Hi everyone,

It’s been a while since the last update, so let’s jump right in.

Taking a Break and Quick Prototypes

During the summer, it became increasingly clear that we were both feeling pretty burned out creatively from working on the game full time for around 8 years now. We kept pushing on with it the best we could, but soon realized that we needed to step away for a little while to recharge.

Around this time, a few developer friends suggested that the outlandish world of Monsters & Monocles would be a perfect fit for a timed horde survival game. We really liked the idea, and decided to spend a couple of weeks making a quick prototype using many of the same assets. Pretty early on we could see that it had promise, so we decided to spend a little more time during the summer expanding the concept to see if we could turn it into an actual game.

Monsters ‘til Midnight

By the end of summer, the game had really started to come together, and also began to take on an identity of its own as a legitimate Monsters & Monocles spinoff. Since it shares so much of its DNA, but with its own thematic twist of trying to survive against the march of time itself as the clock strikes midnight, (literal indestructible marching clocks of death in this case), Monsters ‘til Midnight felt like a perfect fit.

The Monsters 'til Midnight coming soon page can be found here.

Where does Monsters & Monocles Fit Into This?

Although the coming soon page for Monsters ‘til Midnight is now live on Steam, we still have some work left to do in order to wrap it up, so we have a Q1 2023 release date penciled in.

We still have every intention to return to Monsters & Monocles, and we’re hoping that some time away will help offer fresh perspective and a sense of renewed energy needed to get it across the finish line.

As always, I truly appreciate all of the kind words of encouragement, and the many large buckets of ongoing patience that you've all given us.


Thank you for reading, and please stay safe and take care.

Craig

Hi everyone,

Although the first quarter of each new year always feels like a blur of both personal and business tax return preparation work, we’ve still managed to push on and complete another major pillar of the game-NPCs!

A host of colorful characters waiting for you to lend an ear


Although there've been a few of them in the game in some capacity for quite some time, they were never really presented properly or polished up to an appropriate standard.

Professor Crowley busy deciphering ancient manuscripts in his study


With this in mind, we’ve spent the past couple of months working on adding animations, creating and implementing a proper dialogue/conversation system, fleshing out and improving character dialog, fixing and improving interaction mechanics, and generally just trying to make them feel more like they’re part of the game and it’s world.

James Gearsford hard at work maintaining the mighty airship HUB


Trying to also figure out a dialogue system that also works well in local MP was quite a challenge, but overall we’re really happy with how everything turned out. We feel like they add a nice layer of texture to the game that really helps to capture its inherent silliness, while also fleshing out the game’s underlying story and narrative a little more.

The new NPC dialog system in action


With the NPCS finished, the next major pillar we’ve started working on are the remaining boss fights. I’ll have more on this in future updates.


Thank you all for reading, please stay safe and take care.

Craig

Hi everyone,

It’s been quite a while since the last update as both of us try to navigate the challenges that come with having young kids currently learning from home via independent study, but things are still ticking along with good progress being made across various parts of the game.


We spent some time fleshing out the full sequence from finishing a zone > returning to the airship > unlocking one of the five zone fragments > choosing the next zone.

All of these sequences have a lot of moving parts to manage and took some time to get to a point where we were happy with them, but we think they really help tie things together from a game-flow perspective, and add a bit of character also.

Alongside all of the above, I finally started work on “dun, dun duuun” the final boss and the final zone that contains its hideous form. I don’t want to spill too many beans on that front right now, so more on that in the future ;P

Finally tying all of the various game sequencing together and starting work on the final zone has felt like a big milestone for us. We still have a lot of hard work ahead of us, but the final outline has really started to take shape, and that’s such a powerful motivator to keep us pushing towards the finish line.

As always, I truly appreciate all of the kind words of support and encouragement that you all provide.


Thank you for reading, stay safe and take care.

Craig

Hi everyone,

Since the last update, we’ve been focused on finishing up all of those new items, relics, and weapons that were previously shown.

Since quite a few of them use brand-new mechanics and systems that didn’t exist in the game, it was quite a task working through everything. We’re now getting very close to drawing a line through the “loot” aspect of the game, which feels like a great milestone to reach :)

Here’s a sneak peak at some of the new content we’ve been working on. Certain things still need final art, VFX, and general tuning in some cases, but it’s still nice to have even more permanent abilities and upgrades to work with as you find a play-style that best suits you.



Hunter's Dream

The Hunter’s Dream is a new holy-class weapon that fires a barrage of deadly stakes. It's fairly slow fire rate and large spread make it tough to use at range, but it can be especially devastating when combined with the Dragon’s Breath relic that adds a burning status effect.

Diamond Cutter

The Diamond Cutter is a rapid-firing beam-class weapon that fires richotteing shards of superheated crystal. It’s not particularly accurate, and overheats quickly, but is great in tight spaces.



Enchanted Candelabra Item

The Enchanted Candelabra item grants the player a flaming trail of fire whenever they dash. It’s very useful for boxing in weaker enemies to finish them off, and can also be used defensively to create breathing room if your weapons need time to cooldown.

Meteorite Fragment Relic

This mysterious, extraterrestrial relic offers players the ability to drop a row of exploding space rocks upon dashing. It’s very handy for wearing down tougher enemies even as you seek to find a better position.



Alongside the new content, I also managed to completely finish the airship HUB area outside of some minor polish and it’s supporting NPCs that still need to be finalized.

Along with everything shown here, the game is also progressing well in various other ways, both large and small. As always, we really do appreciate all of your continued support and patience throughout the game’s development.


Thank you for reading, and please stay safe and take care.

Craig

Hi everyone!

As I discussed in the previous update, the massive, and much needed UI/UX overhaul we've been working on is just about wrapped up outside of the odd bit of final polish. This puts us in a really nice position to start adding more of the really fun stuff like new weapons, items, and relics!

I don't want to give away too many specifics right now, but here's a quick look at some of the new loot I've been working on:


I tried to have fun with the Victorian theme and time-period for these. The "Dubious Handkerchief" and "Shrapnel-filled Corset" are two of my favs :P


My main goal with the new weapons was to pad out some of the underserved classes such as beam and fire. My personal fav goes to "The Fragpipes", which is the most shrill-sounding homing missile launcher ever devised!


For the new relics, I continued to lean into the same mythological themes and figures as the existing relics.


We still need to get all of the new additions integrated and working as intended, but we're so happy to finally flesh this stuff out a bit, and provide a wider range of fun toys to play with :D

Thank you for reading, and please stay safe and take care of yourselves.

Craig

Hi everyone,

As mentioned in the previous couple of updates, these past few months have been all about working through and finishing every aspect of the game's UI. We're happy to report that we managed to hit our goal this past month, and have now started working on wrapping up all of the game's supporting UX work and general connective tissue. This should really help round out the overall game-flow and make the game feel like a more complete experience.

Here's a rundown of some of the new UI work:


It being the first screen a player sees, I wanted to add a bit more detail and general polish to the game's title, as well as adding a few subtle animations to breath a bit of life into it.




Since the airship's codex computer is so detached from the rest of the game UI, I wanted to try something more unique and thematic, so I decided to make it a more detailed representation of the actual in-game console sprite.



Trying to come up with a clear and easy to use screen for equipping/upgrading relics, that also works in single player, local MP, and online MP has always been a bit challenging. After testing a few ideas and different approaches, we decided it would be best to split equipping and upgrading into two distinct screens

The equip relics console is all about selecting the relics you want from the ones available, with the new central grid view showing you which relics still need to be discovered


Having relic upgrades be a unique screen helps remove some of the UI complexity and visual clutter, and makes it a distinct action.



For the game over screen, it became clear that the key information a player would want after a solo run, would be fairly different from that of a MP group. With that in mind, we decided to take a unique approach for each.

In single player, all items, relics, and weapons collected on that run are now tracked and shown.


In multiplayer, a crown is awarded to the each player for least deaths, most kills, and most gold collected. (It looks like our heroes have seen better days T_T)


Although it's been quite the task working through an entire game's worth of UI, we're really happy with how everything is coming together, and are in a good place to finish up all of the remaining UX work needed to bring us closer to having a fully fleshed out game. Once that core foundation is done, we'll then be able to push ahead with the remaining content, and all of the fun stuff that entails :)

Thank you for reading, and please stay safe and take care of yourselves.

Craig

Hi everyone,

As mentioned in the previous update, we’ve been working on improving and finishing all aspects of the game’s UI and UX.



Working at a higher resolution for all of the game’s UI elements allows us to strike a much better balance between readability and aesthetics, and creates a much better separation between game elements, and UI elements.


We’ve also added much needed visual indicators to the HUD such as HUD frame shake and flash overlay when taking damage, damage value preview indicators to the HP bar, and a weapon overheat animation. The new "Deceased" reaper overlay also adds a not so subtle (and pretty metal 🤘😎) indicator to teammates who have died. Equipped weapons also now have an icon to show their class.




For the game’s core UI, we’ve gone with a fairly clean, simple approach that still incorporates aspects of the game’s Victorian theme.

WIP settings screen



A pack(pride?) of Ruperts illustrating the new color selection feature



New default, win, and defeated character portraits



We still have plenty to do on the UI front, but once it’s wrapped up, we’ll be in a much better position to start adding more new content and really start pushing towards finishing the game.

Thank you for reading, and please stay safe and take care of yourselves.

Craig

Hi everyone,

I realize that we've been quiet on here for the past few months, so I wanted to take some time to let you all know what's been going on.

Towards the end of last year (and beginning of this year), we were faced with some deeply personal challenges and family tragedy. Without going into specific details, the past few months have been incredible difficult for us on all fronts. We thank you all again for your patience and understanding as we do our very best to move forward, we really do appreciate it.

In terms of Monsters & Monocles, this past month we started working on a complete overhaul of the game's UI and supporting UX. This will help the game feel much further along (and more polished), while also allowing us to better add new content. We'll have further updates on this front as me make progress and have more to share.

Thank you all for your continual patience with us and with the game. We're doing our best everyday to move the game further along towards being finished to the level of quality we strive for, and that you all deserve.

Please take care and stay safe everyone.


Craig

Hi everyone.

With the kids starting full distance learning over the summer, this past couple of months have been quite challenging (and a bit of a blur to be honest!) but we’re trying our best to make progress as we settle into a new routine.

Here's a rundown of what we’ve been working on:


Since the airship HUB is essentially the core connective tissue of the entire game, it’s something I’ve been wanting to improve and finish for a LONG time.

My main goals over the past month or so have been to nail down exactly what it needs to contain in terms of game functionality, and also to flesh out how each room will look and feel.

I’m still in the process of cleaning up and implementing the new rooms, but so far we have:


Mostly polish, and a proper representation of the central eye platform that will eventually unlock the final boss level once you complete all of the corresponding zones.


Since this room acts as the spawn point at the start of each session and upon returning to the airship, I wanted to make it a bit more interesting and unique visually.

I've also seen a few requests to have the option for different starting weapons in the forum, and I agree that it's a good idea, so the weapon platforms are the first step towards factoring them into the airship layout/design.


I don’t want to say too much about what I have in mind for this intriguing little room right now, but it will have a couple of uses down the line. Stay tuned for more info... <_<


For the relic room, I wanted to lean more into the idea that the game’s relics are powerful artifacts that have largely been lost to the sands of time before being rediscovered by our heroes.


Still a couple of rooms left to do, and bits of clean-up, but I’m happy with how the airship is progressing.


Alongside working on the airship, I’ve also been fleshing out the room variety for each of the main zones, utilizing the various new traps and elements I now have to play with. Not really a lot to show right now, but it feels good to finally start growing the room count to keep each run feeling more varied and fresh.

That’s everything from the past couple of months. Definitely a challenge as I mentioned, but things are moving along.

Take care, be safe, and we'll see you next time :)

Craig