Hello Crawlers! Two months have gone by without a new update, our longest gap since releasing onto early access. We've been hard at work on our biggest update yet: 0.8! In 0.8, we are going to release the 3rd biome spanning from floors 21-30, along with some of the other additions we'll be showcasing below!


To stay up to date on what we're actively working on, feel free to join our discord where we post regular development updates in our #development-updates channel, and often we pop in chat to chat with players or answer questions!
https://discord.gg/bUPT3bT7hk








The Molten Collapse is the 3rd and most challenging biome coming to Cave Crawlers! Prepare your dwarves for a true test of skill, as this treacherous layer introduces some of the toughest and most complex enemies we have ever created, found only within these fiery depths.

The cavern's walls are rugged and brown, scorched by the intense heat emanating from nearby pools of molten lava that bubble and crackle ominously. The ceiling and walls are often a chaotic maze of stalactites, hiding the dangerous new enemies lurking around every corner. Within the Molten Collapse, the very air shimmers from the heat found this deep below the surface. Venturing into the Molten Collapse isn't just about braving its deadly inhabitants; the environment itself is a constant threat. Are you daring enough to delve into this inferno and conquer the dangers that lie within?

Graphics and lighting shown are WIP and subject to change.




The Stonelings are said to be the remnants of ancient dwarves who once inhabited the molten collapse, a treacherous cave biome filled with lava. Long ago, these dwarves mined deep into the earth, seeking precious minerals and forging mighty weapons. However, a catastrophic eruption trapped them within the fiery depths. Over time, their souls fused with the surrounding rock and magma, transforming them into the stone-skinned Stonelings. Now, these vengeful spirits guard the molten collapse, eternally bound to the place of their demise, attacking any who dare to intrude on their final resting place.

These are one of the most basic mobs which can be found residing within the Molten Collapse. Stonelings can often be found in small groups, and will stumble their way towards any threat, swinging wildly in an attempt to strike them with their rocky fists. If a threat is too far away, or unreachable to the Stonelings, they will pull boulders out of the earth below them to throw at their target.



Seeing as wooden crates aren't exactly flame-proof, crates within the Molten Collapse have been replaced by clay pots containing similar loot. They're quite satisfying to smash!

This is only a small peek into the Molten Collapse. A whole new set of enemies to fight, new loot to acquire, and of course a final boss on floor 30 are all to be discovered in 0.8!





A new system to allow you to find other players and begin new runs together is coming with 0.8! What does this mean for the existing lobby system and how is this different?

The public lobby system will allow you to set multiplayer lobby from private to public, below are the differences:
• Private lobbies can only be joined if you have the room's code, or have been sent an invite to the lobby through Steam.
• Public lobbies can be joined using the new lobby search system, which will be the first screen you see when you click "Together" on the main menu. You can also join a public lobby using either of the private lobby methods.

You may only start or join public lobbies with characters who are set to begin their adventure on floor 1, in most cases being a fresh character. Characters saved to floor 5 or higher will have to host or join a private lobby. Along with the new lobby system, we also added a text chat to use while in a lobby.


Slayer Score is a new way to earn expertise points in 0.8. Instead of gaining expertise based on how many mobs you've killed, you will now earn expertise by gaining "Slayer Score" from mobs you defeat. The amount of score you gain is dependent on how tough an enemy was to defeat.

For example: the easy-to-kill Slime grants 1 Slayer Score, where as the hard-to-kill Crystal Scorpion grants 5 Slayer Score. These numbers are subject to change!


Every weapon's expertise tree is being expanded with 0.8. This expansion is still work in progress, but below are some examples of talents that we have already added and begun testing with internally!

• New Hammer talent, Sacred Seal: "After casting the spell "Holy Strike", grant a random nearby player additional attack damage for a short duration."
• New Hammer talent, Fortified: "Blocking an attack or taking damage has a high chance to give you and a nearby player increased attack speed."
• New Axe talent, Swift Cleave: "Chance on hit to reduce the cooldown of "Cleave" by 1 second."
• New Axe talent, Critical Cleave: "Dealing a critical strike reduces the cooldown of "Cleave"."
• New Dagger talent, Improved Dazing Strike: "Appling "Dazing Strike" additionally has a 50% chance to stun the affected mob for 1 second."
• New Sword talent, Intimidating Aura: "After casting any spell, all nearby mobs take 10% increased damage from all sources for a short duration."
• New Polearm talent, Expose Weakness: "Stunning a mob increases its damage taken for 4 seconds."
• New Armor talent, Blowback: "Blocking an attack has a chance to stun up to 3 nearby mobs for 3 seconds."
• New Ranged talent, Mobile Maniac: "Casting either "Dash" or "Evasion" while holding a ranged weapon increases your movement speed by 3% per stack until you stand still."


With the release of 0.8, we plan to release a new purchasable crawlers pass. This new pass will have 31 tiers consisting of 29 fresh new cosmetic skins to customize your dwarves with, and 2 additional character slots earnable within the pass. Similar to the current pass, there will be various free cosmetic rewards to earn for those who choose not to purchase the pass!

This will NOT replace the current crawlers pass, the "Expedition Pass", nor will it prevent you from purchasing or progressing that pass after its release. If you own both passes, you will simply choose which pass you would like to earn experience towards.


0.8 is the largest and most challenging update to Cave Crawlers yet. There are many other additions we didn't discuss: new perks, tasks, items, and much more! We are very excited to see what you think of the Sneak Peek, so please discuss your thoughts in the comments below as well as in our official discord. Finally, when should you expect 0.8 to release?

We expect update 0.8 to be ready sometime in September. We have a lot more to share, with a new trailer and an announcement of the exact release date coming once we get closer to release!

This is a small update that packs a mighty punch in the form of customization options, bug fixes and quality of life improvements!
This patch includes the following changes:

- Introducing the first batch of Clawsmetics (and there's more where that came from!)
options include:

• Cowboy hat
  
• Flower
  
• Party hat
  
• Cow bell
  
• Pig tails
  
• Moustache
  
• Googly eyes
  
• Toilet
  
• Plunger
  
• Prop hat

Quality of Life Improvements:

- Quitting the game from the pause menu now presents additional options Main Menu / Close App
- Players have the option to begin an instant rematch at the end of the current game with all the same settings
- Visual clarity improvements to the Player Select and GamePlay UI / Signposting

Big Fixes:
- Minor clipping issues on the Player Select and Gameplay arenas
- Collectables occasionally getting caught on the borders of the arena
- Collisions sometimes knocking players out of bounds

Greetings friends!!!
We have some great news to share with you today.

Skelethrone: The Chronicles of Ericona is now available on Steam! We are offering a special 15% discount during the launch period.
The game is also available on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2139840/Skelethrone_The_Chronicles_of_Ericona/

At its core this is a Souls-like game that features Metroidvania elements, filled with exploration and secrets to be found.

You're in for a great adventure inspired by games like Castlevania and Dark Souls. Bloodthirsty monsters, divine creatures and epic boss battles. The game’s story is shaped by choices that will define your journey.

In honor of the release, please watch the trailer and immerse yourself in the world of Makh-Abyss before fully exploring the story and finding out what actually happened after the death of Lord Derek Ericona.

Outbreak Shades of Horror: Chromatic Split Gameplay Debut! Heavy Rain Playthru Begins!

* Additional Steam Gamepad controls.
* Pause when controller changes or opening Steam overlay.
* Release of new gameplay trailer.

Hello again! We have another fun update for the demo, this one a lot more fun than the last!

• Two new modes, checkpoints and flag for people wanting a more laid back chill experience
  
  
• Mesh changes to the pot based on the mode you are playing in
  
• Main menu is more fun!
  
• Singing audio is now always synced to the music (it would de-sync occasionally before)
  
• Separate audio option for voices
  
• Some surfaces set to be less slippery where it felt bad
  
• Area Titles no longer block from clicking in the menu
  
• Clay's face updates based on your current jump combo
  
• Fix to dust particles appearing based on how you look at them
  
• Brightness setting also effects main menu

BUG Fix

Correction regarding the destruction of a tree (we cannot destroy it and we pass through it)

Hey sooo i have seen the videos and its bad.

There were a lot of bugs, making the game beatable in 10 minutes which is a big no no.
So im fixed them as soon as i could.
Fixed:
- You can no longer grab story related items before they are suppose to be grabbed.
- The crowbar and the gun no longer pass through objects.
- The pause menu no longer soft locks the game.
- You can no longer 360 backwards long jump into the basement stairs to pass through.

I also added a tutorial text for Saving since no one really got it.

That would be all.
Thank yall so much for the support!

Hey Ponderers!!

I've been hard at work on this 1.0 update and I've got some stuff I want to share! So without further ado:

In v0.4.0 onwards, I embraced the requirements mechanic that forced you to obtain a certain level in an attribute or research to unlock a specific spell or item. This mechanic is great because it adds tension to the decision making of what you want to level and research in order to unlock spells/glyphs/equipment and so forth.

The problem though is that it limits the amount of tools that are available to the player. Before, when applying glyphs to spells, you'd have the choice of around 6-7 different glyphs, but now you only get 3 unless you choose to invest into *Research Augments*. This isn't a bad thing, per se, but it could be better.

Additionally, the restriction mechanic requires that you invest in something before even getting to try out the tool to know if you like it or not. This means that your investments are somewhat blind.

So 1.0 is trying something a little bit different. Unlocking most spells no longer has a research requirement. Instead, you can always unlock it given that you have the resources to pay, but now certain spells are weaker if you don't meet the research prerequisites.

For example, you can now always unlock Raloch's Cube if you have the glyphs and resources, but if you don't have *Expert Scholar 1* and *Expert Wizardry 1*, its cooldown will be increased by 50% and its spell weight cost will be increased from 2 -> 3. So while the spell is harder to use, it still means you can play around with it and see if its useful before investing into it.



One issue that OoC has always had is the potential for the power singularity. At some point in the game, you start to scale harder than the cost of attributes/upgrades scale and thus you go infinite. This limits my design space and means that I have to be careful with the values I choose to make sure things don't spiral out of control.

New in 1.0 is Attribute Ranks. Every 50 levels in an attribute will rank it up, giving it additional power, but more importantly, increase its cost scaling by an exponential amount. This will have minimal effect on the early-mid game, but by the time you are at level 150-200 in an attribute, things are gonna get expensive fast.

For those that like math, the current rough-math table looks like this:

This has a couple nice benefits, namely it makes a New Game+ mode much more meaningful, since to hit absurd numbers your gonna need to loop a few times. Also means I can play with more upgrade ideas. Things like the cost-reduction scroll will no longer break the game.

In addition to this change, I've increased the scaling of all resource capacities in the game by a large margin to both account for the cost increase and to improve the player's room for massive combo potential.



Druidry is getting a small change! Each Harvest element now has multiple actions attached to each element.

*Oak Trees*, for example, where only able to be harvested before, converting the oak trees and some skill into wood. Now, however, you can do more than just harvest them. You can also use space to expand that amount of room you have available for your trees, and later on, you can use spark and energize the oak trees to make a completely different type of tree.

These are actions are unique to each type of element so each tree type and herb type will have different actions associated with them.



Lots of quality life changes are coming to Orb 1.0. A few I've been working on in the last few days are tooltip enhancements.

Sub-tooltips now highlight additional helpful information that might not be clear from a single tooltip. Effect Levels, for example, is a mechanic that is not explained well unless you deep dive into the various menus. Now its always shown if effect levels are attached to a tooltip!

But sub-tooltips didn't feel like enough. I've also been working on tooltip inspection, which allows the player to pause a tooltip. This prevents it from disappearing and allowing you to hover over the tooltip to get more information on each of its properties.



There is a lot of little things changing. Little design philosophies changes and general gameplay polish to make more strategies viable and reduce mental strain when making decisions.

I'll be continuing to post updates as we get closer to 1.0 release! (Which is still gonna take some time, but its also closer to being done than the sun exploding, so.)

-Marple

• Improved stream chat messages.
  
• While streaming, you can no longer sleep, read books, or access other apps until streaming has ended.
  
• Fixed sleep summary text for tags such as weakened #deepsleeper.