Crows Den: Before and After (Patreon)

I made an off hand comment in the discord server about how much this upcoming dungeon has evolved from its previous iteration and got a request to share things in more detail, so, here we are.

Unlike the prior dungeons, the Crows Den has NEVER featured in a public build (unless were counting the first ever prototype game I made that had 0 art assets and I gave away here as a proof of concept!) and so it does feel like a good idea to properly show off my hard work.

With the Slime Kings Domain, the Abandoned Mines or even the Sewers, these were all locations you may have played through several times and were able to clearly see for yourself how they changed. But this time, you'll have to put up with me showing some screen shots of how things were and telling you how they changed! Hopefully it's interesting haha.

Let's start with the first floor. Also, forgive me for using screen shots from the level editor that are a bit LESS clear, but if I tried in game screenshots with these massive maps, we'd be here all day! The Crows Den was always unique in that it was a very manmade dungeon, so I always wanted to reflect that mechanically. This first version had a very simple puzzle. Basically, there are levers along the walls, and each lever opens a gate. The goal was to walk back and forth until you opened all the gates. It was...fine? I don't think it was particularly good or bad, but it was pretty bland. I knew when I got back to chapter 6 that I wanted to really upgrade this space. It was very empty, the "puzzle" was pretty braindead, and compared to the me who made this original layout, I'd learned A LOT about programming tricker things. So, let's look at the version you'll be playing then.

Right off the bat, we can see that the overall layout has stayed the same. However, what used to be big empty spaces is now filled with hallways and rooms. The walls give you places to hide from enemies wandering around, which is a lot better than the big rooms. But the real big change here is in the way the puzzle elements are handled.

First of all, we have actual traps now. There are floor spikes that pop up at certain intervals and can cause damage to you. There are pressure plates that will fire arrows at you if you step on them. There are even some bear traps lying around in case you get careless. But on top of that the gate/lever puzzle has seen a big glow up.

In the prior version the logic was simple. Lever 1 opens Gate 1. Gate 1 leads to Lever 2, which opens Gate 2. So on and so forth. No more brain dead puzzles! In the revamp, each Lever will open one set of gates and close another. On top of that, certain rooms now have crawl spaces that allow you to move from one area to the next, even letting you move around locked gates to reach different levers. Ultimately though, there is a new goal here. You'll need to create a "path" by opening the right gates so that you can push a crate to a particular pressure plate responsible for keeping the prison locked.

All in all, it's still relatively simple, but you stack on the various trap, enemies chasing you around, and figuring out the puzzle solution, and now you have something much more involved. I'm pretty proud of how it's coming together honestly. But there's even more to look at!

I will be skipping the basement due to spoiler reasons, but the basement really hasn't changed at all, so don't worry about that. The only thing new is another crate/pressure plate combo that will unlock the gates to the upper floors. With that said, onwards to floor 2!

Floor 2 has seen the largest update of the entire dungeon. Originally it was pretty simple. A small hallway leading to the 3rd floor. The black square you see is simply me censoring a cutscene trigger so don't worry about that. But yeah there really was...nothing to this. You can tell I needed a cutscene to happen, and so I just made a map specifically to contain that cutscene and do nothing more. But that wasn't going to fly anymore.

Floor 2 is now quite a bit more complex. There's a tight corridor featuring spike traps, a room where you can imagine enemies will be wandering, and then another hallway to take you to the 3rd floor. I'll be putting even more traps as I progress to the final build. Honestly, I think this dungeon was just too short. It's a really cool idea to have a section where you have Hati in your party. But the original layout could be completed in about 10 minutes. And that's such a waste of getting an additional party member. So, most of the changes made here were to give you more things to do with him. Fight more enemies, run around more halls, whatever.

Floor 3 was envisioned as a bit of dining hall. But it falls into a similar pattern to the rest of the maps where it kind of just ends up being one open square. There's really not too much to say here. There's another censored cutscene event, but yeah this was pretty bland.

The change I made this time was pretty simple. At this stage you're at a "safe" location for the Crows, so there's no more traps. But I broke it up into more obvious "rooms" rather than just, big open spaces. You can hide behind walls if you want to stealth around the crows or go through, room by room, and clear them all out. But regardless at the end you'll find the stairway leading to the fourth and final floor.

Being the boss room, there really wasn't too much to this one. You head in, a cutscene starts up, and then boom you're in the fight. But since the game has evolved quite a bit, in particular with the Goddess altars and Life after Death mechanic, I knew that I couldn't leave this dungeon in this state.

So I added a nice clue that you've reached the end. There's now a campfire to rest at, as well as an altar to Ichor so you can spend your memory fragments before the battle. Of course, she'll also be your respawn point so you don't have to redo the entire dungeon if you die to the boss. The long hallway leading to the boss will also give me space to place your dropped memory fragments safely outside of his trigger. Really this one was just about quality of life improvements and bringing it up to pace with the finalized mechanics and design elements.

And that about does it. The holiday weekend is over, yet another one is right around the corner. Unfortunately, I'll be working both new year's eve and new year's day so I won't really get any extra time to work on the game this time. So, I won't make any promises that Early Access Wave 2 will launch before the year changes, but I will say that it is NEARLY done. The major thing holding it back is really just the sound design.

Both the sewers and the crows den are lacking sound at the moment. And while it's easy enough to imagine what the metal grates of the sewer should sound like as you walk over them, FINDING that sound online can be deceptively difficult. I also need to select the bgms and account for a variety of cutscenes across this entire section. Chapter 6 is so close to being completed, but whether it makes to you this year or the first week of the next is still a bit up in the air.

One way or the other, it'll be here soon though. Oh yeah, I haven't cleanly stated this yet, but Wave 2 will be available for anyone who purchased Wave 1 and is a paid supporter. That was the final decision I came to regarding that. Since chapter 5 and 6 are so connected, it just felt like a good move to give ppl closure before saying "now you have to pay for the full price to keep going" rather than leave them with an incomplete feeling.

I'll make sure to properly clarify that in another post when Wave 2 is ready for launch. Until then I think I'll take a little break from Project Red. It snowed today and I'm kinda feeling like just lying in bed :P

As a bonus here's a new censored artwork for the SFW version of the game as well.

This was probably my least favorite scene to censor as the nudity both made sense and I think added to the sequence, buuuuuuuut I'd rather give Red her clothes than have obstructing rays of light or other stupid censorship crap ruin the whole moment. It's a compromise for that version of the game, but if I need to release the game fully SFW with an NSFW patch, these things need to exist. And hey I have friends who aren't super into the lewd so...this is for them I guess lol.