Demo Progress & Your Own NPC! news - Dungeon Buster

Hello everyone!

The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of craziness in both personal and professional life, but that hasn't stopped or stalled development in any way whatsoever. The demo has been steadily taking shape and has already become twice the game it was since the last update.

The biggest obstacle that has been overcome recently is how the game engine sorts characters based on their vertical position relative to one another (z indexing), and getting this bug stomped was a huge motivation boost. It makes the game look 1000% better as enemies aren't floating over each other oddly, and that wouldn't do whenever you're running around stabbing enemies in the face!

Combat. Delicious, pixelly combat. It has been a real treat adding different enemy types for you to slash, blow up, and generally kill to death. Enemy attacks vary quite a lot; the slimes will try and get as close as possible to you as they slow you down if you touch them (and they split into smaller slimes when you kill them), skeletons have a ranged attack and will also deal damage if you touch them, Dread Knights are tough, and will lumber towards you to try and deal a heavy damage attack, bats will swarm at you and deal touch damage, and so on. Several mini-boss enemy types have been implemented and will feature in the demo, one of which is a flail wielding knight (whose flail also spews bombs by the way).

Apologies for the lack of animation on the Dread Knight, he'll get them soon! As you can see from the animated gifs, when the enemies aren't tracking the player they wander around. This wandering is random, and they try their best not to fall into bottomless pits (but it does happen, hilariously) and will avoid NPCs.

The game world is rich and full of lore for players to discover should they decide to go off the beaten path and explore Mistmere fully. Make sure to read all the signs, tombstones, and incriptions scattered across the island, as there are many hidden areas to unearth and explore.

But do exercise caution when you loot these long forgotten places, as there can be consequences...

So development grinds ever onwards, and I want to get you all involved in Dungeon Buster! On Twitter recently I opened up a limited number of spaces for followers who wanted to be and NPC in the game, and I wanted to pass the torch onto the fans here on IndieDB. There are 10 NPCs available, and you are limited to 1 NPC per user. To claim your NPC just leave a comment on this news piece; it's first come, first serve and I will be selecting based on the time you leave the comment so don't delay if you want to get your NPC! Here's how the Twitter NPCs turned out:

So don't delay! Get commenting!