Rogue Empire: Dungeon Crawler RPG

[Asid]

New Beta Branch Update 1.0.16
Sun, 18 October 2020



This update for the BETA branch of the game includes: Uncovered Abilities Screen, Balance, Bug Fixes and QoL updates!

IMPORTANT: How to try the beta branch?

Steps to try out the beta branch of the game:
•   In your game library right click on "Rogue Empire -> Properties"
•   In properties select the "Betas" tab
•   On the drop down select the version: beta - Beta testing for next release

Changes:

Uncovered Abilities

Something asked some time ago is now a reality!

You can now check out all the abilities you uncovered so far for every available class from the main menu.

This will not work retroactively for dead characters but loading a current game should fill in the abilities you discover with that character!



Halloween!?

To keep de mystery this will be disclosed when merged into the main build!

Bugs:
•   Game should properly pause when not focused.
•   Only the last tile targeted by piercing shot will have a chance to return the used arrow.


Balance:
•   Undead creatures do not heal over time with natural means.
•   Druid: All the druid forms have been buffed. Also the negative effects of being unbalanced with nature have been reduced. Specifics (spoiler):
•  Druid negative effects of being out of balance reduced significantly.
•  Druid bear aspect damage reduction now improves every 8 levels instead of every 10.
•  Druid tiger aspect speed bonus increased from 25% to 35%, damage bonus increased from 25% to 30%.
•  Druid scorpion aspect poison damage and duration significantly increased in all its power levels.
•  Druid eagle aspect speed bonus increased from 15% to 25%, dodge bonus increased from 30% to 35%.
•  Druid drake aspect damage bonus increased from 50% to 60%. Fire breath damage and range increased (cool down increased too).


Other:
•   Shadow creep/chase is now an optional setting for the challenge dungeon. Having it enabled will increase soul essence and score gain by 30%.
•   When using the keyboard to do range attacks (t key) the mouse cursor will be disabled to avoid accidental misfires.
•   Firing on empty tiles will now not destroy any ammo.
•   Satiation/Hunger level icon is now also shown when well satiated (not only outliers).
•   There is now an option to show the current satiation/hunger next to the corresponding status effect icon.
•   Holding shift to see the items on the floor now only shows the text.
•   Added special effects and improved UI for different main menu sections.
•   Story mode renamed into apprentice mode to avoid confusions.


If you want to help out you are welcome to check this build out. I ll probably put it up on the main branch late next week if all goes well.


Cheers and happy crawling!
GW

[Asid]

Update 1.0.16 live! Halloween is close!
Thu, 22 October 2020



This update includes: Halloween, Uncovered Abilities Screen, Balance, Bug Fixes and QoL updates!

Hi every one! It's time to merge the beta into the main build!

And here are the changes!
Changes:

Halloween gets into Ethistos!

From the 28th of October to the 3th of November be watchful of confused villagers walking around dungeons! No one knows what they ate for this to happen, but the are obsessed with one question!

Trick or Treat?

Be warry of what you answer as you will have to deal with the consequences!



You can set a reminder for the event start at the top of this article!

Uncovered Abilities

Something asked some time ago is now a reality!

You can now check out all the abilities you uncovered so far for every available class from the main menu.

This will not work retroactively for dead characters but loading a current game should fill in the abilities you discover with that character!



Bugs:
•   Game should properly pause when not focused.
•   Only the last tile targeted by piercing shot will have a chance to return the used arrow.


Balance:
•   Undead creatures do not heal over time with natural means.
•   Druid: All the druid forms have been buffed. Also the negative effects of being unbalanced with nature have been reduced. Specifics (spoiler):

Read on...

[Asid]

Upcoming Dark Heroes DLC new class reveal: The Soul Knight!
Wed, 25 November 2020



I will discuss a new class coming to Rogue Empire!

Hi everyone,

Before getting into the beefy stuff you might have noticed that the DLC I have been working on has now a name!

Dark Heroes

Simple yet fitting.

Now onto the good stuff! Lets dive into the second class I have been working on:

 

The Soul Knight

A warrior from beyond, the Soul Knight has a strong link to the spirit world. This enables him to harness and manipulate the souls of his victims!



As hinted previously, the Soul Knight has a unique resource: souls.

When defeating your enemies you acquire their precious souls which you can later use in unique powerful effects. While enabling these powerful abilities, souls are a rare and finite resource which means one has to be careful not to run out of them before a complicated situation!

To showcase the class let me show you a few abilities:



Soul Nova: A powerful AOE spell especially useful when surrounded by enemies. While costing several souls, its destruction potential might well pay the cost back!



Soul shield: Several souls whirl around you trying to intercept incoming damage. Be careful, as high damaging hits might remove a soul, reducing the chance of future damage mitigation.



Spirit Portal: Cast a portal on a location in the map: then cast again on any character (friend or foe) to teleport it to the portal location! There is no limit (within the level) for the portal location but it is very frail and can be destroyed at any moment.

One of the interesting gameplay mechanics you will notice while playing the Soul Knight is the possibility to combo/chain certain abilities into powerful effects. This my friends I will let you discover for yourself!

Feel free to ask any questions you might have! Some might not get answered though

Cheers,
GW

[Asid]

Update 1.0.17 live! Christmas is upon us!
Tue, 8 December 2020



This update includes: Christmas, Balance, Bug Fixes and Other updates!

Hi every one! We are already getting close to the end of this rather dreadful year for a lot of us.

For my self personally I am about to be a dad so that makes me happy!

Anyway, here are the changes for todays update!

Changes:

Christmas:
You character will look more Christmassy (this was already the case last year). In addition it seems Santa lost a lot of presents inside the dungeons!



Different present have different type of items. Some are rarer than others of course! When you open it something will happen that I hope cheers you up!

This will go live tomorrow till the end of the month! As always you can disable these events from the settings menu!

Bugs:
•   Fixed bug where returning to an old area after some time with old summons of you would break the game.
•   Fixed bug where returning on previous levels and then reentering a level with a named enemy would make the enemy disappear.


Balance:
•   Enemy base spell critical damage was reduced for easy and normal difficulties.
•   Player and Enemy spell critical damage intelligence influence reduced slightly.
•   Hunter:
   o   Hunter's initial Create Ammo ability cooldown reduced to values of their improved counterparts.
   o   Dirty Shot now has a longer cooldown but has now an improved effect across the board. In addition enemies that after being hit by the ability do not see their current target will now always disengage from combat with it.

•   Mage:
   o   Reworked how siphon mana works: It now siphons mana based on your own mana and damages the target accordingly. If the target has its mana depleted some damage will still be done! Cooldown has been increased. In general terms this should give the player more control over the ability (increasing your maximum mana pool increases the effect) and also makes it a dual effect ability specially powerful against casters

•   Warrior:
   o   Trap Prepared Armor skills improved and renamed "Situation awareness". Now in addition to the trap effect mitigation it also reduces(eventually nullifies) the disarming chance on the warrior.




Other:
•  Added 1 new enemy type.
•  Darkened and widened the tooltip on action bar abilities to improve its legibility.

• Camera and zoom now does not show the screen beyond the level border. This helps a lot with immersion and makes it clear for you when you reach a level's limit (camera wont center towards the character in that situation). This can be toggled as it was before from the settings menu. [\b] I am unsure if this will stay as default, looking forward to your feedback!

•  With the previous change the very first map felt weird, so it has been expanded a little.


Coming up next: I will probably showcase some more about the upcoming DLC!

In any case I wish you the best for yourself and your loved ones in this coming days!

Cheers and happy crawling!
GW

[Asid]

Upcoming new game mode on Dark Heroes lunch: Escape The Barrier!
Thu, 11 February 2021



Showing a new game mode coming to Rogue Empire to be lunched with the coming dlc, free for owners of the base game!

Hi everyone,

Before getting into the beefy stuff I want to apologize for the slow pace this past 2 months. As some might be aware I recently had my first child and it is taking some time away from Rogue Empire! Nevertheless be assured I am still at it!

Escape the Barrier

So what is this new game mode all about!?

The idea behind Escape the Barrier is that your character got trapped inside a shadow barrier of one of the main cities. By chance you acquired priceless information of how to escape the barrier and now make a run from it! Agents of the first shadow as well as other groups chase after you!



As you can see you start the game in a special map where you choose where to advance and then get into an encounter/event. This map is randomly generated when you play the game and is inspired by other popular games.

Note: The art you see here is not necessary final!

So far I though of the following encounters but more might be added. I encourage you to throw some ideas!

•   Regular encounter: Fight a few regular enemies. These will be grouped by themes.
•   Champion encounter: Fight a a champion which may have some escorts.
•   Shop: Our friend the magician merchant will sell you stuff!
•   Trap encounter: Avoid a trapped location!
•   Escape encounter: Against overwhelming odds there is nothing left but to escape!
•   Unknown encounter: Some unknown event, Examples might be skill checks, tough choices, etc.
•   Boss encounter: Entirely new bosses to fight against!



I am yet unsure how many maps you will have to travers. It might just be one huge one.

Another thing to consider is rules for this game mode are fairly different from other game modes:

•   You can not heal or recover mana inside encounters! You will heal and recover mana a bit every time you progress through the map. This will make health a very important factor when choosing where to go!
•   Some spells and abilities will be removed as available options for balance reasons.
•   Experience will be acquired after finishing a successful non-passive encounter!
•   There will probably be some kind of gear passing or buff as a result of your performance in your previous run. This should avoid hunting for the perfect map.


This is still very much work in progress. After this is done there is one more small surprise for the dlc proper before I open some beta testing to it!

Hope you enjoy this when its out!

Happy dungeon crawling!
GW

[Asid]

Wish list Dark Heroes on its newly released Steam Page!
Tue, 20 April 2021



The upcoming Dark Heroes DLC has its own brand new Steam Store page! Don't miss its release by wish listing it!

Hi everyone!

I am really happy to announce that Dark Heroes has now its own Steam Store Page
!

Rogue Empire - Dark Heroes
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1440600/Rogue_Empire__Dark_Heroes/


To perceptive eyes you will also notice some extra content coming to the DLC that has not yet been disclosed: The Insectoid Race!



In addition the DLC patch will also bring some new spells for the core game! Also with this additions, mages will now not be able to learn nature spells, being an exclusive spell school for the druid. These new spells and changes in terms of balance shall make their casting styles more unique and fitting.

Let me sneak peak you one of the new spells, the powerful Lightning Orb!

f

One thing that might be in everybody's mind is: When is the Dark Heroes coming out!?


Short answer:
Fairly Soon
Longer Answer:
Although there are a few things I still need to develop, the main time sink now is balancing and polishing the new game mode Escape the Barrier. I also need to add a trailer for the DLC/Patch as a whole.

Hope this gets you as excited as I am!!!

Happy dungeon crawling!
GW

[Asid]

Dark Heroes DLC survey result and release plans!
Mon, 17 May 2021



Commenting on the last post/survey and how I'll be going forward with the DLC.

Ok guys the survey is closed! At some point it was a virtual tie but over the last days the option to release the DLC earlier prevailed:
•   Launch the DLC only content as soon as possible and put the new game mode further down the line 109 votes (53.4 %)
•   Launch everything as a package 95 votes (46.6 %)


Now for some of you that were worried releasing the DLC sooner would hinder the game I think I can use this outcome to focus marketing (and development) on the new game mode and give it a visibility boost. Any contacts with decent sized content creators would be very much appreciated!
Now when will the DLC be released then!?


My current goal is for the week of the 14th to the 21 of June. Why? Many reasons, among them: time to wrap things up, time to market a little more and avoid E3 and other big events.
What will be the price?


I am considering a price range from 5 to 7 USD. Leaning more towards the later. Please don't be shy and comment about this.
Extra news


One thing that I will be introducing is a level squish. What this means is that there will be fewer levels
but
you will get an ability on every level instead of every 2 levels.
This might alter save games so consider wrapping your games before the release!


I am currently testing this on the game's twitch channel from time to time, so feel free to hop in (and consider tossing a follow <3).

Hope you all have an excellent week! Looking forward to your comments!
GW

 

[Asid]

Halloween is close in Ethistos!
Mon 18 Oct 2021



Trick or treat?Halloween is back in Ethistos!


From the 28th of October to the 3th of November be watchful of confused villagers walking around dungeons! No one knows what they ate for this to happen, but the are obsessed with one question!

Trick or Treat?

Be warry of what you answer as you will have to deal with the consequences!



You can set a reminder for the event start at the top of this article!


Some non in game updates

You might have noticed development got slowed on my side. This is mainly because I got hired to work on an other game reducing greatly my time to work on RE.

But don't worry, I am training someone to continue to work on RE with my help. This needs some time but things are progressing nicely.

In any case, happy Halloween and happy dungeon crawling!

GW

Upcoming Event Starts Thu, 28 October 2021

[Asid]

Underlaying Engine upgrade
Mon, 10 July 2023



The game will have unity updated from unity 2018 to unity 2022

Greetings everyone,

It's been quite a while since my last update. Life's circumstances have kept me away from working on the game, but finally, I found the time to make progress in the past few days.

In particular, I focused on a long-overdue task: upgrading the underlying Unity engine. This change should enhance the graphics and pave the way for future improvements.

With that in mind, I invite you to test the updated version, now available as a beta called "engine-upgrade." Here's how you can access it:

1. Right-click on the game name in your library and select "Properties."
2. Go to the "Betas" tab.
3. Choose "engine-upgrade" from the options.



If you have the time and patience, I would greatly appreciate it if you could give it a try. Your feedback will help me identify any issues with it.

Please note that this upgrade will bring changes to how save files are handled, rendering old saves incompatible. The same goes for soul essence. To compensate for any losses, the game will grant you some based on your achievements.

If you prefer to continue playing with your old saves, you can still do it as they are not removed. You have the option to use either the current game version or the "old-save-compatible-beta" version to load them.

I'm hopeful that this upgrade will enable me to add more content and address some existing issues in the game going forward.

Wishing you a fantastic time exploring!

Best regards,
GW