Notes from the shaft

Boss arenas, nine tiers of gear, and darker music

The first build under the new name. Most of it came from one playtest note: the deeper you go, the more the game should feel like it. The music, the spikes and the bosses all get nastier the further down you get.

• Boss arenas. A boss no longer waits on the slope with everything else. The last row of a boss floor is now a flat hall with no traps in it. You walk through a door at the end of the row above, the door slams behind you, and you step out on the far side of the arena. There are three arena styles, and they change by zone: the Monastery hall (stained glass, red banners, gold candelabras), the Knight crypt (stone guardians in cold candlelight) and the Ember shrine (candle altars and rising embers). The boss fight screen uses the same hall.
• Darker music the deeper you go. Each zone's track is slower, lower and murkier than the one before. It gains a rumbling drone, sour notes and a cave echo, until the Blood Mansion plays to a slow heartbeat drum.
• Nine gear tiers. Wooden, Bronze, Iron, Golden and Diamond are joined by Obsidian, Mythril, Infernal and Void. The new tiers unlock deeper down to keep up with the monsters, and each one has its own colour on your hero.
• Swords hit twice. A parry with a sword now opens the monster up for two critical hits instead of one.
• New spikes. The old spikes looked like broken ribs. Traps now get meaner by zone: wooden stakes near the top, then iron spikes, then a spear trap built from the Castle Prison armoury, then blood-tipped iron in the Blood Mansion.

Dice Dungeon is now Gloomroll Depths

It turns out "Dice Dungeon" was already taken, twice over: there's a Dice Dungeons and a much better known Dicey Dungeons. So the game needed a name of its own.

Gloomroll Depths is a riff on doomscrolling. You keep rolling and going down, one more floor, one more roll, long after you should have stopped. That's about the most accurate description of this game we've managed so far. The name search came back clear.

The game also has a home now. It's made by Wet Torch Studios, and the studio's site at wettorchstudios.com will host the game and this devlog.

• The next build shows the new name in the window, the town banner and the game's file. The pause menu gets a Credits page.
• Your save comes with you. The first launch under the new name copies your progress across from the old Dice Dungeon save.
• The next build also stops the potion and snack counts from getting cut off when the window is smaller than full size.

Bosses, perks, and the dungeon finally makes noise

This is the biggest update since the start. Playtesting at Depth 3,500 showed the problem plainly: the monsters down there weren't scary. They had lots of health, but they still hit like wet socks. This build fixes that, and gives every run something to aim for.

• Bosses. A boss guards the stairs on the last floor of every zone (Floors 10, 30, 50, 80, 110 and 150, then every 50 floors after that). It's the toughest monster on the floor, with triple health, half a heart more damage, and a second strike that lands faster than the first, so you have to parry both. Beat it for 5x gold and a guaranteed piece of gear from the better tier.
• Dice perks. At every rest zone you pick one perk out of three, and it lasts until you die. There are eight: Loaded Die (1s count as 2s), Lucky Reroll, Thick Skin, Sharp Edge, Gold Tooth, Steady Hands, Feather Fall and Second Wind. Some of them stack.
• Monsters hit harder deeper down: half a heart more for every 30 floors below where a monster first shows up.
• Sound and music. Every zone has its own chiptune track, plus town and boss themes, and there are sound effects for dice, steps, jumps, parries, hits and gold. All of it was made from scratch for this game.
• Game feel. Screen shake, damage numbers, dice that tumble before they land, fades, and banners when you reach a new floor, a new zone or a boss.
• Tutorial tips on your first run (X skips them), and a pause menu (Esc or the pause button) with music and sound volume, the controls list and "Give up run".
• Bigger stash. It starts with 3 slots, and you can buy 2 more at a time in town, up to 15 (100g to 4,000g).

Gear tiers, a monster ladder and seven depth zones

• Five gear tiers for swords, axes, pickaxes, helmets and shields: Wooden, Bronze, Iron, Golden and Diamond. Each tier has its own name colour, and the higher ones unlock at Floors 25, 60 and 100.
• Nine monsters that arrive every few floors, each in three colours. The weaker colour retires when the stronger one turns up. Snails hide in their shells and bandits block.
• Depth zones: Mossy Entrance, Old Mine, Deep Cave, Sewer Canals, Forgotten Cemetery, Castle Prison and Blood Mansion, each with its own backdrop and getting darker as you go.
• Perfect parry: a gold zone at the very end of the parry window that does triple damage.
• Market Town: a new town street with the Tailor, Shopkeeper, Stash, a High Scores notice board and a wooden DUNGEON signpost.
• Rest zones can sell spare gear too, and every found item gets its own "send up" row.

Make your own hero, then dress them up

• Character creator on first launch: body, skin, hair, clothes and your name. The gear you wear now shows on your hero in town, on the map and in fights.
• The Tailor sells hats, hair, capes, masks, gloves and ears. They change your look only.
• Pets: the Dog sniffs out loot ahead, the Fox gives extra stamina per kill and the Wisp lights the dark.
• Unlockable skins: Ghost, Orc, Zombie, Demon and Devil, each earned through play.
• The Goddess waits at rest zones and gives you one blessing (+1 heart) each time.
• v0.8.1 fixed the hero facing backwards, cut the speech bubbles way down (they were constant), and added the bag view (Tab).

The hero starts complaining

• The hero and the Shopkeeper now talk, with narration and speech bubbles. The hero is a reluctant, underpaid grump, and the Shopkeeper is a greedy, deadpan salesman.
• Jumping is free and uses Space only. It works even with no stamina, because running out of breath shouldn't mean you can't hop a spike.
• Resting (C): +5 stamina, but 1 time in 3 something finds you first. Beating a monster also gives you 2 stamina back.

"Ah, smells like shit down here."The hero, every few floors

Online leaderboards and the mine lift

• Two online boards: Full Run (only runs started from the top, resets monthly) and Deepest Depth (any start, never resets). When you're offline, the game shows the scores from your computer.
• Return to town from a rest zone. Your run waits while you shop, and the mine lift takes you back down for 10g per 10 floors.
• Waypoints unlock at Floor 50, 100, 150 and so on, so new runs can start deeper (for Deepest Depth only).
• First launch asks for your name, and skeletons finally face you in fights.

First playtest fixes, and holes in the floor

• A death animation before the death screen, and your body stays on the exact tile where you died.
• Jump presses just before "JUMP!" now count. Spikes only appear mid-row and never next to each other, a fixed rule checked over thousands of tiles.
• New hazard: gaps. Miss the jump and you fall to the row below for 1.5 hearts.

A town, gold, and your own corpse

• Every run now starts in a town with a shop, a stash, a high score board and the way down.
• Gold, loot (gems and goblets) and gear that lasts a set number of runs. Gold is banked instantly down to Floor 50. Below that you carry it until a rest zone.
• Corpse runs: die and your body stays down there with your loot, guarded by a monster. Reach it next run and take it all back.
• Save Game Potion: one per run, lets you continue from where you drank it.

Real pixel art

Placeholder shapes made way for Anokolisa's Legacy Fantasy art: the hero, five monster types (slime, wild boar, cave crab, skeleton, boar warrior), cave ledges, spikes and candles. Monsters animate now, and a monster's attack animation is its warning that a hit is coming.

Side-view fights and one-handed controls

Fights moved to a side-on arena with a timing bar and a green parry zone. Spikes hurt unless you jump them. Everything fits under one hand: Space rolls, 1 to 3 picks a move, Q and E reroll, A blocks and D strikes.

Roll the dice, walk the zig-zag

The first prototype was the core idea and nothing else. You roll two dice and move by one die or both added together, down a shaft that zig-zags back and forth. You get hearts for health, stamina as the clock, parry-based combat and a local high score table. Dice movement is a skill choice rather than pure luck: you decide how far to go, and rerolls cost stamina.