28th September 2020
FURY OF DRACULA: DIGITAL EDITION - DEVELOPERS BLOG VOL.7
Our allies have been gathered, but I can’t help fear it will all be for nought. Last time we were able to ambush Dracula, but now he knows we’re hunting for him. We have no choice but to scour Europe before he has the whole continent within his grasp. If we fail, then I dread to think what horrors await us.
Excerpt from the hunting diary of Dr. Abraham Van Helsing
Hello again hunters!
As we publish our 7th developer blog for Fury of Dracula, we’ve got a whole heap of news to update you on. As always, we’re going to talk you through the exciting things we’ve been working on behind the scenes, to give you an idea of how the game is progressing!
So, what have we been working on?
Leaderboards
We’ve given the leaderboards an update so they look extra fancy! We’ve also finished wiring everything up so that they work correctly, now we just need to get it in the hands of players so you can all start competing!
Tutorials
After some thought about how best to convey information to new players, we’ve decided to split some of our bigger tutorials into more manageable chunks.
We’re also going to be adding tool-tips that’ll help you learn while playing, or just remind you what certain buttons do. We want to make sure that players understand the game in a way that suits them!
We’ve also been looking at how to let players browse the advanced rules of the game - we’re still evaluating our options, but we’re confident that we’ll be able to find something that works well!
Testing
Our hard-working QA team have been cataloging issues and bugs that they’ve come across over the last 2 weeks, and with the help of our beta testers they’ve been able to ramp up the number of issues we’re fixing and being made aware of.
Right now they’re mainly focusing on actually completing games, and any issues that block progress entirely in games.
In order to make sure we’re able to test out as many bugs as possible, our priority is making sure that you can actually play an entire game. If the game always locks up about 80% in, that leaves 20% of the game we can’t properly test!
Online Features
We’ve been updating features to make sure that they work properly when you’re playing online instead of offline. We’ve given the ‘pass to player’ flow an update, in order to make sure things flow as smoothly as they would offline.
We’ve also been making sure that the marker used to determine Dracula’s position has been updated to work properly online. This is a new feature we’ve added to the game recently, to make it easier for the hunters to see where Dracula is on the map when something reveals him.
Music
At this point in development, we only have a handful of tracks left to create before the complete soundtrack is ready! We’ve managed to make some very spooky tracks to add to the atmosphere of the game, so we hope it helps you all get into the gothic horror mood of the game.
We’re also hoping to be able to release the game with a downloadable soundtrack, so stay tuned for more information on that!
Press Kits
Our marketing team have just finished sending out the physical Fury of Dracula press kits for a bunch of different reviewers and outlets. Stay tuned to our social media and keep an eye out for them in the wild!
Tokens
Earlier in our developer blogs, we mentioned that we’d added tokens to the game to represent things like roadblocks and storms. We’ve spent a bunch more time working on these tokens, making sure they’re easy to see on the board, easy to remove and work as they should!
We’ve also added some effects to the tokens now, so storm tokens will actually make it look like a storm is raging on the sea!
Updating the buildings
In order to make it easier for players to differentiate what cities are ports, we’re giving them a bit of an artistic update to make them look more unique at a glance. They already have a slight blue glow, but we wanted to make it more clear which cities are ports, as it informs the decisions you make in game quite a lot.
What are we working on next?
We’re looking at making the post-game results screen look more exciting - at the moment it just dumps a bunch of statistics on you without much fanfare! We want to show you interesting information about the game you played, but presenting that information in a nice way is just as important.
Hopefully in the next development blog we’ll be able to share an update on how the results screen looks.
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.
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.