at 11:00:32 PM

Hi Everyone!

Sorry for the delay, we wanted to send this message out sooner, but we had to finalize a few things with BackerKit. This is just a quick update to say that the BackerKit surveys are starting to go out.

We are doing a limited rollout of the surveys across all reward tiers to ensure no major issues are present with the surveys before we roll it out to the everyone else. We will soon be sending the rest out after a few of the initial survey responses successfully come in.

Thank you everyone for your patience and support!

BackerKit Survey Info and Some Community Love
almost 6 years ago – Mon, Jun 05, 2017 at 11:00:47 PM

Hey everyone!

While Kickstarter wraps up doing its thing around the middle of this week, here are a few things we wanted to share.

BackerKit Survey Date and Info!

Mark your calendars! We’ll be sending out the BackerKit reward surveys on Monday, June 12th!

Important Note: If Kickstarter had issues processing your payment, wait until you get your survey! We’ve had some users go into the pre-order shop and pre-order their items and pay, but this causes a duplicate order in the system that doesn’t include all of the Kickstarter backer only rewards. When the survey arrives, it will let you know if we had an issue processing your payment from Kickstarter and will give you a chance to fix your payment when you complete the survey.

If you run into any issues or don’t see your survey email after 24 hours after checking your spam folder, leave us a message or comment on Kickstarter and we’ll help get you taken care of!

Master Tier Thanks!

We wanted to take a moment to thank our two top tier backers. Both will have a boss, monster, some lore, and premium pixel portraits made to their specifications present inside the castle. They will also receive the full physical rewards pack once they have been produced after Forsaken Castle is released.

If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll notice I make no secret of the fact that I have, over time, come to enjoy the most recent incarnation of the show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Everything, from the show, to the community surrounding it, are full of fun, generous, and kind people. Amora Bunny and I follow each other on Twitter and occasionally have discussions in this mutual interest. Shortly after our first 24-hour update post, I had shamelessly mentioned to him over Twitter that our Kickstarter had recently launched. Without a moments hesitation, he thus proceeded to come in like a wrecking ball and snatch up the first of the two available Master tier rewards with the following image in tow:

Needless to say, I was completely surprised! We were already off to a great start with almost 50% of our funding in the first 24 hours, then Amora Bunny kicked us over that hill and helped add even more amazing fuel to the fire!

If Amora Bunny was a great tinder box at the beginning, then John Wedig was the explosive charge that went off at the end of our campaign! In the final minutes, he boosted his Paladin pledge up to Master and added almost another $800 on top of that for good measure, which put us over the top to achieve our Switch/Xbox stretch goal! So a big THANK YOU to Amora Bunny and John Wedig for their generous support!

You both will be receiving messages from us in the near future, so that we can start gathering details for your requests and to provide you with some more info about Forsaken Castle's world and lore. If you would prefer us to keep story spoilers to a minimum, please let us know when we reach out to you.

Community Corner

In case you missed it, we have two great interviews over at Siliconera.com and GamersXtreme.org that reveal some fun design details about Forsaken Castle. Let them know what you thought of the interview in the comments section of their sites. I’m sure they’ll love to see them!

Forsaken Castle Developers Talk About The Monsters & Powers That Flesh Out Its Gothic World - Siliconera.com

Interview with Duck Block Games on “Forsaken Castle” – A 16-Bit Metroidvania Homage Kickstarter - GamersXtreme.org

Final Stretch for Nefarious Graphic Novel Vol. 1

Josh Hano’s Graphic Novel based off of his game Nefarious is in its final stretch with 8 days remaining. If y’all haven’t had a chance to check out, click the image below to check it out! I highly recommend giving the trailer a watch!