It is the cold time of year so we are announcing TWO festive celebration events!

Who will be the last remaining Santa? Let’s find out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/763410/Long_Live_Santa/
Our FREE GAME, Long Live Santa is the perfect way to enjoy Christmas with friends. The Doborog Community Managers will be in the Doborog Discord server from 5pm GMT / 12pm EST on Saturday the 26th (the day after Christmas) to play Long Live Santa and Last Bot Standing!

If you’ve been waiting all year to get a big game of Long Live Santa together, that is the perfect weekend to do it!


It’s a competition! With PRIZES!

• You must submit a NEW Level
  
• It must be a Challenge Level (so that we can play it by itself)
  
• It can be related to Winter, Christmas, Hanukkah or any other festival that you want!
  
• Only submit levels you have made yourself

Send your Steam Workshop links to josh@doborog.com or post them in the Doborog Discord #Community-Content channel!

https://discord.gg/kNh68p2P2F

The level should be a Challenge so we can easily play it. Add levels to a challenge by uploading them in this menu:

Don’t worry if you’ve never made a level before, you can still win a prize.
There will be an overall winner but there will also be awards for Funniest, Best Theme, Most Dangerous and others!

Submissions end on Saturday 16th of January 2021 so you have lots of time to build. Winners will be announced on the Saturday 23rd.

If you’re looking for inspiration, here are some other winter themed levels!
https://clonedroneinthedangerzone.com/christmas-levels

What are the prizes you ask?


Have a wonderful end to your year and we hope to see you more in 2021!

Josh

Hello humans,

--- A quick summary of this post -----------------------------------------------

- Teaming is not allowed on any public server (teaming on private servers is still fine!)

- From now on, possible consequences for teaming include: temporary/permanent bans, win count resets

- Reporting can be done via the in-game reporting, sending a Discord DM to Carissa or Josh, or emailing us at support@doborog.com. If you see it, let us know!



There have been a lot of reports of teaming in public Last Bot Standing matches, and we have decided to officially say: teaming is banned on any public servers. Reminder that teaming in private servers is still allowed, as long as all players in the private server agree to it!

--- What is teaming?-----------------------------------------------

Teaming is when two or more players join the same match, and agree to avoid targeting each other for any length of time (examples: the entire game, until the final area, until a certain number of players remain, etc.). Sometimes (but not always), players who are teaming will fight other players together. Teaming can happen to give these players upgrades and wins, and is unfair to everyone joining the game solo.

Any situation where players attempt to give a win to a specific person is considered teaming, regardless of how many players are involved or what public server they're on. It's against the rules to team in any public servers even if all players in that LBS match agree to team.

--- Some examples of teaming -------
- Talking to other players--sometimes in-game (using emotes or other methods), or more often, outside the game (using voice chat, messages on Discord/Steam, etc.)--to create alliances or work together on some larger goal. (As a warning: going forward, using teaming as a method of combating someone else’s teaming may put you at risk. We do try to take into account players’s motivations when handing out consequences, but it is not always possible to do so 100% accurately)

--- Some examples of not teaming -------
- Coincidentally all targeting the same person for a limited amount of time because they're the biggest threat (reasons for this include: they have the highest skill level, they have a really powerful upgrade (like giant mode), etc.)

- Running away from/not fighting someone because they're scary and you want to live lol


*Note that these examples are only a couple of common scenarios, and don’t include all possible scenarios.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We know it can be discouraging as a new player to see how skilled our veteran players are, and how high their wincounts are because of that. We’ve seen teaming used as a means of improving a new player’s experience. While we are still banning teaming in public servers, we see the need for more support for new players, and we’re currently doing some research into that. (As always, we strongly welcome community ideas and feedback!)

For our players who found the team gameplay aspect of teaming fun (especially our organized clans!), we’d love for you to reach out and let us know how we can support you in other ways. Things like organized private server teaming battles can be a lot of fun!

--- Next steps -----------------------------------------------

There won't be any action taken against people who have used teaming before now because it wasn't an official rule. After this point however, we will begin investigating any teaming reports we receive. If, after investigation by our team, someone is determined to be teaming, consequences will be applied (including temporary/permanent bans and win count resets).

If you see anyone you suspect of teaming, please use the in-game report system and reach out to us (DM community managers Carissa or Josh via Discord, or email us at support@doborog.com).

Good luck in the arena,
Josh and Carissa
<3

Hello Humans!

We need your help!

We want to win the Labour of Love Steam Award for Clone Drone!



Erik and the Doborog Team have been updating the game regularly ever since it came out in Early Access and now it's time to share that passion with the world!

Not tried the game yet? During the Autumn Sale CDITDZ is 30% off! Slice bots in single player or join the community online in multiplayer. If you're stuck for someone to play with, join the discord! There are a lot of friendly faces there who love multiplayer or just chatting.

Discord: https://discord.gg/VrFTpYxtU6

Have a lovely weekend,

Josh

Hello Humans!

The Doborog Games team has been upgraded with two new Community Managers!

Would you like to duel them?



Carissa makes her own tiny games for fun including Pixel and voxel art, code and occasionally music. She really enjoys playing board games! All her friends know her for dabbing but she swears she hardly ever does it. She is tasked with making the Clone Drone community a wholesome place to hang out with other Clone Drone fans. Whether you're sharing a level you made or reporting a bug, she'll be there to listen!
Her favourite bot is SpiderTron 5000 because of how aggressively tall it is. She's a bit short so it's immersive having something tower over her!

Josh has loved Clone Drone since it was first uploaded to Itch.io and has many years of robot slicing under his belt. You may know him from GamingFTL, his youtube and twitch channels where he where he plays Clone Drone and many other games.
His experience streaming, editing videos and watching cute animals on twitter will be put to good use as we make TikToks, Tweets and share new updates.
He enjoys painting Warhammer miniatures and playing Tabletop RPGs with his friends. His favourite robot is the Player Clone Drone because he thinks the head looks like it's got massive eyebrows, which in his opinion are the most powerful feature of anyone's face!

Welcome them by joining our new discord and challenging them to a duel! Friday at 6pm GMT / 1pm US Eastern / 10am US Pacific

Join the new Doborog Discord here: https://discord.gg/VY7zEw2chm
If you've joined the other Clone Drone fan discords already, Carissa and Josh will be in there too to chat!

We wish them all the best and hope you enjoy the community they're building together!

Hello!

Clone Drone is being featured in the Steam Fighting Sale. We are celebrating this by live streaming the game for 3 hours starting at 5pm GMT / 12pm EST on Saturday 14th!



Josh will be playing the Battle Royale, Duels and some single player so if you'd like to battle against one of the team, make sure you join us!

- Josh, Community Manager at Doborog

Hello!

Clone Drone is being featured in the Steam Fighting Sale. We are celebrating this by live streaming the game for 3 hours starting at 5pm GMT / 12pm EST on Saturday 14th!



Josh will be playing the Battle Royale, Duels and some single player so if you'd like to battle against one of the team, make sure you join us!

- Josh, Community Manager at Doborog

Happy October! Doborog has been heads down hard at work on the epic final Story Mode chapter—see update on timing of that below—but we're taking a pit-stop to put out an update of some improvements we wanted to get out ASAP!


In response to feedback, we've decided to refresh the Spear and Shield mechanics! Many didn't like combat with the spear—to the point it was banned from fan tournaments due to flicking. We hope this update helps these weapons become a fun part of competitive play once again.

• The Spear damage area (the part that destroys voxels) has been changed to wide instead of long, making the spear more effective when it travels forward, and worse when it travels sideways.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Spear flicking was still possible in multiplayer, so we have restricted it even more. Let us know how it feels!
  
• The Shield is now breakable! That's right. The shield no longer protects you forever, but takes damage whenever a weapon hits it. This makes combat more interesting, and opens up for strategies that are less about going around the shield, and more about whittling it down to get past it.
  
  

Yes! More human languages for the communication bank. The robots now support Japanese and Korean subtitles.

Beautiful!



Like with the other languages, we would love to hear your feedback to improve the quality of the translations. Let us know if something doesn't feel quite qilsnib enough.



The crosshair on the bow and spear could previously be hard to see depending on the situation. The bow and spear now have a new crosshair that's bigger and inverts the colors behind it for maximum contrast. Let us know how it feels!



Arrow rotation now snaps instantly between vertical and horizontal mode, giving you unprecedented tactical control for how you deal damage. Hotshot Arrow-Shooting Tip: Spidertrons mainly bob up and down.




Has THIS ever happened to YOU: 3 decorative voxels get taken off the beautiful horn attachment of your robot head, and you fall down on the ground, dead as the day you were harvested?

Now head damage is only fatal if it damages the important cubes sitting near where your central processing unit resides (a 2x2 cube 3 voxels above the neck).


In Twitch Mode bow1s now walk towards you if they're the last type of enemy in the level, which should cause fewer issues with them landing on pillars and taunting your inability to destroy them.


It used to be possible to acquire armor in LBS, leave and re-join the match, and continue to have that armor for zero upgrade points. No longer!


We are still hard at work on Chapter 5, and we're now aiming to release it early next year.

Why the delay? A few reasons combined made it a choice we hope you can appreciate:

• Scope/Quality/Time balance - As some say, pick two 😅. While we could have rushed the final chapter update out sooner, we felt that adding a bit of time lets us get closer to the updates the game deserves for its exit out of Early Access. This includes the quality of life changes in this update, and epic-ness of Chapter 5 :)
  
• Making a big splash with full release - We are planning a big push to share the game more widely with the full release, and (you might have noticed) the end of this year is packed with the releases of new games and consoles. We want to harvest and upload the minds of as many humans as possible into the arena at release, and we've learned choosing the date wisely is part of that. We will announce more about the release here at a later time, too!
  
• Console requirements - We are planning to launch on (at least) 3 different consoles! Parallel to Chapter 5, our porting team has been working tirelessly towards making sure the game has the features required by consoles.

As always, for those of you who live on the bleeding edge, you can follow our development live on Twitch, and even try out the current (very buggy!) build in the experimental branch. While we know how it can be disappointing to have release dates slip, we hope you all can appreciate where we’re landing!

Thank you all for being amazing OG Clone Drone community members! We are so glad to have those of you who have stuck with us throughout the long development process with us during launch and beyond. 💙

Hello humans!

We've been building a lot of cool tools for Chapter 5!
While we work on the chapter, we thought it would be fun to share them with you in a little update.


While you could already play existing animations on characters, now you can go a step further and make granular adjustments to a character's pose directly inside the Level Editor!



This is great for cinematic moments (we're using it for Chapter 5) as well as creating new and interesting attack / movement patterns for the enemies of the game, specific to your level.




So how do you make crazy new animations? We made a tutorial! :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Az-vqwRkY_0


Now you can organize all your animation tracks in handy folders! This is great for big and complex animations.

Ever wanted to make the players of your level press a button? Now you can.

This might seem like a minor change to highlight, but this confused a lot of people!
If you want to triggers things when the player walks into an area, use the AITriggerArea.

We fixed a number of bugs with this release:

• Exploit in LBS: You can no longer get both Armor and Sword.
  
• Twitch Notifications in the game are back! You can now see when both developers and other streamers are live.
  
• Fixed a terrible crash bug happening to people in Story Mode.
  
• ...and many other small things.

That's it for this update. Let us know if you make a super cool animation with the new tools! :D

Chapter 5 will bring us to the final showdown of the Clone Drone storyline.

We've been working hard on laying down the foundations, exploring new game mechanics and expanding our level editor technology to raise the quality of our content even higher.

One of the key questions we asked ourselves at the end of Chapter 4, was how to proceed from its cliffhanger of an ending. We could move the plot along using cutscenes, but I'm happy to announce that instead you'll be able to have full control of your new battlecruiser in glorious 3D space combat!!!



With the release of the final chapter of the story mode we're also going to be launching the game out of Early Access!

We'll likely put out an update or two after launch, but after four awesome years of development we're starting to look ahead towards what other cool games we can build. We hope you'll join us on that journey when the time comes! :)

We're super excited to tell you that Clone Drone will be coming to Xbox One, Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch!

While the main team finishes up Chapter 5, the talented people at The Knights of Unity are hard at work making sure the game integrates smoothly with all the major consoles.

We're aiming to launch both Chapter 5 and the console releases in in one glorious update sometime around October.

Note: This date is not confirmed and might change, but that's what we're aiming for right now.

The experimental branch has a preview of space combat here:
http://clonedroneinthedangerzone.com/experimental
We'd love to know what you think of it so far. :)

As always, you can follow the progress of Chapter 5 live on Twitch right here: https://www.twitch.tv/doborog

Let us know if you have any questions! <3

Hello humans!

Good news! We just added 5 new delightful Last Bot Standing levels, and introduced several balancing changes.

Have you ever observed other players spinning around crazily and somehow killing people?
We have, and it's not much fun to be on the other side of.

The new update introduces restrictions on how far you can turn while swinging your weapon.
Our goal has been to maintain a good range of motion, so you can still rotate towards your target and strike with great precision, but discourage flailing around wildly around in an attempt to make the hitbox make accidental contact with your opponent.

All weapons have this new restriction, but the one where it was used the most was probably the spear.

To illustrate what we're talking about, here is a demonstration of flicking the spear around:

(thanks Gontarekt + Niek Alexander!)

And here is the fix:

The camera still moves to not interrupt your flow of motion.

The spear is of course not the only weapon this applies to. Hammer + Sword can no longer spin around wildly either.

Other multiplayer balancing changes:

• Sword attack cooldown increased from 0.6s to 0.7s to make it slightly less easy to spam attacks.
  
• Raptor kick cooldown increased to 2s, leaving a small opening for attack in between kicks.
  
• Kick + Dash: Kicking in the middle of a Dash no longer cancels the Dash momentum

A final note: We don't resent anyone who may have flicked their spear around or rotated their hammer wildly in the past. If the game allows you to do it, it is a legitimate way to play! It is our hope that these changes make for a more predictable and fun multiplayer experience for everyone. Let us know what you think! :)

Five new levels has entered the permanent Last Bot Standing rotation!

The risk/reward of getting upgrades is turned TO THE MAX in this level where the floor goes away when you stand on it.


Jump around these pretty walkways.


What is better than a Death Cube? ALL THE DEATH CUBES!


Vast height differences and moving platforms makes for an interesting time among the cliffs.


Do you like playing in the Waiting Room? Now you don't have to leave it!


You can now push garbage around.
Help the garbage bots keep the arena clean! 🚮🚮🚮


We've also fixed a multitude of bugs, including:

• Armor was completely not working against the hammer in co-op!
  
• Hammer bots can no longer kill you while returning the hammer to the idle position
  
• Numerous crash bugs!
  
• Many minor localization updates based on your excellent feedback. Thanks everyone for your reports!

The time has come... for CHAPTER 5!!!

We'll be ramping up development for the final story chapter in the coming weeks.
This is going to be an epic chapter, so expect a release date many months from now.

More info when we have it! :)