Hey friends!

You know what they say, April showers bring May… sales and beta invites? Something like that. Anyway, we got out our gardening shears and did some heavy pruning on the Roundguard price for a nice two week sale! Why, you ask? To celebrate that we’re ready to invite you all to playtest the new hero: The Druid!

First, it’s time for an introduction. Sprig is not your garden variety druid. She’s a tender-shoot fresh from the wilds, and she’s ready to plant grass and take names. She brings with her plenty of forest friends, including butterflies, hummingbirds, and semi-sentient briar vines, but her best friends are the sprouts she plants everywhere she goes. Her brand new skills, weapons, and armor work together with her sprouts to create fresh combos and ways to think about the board.



Sprig and the rest of the Druid update is not fully bloomed quite yet, but it is ready for your feedback. I’d especially love to hear your thoughts on balance, polish, confusing bits, etc. Please, please join the beta and take the Druid for a spin!

To join the beta, all you need to do is:

1. Own the game. (Oh look, it’s on sale right now!)
   
2. Right-click on it and select Properties, and then the Betas tab.
   
3. Enter the password supersecretbetabranch .
   
4. Select the beta branch from the dropdown menu.
   
5. You did it!

We have lots more info about the beta in our Discord, so please join that as well. It’s the perfect place to share your feedback, brag about your high score, or share your best / worst plant pun.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

<3
Andrea, Wonderbelly Games

Hello friends!

It's been one year since we launched and I believe the traditional first anniversary gift is a sale, isn't that right? Or is it loafers? Well, either way, we're celebrating with a big sale for Roundguard just about everywhere, so now's a good time to tell a friend to pick it up.

Yeah, so... One whole year, huh? It's hard to sum what the last year has meant for us. This was the first year Bob and I got to be full time indies -- a dream come true! Although with our daughter's preschool shut down due to COVID, it hasn't really been full time at all... It's been a stressful year, as I'm sure it's been for all of you. But it's also been so rewarding. Hearing stories about how Roundguard has been a fun activity for cooped up families, a way to introduce your partner to your love of roguelikes, or a kind distraction in a time of pain has consistently warmed our hearts. Thank you all so much for sharing with us.

And we've been completely blown away to see Roundguard nominated for a ton of lovely awards, including "Mobile Game of the Year" by the Golden Joystick Awards, "Best Mobile Game" by Destructoid and the New York Game Awards, "Best Apple Arcade Game" by the Pocket Gamer Awards, "Excellence in Game Design" by DevGAMM, and "Best Family Game of the Year" by the NAVGTR Awards.

But we haven't been resting on our round little laurels. In the last year, we've released the Treasure Hunter update, Halloween & Winter seasonal events, and the Gift Giver update, adding more game modes, monsters, unlocks, and tortured puns. And we're not finished yet! Spring is coming and there's new life sprouting up in Roundguard...



We've been working on a new hero! I'll give you a hint: her class type rhymes with "fluid"... which is fair, because we're still working out the details, but I'll be talking more about her soon enough. And in about a month or so, we'll be running a beta test to get the new hero tuned and polished and we'd greatly appreciate your feedback. If you're interested in helping, please come sign up for the beta in our Discord and we'll let you know as soon as we're ready.

Thanks again for hanging with us this last year. I'm feeling hopeful for the next one. Let's chat again soon!

<3
Andrea, Wonderbelly Games

Do you feel that chill in the air? A storm is on its way! From Dec 20 to Jan 2, Roundguard is celebrating the end of the year with frosty challenges and festive flair!

• The dungeon will be blanketed in a fresh coat of snow, and dungeon denizens will be dressed for the weather. You know what that means... Pom pom hats!
  
• There will be two weeks of unique daily challenges with our new winter rules! Look out for snowballs snowballing and icy winds blowing through each daily challenge.
  
• Even the title screen has got in the spirit, with the jingliest jingle bells the castle could find.

So grab a cup of cocoa, slip on your fuzzy slippers, and let's close out this year with some cozy videogames!

<3
Andrea, Wonderbelly Games

Hey friends,

'Tis the season of giving and we have a gift for you! Today we released another free content update for Roundguard! Let me tell you a bit about it...



New characters are roaming the dungeon! There's the Big Freeze, an ice cold frost giant who hits like an avalanche and the Projectionist, a moody dark elf who wants to explore your emotions. And of course, there's the eponymous Gift Giver with gifts for you! He has a dramatic flair and an impeccable wrapping style. Complete his quests to prove your worth and he will reward you handsomely. Along with the new characters come new quests, trinkets, and elite fights!

From December 20th to January 2nd, there will be a special winter event full of frosty flair and festive cheer! The dungeon will be covered in snow and denizens will be dressed for the weather. There will also be two weeks of unique daily challenges using our new winter rules: Snowballing, which turns all pots to snowballs that stick to your hero, and Icy Winds, which blast through the levels and blow you around. Of course, a truly talented archer can also use the winds to fire trick shots around corners...

On top of that, we've added ten new board layouts (including several designed community members!), five new trinkets to unlock for the Wheel of Wonders, three new achievements, 🎵 and a partridge in a pear tree...🎵

Okay, maybe not that last one.

Besides the new stuff, we've done a few balance tweaks and a couple of bits of polish. I've put the full patch notes down at the bottom of this post.

Okay, what else? Well, you've made it down this far, so I know you're one of the good ones. Let me let you in a little secret. You know that "Set Seed" button on the character select screen?



Well, it's not just for entering a seed to change how the dungeon is built. It's also for entering cheat codes! Here are a few we added:

"let it snow"          Cover the entire dungeon with snowballin' snowballs.
"blow me away"   Fight the icy winds through the whole dungeon.
"jingle bells"         Make the dungeon look frosty and festive at any time of year.
"spooky time"       Pretend it's Halloween again and get in costume.

There is one little trick to this if you want your run to be randomized and not seeded. After you enter the cheat code, open the seed menu back up and delete the code. That way, you'll clear out the seed so the dungeon will go back to randomly generating, but the cheat will still be turned on for the next run.

I hope you're all safe and you have some time this month to relax and get ready for a new year. This last year has been hard, but I want to thank you all for the kindness and generosity you've shared with us. You've made it a really special year for us too. I'm looking forward to having more to share with you in 2021!

<3
Andrea, Wonderbelly Games

• New NPC “The Gift Giver”! He has a dramatic flair and an impeccable wrapping style. Complete his quests to prove your worth and he will reward you handsomely. Can you earn the ultimate gift?
  
• New NPC “The Projectionist”! She and her prismatic projections want to help you get in touch with your emotions. But at what cost?
  
• New NPC “The Big Freeze”! It's always winter for this frost giant, and he's here to put you on ice.
  
• Along with each new NPC come new quests, trinkets, and elite fights.
  
• Five permanent unlocks that add trinkets to the Wheel of Wonders: Ring of Distortion, Lens of Duplicity, Amulet of Artifice, Gloves of Forgery, and Scepter of Cunning.
  
• Ten new board layouts, including several designed by players in our Discord and the PC Gamer forums. (You're awesome!)
  
• New Winter event! Occurs every year from Dec 20 to Jan 2. Includes a snowy look throughout the dungeon full of frosty flair and festive cheer. Dungeon denizens will be dressed for the weather. The title screen music will jingle your bells. And there will be two weeks of unique daily challenges with new winter rules!
  
• New rule “Snowballing”! As you bounce into snow, you’ll collect a bigger and bigger snowball. Will you hit with the force of an avalanche or be swallowed up in one?
  
• New rule “Icy Winds”! Chilly gusts blow through the levels. Don’t get blown off course!
  
• Three new achievements: Gracious, Refractor, and Ice Cold.

• Tuned quests to give more variety & fewer repeats.
  
• Goblin bombers now have more health, but less attack. They are worth a bit more gold.
  
• Increased gold values on Goblin Poet, Spider Ballerina, and Grandma Ogre rooms to bring them to par with other elite fights.
  
• Changed Payback achievement from "Defeat 10 Treasure Chest Mimics" to "Defeat a Treasure Chest Mimic on the first turn in a room."

• You can now skip the splash screen at start up.
  
• A dark elf sound effect that sounded kind of naughty has been replaced, and all elves have been threatened that we’ll tell their mothers if they try to sneak anything else in.
  
• Fixed a few text overruns in Japanese.

• Ooh, this was a fun one. If your system region was set to Turkish, the game used to crash during the tutorial. This was because an obscure call in our Dialogue manager was converting all of our string table IDs to use Turkish ‘i’ characters, so all strings that had an ID with an ‘i’ would crash the game. WHOOPS. That’s fixed now.

Hey friends!

Good tidings! In only a few more weeks, we'll be gifting you all the Gift Giver Update! We're just picking out the right paper and sparkliest bows and getting it all wrapped up. When it arrives, it will include:

• Three new NPCs -- The Gift Giver, The Big Freeze, and The Projectionist -- with new quests, trinkets, and elite fights!
  
• New boards throughout the dungeon, including several designed by the community!
  
• A special winter event from Dec 20 - Jan 2 full of frosty challenges and festive flair!
  
• Five new trinkets for the Wheel of Wonders, three new achievements, a few balance tweaks, and fingers crossed, no new bugs!

Oh, but are you tired of waiting? Doesn't it feel like this whole year has been about waiting and wouldn't it be nice to just get something right now? I feel you. Well, good news! You can play it all right now if you join the beta branch! Just saunter on over to our Discord and check out the #beta-welcome channel, where we tell you the super secret password to get you into beta paradise. And while you're there in the Discord, give us a wave, yeah? We'd love to say hi.

And finally, tomorrow we'll be kicking off a crisp and pumpkin-spiced discount for the Autumn Sale, and... the Steam Awards nomination period begins! We'd be honored if you think of us. I heard there's a new category this year called "Sit Back & Relax" for games you like to unwind with. I think Roundguard is a good fit for that, but you do you. Have fun voting!

<3
Andrea, Wonderbelly Games

From Oct 26 through Nov 1, Roundguard is celebrating Halloween with spooky daily challenges and silly costumes! We may not all be able to go out this year, but we always have videogames, right? RIGHT!



- The heroes and monsters of Castle Springbottom are dressed up and ready to trick or treat!
- You'll be haunted by a week of unique daily challenges full of ghosts, ghouls, and... pizza rats?
- Spoooooooky title screen music!
- You can smash all the pumpkins you want and no one will judge you! In fact, we'll reward you with even more candy! And not just the little stuff. That's right, we're handing out FULL SIZE BARS.


"JUST A HOOMAN... TAKE A BIG BAR... DON'T BE SHY..."

Anyway, we felt the need for a little mental diversion and we thought you might too. Thanks for humoring us. Have fun, stay safe, and eat lots of candy!

<3
Andrea, Wonderbelly Games

We're digging into work for our next content update, but in the meantime, here are a few bug fixes for all of you. Remember, if you'd like to see the new content first, come to our Discord for more info on how to join the beta branch: https://discord.gg/roundguard

• New UI icon on the run menu to mark new daily and weekly runs you haven't looked at yet.
  
• Bonus gold each time you're hurt now only counts when you're actually hurt, not healed.
  
• Cleaned up some Korean language text overruns.
  
• Petrify no longer causes issues while playing with the No Gravity rule.
  
• Aimer no longer looks like it's blocked by the ceiling when you're not playing with the No Gravity rule.
  
• New "Complexity" indicator on heroes so new players know who is expected to be more challenging to play.
  
• Mouse controls: Can now Right Click to skip dialog. (Can still press Z as before.)

Hey treasure hunters,
Today we released our first major content update and it’s free for you, your best friend, your dog, and your coworker who always forgets to mute his mic on Zoom calls. That’s right, Roundguard is now bigger and better for everyone! There’s a lot of new stuff here, so let me give you an overview...


Every day there’s a unique bite-sized challenge with a game-changing twist, like “No gravity!” “Poison is permanent!” or “Defeat the room in two turns or die!” It’s perfect for a quick warm-up or if you only have 10 minutes to kill on your lunch break. If you can defeat the day’s challenge, you’ll earn a Golden Puzzle Piece.

Each week, there is a new 45-floor dungeon with a whole fresh set of twisted rules. All players face the exact same dungeon for a true head-to-head competition on the leaderboards. The person who claims the top spots each week gains the ultimate bragging rights -- only your first attempt counts for the leaderboards, so you’ll have to be a master of improvisation. But if the week’s run is too fiendish, you can always try again. And because it’s the same dungeon for everyone, you can strategize and share tips with others in the Roundguard community. You’ll earn a Golden Puzzle Piece just for trying out the week’s Run, and even more if you can claim victory and survive to the bottom!


Each Golden Puzzle Piece earned from playing the new modes helps you unlock new relics and bonus properties. You’ll be able to equip these new rewards in Normal Runs, so you can bring some of the rule-bending wackiness back with you into the main game.

There are four additional relics that can now be unlocked by achieving higher and higher gold scores during Normal Runs. Each of these relics give you an opportunity to earn EVEN MORE gold -- if you can handle the additional risks involved. I can’t wait to see the crazy new scores on the leaderboards.


Keep your eye on those treasure chests, ‘cause now they may be keeping their eyes on you! You know how much we love the Monster Manual and you know there’s no way we could go any further without adding mimics to the game. (You know, because you keep asking us to please put them in!) Mimics have a nasty bite, but if you can manage to defeat one, you’ll get an even bigger gold reward than what you would have found in a less toothy treasure chest.

You can now enter a “seed” before your run. If anyone else enters the same seed, they’ll play the exact same dungeon with the same loot drops, enemy spawns, and everything else that’s usually randomized. Challenge your friend to a head-to-head! (This will work across all platforms, by the way, so don’t forget your console / iPhone friends.) Tell me what it’s like playing the dungeon built off your phone number, your middle name, or the first sentence of that book you still haven’t read because you’ve been playing too many video games. Just don’t go sharing your SSN on the internet. Stay safe, friends.

We’ve beefed up the achievement roster by nearly 25%, and a few of them are real puzzlers. I promise they’re all doable! You just might need to figure out the right combo of relics, equipment, and trinkets to pull them off.

Whew! Okay, that’s the new stuff… but there are a lot more balance changes, UI improvements, and bug fixes we made too! Keep scrolling down below if you want allllllllllll the nitty gritty. And please, tell us what you think about the new update and what you’d like to see in the future. You can always reach us here, on our Discord, or on Twitter.

<3
Andrea, Wonderbelly Games

• Spawn rate changes: Orc Greasepunks, Phase Spiders, Dark Gelly Cubes, and Dark Elf Conductors are slightly more common. All other Gelly Cubes and Dark Elf Illusionists are slightly less common. Chaos rooms have more enemy variety and more treasure chests than previously. Chaos rooms now also have more enemies than a normal room. Fixed Green Gelly Cubes being overvalued in Act 1 so that they now leave room for more enemies.
  
• There are more large peg spots on many boards now. (More room for chests!)
  
• The bottom gold pile are now worth more in Act 2 and even more in Act 3.
  
• The treasure scarab now appropriately multiplies the gold values in the bottom gold piles when you complete a room.
  
• The treasure scarab can now perch on all medium-sized gold pots.
  
• Brilliance relic now burns WAY more of your mana every turn.
  
• Luck relic now only doubles the center gold pile value (previously was triple).
  
• Wisps now appear more immediately when you press the skill button so you don't miss as many wisp-ortunities.

• There is clearer feedback on content you unlock along the way (for those of you who haven’t unlocked these already): scarab, unstable potions, chaos rooms, and relics.
  
• There is clearer feedback to show that the scarab is multiplying your gold score.
  
• There is a countdown timer on the leaderboards showing when they will reset.
  
• The relic menu now tracks which hero you've mastered a relic with, so you can try to master it again with each hero!
  
• Properties that grant you bonus gold will now show a callout with the amount of gold when it's granted.
  
• There's now a visual indication of which save slot you're currently using on the save slot menu.
  
• Instinct relic timer UI now reveals/hides itself at smarter times between boards or when you quit.

• Walls no longer kill your momentum if you approach at low speed.
  
• Fixed map generator sometimes creating a room that looked like it connected to 2 rooms from 1 exit.
  
• Healer's Hatchet buff no longer breaks in a number of ways in various odd circumstances.
  
• Getting an immunity now immediately wipes off any already existing debuffs, rather than only making you immune to future instances of that debuff.
  
• Fixed Team Warrior Jersey trinket occasionally getting you stuck with all immunities even when not at full health.
  
• Gold Powered Edge Sharpener trinket now works as intended. Hopefully you didn't notice what was wrong.
  
• Getting your hero to a higher level than we thought possible no longer causes problems.
  
• Fixed rare issue where the Trinket equip UI button seemed unresponsive to touch/mouse due to invisible blockers.
  
• Ledger can finally properly play dialog variations when you succeed on a full normal runs (rather than always playing his "first time" version).
  
• Hitting enemies inside the Wizard's bubbles now counts as a hit to open the cushion.
  
• The Wizard's lightning can now more reliably reach pegs at the edge of the board if you're on the far side of the room from them.
  
• Fixed mana sometimes getting overfilled by certain trinket effects.
  
• Water pool ambient sound no longer follows you back to the main menu if you save and quit during an Act 3 board.
  
• Cube Whistle trinket now actually works on the rainbow gellies if you meet the Gel Tamer a second time in a run.
  
• Wizard no longer sounds nervous whenever you look at her on the leaderboards.
  
• Fixed skill equip menu behaving oddly with non-English languages set.
  
• Are you still reading? You’re an absolute treasure.

We’ve been hard at work on the Treasure Hunter update and we’re ready for feedback! Starting today, you can join our beta branch to download our latest update and get playing. Please go to the #beta-welcome channel in our Discord for all the info on how to join the beta: https://discord.gg/roundguard

In the Treasure Hunter update, we’re adding:

• Daily Puzzles and Weekly Runs: Two new modes of play that mix up the feel of the game with challenging and chaotic rule sets. There’s a new test every day, and if you can defeat them, you’ll unlock relics and bonus properties!
  
• New Goals for High Scores: Push yourself to greater heights to unlock new relics! Using these relics well will help you get more of the treasure you seek, but they also make the game more difficult.
  
• The Mimic: A new enemy type that can hide in plain sight in any room. You’ll never look at treasure chests the same way again!
  
• More, More, More: Lots of little balance changes, bug fixes, and other quality of life improvements.

If you’re interested in getting a taste now and you’re okay with encountering a few bugs, we’d very much appreciate your help testing this update and sharing your feedback. We’re a tiny team and your help is huge for us. Thank you all for being such a wonderful community!

<3
Andrea

If you were waiting for a sale, now’s the time! Not only are we 25% off right now, but part of the proceeds will go to help the Indie MEGABOOTH deal with the huge blow the pandemic has dealt them. They’ve been a massive force of support for indie developers over the last nine years, but with game conventions being a pretty dicey undertaking for the foreseeable future, they need to go into hibernation. They helped bring us to PAX West last year and they are very cool, very nice people. So if you haven’t bought our game yet, or you have a friend who needs a good distraction, it’s a good opportunity to support us and the Indie MEGABOOTH at the same time!

Now when is new stuff coming, you ask? And what will the new stuff be?

We’re currently working hard on adding some new modes and content to keep the game fresh. We’re calling it the Treasure Hunter Update, and it will include:

Weekly Challenge runs: Seeded runs with crazy bonus rules that evolve each week!

We’ll set your hero and starting loadout, add some bonus rule modifiers, and let you try to piece together a strategy to survive all the way through Act 3. How about a run with low gravity? All status effects are permanent? No health pots, but full room clear heals you? We’re making a big list of weird rules to play with and combine, and we hope they’ll push you all to explore new strategies and playstyles.

Your first attempt will score on a dedicated leaderboard for that week’s challenge. But even if you don’t win on your first go, completing the challenge at any point during that week will still help you make progress toward new unlockable content.

Daily Puzzles: Super short seeded runs with absolute bananas rules that swap out every day!



These will be more about adapting to super weird situations rather than building a sustainable strategy. Again, we’ll set the hero and starting loadout, along with more extreme rules: All rooms are Elites! You must clear each room within 3 turns or die! Your skills swap to random other skills every shot! There's an open demon portal in every room! You only have to manage for a few rounds to survive, so we can be a little crazier with these experiments.

That new room type sticker at the bottom means you’ll earn a Golden Puzzle Piece for completing each Daily Puzzle run.



You’ll also get one from attempting the Weekly Challenge run, and even more if you manage to beat the Weekly Challenge.



Earning Golden Puzzle Pieces is how you’ll unlock some new Treasure Hunter themed content, like bonus properties for the random loot pools, and new Relics to equip in normal runs so you can bring some of the crazy rules back to the original mode with you on your terms.

Plus... we've slipped in a sneaky new peg type!



You’ll never be able to trust a treasure chest again!

All this juicy stuff will take a little while to get implemented, balanced, and localized. And COVID has thrown us for a bit of a loop as we try to balance running a game studio, taking care of our kid without preschool, and dealing with all the other stress that’s come along with it. But we’re still pressing forward! We expect it’ll take a couple of months to get the new update all ready to release. In the meantime, join us on our Discord to share ideas for rules you think would be the most fun for Daily or Weekly runs, new bonus property and relic ideas, and new board layouts, and we might be able to include them in the update!

And pssst. Maybe we’ll slip some of this stuff out in a special beta when it needs more eyes and testing. Lemme know if you’re interested.

As always, thank you for all the support and positivity! We’re really excited to keep expanding the game for you. Take care and stay safe out there!

<3
Andrea