Hello everyone, happy New Year!

It’s time for our yearly roadmap post. The previous year was tumultuous, for both the gamedev industry and us with the launch of Hellcard 1.0, technology changes, and team shuffling. We are now well posed for a productive 2025, so let’s talk about Thing Trunk Past, Present, and Future.

The biggest externally visible event of the past year was the launch of Hellcard 1.0 and Bruja DLC. Both performed well, which wasn’t a given. We launched during a period of many, many failed launches of good games that went under without even making a ripple. After all, in 2024 a whooping 18996 games were released on Steam. That's over 2 games per hour!

Yet we hit over 2000 concurrent players, making it our biggest launch yet! And then soared to over 5600 concurrent players for the Bruja DLC launch.

We are now crunching numbers to see if making DLCs is a valid strategy moving forward. Adding one more class to Hellcard would be awesome, but with our limited manpower, we wouldn’t want to delay other projects unnecessarily.

We also have been polishing and balancing Hellcard, with more cards and complete rework on the Tinkerer class. As a result, we have recently hit an Overwhelmingly Positive rating in recent reviews, which we are super stoked about.

We have also been working on console ports; you can expect more news in that department shortly. The workload was shared between us and an external porting company, which allowed us to learn a lot. In the future, we are going to develop games for consoles and PC at the same time. This should save a lot of time since the work won’t have to be duplicated. It will also make the codebase tidy and organized.
On the team front, there have been changes as well. We took in three interns last year and offered each of them to keep working with us once their internships ended. We are 14 people strong now.

Sadly, Matt, one of the founding fathers, decided to take a more passive role in development, mostly due to burnout. He remains in an advisory role but doesn’t work on any specific project, for now.

Last, but super far from least, after 10 years, we managed to compartmentalize the development. Until now, each one of us has worked on all current projects. We had issues with delegation - team members would consult everyone else about most decisions. While this approach was great for what we call visibility, meaning everyone knew everything going on, it’s detrimental to efficiency. And it put unnecessary strain on the team.

For the last three years, we have been trying to isolate the bureaucracy of running the company and ongoing projects from each other. And on the project scale, learn how to delegate. We are now confident this new system is working.
First of all, we signed an unannounced project with a publisher. It will be our first UE5 project. That’s all I can say at the moment, though ːarchduckː It will be part of the series and Supporter's Pack, of course.
We are looking for funding to expand the Book of Aliens team. The environment is adversarial, to say the least with studios firing devs en masse and investors scared. We have a couple of options that we will continue to pursue while continuing to work on the game. The core Book of Aliens team is small now, we can iterate prototypes and design but we will need more hands on board before moving into preproduction.
We are finalizing the modding support update for Hellcard. This completes the Hellcard’s roadmap, encompassing all we had planned at launch. We even have added plenty of unplanned content along the way, so there is a non-zero chance that’s not all ːarchduckː
I know, that’s a name you haven’t heard in a long time! In my spare time, I have tinkered with the Book of Demons. Specifically, I remade it to work without path-bound movement.
There is a story behind it, too. One day I woke up and remembered a negative review from 2018 (these tend to burn into your brain when you are a green dev with starry eyes). Someone wrote that the game was “shit on rails” and that “devs made it on rails because free movement would be too hard”. Which was funny since path movement and mechanics were super complicated to implement.
I wanted to see if it would work and if I could rewrite the game secretly to surprise the team. Not only did it work but it’s also fun. Not sure if we are going to do anything with that, though. The changes are too fundamental to be incorporated into the core game’s code.
We will release the modding support update sometime early this year. This should allow anyone to add new classes and cards using pre-existing mechanics. We expect to spend at least a month fixing issues with it and supporting modders (assuming there will be modders ːarchduckː). This will finish the content roadmap for Hellcard but doesn’t mean there won’t be more content at all. If adding future classes as DLC proves feasible we might add one or two.
The work continues. Since we are fully transitioning to Unreal Engine with all future projects, we decided it would make sense to develop a smaller (or maybe simpler is the correct word here) project on it first. That way we will have a better grip on the tech before diving head first into Book of Aliens, allowing us to ensure the the proper quality you expect from us in both games.
All in all, everyone is excited about the future, doing what they want to be doing and work is progressing very quickly compared to previous years. So, I dare say, it was a year of hard work but it seems to be paying off. This year will tell!

As Always,
Stay Safe in Paper Dungeons ːarchduckː
Konstanty

The Archduck, often seen lurking next to adversaries in both Hellcard and Book of Demons. An innocent duck with the wrong friends? Or an evil mastermind, subtly pulling the strings from the shadows? Now you can also befriend this somewhat sinister fowl and see if you end up running your own paper dungeon. Don't blame us if a party of heroes kicks in your doors sometime down the road, though!

We have joined forces with Makeship to see if there is enough interest in Archduck plushies. If there is they will bring Archduck plushie into the physical realm. They are the same guys who did Rimworld plushies, so they are solid.

You can sign the petition here:
https://www.makeship.com/petitions/archduck-plushie


If it reaches 200 orders the game is on. If not - we still have our unique, improvised archduck plushie at the office to cry into ːarchduckː

As Always,
Stay Safe in Paper Dungeon ːArchduckː
Konstanty

As you might already know, Book of Demons continues in our next game, a co-op deckbuilder Hellcard. Which, coincidentally, is going to leave Early Access in the coming weeks. All the heroes you know from Book of Demons are already in Hellcard and now we are testing the fourth class. Someone new who isn't present in the Book of Demons' line-up. Once we are satisfied with the balance we will lock in the launch date.

We also thought it would be a good idea to bundle both games since it's the same universe. Not sure why we didn't do that earlier. Anyway, without further ado, the Hellcard x Book of Demons bundle!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/37956/Book_of_Demons_x_HELLCARD/

And if you want to try Hellcard's take on deckbuilding before committing, you can do so in the prologue.

As always,
Stay Safe in Paper Dungeons ːarchduckː
Konstanty

We went quiet for a while but for a good reason; the Hellcard's closed beta was raging behind the scenes. We had our hands full balancing and adding quality-of-life stuff to the game. At the same time, we were making plans for the launch. Finally, the time is upon us.

Mark your calendars, wishlist, and tell your friends. This train can't be stopped: Hellcard is releasing into Early Access on the 16th of February. Why Early Access, some of you might ask. Those who participated in the Early Access of our previous game, Book of Demons, know that our EA launches are atypical. We launch in Early Access with the game fully playable and somehow polished. For us, Early Access is an opportunity to gather feedback so that we can polish and balance the game where you feel it will make a difference. We will also be adding extra content to make sure the game stays fresh.

I would have forgotten! Here is our new launch trailer, where you get to know the antagonist of Hellcard a bit better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zssuAFHzGIA

Instead of doing the demo, we are relaunching it as a prologue. This might increase the visibility for the new players since the demo had poor visibility on the store page and people on our Discord were asking where is it.

Until we make sure we can have both demo and the Prologue live at the same time the demo will be unavailable, sorry for the inconvenience. The good news is that:

All your saves and progress from the demo will transfer to the prologue and later on to the full game. You can just install the prologue and continue where you left off in the demo.

You can check out the Prologue in either single or co-op multiplayer here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2207480/HELLCARD_Prologue/


See you on the 16th and, as always,
Stay safe in the paper dungeons ːArchduckː
Konstanty

Good news everyone! First of all, the game now includes the Czech language! This is thanks to the excellent community translator who took the time to translate the game and worked with us to integrate the translation.

We also, finally, got the official playable verification for Steam Deck! The only thing holding us back from getting that green tick is the text size in the game, which is a tiny bit smaller than required for the Steam Deck. Aside from that everything works and the game runs perfectly. Since the text size probably won't change (as it would require a manual rework of the whole GUI) now is the best time to play the game in your Deck.

Other stuff included in this update are various accumulated fixes and improvements to the rendering and window system backend. Peculiar resolution handling issues on ultrawide displays should be a thing of the past.

As always,
Stay safe in the paper dungeons ːarchduckː
Konstanty

Although we work hard on the next titles in the series, we of course keep maintaining and updating Archdemon's dungeons. Like we could stop ːarchduckː

Without any further ado, the first and the biggest news of this update is the addition of Ukrainian community translations!

We have also found and fixed multiple minor issues with other languages. There were also some controller issues and crash bugs that are no more.

Full changelog:

• Ukrainian language is now available thanks to awesome community translators!
  
• Fixed a seemingly random crash on Massacre difficulty
  
• Various updates and fixes to all translations in the game - also thanks to awesome community translators!
  
• Controller - fixed an issue where the game pedestal would be highlighted on game startup but pressing a button opened the menu instead of launching the game
  
• Fixed avatar sharing to Facebook

As always,
Stay safe in paper dungeons ːarchduckː
Konstanty

Update 18.3.2022: We posted this statement and raised the price in order to draw the attention of Russian players to our statement so they could see what is happening in Ukraine in their name.

It worked. We received a lot of angry and grateful feedback both from Russians supporting and hating this war. Since then we have joined other studios and halted sales of Book of Demons in Russia and Belarus until further notice. Owners of the game will continue to be able to play it. Supporters will still receive all the content. Again, this is not an action aimed at Russian and Belarussian players, although it affects them. Taxes from sales of games on Steam go back to the country where the sale has taken place. This means that every sale of our game in those regions would be helping wage this war.
You can read the original statement below.



Here in Poland we still remember horrors of war from our grandparents' stories. Now we witness them at our doorstep. We support our neighbors from Ukraine in this dark time. Members of our team are privately driving to the border refugee camps every day and transporting mothers and children fleeing the war-ravaged country. It's all not enough. There is a river, an ocean of people crossing the border every minute. Often with nothing more than a child or a cat cradled in their arms. This madness is hurting innocents, mothers, fathers, and gamers like us.

First of all, for the next seven days we commit to donating all income from the sales of our game on PC to NGOs that take care of refugees.

Furthermore, as a company, we would like to try and reach our Russian players and let them know what is really happening in Ukraine. We are raising the price of Book of Demons over 10x to 6666 Rubles for the Russian region. This price change is a temporary measure to bring attention to this statement. Eventually, the price will return to normal levels.

This is a drastic measure, as we are aware that some of our greatest fans are from Russia, the country where love for the ARPG and the original Diablo is strong. Most of them probably are aghast with war crimes their government is committing on innocent Ukrainians. We know this might feel like punishment to some of them. Yet if this makes new players check our post for an explanation and thus allows us to be heard and reach those who are not aware of what the Russian government is really doing, then it will be worth it. We don't blame regular Russians, we are all brothers and sisters. It is their government that is to blame. The price will remain increased until further notice.

To our Ukrainian friends considering escaping the horrors of war: if you can risk getting to our border there are thousands of people from all over Poland waiting there to get you to safety. We have food, toys for kids, medical and legal aid. You will get driven to your friends or families all over Europe. If you have no one we will take care of you and build a new life for you. Thousands of families are offering their homes to refugees. You don't need a passport to cross the border, take your pets with you. Everyone is welcome. More info in Ukrainian here (official government site).

As always, stay safe.
Thing Trunk team

It's October so the Town is also celebrating. You would think they had enough scary stuff going on with the Archdemon and the whole undead invading the land but apparently, there is always room for more!

Pumpkins, last year sweets, spider nets, and paper skeletons are dragged out of cellars and dusted off. Coincidentally, this all is also done by paper skeletons!



This also means that “Limited Edition Spooky Challenges” are back starting from 10/26 until 11/2. Here is a rundown:

• 7th sense: killed enemies respawn and can be killed again for more gold. They don't give you more points, but think of all the gold! Grab as many coins as your pockets can hold and run before the monsters surround you! Begins on 10/25.
  
• Spooky Spores!: We heard you like spores, so we put spores in your spores. Did we mention you now also spawn spores that spawn other spores and all spores poison you? That's how it is Run or kill enemies around you to gain more points: the choice is yours. Begins on 10/27.
  
• For The Horde!: the enemies are blindingly fast and can sense you from far, far, very far away. Kill them quickly or push them back in order to finish the run as fast as possible! Begins on 10/29.
  
• All you need is Blood: each second you lose 1ːpaperheartː Every time you deal destroy enemy heart you gain 1ːpaperheartː Perfectly balanced as all things should be, manage your hearts and survive. Begins on 11/1.

As always,
Stay safe in the pumpkin dungeons ːarchduckː
Konstanty ːpaperheartː

It's been a while since we have released an update. Rest assured, though: we are committed to the long-term support of the Book of Demons. We are simply bundling fixes in larger batches.

Without further ado, This Update's Highlights!



There have been issues with saves being corrupted due to power outages. Each time we tried to recover the saves by hand and sometimes we succeeded. Now we are adding a two-tier automatic backup system that should keep your heroes safe.



There was a bug preventing Razer keyboards from going full RGB on you. They will now. And it will look glorious, give it a try!



This title goes to slowed, frozen, and stunned states not being recognized by the game. This resulted in stun locks on the hero and some general weirdness. It won't be as easy to get frozen to death now and goats won't be so frustrating! The funny thing is, we actually fixed this bug two years ago but it came back. Fingers crossed it stays squashed for good this time!



Ver. 1.05.211020 - 21 October 2021

• Changed the save manager system to keep two-tiered backups of characters in case of a power failure
  
• Fixed Razer keyboards not using RGB backlights correctly when enabled in the "Extras" section in options - the return of RGB glory!
  
• Revamped the whole credits backend system - supporters can now be updated more often, regardless of the game updates
  
• Now, if you are a supporter, your name will be highlighted in the credits when you view them! How cool is that?
  
• Fixed slowed, frozen, and stunned states not being recognized properly by the game mechanic
  
• Updated supporters list in credits
  
• Updated translations with small fixes

As Always,
Stay safe in the paper dungeons!
Konstanty ːpaperheartː


PS.: Looks like there was a nasty bug that slipped past our tests and affected players with non-latin characters in the same path. A hot patch just went live that fixed that issue. If you have been affected you might get a "save corrupted" message on startup but your saves should be fine.
Sorry for the commotion!

PPS Update 10/27/2021: we are releasing a small fix, some fixes from the previous update required fixing and now should be fixed ːarchduckː

Hello!

It's been a while since the last progress update and we are sorry it took us so long to write them. Matt opens a new era of regular updates with a lenghty blogpost on why making games takes so long and what is our current status. As I said it's lenghty but there are also concepts and renders from new projects sprinkled in there, so hopefully it will be a worthy click and read!

You can find the full post here, on our blog.

And here is a taste of these new images and concepts ːarchduckː



As I mentioned this post ushers a new era - an era of montly dev updates from us. So see you soon!


As always,
Stay safe in paper dungeons!
Konstanty