24th August 2020
FURY OF DRACULA: DIGITAL EDITION - DEVELOPERS BLOG VOL.5
“A rage grips me that I have not felt in aeons. The passage of time does little to quell my anger, as I can still feel the sting of that cursed night when they drove that blade through my heart. But soon I shall make them know true despair. They’ll know what it feels like to have every ounce of life drained from their weak, mortal shells. And when nothing is left but an empty husk, then I shall bask in my assured victory.”
Second entry in the recently discovered diary of Count Dracula, 13th November 1884
Hello Hunters!
We’re heading towards another milestone build right now in the development of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition, which means that we’ve got a whole heap of exciting features to talk about in this update. And if you haven’t seen it already, we’ve also made the Steam page for Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition live, which has meant we can see people wishlisting our game - it’s lovely to see so many people are excited for when the game launches!
Player State Icons
Fury of Dracula is the kind of board game where there are a lot of things to keep track of, so we want to make sure that you can tell at a glance what is happening to each character. As characters suffer from different status effects, icons will now appear above them to symbolise what effect they’re under.
In order to do this, we’ve created a number of different icons that will represent different possible player states - you can see some in the above screenshot!
Trading Dialogue
Trading items between hunters is a key tactic if you want to make sure that everyone is prepared to face Dracula - so we’ve put extra effort into making sure that trading works perfectly.
Early into design, we had it so that only the player initiating the trade would be able to confirm the trade. As Fury of Dracula is a cooperative game, we know it’s important that both players agree and communicate before making decisions. We didn’t want players to be able to ‘steal’ from each other, as that goes against the spirit of the game!
More Music
Our super cool in-house sounds man, Dan, is still hard at work making more tracks for Fury of Dracula! Take a listen to some of the awesome tracks he’s made so far:
Sound Effects
Along with more music for your hunt, Dan has also been working on sound effects for the game! These include the sound effects when you select options in menus, along with combat sound effects for when you play certain cards.
One of the benefits of playing the digital version of a board game is that we can add extra immersion to the game through things like sound effects, so we’re definitely doing our best to lean into the gothic horror theme.
Power Cards
We’ve now implemented the logic needed for power cards to work in the game! These are an important part of Dracula’s arsenal, so the lives of the hunters just became a lot harder.
Now that these are working, our QA team can get to work testing them and making sure they do exactly what they should be doing. This is exactly why the debugger tools we’ve mentioned in previous developer blogs are so handy - being able to set up the exact situation we want to test each power card in is far easier when you can manually do it through our debugger tools.
Nomad Account + Stats tracking
A few weeks back we announced that the next update for Talisman: Digital Edition will involve an overhaul of the profile system. You can read more about that here!
We’re going to bring the same system that we’ll be implementing into Talisman over to Fury of Dracula. This means profiles and stats tracking, logged across all your devices.
Right now we’re testing the system in Talisman, and starting to implement it into Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition too - it’s still in the early stages, so look out for more information in future developer blogs!
Tutorials
Right now Carl, our Design Director, is getting started on the Fury of Dracula tutorial! Having talked to the Fury of Dracula development team, he’s now figured out what order information will be presented to players.
For our tutorials we are using a hybrid approach - this means players will be able to choose if they want tutorial messages to appear as they use features, while also offering more dedicated tutorials that walk you through the game step-by-step. The more options the better, right?
Setting up these tutorials will also require a bit of work from the development team, as they will need to make sure the tutorials highlight UI elements, add boxes for the tutorial text, setting up a specific deck/game to be played, etc. We’ll be sure to share more information as they progress!
What are we working on next?
As we work towards the next milestone build, our main focus will be on getting the tutorial up and running, along with further work on the AI for both Dracula and the Hunters.
We’re also slowly rolling out the closed beta version of Fury of Dracula: Digital Edition to the lucky people who applied to be part of the closed beta. If you applied but we haven’t got back in touch with you yet, don’t worry - we’re planning on rolling the closed beta out in waves!
How can I keep up to date with Fury of Dracula?
Add it to your wishlist and follow the game on Steam! That way you’ll get all the updates posted straight to you, and you’ll get notified when the game is available to purchase and play. Check it out on Steam here.
You can also stay tuned to our social media. We’re going to be sharing updates more and more as we get closer to the release of the full game, including more blogs like this one.
Join us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to hear announcements as they happen. Or if you’d like to bolster the ranks of hunters on our Discord, you can join it here.