A Roadmap

And a playable version is out. Mind yourself that the current version is just a tech demo, and not early access or anything, so don't expect much content. For context, when I released the first five dungeons of Ero Witches, that game was in development for four months, while this game has only been in development for two months. So it's important to keep your expectations in check.

Anyway, I thought it might be useful to list all the things that I'm planning to add to the game. In no real order, these are:

Whatever comes from the Tech Demo

I'll first fix any bugs or QoL requests coming from the tech demo. Or whatever else I can do based on the feedback I'll get. Feel free to report any bugs in a comment under this devlog.

More Ratkin

There are quite some additional ratkin enemies planned. In fact, the textures for those are already made, only the movement animations are missing. Of course it also needs balancing, which is more complex once you get to the longer and more difficult dungeons.

Classes

Obviously there will be more than four classes. You may have noticed that some cursed equipment references a prisoner class. The idea is that the adventurers can switch classes (unless forced into a specific one) with some classes not occuring for adventurers in the stagecoach. Once you reach level 5 in a class you get a permanent bonus that persists even if you change classes. I'll probably go for 8 baseclasses and 4 special classes, one for each area type.

Sets

Different items should be able to be part of sets, granting bonusses if you wear enough of them. The idea is to give the prisoner equipment a set bonus that turns the user into the prisoner class so you can "easily" do the mission to unequip them.

UI and Textures

No the guild buildings will not stay as buttons with text. No the UI will not stay black transparent boxes. No Mami doesn't manage all facilities in the guild.

Kidnapping

Currently adventurers die when they are killed. I'll replace this with a kidnapping system. Once kidnapped you'll get a mission to rescue your unfortunate comrade. When you succeed you get her back, though she will carry some interesting and unique "gifts" depending on where she was captured.

Other Enemies

The ratkin are only one of the many different enemies. They serve the role of the bandits in Darkest Dungeon, where they can pop up everywhere. The remaining enemies are mostly confined to specific areas. Most of their stats and moves are already designed, but texturing everything will take some time (though some have some rough drafts already). I'll go area per area, so you'll notice when they are finished.

Other Areas

The idea is to have four different areas, each corresponding to a quadrant from your guild, of which the current forest is one. The others are a cave (spiders/bats), a swap (vines/slimes/alraunes), and an actual dungeon (machines/orcs/goblins). Each requires some different tiles and curios, but that doesn't take that much time. And as said before, the data for the enemies is mostly done already.

Bosses

Rather than the bosses happening at the end of a dungeon, I'm thinking of just making them a dungeon themselves, as in just a single room with the boss. The trek to the boss doesn't really add a lot, so I might as well streamline that. I have some ideas for bosses thought out already, but normal enemies take precedence now.

I also want some minibosses. These are like bosses but smaller and occuring during a dungeon run. Something like a kraken attacking in case of some interactions with the lake curio.

Curio Rework

Currently curio interactions depend on provisions, just like in Darkest Dungeon 1. This has some problems, firstly it limits the amount of provisions I can create, since all of them need some interaction with curios or you're left with a lot of dead weight. Additionally it only works once, if you know the effects you just make sure you have the right provisions for the area. I guess it works better in DD1 where there's a heavy focus on provisioning (though it becomes irrelevant once you have enough money).

Instead I'd like to investigate making the curio results depend on the adventurer that interacts with it and her quirks and personality. But for now, the curio system works.

Hypnosis/Parasites/Piercings

There's still some empty slots on the equipment bar. These are meant for hypnotic suggestions and parasites, both applied by enemies. Parasites grow slowly if you nurture them correctly and give both drawbacks and bonusses. Hypnotic suggestions on the other hand weaken over time. Piercings are piercings. I don't know how I'll show these, since limiting them to a couple slots may be too limiting.

The idea is that in the endgame you can make a full death machine by using all these parts together.

Animation Rework

You may note that the animations are a bit wonky and stilted. While not by design, it's a consequence of creation them unhindered by any knowledge of how animating works (as well as changing animation position and length several times during development). I hope to get better at it as I animate more stuff, and then do a second pass through the current animations.

Analytics

Darkest Dungeon 1 is balanced based on player analytics. Just knowing how much a move or class is used helps massively in balancing stuff. Moreover, it's just fun to know. I think there's a way to set this up with Godot, but I'm not actually sure. In any way it's of lesser priority than the other ones.

Personalities

This is the big one. I'd like each adventurer to have a personality like in Going Deeper. This would then impact the quirks they get/lose, the growth of their crests, curio interactions, and more. Unfortunately, it would be a system with quite a deep impact, so I prefer making a larger part of the game before implementing it. But once implemented it will give an extra dimension to your adventurers and force you to live with or "correct" their personalities.

Anyway, that's what's planned. I'll keep you posted in future devlogs.