Our hero needs to crawl the dungeons to rescue various characters. After they survive, they will help upgrade weapons and familiars, but it’s not free. So... where do they come from?

Barbara
Age: 22
Height: 168cm
Personality: Smart, lively
From: Butland



About:
Barbara is an alchemist and a trader. She used to be a doctor and helped the villagers at Butland suffering from the plague. But the medical conditions were too dire to rival against the plague.

When the Nightmare Land was created, she was standing near the center of it, and failed to escape from being swallowed with everything else around her. But at a mercy of the dark magic she kept her human physique.

After that, she was stranded in the Hall of Circle. She tried to find a way out together with other three who suffered the same faith, but not succeed yet. She is now trapped in the first nightmare called: Sinner’s Tower.


Amanda
Age: 72
Height: 155cm
Personality: Tender, wise
From: Frank’s house



About:
Amanda is an experienced trader for items and bags. She used to be a house keeper for Frank. When Frank was not at home, it was Amanda who looked after the sick Aileen and understood her best.

When the Nightmare Land was created, she was right standing near the center (Frank’s home) and failed to escape away from being swallowed. She also kept her physical features intact to this day.

After that, she has been sent to the Hall of Circle as well. She tried to find a way out together with other three who suffered the same faith, but with no luck so far. She is now trapped in the first nightmare called Sinner’s Tower.

Broker
Age: 48
Height: 150cm
Personality: Upright, strong
From: A fishing island



About:
Broker was the only blacksmith at this fishing village. He made tools for people to catch fish at the sea and also forged weapons for the people. He earned his reputation by finding the first ocean animal for the village.

Unfortunately, again, when the Nightmare Land was created, he also failed to escape from it (Unknown location). Trapped in the Hall of Circle, he stayed in the second nightmare called Steam City.

Scrooge
Age: unknown
Height: 180cm
Personality: Stingy, greedy
From: Duke Vlad’s Castle



About:
Living up to his name, Scrooge was the finance minister for Duke Vlad’s Castle and kept his eye wide open for every single coin in the vault.

When the Nightmare Land was created, he was right near it (Duke Vlad and his crown’s location) and was swallowed whole. He got his body undistorted too, but apparently he wouldn’t hesitate to leave his body behind if he could get out to reclaim all his fortune. He is now at the second nightmare called Steam City.

Before Devlog：
Devlog: The Birth of The Big Eye Crown - Weapons

Dear Crown Trick players! First of all, we would love to thank all of you that participated in our alpha test so far. Feedback on Discord has been amazing and we are still digesting it to this day. Now, let's talk update!

In the latest update, we added a lot more weapons. Here we’d like to walk you through our arsenal and illustrate all categories of weapons and their use cases. Let us know if you do have some feedback about these designs as well! We'd love to hear from you.

In the current version, we have 9 categories of weapons:

• Swords: sweep three tiles in front of you with a normal attack power
  
• Axes: sweep eight tiles around you, but attack power will be lowered for each hit that lands
  
• Daggers: attack enemy right in front of you twice, with high attack power
  
• Spears: attack two tiles in a line in front of you. The farther enemy gets higher damage
  
• Gauntlets: reach out to attack enemy as far as 3 tiles. The farther the enemy is away, the higher damage you deal
  
• Pistols: attack range is 3 tiles and the last shot will deal damage twice
  
• Rifles: attack range is 4 tiles and will damage all enemies in a line
  
• Shotguns: attack range is 2 tiles. The enemy right in front of you will take full damage. Alternatively, each of the enemies (maximum 3) on the 2nd row will take 1/3 of the damage
  
• Staves: low physical damage, but can cast element attacks

The weapon mechanics are illustrated as below:



We have designed many models for each of the 9 weapon categories and will have more to come in the future!

Good news, everyone!

We know it's been a long wait since our last demo release. But now we are finally ready for a Closed Alpha Test here on steam with much more content for you to explore!

Join our Discord server to sign up for the alpha and get the key: https://discord.gg/FbaXFNm

Don’t forget to wishlist and follow the game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1000010/Crown_Trick/

Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CrownTrickGame

We are very grateful to everyone for participating in our previous demo test and providing valuable feedback. With your help and support, we were able to readjust the gameplay, add more exciting content and fix some major bugs. Probably there are still some bugs left in this alpha build that need to be fixed, but we will take care of it later :D
Hope you guys enjoy the game!



The Alpha Update & Patch Notes

Weapon system optimization:
1. Now every weapon has regular and random elemental attributes to it.
2. The damage of each type of weapon has been modified and adjusted to a different degree.
3. Polished the special effects of all weapons, including regular and elemental attacks. (Where firearms' special effects are not implemented in the game yet)

Magic skills and Familiars adjustments:
1. Now Familiars only can provide active magic skills to the player. All of their passive skills have been transferred into Relics.
2. Added some balancing adjustments into magic skills in general.

Relics system adjustment:
1. The Relics are now divided into three different quality types, which significantly increases different combinations for using the Relics.
2. Now you can preview the Relics in the main sceen interface.

Added experience and character level system: By leveling up you will be able to unlock more weapons, relics and items.

Optimize the main hall and NPCs:
1. Updated the upgradeable content provided by four NPCs in the main hall.
2. Optimized the upgradeable content of the magic crystal, including some permanent abilities, weapons, items, and Relics.

Dungeon update:
1. Now each dungeon is divided into a prologue and a main part. The main part has more floors and higher difficulty than a prologue.
2. Overall significantly increased the number of quests, hidden rooms and mechanisms.
3. Now the spring water can restore the HP, mana and the elixir flask at the same time.
4. Now there are only two types of Crusibles: Magic and Status Crucibles that are available at the start of every floor.

Added Dream Fragments as a collectible item and new Hidden BOSS. Every piece of Dream Fragment tells a small part of a bigger story. By collecting the Dream Fragments, a player will be able to unlock a secret BOSS to fight.

Controls optimization:
1. Players can now choose their preferred controls mode in the options settings.
2. Added an option for creating customizable key shortcuts

Other:
1. Fixed some major bugs
2. Greatly optimized the game performance

The Crown Trick open beta version of the game has already been up on itch or Gamejoft for some time now and the response that we have gotten from the players and fans has surpassed our expectations. It has also helped us to solidify the core mechanics of the game that make it enjoyable namely: The synchronous movement, the elemental interaction and the rogue-like aspect. Right now we are looking to collect everyone’s feedback and questions and we’ve compiled a list of some of the most asked questions along with their answers right here!

We’ve had a lot questions about the weapons and relics. In this version of the game players have said that combat suffers from a number of issues that make it feel quite lacking in terms of difficulty and believability.

Some of the main reasons for this are:
1. The 9 weapon types only have one currently playable weapon in the game so there is a lack of variety
2. There are few relics in the game, only about 20, and they don’t have clear enough differences.
3. There are some relics and weapons that have bugs.
4. A few of the weapons’ designs didn’t fit the game; for instance melee weapons were at a severe disadvantage.

The current planned fixes for these issues
1. We will make more weapons for each weapon class, with approximately 9 weapons per each class, so 9*9, for a total of about 80 or so weapons.
2. Emphasize the particularity of relics, reduce the number of basic relics, add additional “special relics” and make the combination of relics more varied and meaningful.
3. Make the amplification of relics more clear visually. This may make the players feel like they have much more powerful impact when they first play through. (Currently many players feel like they aren’t that impressive)
4. Make the pairings between relics, abilities, and items more sensible.
5. Fix the bugs with certain weapons and relics.
6. Fix the issues around melee weapons and buff the swords and battle axe
7. Fix a few of the issues with the ranged weapons, make the differences between them more distinct.
8. Add more magic based skills.



In this Demo version of the game we released Chapter One, the easiest difficulty level, because we didn’t want to overwhelm new players while the learned how to play the game. (We realize now this was a mistake because everyone playing is an expert at roguelikes)

Plans for changes:
1. Every chapter will be have an upper level difficulty and a lower level difficulty, with the lower levels of each chapter having higher difficulty as the player descends further within the chapter.
2. The lower levels within each chapter while have more unique content, events and bosses that match the harder difficulty
3. At the lower level within the chapter players will be challenged with Bosses, main and hidden.
4. Main Bosses will require that you find hidden clues before you are able to challenge them.
5. We will aim to add difficulty settings for the game so that players can have a different play through experiences.
6. Some of this will be done through increasing the number and strength of enemies, but it won’t be the only way we look to increase difficulty.
7. We will add a challenge mode.
8. We will add a kind of “endless maze” mode similar to “SlaySpire” (we are testing how to implement this)
9. We will adjust and balance the mana consumption of skills, blinking, and make mana recovery more reasonable.


In this version we only had two input methods for the controls: mouse/keyboard and controller both of which did not have button mapping available. The game’s current character turning system also confused players.

The current planned fixes for these issues:
1. Create a key mapping feature that allows players to map inputs to buttons or keys they would prefer.
2. Create a mouse function that allows you to click on the grid to move and click on the enemy to attack.
3. Implement a new turning method, in which pressing a directional input will automatically turn and move the player in that direction one space without an additional input. The player will need to control the direction they face when not moving with a different input.
4. We will be optimizing the UI interface.

In the test version the players Homebase upgrades become more and more expensive making it harder to upgrade each time. Further more leveling your character was not fully open to the players so this reduced the amount of replay value. Our game is more of a Roguelite style game in that we want players to be able to level up and defeat the higher difficulties.

The current planned fixes for these issues:
1. Streamline the Homebase upgrade system.
2. Increase the Soul Crystal output so that upgrades requiring Soul Crystal will be achievable earlier.
3. Increase Homebase upgrade diversity and meaningfulness.
4. The player character will not lose experience points after death during a run so that they can unlock new skills and other upgrades for their next run.
5. The main purpose of player character upgrades is to unlock more weapons, relics and tools so that you can have access to more methods for dealing with mobs and bosses in future levels and chapters.
6. We are considering attaching numerical values to the player upgrade system. (Still under team review)



Right now there are several factors that are contributing to these issues, but mainly it’s due to:

1. We have used 4K picture quality for all of the in game image rendering.
2. There are some issues with Unity and memory usage when using this image quality level
3. Because of the synchronous movements certain players have experienced lag in rooms with large numbers of enemies or action animations.

In the current version of the game we have implemented a very simple Save/Load system. In the future we plan to implement an AutoSave function within the game that will allow players to exit the game at any point and come back at the exact point they left of playing.

The current planned fixes for these issues:
1. Performance optimization, with the ability to select low, medium or high image resolution.
2. Fix the issue regarding memory usage.
3. Try to increase the combat animation speeds (This will be more difficulty to implement and if there are any suggestions that you all have the team would love to hear them)

The current version of the game is just a test version and there are many things that we didn’t list above that still need to be implemented or tweaked as we look to move forward with the games development. Everyone has been so helpful when it comes to assisting the team in finding bugs! Here’s a brief list of some of the bugs that players have identified and that the team has been able to fix already!

• Mobs will get stuck inside walls and will disappear or become untargetable making it impossible for players to leave a room
  
• It was impossible to directly pick up gold or items
  
• After pressing Tab to open the mini map, Pressing Esc wouldn’t take you back to the previous screen or menu. (the player needed to manually click the return button)
  
• Some of the maps were obstructed from view.
  
• Progress would be deleted or lost if a player opened the large map inside the lab.
  
• After opening the potion interface players would be unable to exit.
  
• After completing objectives their notification icons would still remain on the mini-map
  
• After completing objectives the mini-map would disappear
  
• The training vial and the first blood vial were different
  
• There were some issues with item or skill explanations
  
• Item description optimization issues

We know that there are still many issues that will need to be fixed and we hope to be able to resolve them as quickly as possible. There are also opportunities to improve the game in many different areas and we will strive to make the game better and better.

If you have any issues, especially issues regarding choppy or lagging gameplay, don’t hesitate to reach out to us on Discord !


We are grateful for your continued support and help in making Crown Trick better and better!

In the last devlog, we heard from one of the girls on the design team. After that update we had lots of people asking what we meant by “Explosion”. The Steam page wishlist experienced growth that even startled our design team.(Last Devlog: The Birth of The Big Eye Crown - The sense of design in a Roguelike)

Seeing that the result was so good (the wishlist grew, and we crushed our KPI) ，I decided I might as well risk my life and make a post like the girl from our design team.


During the earliest Demo of the Game，the art style was quite different from what it is today. However, as we moved to a new art style we ended up creating a more cartoonish art style similar to animated fans. The reasons for this were simple, the team has lots of Bilibili fans on it...

Dun dun dun dun, The early shots and style from the game emerged

It’s true, from the very early stages of the games development we tried many different things for the art style. We looked at other Roguelike games and their art styles. We came to the conclusion that our game’s style should be happy and relaxing. From this foundation we decided to choose a young girl for our lead character following some things we found from the current Roguelike market. We felt this would be the best way to stay within the framework of Roguelike games in the market as well as remain true to our guiding principles for the art style.

This is an early art style we considered for our female lead character

This is another

We also had some ideas for a more Tomboy style desig.
We hoped to create a female character that looked strong and capable of taking on any challenge that she might face in the dungeon and that she was also a little mysterious.

Cute girl came close to looking like this

At the time of our Demo the games are style looked like the pictures below, it’s quite different than the current art style, right?


Did you notice how the floor looked more like a chessboard?

This was an early demo version, but you can still see some of the core elements of the gameplay such as the elemental interactions and the ability to change the environment and effect gameplay by buffing or debuffing areas and characters.

Even in the early art style of the game you can see that we wanted to maintain the hand drawn feel of the items and textures.

Familiar containers

The creatures, and monsters from the early art style of the game

When every thing was ready we prepared a Demo of the early version of the game, however the players felt that the art style was a little lackluster and didn’t really capture their interest or attention from the get go. With most responding that there wasn’t anything too special about it.


The art style didn’t match our expectations and we felt it didn’t help our game to stand out enough from other games. We wanted to make sure we could showcase the best aspects of the game and we decided that a cartoon style is not the same as the “Sister Meng” style. So we focused on making sure that we achieved a more textured visual and game experience for this most recent demo version of the game.

Of course we know that its very difficult to make a real hand animated game. It’s been a difficult challenge for our team. But we want to make sure we deliver the best game to the players. So we’ve worked to maintain the lines, color blocks and frame animations.

The first death animation! Because this is a Rougelike game and the player’s death is an important part of the game.


The new scenery appearance


We will continue to develop the game along this basis. Now , the game like this：

We also included the chessboard like feel

In this animation the fire barrel explodes and interacts with the environment which is pretty cool while still maintaining the cartoon feel.

At the same time we’ve carried the 2D art hand drawn art style over to the rest of the game.
Even though this will take more time to implement we’re sure the result will be much better.

Hand drawn Main Character

Hand drawn cartoon style NPC enemies

Continuing in the tradition of cute girl

This is a short gameplay video, you can take a look and check out what the gameplay and game art style is like in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXYj6D9RIAw

===================================================
After reading all this, wanna play Crown Trick? You can go to https://nextstudios.itch.io/crowntrick or https://gamejolt.com/games/crowntrick/413083 . We’ve put out an open beta version of the game that everyone can try and then join our
Discord and share your suggestions.

==================================================
Last Devlog：
Last Devlog: The Birth of The Big Eye Crown - The sense of design in a Roguelike

Sorry for keeping you waiting so long, but a test play just begins!

While we hope that everyone had a nice time playtesting the game, you are also more than welcomed to leave your feedback and let us know what makes the game NOT so good. As the game still remains in the development stage, your opinion is very important to us.

Itch: https://nextstudios.itch.io/crowntrick
Gamejolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/crowntrick/413083

Again: The unbelievable crown is a synchronous turn-based Rogue game, remember to be a turn-based system!

Editor's note: This log comes from one of the game designers "FY". She is the only girl on the team and is responsible for scenes and room production.

This time FY will talk about some ideas we’ve had in terms of making the rooms in the game: What are we thinking about when we talk about the sense of design in a random game (Rougelike)?

When we discuss the design of the level of a Rougelike game, we find that many of these game levels do not need to have too many engineered encounters. Try to think carefully, think about some of the popular titles from this genre like Enter the Dungeon, The Binding of Isaac, and Crypt of the NecroDancer , ... You will find that these games don’t have the “standout scenes” that impress you like some of the iconic scenes in RPG games. Instead, they have artifacts, a Boss battle or a "fancy" trap.


"Crypt of the NecroDancer" Random enemies, random and damaging walls


"Crypt of the NecroDancer" Boss battles are very interesting

From a viewpoint about randomness, Rougelike games do not require too many elaborate levels of design. One of the main reasons why everyone loves to play Rougelike games is that the producer can use a small amount of resources to give the player longer more interesting gameplay. The player is motivated to overcome the difficulty and uncertainty caused by randomness. If a fixed puzzle is included, after being answered 10 times, it will become boring and cumbersome, and the design cost to implement such an intricate puzzle is often very high. So, due to the high cost of production and the low replay value, the intricate fixed design and Rougelike are not a good match.

Then why did we have to add a lot of fixed designs to the random city?


Game screenshot, all liquids will respond to Electricity

This has a lot to do with the gameplay of our game, which requires the use of various elements of terrain intelligently.
. Before Devlog：Core Elemental interaction。

What is the elemental terrain? From an implementation standpoint, it can be understood as a special trap or mechanism with different interaction effects. Of course, the experience when playing may be quite different. In other words, the game is made up of various types of special traps. Of course, players don't want all the in game traps to always produce the same results. We hope that all the traps used in the game have a uniqueness so that weapons and attacks are all different.



This poses a challenge to the level design team (as if the creation of the dungeon is not enough ~~). There aren't many games that have been able to overcome this challenge because of the risks. But we’re not shying away from it.

How do we solve the problem of “using elemental terrain” in a meaningful way... The problem has been haunting us for some time. Finally, during the brainstorming process, it seems there have been quiet a few possible solutions:

Do we really want to make a game like Mario, where we treat each room as a puzzle, and players use objects to fight just like solving a puzzle. A solution for each room cannot be represented by 0 or 1, and ultimately the solution must be based in what this type of game (the endless dungeon of a synchronous turn-based system) requires, namely: resource management.

Basing the game around the room encourages the use of element interaction to generate a favorable outcome for the player, while also encouraging the player to save their resources. Good players will focus on saving more resources as they enter deeper into the dungeons; players who do not master the skills will be trapped in the room until they are able to figure out the most optimal solution.

In Crown Trick, the player's can use of the room and elements in the following situations:
1. Attract monsters to terrain with negative effects
2. Use terrain to increase the amount of damage
3. Using objects to generate damage (control)
4. Use the object or terrain to create a chain reaction
5. Transform and utilize the terrain

Anything that meets the above criteria could be considered a suitable way to play the game. However, don't forget that in each level, the position of the enemy randomly changes. The terrain elements generated on the ground are randomly changing, and the position of the player entering each level randomly changes. This leads to some obvious objectives when the player sees the room, and some are slightly hidden. In rooms with more obvious puzzles, the player can easily see the means of breaking through, thus completing the battle more efficiently. In the room with more hidden puzzles, the player needs to do some calculation and thinking, and the means of solving these kinds of puzzles are also diverse.

Let’s take a look at some of the battles that have been designed.
Here are some of the rooms in the game:（cell）：

一、 Using objects and object combos
a) Room 1: The arrow shoots the oil drum, and the oil and water mix produces a large area of deceleration effect.

Room (in design)

b) Room 2: A row of explosive barrels, can be detonated to cause a lot of damage

Room (in design)

In the “Room 1”, the best solution is that the player shoots the oil drum with a bow and arrow; most players in the “Room 2” may wait for the monster to detonate as much as possible, but there are many players who may choose to ignore these things in the room.

二、 The a planned use of the terrain
a) Room 3: Players can use their position to lead the pig into the fire

Room (in design)

b) Room 4: Fire and explosive terrain help to stack a lot of damage on the Boss. How can I bring Boss to this area? Come on, you can do it!

Room (in design)

In “Room 3” and “Room 4” , there may be more differences in the player's choice. These terrains have various requirements for the player. Due to this, the puzzle of a room no longer tends to be a unique, fixed, or singular solution. Players can play by using their intuitions and preferences.

三、 Some traps that change according to the round, such as: ground thorns, players have to navigate around them and they can use the characteristics of these kinds of traps during a round to make the battle go in your favor.
a) There is no monster in this room, the player only needs to walk over the thorns without injury.

Room (in design)

b) There is a monster in the room, the player seems to be able to use the thorns to cause damage to the monster.

Room (in design)

So, perhaps for our game, in each room, the answer to the puzzle is between 0-1, and there is no one “correct” solution. Because players enter the room randomly, the monsters spawn randomly, and random elemental terrain, players can think about how to use their own means to go through the room in their own way.

Here’s today’s Dev blog. If you have any suggestions or questions feel free to send them to us!

In designing each room, after further discussion and research, the levels team has developed a new set of design methods that not only borrowed some existing methods, but that also combine some urban design methods as well. Until next time, bye by everyone!

Unfinished, to be continued...

Before Devlog：
Devlog: The Birth of The Big Eye Crown - Elemental interaction

In the last post, we briefly talked about “elemental interaction”. In the game, “How to use natural elements to fight” is one of the important experiences that we hope to bring to the players. This time we will talk about the development process in this regard:

Inspiration
The earliest source of inspiration for "natural element interaction" was the game "Divinity: Original Sin 2" which was released in the previous year and was highly praised. In the first generation, the gameplay was like Diablo's Action RPG. In "Divinity: Original Sin", the gameplay was a more traditional ActionPoint-style C-RPG, and provides an extremely interesting and interactive aspect of natural elements. At that time, our group of developers were also very addicted.

IMAGE：Divinity: Original Sin

Introduce
The original intention of making "Crown Trick" is to provide a easier-to-use retro synchronized turn-based gameplay system, but the problem is that this retro gameplay is complex and fragmented. So after we removed these complex points from the gameplay, the game was simple but the interesting aspects of these retro games disappeared.

Gogue Like game dense information interface

So, we spent a lot of time thinking about how to add a new mechanism to the game to support the fun of the core gameplay. At this time, we put our eyes on the instinct of the original sin of the gods - "to introduce a set of nature for the game." Will the element interaction system be interesting? ". With this idea, I started to try implementation.

Try
Although we got inspiration from these games, it is quite another matter to make this mechanism in the game. The game is based on the "grid" unit, and based on the "round" process unit, then the elements must meet these two points after joining, but also natural enough and easy to understand.
Therefore, the element of "the elemental terrain of the lattice shape" came into being.

'Crown Trick' Battle scene

Next, we needed to determine what elemental terrain is introduced.
In "Divinity: Original Sin 2", not all elements correspond to a kind of terrain. For example, wind and electricity do not have independent terrain. This may seem natural, but the sense of consistency will be weaker. Using it as a core game mechanism may cause certain inconsistencies and imbalances.
To ensure that each element has independent terrain and differentiated effects in the game, we will try to design a set of element interaction mechanisms for the game.


'Crown Trick' Elemental terrain
The following terrain effects are still being designed and adjusted. This is our attempt at the mechanism. If you have better ideas or suggestions, you can tell us.

• Flame - damage terrain, multi-round DOT, if the player can extend the enemy's ignition time by pulling, then the income is higher.
  
• Explosion - damage terrain, single-shot one-time damage, if you can not pull with the enemy, then the return is higher.
  
• Poison - damage terrain, multi-round percentage DOT, stackable.
  
• Ice – controllable terrain, will freeze the enemy
  
• Electricity - controllable terrain, will paralyze the enemy
  
• Oil – controllable terrain, will slow down the enemy
  
• Wind - increase / decrease the terrain, will weaken the enemy
  
• Water - increase / decrease the terrain, will enhance yourself

'Crown Trick' elemental interaction

So what happens when different elements come together? I can demonstrate some simple examples, such as water terrain.


'Crown Trick' Water elemental assemble

Flame + water = steam, steam will provide stronger DOT and an additional increase / decrease effect
Flame + wind = blow, the fire will be blown into a small fire, the scope is expanded, but the power is low.
Flame + oil = point fuel, become a sea of fire.
Electric + wind = thunderstorm, brings damage and paralysis to the enemy
Ice + wind = ice storm, can bring damage and freeze to the enemy
……


Game goal
In fact, the complete interactive elemental terrain is a very big challenge. In the process of making all the combinations of two elements, there are still many combinations of elements that are unnatural. We are constantly trying to explore more feasible combination results (the above-mentioned explosion terrain is the latest introduction, replacing the original fire wall terrain).

Although it is difficult, the production process is full of constant change, but our goal has never changed - to introduce 8 kinds of natural elements to the game, with each combination of two elements producing a change, each change has its own effect, so that Player can defeat the enemy by combining elements to get an experience each time.

Elemental-related design ideas are introduced here for the time being. Again, this is an attempt at the mechanics of the game. If you have better ideas or suggestions, please let us know. We will continue to update and introduce new links in the follow-up, so stay tuned~



Guess: How many several combinations of water lements topography?


Unfinished, to be continued...

上一篇：
Devlog: The Birth of The Big Eye Crown

The China Spring Festival is coming soon.『Crown Trick』wishes you :Everything to be plain sailing throughout the coming year!

Hello！

Since our game announced the Steam store page, there are always players and fans asking: What kind of game is this? Or is this game similar to XXX? How is this game played? And so on...

This kind of question is always difficult to answer in one word. In fact, it’s easier to understand if you play the game. But...the game is not done yet. So how can we explain ourselves without a playthrough? This is how The Big Eye Crown blog series was born. We hope that through this form, we will be able to talk to the fans and future players who I have not met, about the game, answer some questions, and most importantly do a little bit of shameless self-promotion, hehe!


（What are you staring? ）

We are a group of Rogue-like fans! We’ve played almost all the mainstream and non-mainstream Rogue games on the market. We’ve even put in thousands of hours on some of the games. Everyone on the team had the desire to make a Rogue-like game. We thought, hey we love Rogue games so much, why not making one?!

At the beginning of the project, we wanted to make a game in an underground city about exploring and fighting monsters. Different dungeon monsters will give you different abilities. You can capture all sorts of strange monsters as you traverse the dungeon and then you can use their skills to fight. The maze of the entire game is randomly generated, and there are other various changes which keep the game fresh even after multiple play throughs.


（Early demo screenshot）

In terms of combat mode, we drew inspiration from the classic Shiren The Wanderer (an incredible Japanese RPG series, also one of the earliest Rogue games) in the "synchronous turn-based combat". The "synchronous round " is simply explained as: when you don't move, the enemy does not move; when you take a step, the enemy also takes a step; all operations take place in the same round. The well-known music battle game Crypt of the NecroDancer also uses a similar combat system.


（Try and catch me!）

In fact, the "turn-based" model of gameplay is not a mainstream type of gameplay. Even in the age when Roguelike games were more popular, this was a little more niche. Nowadays, there are very few such games, and there are many reasons for the decline. However, we feel that this classic gameplay feature should not fade away with time. We hope to reinterpret this classic style gameplay in our own way.


（Shiren The Wanderer ）

Our game differs from the big map setting of Shiren The Wanderer. Instead, our game is similar to The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth with an underground labyrinth of rooms as the setting. Crown Trick also includes controls for different weapons such as swords, guns, and pistols. We wanted to give the game a clearer sense of purpose and strategy, while also making the game more accessible to players of any background or level. I’m not sure whether it wll be welcomed or not, but we just want everyone to be able to play the game.


（Randomly generated room）

In addition, the elemental interaction design is inspired by the game Divinity: Original Sin. The different elements of the terrain have different effects on the battle. In the original Divinity: Original Sin there are a small number of elements that can interact in pairs, resulting in new gameplay changes. We have made new gameplay features based on this concept, adding more elemental terrain to the randomly generated maze, and set up a function where elements can create new interactions with each other. This is a gameplay experience that is not currently available in similar games.


（In-game element dynamic effects）

Eight elements have been designed so far. Can anyone guess how they’ll interact?


Unfinished, to be continued...