What a month!

Scrabdackle has been out for (almost) a month, and it's felt like a rollercoaster. We've got a fair-sized community starting to build around the game now, with big plans for the future, and we're still pulling very strong daily download numbers on the game (3250 at time of writing).

I haven't put out a patch for the demo in a bit, and I wanted to talk about that. My current priorities are completing more demo-connected content. What I mean by this is - I won't be working on later content or systems for now, like a warp network or late-game bosses, and will instead be working on content adjacent to the Junk Heap and the final missing menus and features.

I'm grouping this work together by priority, with each priority tier containing some content and some systems progress, as well as a handful of bugs. Priority 1 items are well underway, and mostly done. I'll likely put out a patch (or two, pending bugfix stuff) per priority milestone below.

I don't current have a public task tracker, but my list looks something like this:

Priority 1 items: Ruins update

Content

• Completing a preview (5-7 screens) of the Rubble Ruins area east of the Junk Heap.
  • 3 new enemies (2 completed): Hounds, Ghouls, and Grinbles
  • 3 new tilesets (all completed)
  • New music track (complete)
  • Secrets!
  • Quick sidebar - even though only a few rooms will be available to the demo, I actually need to nearly entirely complete the Ruins content elements to be able to finish this. The only things left to do after that will be level design for the screens you can't see (which is already planned, and which goes fast once the assets and enemies are in place) and a boss fight that I'll leave for the future.

Systems

• Minor rehaul of the ambient particle system
  • The particle system needs to live 'over' the room viewport rather than within it, so that it isn't captured in room transition screenshots. This means I can have a dark cloud at the "top" of the screen that stays in place when the wizard walks upwards across rooms, rather than sticking with the exiting room that transitions downwards out of sight.
    • (This is kind of complex to describe simply - but I might do a "how it's made" dev log in the future about it, since it's pretty neat)
• Misc underlying game framework revisions
  • I need to do a little bit of node restructuring. Nothing interesting to talk about here specifically, but this work should allow for a better variety of resolution support in the future, and more complex room design for the future (when we get to things like the mountains).
  • Although it won't have immediate value to the demo, if I don't work on this now, it'll be a much more difficult beast to tackle later.

Priority 2 items: Peanut update

Content

• Completing Peanut Village
  • Hint shop
  • Many NPC dialogues
  • Several more building designs
  • Finalized Dash ability
  • ???
• Art/animation rigging pass for peanuts
  • Each needs to have its own idle/walking/etc animations as well as the ability to be more expressive. Possibly to have its colour and shape randomized as well, for non-important NPCs.
  • Peanuts are one of the main NPC types in the game, so it's important to have a system for easily managing a wide variety of them that can all do the same generic tasks. This will also mean that I can have them 'react' during conversations, with jumping, shaking, more facial expressions, and so on.

Systems

• Improved event system
  • There's currently no way to easily check what minor events have or have not been triggered. Major events (like finding a new ability, or beating a boss) currently have their own event flag, but I'd like to make improvements so that I can see (for example) not just the *number* of stars the player has found, but which ones have and have not been picked up specifically. The current system is overly simple, where if you pick up a star in a room, that room is told to not load the star anymore (unless you die before saving), but the game doesn't have way of comparing what you've found to any master list. That'll be necessary for a variety of later functionality.
  • There's also a few gaps in the current event system that need to be improved in general anyhow, like how major flags stay flagged even if you die before saving. (Sorry speedrunners! Though, I was impressed with how this was used to shave time.)
  • This tasks is also necessary for the minimap work mentioned next...
• Minimap expansion features
  • Finalizing expanding minimap with ability to navigate, highlight zones, and see a list of points of interest
  • (Possibly) adding a 'go here' quest flag icon. I might not do this one, but I'd like the system to be robust enough that I could revisit this later if I wanted to.
• Dialogue system refinement
  • Removing dedicated 1/2/3/4 buttons for choices and replacing with an arrow selector that navigates up and down
  • This both clears the way for controller support (which doesn't have unlimited buttons), and helps indicate on streams and Let's Play videos what choice is being picked.
  • Better indication of which character is speaking when a dialogue box appears near multiple characters.

Priority 3 items: Ducklands update & final demo pass

Content

• Ducklands content! Like the Ruins, a preview of just a few screens.
  • 3-4 new enemies, several tilesets, and so on - I'm not defining the exact scope until a bit closer to.
  • Music track (already complete, although only the short preview loop is in-game presently)
  • As usual, secrets!
• One additional ??? ability
  • A related feature will be found in/near Peanut Village

Systems

• UI pass
  • I'll be finalizing the left-side menu bar with hover text and a way to quickly switch between unlocked abilities.
  • I'll also be improving some GUI elements, like changing the health potion set-up to be more readable, and similar work for the magic meter.
  • Finally, 'impact' animations and transitions for taking damage and dying will be improved.
• ""Book"" menu
  • The last menu screen and main feature needed is a book that will be used to see enemy information, track stars found for a given area, and hold some other information as well.
  • We've been discussing this on the Discord  - I won't start revealing it widely until closer to, but I'm very excited to work on this!

And after that...?

Everything past Priority 3 is 'won't-be-seen-in-the-demo' content, and at that point I'll be setting up a closed beta test. This will also be managed through Discord, although I'll announce it more widely when we've set it up. (I also have a few other Quality-Of-Life tasks like key rebinding to do, which isn't locked in to any particular priority group and will just get done when it's done). Once we're in closed beta, I'll be continuing to post devlogs and announce work, but non-beta-testers won't get to experience it until the full release.

Thanks folks. As always, please join the Discord server! We're growing fast, and past talking about upcoming content, we just plain have a good time!

👉 Join us on Discord today! 👈