Hi folks,

We hope you're enjoying the new DemonCrawl patch! Our main goal was to address a number of underperforming items, and so far the feedback suggests that players are happy with the changes overall. We're really glad to hear that!

However, our work's not done - we promised you poll results, and poll results are what you're gonna get.

So without further ado, let's jump into the data (remember, each player could vote for up to 3 items on this list):



While some of the data speaks for itself, we would like to provide our own interpretation as well as a few general observations - read on if you're interested to know how these results will shape DemonCrawl's development in 2020.

• There is a pretty significant gap between the top 5 features and everything else.
  
• It is safe to assume that most of the users who participated in this poll already play DemonCrawl on PC, in English. Therefore, certain options such as "port to another platform" and "localize game to another language" were bound to receive few votes. We don't take this to mean that there's minimal interest in these features. We still plan to port and localize DemonCrawl in due course.

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Moving onto specific interpretations...

Items are at the core of DemonCrawl's identity, so we're really pleased that new items are the #1 priority for our playerbase! We will continue to release the occasional update that adds a handful of shiny toys, but what we really want to do is develop a proper expansion that contains 100+ items with all-new mechanics.

We are also considering adding a new mode that limits the item pool to, say, 100-200 items for a very different gameplay experience. The pool would probably rotate on a daily or weekly basis. Let us know if this is something you would be interested in!

A new 10-stage quest? We can do that!

Also, we received feedback from a couple players who noticed that the poll didn't have an option for "new gamemode" and chose "new quest" as the closest alternative. We may end up running another poll to see which of these our community prefers - we'd be excited to work on either!

Admittedly, this one surprised us. We had wanted to take another pass at item balance for quite some time, but when we learned of the huge demand for it, we decided to make it a priority for v1.35.

We will continue listening to your feedback and will make an effort to include balance changes in our patches more frequently.

Ok, we'll get right to work on the Dead Rodent Mastery.

Jokes aside, we think new Masteries go hand-in-hand with new items. There are perhaps only a few existing mechanics that lack Masteries (e.g. Explosions, Electric), but a ton of unexplored design space for brand new mechanics. We're going to focus on the latter.

Also, we are of the mind that nearly every mechanic should have its own Mastery.

This is the feature we are currently the most interested in pursuing, so it is great to see that it ranks so high for our players (nearly 1 in 3 poll respondants are eager for improved endgame!)

We have big ideas for both Endless Multiverse and Beyond that should drastically increase the longevity of each mode. Stay tuned.

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This selection outperformed "tutorial overhaul" by a good margin, which was a little surprising. We will continue adding in-game tooltips with each patch, and probably postpone the tutorial rework 'til next year.

If you know of any terms/definitions that are unclear or outright missing, please let us know!


At the time of launch, we were limited to 100 achievements in Steam. It appears that this cap has been removed, so we can get to work on adding new achievements soon! We have literally 100s of ideas for cool and interesting challenges. If we run into another cap on Steam, we can just add the achievements to the game client itself.


These were perhaps the biggest surprises for us.

Nintendo Switch port managed to snag nearly 12% of the votes. We take this to mean that there are a substantial number of PC players who would be willing to purchase DemonCrawl again on a second platform. These numbers are much higher than we expected - we are flattered.

While PS4, Mac, and Linux didn't show the same level of enthusiasm, we should reiterate that these results mainly represent the perspective of PC (Windows) players.

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Thanks for reading! If there's anything you would like us to expand on, feel free to leave a comment below and we'll get right on it.

Here's to a great year of development ahead!

Hello folks!

Today, we are releasing one of DemonCrawl's biggest patches since launch! The theme of this update is balance changes, which happened to rank quite high in our feature poll. (Speaking of which, we will be creating a separate post for the poll results later today - so stay tuned for that!)

In the meantime, let's go over some of the highlights in today's patch. Full patch notes are available below as well.



We have extended the Token Shop with a few new legendary items. These items are meant to help out certain builds that lacked powerful, synergistic enablers (specifically Electric, Canker, and Bone builds.)

We have also re-classified Thicker Skin as a passive item. We like Thicker Skin's effect, but it simply doesn't match up against the other legendary items in the pool.



7 items have been completely reworked, in additional to several smaller changes to other items. Over 30 items have had their prices adjusted.



We are continuing to support our favorite DemonCrawl content producers with exclusive in-game cosmetics! If you would like to unlock these new avatars, check out the following channels on Twitch - each streamer may have his or her own method of distributing their avatar:

• Esty8nine - https://www.twitch.tv/esty8nine
  
• Frostprime_ - https://www.twitch.tv/frostprime_
  
• Patty - https://www.twitch.tv/patty

For a complete list of changes, please check out the patch notes below!

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• Added 3 new avatars in cooperation with some fantastic DemonCrawl Twitch streamers
  
• New Casual Mode setting to enable or disable stage mods
  
• A new tab has been added to the Help menu for stage mods
  
• New Token Shop legendary item: Bone Casket - "Item chests also contain Bones. If you are not injured when you bury Bones, gain souls instead of restoring life."
  
• New Token Shop legendary item: Ointment - "Whenever you discover a 4 or greater, pacify a Canker. If there are no Cankers to pacify, spawn one instead."
  
• New Token Shop legendary item: Electroscope - "At the start of each stage, all 0-value cells gain Electric."
  
• Adventurer's Hat rework: "[1 Armor] Fortify by 5 whenever you gain a legendary or divine item."
  
• Cornucopia is taking the place of the old Adventurer's Hat and has been slightly reworked
  
• Welding Mask rework: "[2 Armor] Every 100 cells opened, equip a random armor."
  
• Sledgehammer is taking the place of the old Welding Mask
  
• Bullet Time rework: "Projectiles and orbs travel slowly."
  
• Iron Will rework: "Gain 2 defense whenever your armor breaks."
  
• Patron Saint rework, changed from passive to magic: "[20/20 Mana] Spend 5 coins on target stranger and convert it to a familiar."
  
• Arcane Staff rework, changed from magic to passive: "The first diamond you collect each turn will fully charge a random magic item."
  
• Divine Lantern rework: "[300 Mana] Glean target hidden cell. If it's not a 0, this item retains its mana."
  
• Scribe rework, there are now 3 different types of Scribes
  
• New Daily Mission: Down With the System - "Destroy 3 signs."
  
• New Daily Mission: Waive the Flag - "Earn 100 points from Flagless awards."
  
• New Daily Mission: Think of the Children - "Earn 100 points from Charitable awards."
  
• New Daily Mission: Don't Blink - "Earn 100 points from Fast awards."
  
• New Daily Mission: Float Like a Butterfly - "Earn 100 points from Untouchable awards."
  
• New Daily Mission: Tightwad - "Earn 100 points form Thrifty awards."

• Thicker Skin is now a passive item
  
• Tithing Plate buff: "Whenever you spend coins, gain twice that much mana."
  
• Astrolabe buff: "At the start of each stage, reveal any cells that have guaranteed objects in a 3x3 area."
  
• Purveyor Charm renamed to Merchant Amulet and buffed: "Strangers activate two additional times."
  
• Bloodbank buff: Generates max life instead of life
  
• Lantern nerf: mana cost increased from 60 to 90
  
• Mortar nerf: "Whenever a visible monster dies, it explodes in a 3x3 area."
  
• Divine Mortar nerf: "Whenever a monster dies, it explodes in a 3x3 area."

• Sword price reduced from 38 to 27
  
• Blissful Amulet price reduced from 40 to 30
  
• Silver Bullet price reduced from 29 to 24
  
• Singing Bowl price reduced from 24 to 14
  
• Hook Hand price reduced from 29 to 26
  
• Evermetal price reduced from 30 to 28
  
• Cauldron price reduced from 28 to 21
  
• Witchcraft price reduced from 36 to 30
  
• Stocking price reduced from 34 to 25
  
• Chainsaw price reduced from 40 to 35
  
• Troll Cross price reduced from 33 to 29
  
• Guardian price reduced from 20 to 16
  
• Wishbone price reduced from 16 to 10
  
• Divine Wishbone price reduced from 14 to 9
  
• World Wonder price reduced from 22 to 19
  
• Scalpel price reduced from 25 to 22
  
• Lotus price reduced from 50 to 40
  
• Jumprope price reduced from 29 to 21
  
• Barbecue price reduced from 17 to 15

• Purify price increased from 28 to 40, mana cost increased from 300 to 500
  
• Fake Moustache price increase from 35 to 50 coins
  
• Walking Stick price increased from 22 to 35
  
• Talisman price increased from 15 to 19
  
• Sapling price increased from 15 to 18
  
• Alcohol price increased from 20 to 21
  
• Chaos Portal increased from 18 to 30
  
• Magic Hammer price increased from 16 to 24
  
• Magic Smoke Bomb price increased from 20 to 30
  
• Bone Baton price increased from 15 to 27
  
• Spirit Jar price increased from 27 to 37
  
• Lion Tail price increased from 21 to 24
  
• Lightning Rod price increased from 25 to 30
  
• Punchbag price increased from 11 to 17
  
• Nightmare Gut price increased from 15 to 24

• Explosive stage mod rework: "Objects have a 50% chance to explode in a 3x3 area when interacted with. Whenever an object blows up, you take 1 damage."
  
• Devouring stage mod now triggers on mistake instead of reveal
  
• Brooding stage mod now triggers on reveal instead of at random
  
• The Nomad that buys items can no longer spawn if your inventory is empty
  
• Updated drop tables for strangers

• Added dictionary term for "obscure"
  
• Added dictionary term for "orb"
  
• Clarified Fake stage mod tooltip
  
• All instances of "undiscovered cell" tooltips have been changed to "hidden cell" for consistency
  
• Fixed title casing on "soul" tooltips for consistency
  
• Android only: updated item descriptions to say "tap" instead of "click"

• Fixed Fake mod alert showing up multiple times
  
• Fixed Totem activating every 20 turns instead of 30
  
• Fixed Chromatic armor not counting for "Matching Metals" achievement
  
• Fixed Divine Time Capsule not destroying itself on use
  
• Fixed Library specialization not persisting between loads
  
• Fixed a visual glitch related to Purify
  
• Fixed a cause of Dark Hearts lingering on boss stages
  
• Fixed Electric cells not affecting Mega Tokens
  
• Fixed some stats not resetting properly when launching the tutorial
  
• "Stage shaders" setting now applies to cutscenes as well - helps avoid crashes on devices that don't support our shaders
  
• Fixed Dimensional Portal not choosing from list of sacrifices properly
  
• Fixed Blacksmith not saving properly after completion of an armor
  
• Added check for "Infinite Devotion" achievement whenever you launch the codex
  
• "Very Fast" and "Insanely Fast" awards now state their respective thresholds
  
• Speculative fix for Unstable Compound crash

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Hotfix #1 @ 9:40 PM - Fixed a softlock in the final stage when stage shaders are disabled.

Hi folks!

We are officially closing the DemonCrawl Feature Poll on Friday, January 24th. Vote for the top 3 features you'd like to see in 2020 and don't forget to reclaim your 10 free Tokens!

We will be publishing the poll data in full on Friday or Saturday along with our interpretation of said data.

In the meantime, we are already working on a big patch based on feedback from the poll. We expect to deploy the update sometime this week. We won't spoil anything, but it's shaping up to be our largest release since Casual Mode. :-)

Finally, we have something huge in the works following v1.35. Stay tuned for another announcement post in the next couple weeks - you won't be disappointed.

As always, thank you for your continued support!

Hello! We are releasing another stability patch for DemonCrawl today.

We are in the beginning phase of the next major DemonCrawl update; stay tuned for more details when we publish the results of our poll (open for another week or two, don't forget to place your votes!) and discuss what it means for the game's development. Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to participate - it's been a huge help for us!

Full patch notes are below.

• The help menu now records additional events, such as damage taken and coins spent
  
• Collecting an artifact or emblem will now show a message indicating how many you have

• Fixed crash related to a slow response from the leaderboards
  
• Fixed crash when certain kinds of loot tried to spawn in the Metagate
  
• Fixed crash that occurred when Justice Juice removed an omen with a status effect
  
• Fixed crash when popping Wishpool from a bubble
  
• Fixed incorrect divine count in the codex
  
• Fixed Totem and Blighted Totem using outdated stage power code
  
• Fixed Divine Pickaxe price
  
• Fake Moustache messages will not show up so frequently anymore
  
• Boss movement animation now scales properly with board zoom
  
• Speculative fix for Golden Chestplate crash

Hello!

We are releasing a small stability patch for DemonCrawl this evening. Full patch notes are available below.

• Fixed a crash related to Gravedigger
  
• Fixed Bazaar crash
  
• Fixed softlock between Divine Puzzle and Divine Present
  
• Fixed Divine Horseshoe not preventing omens from showing up in chests
  
• Fixed "Hard Mode Unlocked" popup showing the wrong difficulty sprite
  
• Fixed rare issue that caused board size to be smaller than the minimum zoom setting
  
• Fixed a couple glitches related to bosses in bubbles
  
• Dark Hearts will now maintain their appearance when popped from bubbles
  
• Fixed Medusa Head not assigning Spawner identity correctly
  
• Masteries are now properly disabled in Classic Mode
  
• Fixed typo in Lycan Snag
  
• Workaround for crash that occurred when encountering corrupt quest data
  
• Fixed solvable board setting not being respected in Classic Mode
  
• Speculative fix for a crash related to particle effects at very small board zoom

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In other news, our feature poll is doing quite well! We have already collected several hundred submissions since yesterday's announcement post. It's great to see that our community is so interested in helping us shape the future of DemonCrawl. :-)

We plan to keep the poll open for a few weeks, or until the votes stop coming in. We will then publish the results along with a general roadmap for DemonCrawl's development.

Without spoiling anything, let's just say that the votes have been somewhat surprising so far!

Hello everyone!

Over the last few weeks, we have made great progress fixing bugs throughout DemonCrawl. There are still a few issues to work out, but pretty soon we'll be ready to turn our attention to creating new and exciting content. :-)

Our question is: what new features are players most interested in? To help us answer this question, we have created a community poll that includes just about every option we could think of:

(You must be logged into a Google account to participate in the poll. We will not collect your email address.)

We greatly appreciate your feedback and plan to use the poll results as a guide for our development priorities in 2020. If you participate in the poll, you will be awarded a promo code for 10 Tokens. Also, depending on the turnout, we may consider running polls like this on a semi-regular basis.

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In other news...


We are very grateful to all the Twitch streamers--and their audiences--who have supported DemonCrawl since its launch. We want to say thank you by creating exclusive, in-game cosmetics to support your unique brands. If you are a content producer and would like to take us up on this offer, please reach out to us at support@therefore.games.

Today, we're announcing a new avatar in cooperation with Sinvicta:



We love his logo and wanted to see what it would look like when drawn in DemonCrawl's 16-bit style. We're quite happy with the results!

If you would like to obtain this avatar for yourself, please follow Sinvicta on Twitch and stay tuned for more details. Also, don't forget to check out Sinvicta's YouTube channel here, where you can find his first impressions gameplay video on DemonCrawl. Nice!

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We're thinking about opening a Trello board or similar for keeping track of bugs. Our players have done a great job of posting detailed reports in the Megathread, but sometimes when you encounter a bug, it can be difficult to know if the developer is already aware--Trello could help us with that. It would definitely be easier than maintaining the Known Issues thread. Let us know if this is something you would find useful, and if so we'll take the time to set it up.

Thanks for reading!

Hello! We are releasing a stability patch for DemonCrawl today that corrects a number of issues discovered by our players.

• Fixed several memory leaks in the quest cleanup routine
  
• Fixed a memory leak related to stage mods
  
• Stage particles setting now applies to many other graphics, such as projectile trails, cell mana, and item effects
  
• Fixed guaranteed Divine items not saving to disk properly
  
• Fixed several stage mods not saving properties to disk correctly
  
• Fixed an issue with Golden Chestplate that could cause it to have negative durability
  
• Fixed incorrect number of total paints on the customize screen
  
• Fixed a rare crash that could occur when the stage was destroyed before cell evaluation finished
  
• Fixed certain life restoration effects triggering after game over
  
• Held magic items and crafting ingredients are now visible even when the custom cursor is disabled
  
• Dimensional Portal now correctly lowers armor to base durability instead of breaking
  
• Shadow Siphon can no longer target immutable objects
  
• Items, inventory, and avatars are now saved to disk using names rather than IDs, which should help us avoid problems between updates
  
• Speculative fix for salvaged crafting ingredients not saving to disk sometimes

Developer's Notes: We believe these memory leaks may have been at least partially responsible for poor performance in the Endless Multiverse. However, we are still working to uncover the root cause. Please let us know if you see any difference in your Endless Multiverse FPS on this verison of the game. Thank you!


We are creating a community poll to see which features players are most excited about! If there's anything you would like to see included among the poll choices, feel free to leave a comment below. We will create a separate announcement about the poll once it's ready.

Enjoy!

Hello! We have an exciting update for you today.

Let's get the big one out of the way first:

Straitjacket is now a beneficial armor item. A new omen called Fig Leaf is taking Straitjacket's old spot, but does not prevent you from picking up loot - Fig Leaf merely stops you from wearing armor.

We originally designed Straitjacket as a "worst case scenario" omen. We liked the idea of having an item in the pool that was universally feared--especially because most other omens can be subverted to your advantage--but players have rightfully argued that Straitjacket's lack of counterplay is bad design. We agree.

Someday, we may introduce a new omen to strike fear in the hearts of all DemonCrawl players, but for now we hope you enjoy the softer side of Straitjacket.

We have also added a new boss to the game. Introducing Baglord:



Yes, it's the lord of bagmen himself!

Baglord will make your life more difficult by spawning cronies throughout the map. If he's in a bad mood, Baglord will slaughter his own men just to intimidate you. This dude's crazy!

BAGLORD, LORD OF BAGMEN:

• Spawn a Bagman whenever a Dark Heart is collected.
  
• Whenever a Bagman is killed, take damage equal to its empowerment value.
  
• Bagmen cannot weaken monsters.

To top it off, we implemented an experimental new stage mod called "Fake" that causes three cells to show incorrect values... can you feel the paranoia setting in?


Bug fixes are our highest priority right now - there are still a few important issues we need to address. After that, we would like to run a community poll to determine which features our players are most interested in. We want to make sure we're spending our time on content that people actually care about. 2020 is going to be a great year for DemonCrawl, and it's all thanks to your support!

Full patch notes available below.

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• Added video setting to disable board rumble effect
  
• Stage particles setting now applies to cell auras as well
  
• New boss: Baglord
  
• New stage mod: Fake - "Three cells have the wrong values."
  
• New omen: Fig Leaf - "Unequip your armor. You cannot wear armor."

• Straitjacket has been converted to a Body Armor: "[6 Armor] You cannot pick up loot."
  
• The Timeless mod now deals damage instead of direct life loss
  
• Stage mods will now take the stage density into account when calculating loot droprate
  
• Loot scaling is now capped to prevent empty, powerful stages from having Tokens in every cell
  
• Quest completion XP is now based on the difficulty of all stages, not just the last stage
  
• The Thrifty award now requires you to skip at least 3 special stages and gives more XP to compensate
  
• Charitable award XP can no longer exceed Victory award XP
  
• Bagman no longer increases damage taken from sources other than monsters
  
• Updated default leaderboard version to v1.31

Developer Notes: We really like the idea of Token-farming builds, but realized it was a little too easy to spawn hundreds of Tokens in a stage if you knew what you were doing. With this balance change, adding mods to stages with very few monsters will have a minimal effect on loot drops. However, adding mods to a dense stage will generate more loot than ever!

• Fixed a leaderboard crash when too many results were retrieved
  
• Improved reliability of "My Score" button
  
• Fixed rare situation that could cause immutable landmarks to get destroyed
  
• Frozen aura no longer affects cells with immutable landmarks
  
• The prestige icon will no longer appear after prestige 10
  
• Fixed a problem with indefinite-type status effects changing into different items on reload (e.g. Horseshoe)
  
• Fixed a few more pluralization issues on item effects
  
• Fixed Fish items not saving aura removal to disk
  
• Fixed Wishpool not saving to disk
  
• Fixed a softlock between Magic Dice and Earthblock
  
• Fixed Beyond Mode token cost not resetting after removing special emblems
  
• Fixed Cattle Prod not saving some cell properties to disk
  
• The stage select screen is now capable of showing more than 9 mods

Enjoy!

Hotfix #1 @ 8:40 PM: Fixed a crash related to the final boss.
Hotfix #2 @ 11:30 AM on Jan 9: Fixed a Mystic Statue exploit.

Hello!

Today, we're releasing a stability patch to address a number of issues we've discovered through player reports in the last couple weeks.

• Elder price scales more steeply after a few uses in order to curb an infinite with Banker

• Fixed several status effect crashes
  
• Fixed potential desync on conceal-related status effects
  
• Bribing a Harbinger will now save to the disk
  
• Can no longer pan the game board past the boundaries of the screen
  
• Fixed Bones crash when board is zoomed out quite far
  
• Fixed previously-unlocked Avatars showing up as Beyond rewards
  
• Removed "Restart Quest" option from escape menu in Beyond Mode
  
• Fixed an issue with Beyond emblems not persisting between reloads
  
• Fixed Worldclay not preventing Divine unlocks
  
• Activating a stranger will save more reliably to the disk
  
• Removed boss from final stage on Casual Mode
  
• Fixed October 1990 stage not completing in Casual Mode
  
• Fixed lingering October 1990 stage effects if you return to menu
  
• Drugs overlay is now removed if you restart the quest
  
• Updated Heirloom unlock tooltip to clarify that Heirlooms are one-time use
  
• Android only: beating Quest 5 in the free game now explains that the full game is needed to unlock Hard Mode
  
• Android only: speculative fix for targeted magic items not working on alternative control scheme

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We have received a few reports about significant lag in the Endless Multiverse. Unfortunately, we have not been able to track down the cause of this issue yet. If you are affected, please submit a bug report here and include some information about your computer (OS, GPU, processor, amount of RAM) to help us determine if the problem may be hardware-related. Thank you!

Hotfix #1 @ 7:35 PM: Fixed a Mercenary crash.

Hello!

We're releasing a small hotfix this morning to address reports of Casual Quests not unlocking for some profiles. More to come soon!

• Fixed Casual Quests not unlocking for some profiles
  
• Fixed stage not ending when a minion kills the last monster
  
• Dimensional Portal tooltip no longer gets stuck after use
  
• Magnifying Glass now works on Bosses
  
• Increased opacity of Magnifying Glass values
  
• Added log entries to Beyond Prizebox to help us track down a couple reported issues