Hi everyone! I’m thrilled to announce that Mars Base is now being published by Freedom Games ( https://freedom.gg ). For those of you who may not know, a game publisher not only provides additional investment and funding for developing the game, but also takes care of a lot of the business and marketing side of releasing a game. That includes managing my store page, marketing and advertising the game, helping showcase the game at both digital and live events, PR, and a lot more. It really lets me totally focus on working to make the game the best it can be, and provides me with the resources to do so.

Thank you for all of the support you've given me. If you have any questions about the announcement or just want to join the community, feel free to join our Discord and I’d love to hear from you!
Also make sure to follow on Twitter where I’ll be showing off some of the work in progress for the game.

Greetings, Champions!
It has officially been a year since Until You Fall has been released across all platforms.
That means it's time for a celebration.


The Champion Tournament
Champions have competed to earn their spot as Finalists in this contest of skill and bravery.
Each of the four Factions will be represented in the ultimate battle, where only one can come out victorious!
The Grand Champion will receive a custom UYF Championship Medal, an exclusive Discord Role, and $500 cash.

Rokari History Fan Fiction Contest
Dream up unique lore and stories from within the world of UYF in this contest of creativity and charm. Submit your 1,500 word or less entry here: https://forms.gle/9P2KYVA93g9be4BT7!
One winner will have their masterpiece read by a professional voice actor, be awarded with an exclusive Discord role, and receive $500 cash.

Rune Knight Trivia
Prove your understanding of Rokar, the Unraveled, and the development of UYF in this contest of wits and knowledge. A mix of Relaxed and Nightmarish questions will provide even the most dedicated of fans some challenge for this UYF-focused trivia event.
The winner of the Kahoot! event will win an exclusive Discord role, a unique Rune Knight "Thinker" framed poster, and $500 cash.

For Rokar Feedback Survey
All of Rokar is encouraged to participate in the Aetherversary Festival, and thus the creation of this contest of participation and luck. Simply complete the survey about your experience with the game to earn an entry.
Four randomly-selected winners will be selected from completed surveys. Three will receive an UYF Swag Bundle and one Grand Prize winner will receive the UYF Swag Bundle plus $500 cash!

All four events will come together for a grand Watch Party Celebration held on our Discord server at 5pm ET on Tuesday, November 16, 2021.

You can learn more and join in all of the festivities on our official Discord server.
Press the advantage and rise up as a lucky winner!

Fight. Fall. Rise Again!

Its been a while. There's too many changes to include, but hop on and play, the game isn't the same.

Hey Dungeon Designers!

Our Playtest is here! This post will serve as your one stop for anything and everything related to the Playtest.

How do I access the Playtest?

• There is a link in the middle of our Store Page, after clicking that link you should have a game called "Super Dungeon Designer Playtest" in your Steam Library. If you signed up ahead of time, check your Steam Library!

Where can I learn how to play?

• Discovering how the game works can be fun, if you're having trouble figuring something out please reach out either by replying to this post or jumping into the Super Dungeon Designer Discord Channel to ask. We have a catalog of all of the useable items with a description of how each works here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Rk8Uaj3oGSxfpf7E1lA44VtZ5jMSNzUYcZuT9sZ-SRk/edit?usp=sharing

What does this button do?

• We will have tooltips in the game but we don't have them in just yet. For now, here is a UI cheatsheet:
  
  

Where can I report bugs or feature requests?

• Please report all bugs!! It will really help us out. You can report bugs by replying to this post, or in our Discord channel (link above). You can also email us at contact@squishstudios.net. If you have a feature request you can post that here, or create your own post in the forum to get a discussion going around it. We take feature requests seriously, if we see a lot of hype around a new feature we'll definitely consider it for the game.

How do I share my levels?

• Dungeon sharing online is not in the game yet, to share dungeons locally navigate to "My Dungeons" from the ESC menu. You will see a folder icon in the bottom right. Click on that and it will open the folder that your dungeons are saved to. You can copy the text file and the image with the same name and send those files to someone. PLEASE BE WARY OF ACCEPTING FILES FROM STRANGERS OVER THE INTERNET! We will also be sharing levels that way in our Discord channel in the Level Sharing channel. Discord Channel

I can't install the game!

• Reply to this post or jump in the Discord Channel and let us know what kind of error you're getting.

Will there be more playtests? What happens to the levels I make during this playtest?

• Yes! There will be more playtests in the near future so keep an eye out! Unfortunately, we can't guarantee your levels will continue to function by the time the next playtest comes up. We're at a point in development where we're still making big changes to the core components of the game and sometimes that breaks old levels.

How do I play co-op?

• First, click on this button at the top of the left menu while building your dungeon
  
  Next, click on this button to add another player. Click it three times to add up to four players
  
  Note that all players share equipment at the moment. That will be changed in a future update so each player has a separate inventory. By default, all players will start wherever you place Player 1. You can set individual start locations by selecting and placing players from the characters menu
  

How do I play with a controller?

• Controllers should register even if you connect them while playing, we recommend syncing controllers to your computer before you start the game. Bring up the menu by hitting ESC and click on "Controls". From there you can assign controllers to different players and also remap any buttons you need to remap. You can also remap keyboard and mouse controls from this menu.

How does Steam Remote Play Together work?

• Steam Remote Play Together is a Steam feature that we support. For more information check out this link: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/0689-74B8-92AC-10F2
  We recommend a strong internet connection, especially when you add more than 2 players.

How do I add an exit to my dungeon?

• Add an "End Level Tile" to add an exit to your dungeon. You can place multiple "End Level Tiles" and hide them or make them a part of a puzzle!

This page will be updated throughout the playtest as more questions come up!

We're excited to build some dungeons with you!

-James

Made a few polishing touches for Jumping with Left Trigger which can only be done when Hover is assigned to Left Trigger on Gamepad.

Hi! How are you doing today?

We’ve mentioned skill crafting a lot in our communication so far, and it really is one of the key features in Wantless, so we thought it would be a great topic for a 1st deep dive. Right before that, a brief development update so you can learn about what we’ve been doing:

Our small 2-men team has been hard at work upgrading the game’s look & feel to make it presentable for Steam and social network. A lot of content is already functional in Wantless, namely procedural patient and mind map generation, turn-based combat, skill crafting, travelling, shopping, even the talent tree to a large extent, but a lot of it still has that prototype look. Communication milestones are a good time for such updates.



We’ve also dealt with a lot of actual communication and admin groundwork, organizing Drop Rate Studio’s paperwork and accounting, and of course, creating the Steam page.

People now have a place they can go to learn more about Wantless, and that’s paramount!

We hope to get back to full speed development from next week on, and our next steps are to keep working on gamefeel, environment and enemy variety, animation and the introduction of VFX, so core gameplay can be showcased more extensively.

With that out of the way, let's get Neural Shaping!



Neural Shaping is a skill crafting system, its output is a brand new skill you can use.

Ok but, what’s a skill?

A skill is an action you can take during turn-based combat, other than basic movement. It applies its effects on targets caught in its area of effect, at the cost of some resources.

To help us walk through this together, let's introduce a simple test-subject skill we can play around with: Pain shock. But we might as well call it Bob to track it through its metamorphosis.



This is the simplest a skill can get. Here’s what you’re looking at from the bottom up:

1. Its effects. What the skill does, and who it does it to. Bob currently has a single effect: dealing some pain-type damage; and it only affects enemies (you're not hitting yourself with this).
   
2. Its form preview. That’s the skill’s shape, its area of effect. In this case there’s a single tile highlighted, and it's right next to the character, so we’re looking at a melee range skill that only affects a single tile.
   
3. Its range. You can see it in the form preview section, but it’s not that easy to visualize for longer range skills (distinguishing between 7 and 8 tiles at a glance requires more visual acuity than I’m capable of, I can say that much). This skill has a range of 1, meaning it can hit up to 1 tile away from the caster, that’s melee range. A range of zero means it can only be targeted on the caster, and anything higher than 1 is considered ranged.
   
4. Its cooldown. You’re used to this one, it’s the number of turns a skill remains unavailable for after being used. Bob currently has no cooldown.
   
5. Its cost in Action Points (AP). Action Points are your main resource, and you can spend up to 8 each turn (they’re restored at the beginning of each turn). This one costs 2, which is pretty low as it lets you use it up to 4 times in a single turn.
   
6. Its name is procedurally generated according to its shape and effects, although you can customize it at will.
   
7. Its icon is also generated and is composed of 2 parts:
   • The frame is generated according to the types of effects you skill has. Red stands for damaging effects, and there are colors for support, buffs, debuffs/afflictions and utility.
     
   • The icon on the frame is customizable, and you can pick yours from a large set. These are currently placeholder.
8. Its Discipline cost. Equipping a skill reserves an amount of Discipline from your limited pool. Stronger effects, longer range and larger area of effect increase the Discipline cost, while higher cooldown or action point cost reduce it. If a skill costs more Discipline than you have available, you won’t be able to equip it and bring it to a map (you'll still be able to craft it). You’ll increase your total Discipline pool through levelling and acquiring perks on the talent tree.
   
9. Its Awareness cost. Awareness is a special, limited resource you earn by slaying enemies on a map. Unlike AP, it isn’t automatically recovered every turn, and you won’t get more than a few on each map. You can choose how much Awareness your skill costs, from 0 to 3, and each added Awareness point cost drastically reduces the Discipline cost of your skill (currently, every added Awareness point divides Discipline cost by 2, but that's subject to balancing). You’re essentially saying “This skill is beyond my current level, but I can still use it a very limited amount of times per run, as an ultimate ability”. Don’t forget that your Awareness pool is used across all skills: if you’re spending it on this skill, you won’t be spending it on another one, so choose your ultimate skills wisely. Bob costs no Awareness (it doesn’t look like much of an ultimate does it?).

You can equip crafted skills in the dedicated menu, as long as you have enough Discipline available. You can currently bring up to 10 skills in Transposition with you, but that's subject to change. We don’t want skill number to be a restriction, AP and Discipline costs should suffice.



So that’s what a skill is, and here’s our Pain shock (Bob) in action. Not very impressive, not very expensive, an overall reasonable, if unimaginative craft.



Now with skills out of the way, we can look at the components required to craft them: Synapses.



You’ll be looting them in battle, earning them as patient rewards, or buying them from the shop. Finding the right one for your dream build could become an obsession before you realize it!

There are 3 Synapse types:

1) Form Synapses determine your skill’s range, shape (or area of effect), and the number of effects your skill can have.


2) Effect Synapses determine what your skill does. There are lots of different effects in Wantless, and many more we intend to implement, so that could be anything ranging from dealing instant damage, to applying health regeneration buffs, poisoning, stunning, silencing or pushing an enemy away.


3) Efficiency Synapses determine how many Action Points it costs to use the skill, along with its cooldown.


You’ll need at least 1 of each Synapse type to craft a skill, and you could slot up to 5 Effect Synapses if your Form Synapse allows for that many.

Note that Synapses aren’t consumed on crafting, but cannot be used to compose multiple skills at the same time. You can always disassemble a skill to reuse your Synapses for something different.



The Discipline cost induced by a Synapse isn’t explicitly displayed, but you can swap them out at your leisure to see the impact on cost.

Let's look at some basic ways we could alter Bob's form and costs without changing its effects:



To help you visualize how this works in practice, here's a gif of the Neural shaper UI being operated. All you have to do is drag and drop your Synapses from the Synapse inventory to the proper slot, and hit the screaming CRAFT button when you're happy with the previewed skill.



Lastly on Synapses, and as is customary for loot and gear in RPGs, Synapses drop with a quality level, ranging from common to legendary (that's what the color code on Synapse icons means). That quality level determines the amount of modifiers, or affixes, your Synapse has. Though they're quite important to the system, we'll detail how these work in a dedicated devblog, as to keep this one reasonably concise.



Now let’s give Bob some more drastic makeovers to help it all sink in:



You can see Discipline cost goes all over the place. You get to choose if you're going to spend your pool on few powerful skills or many affordable ones. A balanced build is usually composed of at least some offense, defense, and utility.



But your late game build could be made of all sorts of crazy, unique combinations!



That’s it for this introduction to Neural Shaping. We’ll dive into more details on Synapse modifiers in an upcoming Devblog.

It's still pretty early in the development process, and we still have a lot of feedback, gamefeel and balancing work to do on this system. One of our critical next steps is to implement proper VFX for all of our effects in battle, as an example.

We hope to keep posting these Devblogs every few weeks to keep in touch, in the meantime let us know what you think in the comments, and join us on Discord to ask direct questions or give feedback about the system!

Take care of yourself, hope to see you soon!

Hey everyone! Remember when we launched the Workshop and announced a Level Design Contest? No? Well, neither did we. Anyway, it's finally the end of June (please don't argue, it's June, OK!) and the people have spoken!

The winner of the Level Design Contest, with the most player upvotes is...... drum roll please...... SasquatchOnUranus with the level "Compound Raid". Congratulations Sasquatch! We'll be getting in touch with you shortly so keep an eye on your inbox!

It's *actually* been 6 months since we launched the Workshop and there are now over 2000 entries! That's nuts! We've been looking at the amazing levels you've been making and, to be honest, they're blowing us away with the creativity and ingenuity on display! Some of the ways you lot use assets are just bonkers!

We love it! And since its also 1 Year of Door Kickers 2 Early Access, we thought its fitting to celebrate by looking at some of our favorite community-made maps. Enjoy!



We love seeing what you all come up with! Thanks for sharing your creations with us!

And for those of you who skipped through the video (you know who you are) here's our list - and a convenient collection: Top Picks from KHG

Ash with the map Jungle Ops - M4
Pif35 with the map Oil Rigged
DrSqua with the map ARC-20 Isolated Extraction
Panguino with the map Sinful Paradise
Dirk Diggler with the map Redacted I - Rules of Commerce
Void with the map Canyon Capers
AdmiralDuckSauce with the map Way of the Gun
Airman with the map MicroOp 6
CEO of The Internet with the map Who Goes There

Thank YOU,

The Devs @ KillHouse Games

Hi ,

It has been a while since our last DevLog and we apologize for this... We wanted to come back to you with something really exciting: 3 minutes of gameplay coming from the early stages of the game



You just arrived on Rocket Island with a few dollars in your pocket, to get money you will have to perform odd job such as working as a delivery man for Burger Joint! 🍔

Now let’s move on to the changelogs:

• Our vehicle system is working and 6 vehicles are waiting for you at the Rocket Island dealer. Some of them are purely for speed fans who want to have fun, but most of them will be of great help to you in your work. Are you more of a van or a pickup truck when it comes to working and transporting your goods?
  
• We told you about our job system during the second Devlog, today it is fully functional and will allow you to do odd jobs to make ends meet! (Please check the video below)
  
• We have started to work on an NPC system that allows us to populate the island of Rocket Island, this is an opportunity to meet the first residents of the island! 👨‍👩‍👦
  
• The people of the island don't like to move around, they prefer to use their car (which tends to clog up the traffic a bit when you want to work and go fast...)
  
• We added a lot of sound to the game to facilitate immersion
  
• Even if it doesn't change anything for you, we spent a lot of time on the technical optimization of the game (level streaming, profiling, debugging...)
  
• We have made a lot of progress on the overall quality of the island and its level design 🏦
  
• We have worked on a first version of the WorldMap which we still have to work on before presenting it to you
  
• As some of you have noticed, we have redone our KeyArt as well as given a new look to our Steam page (on which you can find several exclusive images 👀 )

Once again, we wanted to thank you very much for all your messages and support!

Don't hesitate to give us your feedback about the progress and what you would like to see in the game!

Info

■ Halloween event extended until 12th of november (ends with livestream)

Functionality

■ Added more light settings for item "headlight01"

Changed

■ Changed reset location if player reset vehicle

Troubleshooting

■ Fixed error with firstperson camera for vehicle "miniexcavator01"

■ Fixed error with texture for object "barrier" at the store
■ Fixed error with power off for item "metaldetector01" when toggle player hud
■ Fixed error with opening cover for item "smeltingfurnace01"
■ Fixed error with attach item "meltingcrucible01" to item "smeltingfurnace01"
■ Fixed error with camera collision while driving a vehicle

Savegame

■ Fixed error with save vehicle "trailer01"

Dear Dragons,

Daylight Saving Time is about to end, and clocks will be going back one hour. At 02:00 pacific time on Sunday, November 7th, clocks will go back to 01:00.

We plan to reflect the required time changes to the game during our scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, November 9th. Since server maintenance is the only time we can adapt to the change, the following system times may be slightly affected.

• Black vs. White War
  
• Infinite Dungeon
  
• Storm vs. Storm
  
• Daily Quests
  
• Master & Disciple
  
• Playtime Bonus
  
• Boss Spawns

For example, the times will be delayed by one hour or canceled in certain dire cases. Until then, we kindly ask that you note the time change and bear with us.

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.