The release date of Deep Dark Wrath is 2024 May 27, Monday.

Heyyo, it’s CraftedCircuitry again with a small announcement. It’ll only be 2 weeks left until Deep Dark Wrath’s Full release. You may have already seen most of this post if you also check out the IndieDB page but I did add the most recent news I did down below.

v0.9.10 - Final Bugfixing

I still had some time to polish and bugfix and it’s good that I still try to break my game whenever I can. A remnant of an old bug that destroyed a few weeks of game dev was the Area Notifier not properly syncing whether I was in a certain area or not. This time it was in the Hidden Veil Shop, which is a very big misstep if I did not see that bug.

The Area Notifiers have 2 main collision areas, signifying the 2 areas it would connect. What I would do is check collisions to see if the Adventurer has passed through it or not. On my first iterations, it would not properly log what area the Adventurer was in, making it possible where enemies would not spawn in the area you want to go and not properly activating certain important functions for that area.

I fixed it by simply checking if the Adventurer’s current area was already different from the collision’s area, making it more precise.

However, I didn’t do it properly for Veil Shop, which resulted in this bug again. This can be easily manipulated by players as there is a very powerful function it does that would essentially break the game if I let the bug happen. Luckily, since I already know how to do it properly, it’s an easy fix.

V0.9.11 - Adventurer Hit Effects

In pursuit of polishing the game further, I added more hit feeling whenever the Adventurer gets hit. I made it more exaggerated, I emulated the feeling you get on how Hollow Knight does it. Blackening of the screen, shockwaves to see that you got hit, and more red when the Adventurer is already at 1 HP. There’s also a lot more effects when the Adventurer dies in the run. Again, I wanted to add a bit more exaggeration.

I essentially just reused the Oracle Appraisal effect for this so I didn’t really have to make a brand new module. It was also White normally, so I can easily modulate the colors to what I need it to be. It’s the same as the small effects you get when Enchanted Cards apply, the Adventurer healing, or when they get Points. The effect only ever gets used for the Oracle so I might as well reuse it.

V0.9.12 - Stamps

The Adventurer can now get Stamps from their adventures that automatically show up in their Save Journal. This is only saved on your Save Data and is not connected to stuff like Steam’s Achievements system. I might add the functionality post-release.

I’ve even added a little Info page in the Dungeon Chronicles so you can get a hint of how to get the three Stamps on your Save Journal.

V0.9.17 - Plume Color

Something that’s been on the backburner for a long time, didn’t even write it on my to-do lists and documents. A small little change that lets Adventurers change their Plume Colors. It adds some nice more personality in your adventures as your venture deep into this deep Dungeon.

The simple color bar was changed to the sprite of the Adventurer eventually as it’ll help you get a glimpse of what it looks like without having to go out of the Options Menu.

Overestimated Requirements

I sadly over-estimated the minimum requirements for a PC. I had only been testing the demo on the lowest spec laptop I have available and it can run it, for a lack of a better way to say it. I only tested the Full Game recently, and well, it doesn’t run xD. I really thought GLES2 could save me with lower budget spec hardware, but with how I made the game, it was just not able to. GLES2 still saves me on older Androids which is still very good though.

I’m just gonna play it safe and put the recommended requirements as the minimum. At the very least it actually runs properly and very smoothly. Going lower will still be fine if ever anyone wants to try, but the lower the spec you go, the less performance and less guarantee it actually runs.

Ready for Steam Cloud Saving

Yes, I was honestly debating whether to add this or not. But it always stuck in my mind that this is a grindy game. Adding Cloud Save to Steam is another layer of protection with the Save Backup functionality of the Save Journal. I decided to do it, it was pretty easy with Steam anyway, and I got it working in literal minutes.

I’ve done some developer tests and it seems to be working flawlessly. What’s nice is that both this and the Save Journal Backing Up work very seamlessly together.

The Cloud Saving seamlessly follows the local save first and not the Steam Cloud, so your current progress will always be safe no matter which platform you play from.

A Quick Ending to a Quick Announcement

I feel like a broken record, but it’s simply just polishing and playtesting as the game is about to release in roughly 2 weeks. Hoping for a good launch, and once again, thank you for all the support. This has been CraftedCircuitry, signing off for now.