Where We Are
In the first chapter, there were two of us, with a list of memories and a dream: get a game of our own onto Steam. Neither of us drew, and the canvas was blank.
Today there are four games, an engine they share and a bench where the numbers live. This chapter closes the account of the first part, with what can be checked and the open items named plainly.
What each game has
Counted on October 25, in each game's own project:
| Game | What it has today |
|---|---|
| Castle Arena | 14 factions, 15 arenas, 7 languages, a map editor and 48 options for building game modes |
| Castle Survivors | 90 weapons, 97 upgrades, 36 enemies, 9 bosses, 17 worlds and 5 languages |
| Line Tower | The original map's full rules, up to 12 builders and 4 nebula skies |
| Custom Hero Survival | All 122 abilities of the original map and 11 shops |
| Kastle, the engine | 164 creatures with 705 skins, 235 effects and 1,115 scenery models |
What's missing, by name
A devlog that only shows what worked is a brochure. So here's the rest:
- Castle Arena. The new economy, AI and field from chapter 4 are in the code, but the factions still need to be recalibrated on top of them, and the Training lessons that lost their pace need to be redone. Everything will ship together, in one version. After that, the Steam page.
- Castle Survivors. It's in the test-build stage. What's left now is what only testers can show.
- Line Tower. The rules are complete, but names, art, sounds and texts are still provisional. The game's own universe is the next step.
- Custom Hero Survival. Of the eleven long bot matches we use to test the game, three still don't reach the end. And MODERN keeps growing on top of CLASSIC.
- Kastle. The games still use their own orders and abilities instead of the engine's.
And the secret sauce?
In chapter 3, the world came alive, but the secret sauce was missing. It still is. We'd rather say so than pretend we hadn't noticed.
What the road taught us
If the first part of this story could be summed up in a few lines, these would be them:
- Credit the artists. Using an artist's work, and saying who made it, is our way of valuing the people who create.
- Measure before changing. Feel finds a lot, but some problems only appear in match number eight hundred.
- Teach by playing. Nobody learns a game from a text box.
- Don't write the same thing twice. Four games only fit in a two-person team because what they have in common lives in one place.
How close is Steam
Closer than ever, and not there yet. Castle Survivors already builds its own Steam test version. Castle Arena opens its store page after the recalibration. For Line Tower and Custom Hero Survival, the next step is test builds.
For all four, what comes next is the same: get the games into the hands of people who play. From here on, this devlog goes back to its normal pace, one post per subject, now with four games to draw subjects from.
Thanks for reading this far, from the late nights spent playing.
— The team