New Demo (v0.5.0) is out

The updated version of Cloak Hero’s demo(v0.5.0) has finally been out. It was quite a long period of time since the first demo was released back in January. Many thanks to anyone that played the demo and a lot of feedbacks has been collected. 

In the process of analysing and learning from all the feedbacks, I had some new ideas and inspiration. I tried to make the game more fun by adding more contents, some of the experiments took quite a lot time and efforts. As an example, when I was remaking the dungeon Entry Hall, a strong impulse driven me to develop more of the story line. I couldn’t stop thinking about how the Entry Hall should be bigger with many things going on with different characters and backgrounds stories. With the small Entry Hall as a start, I ended up with a big entry town with a lot of rooms filled up with furnitures and objects. A rather straight forward task has become much more complex. The more things that I want to add, the more this project deviates from the original plan. 

This unplanned expansion has exhausted the energy of me. It was really exciting at the beginning, but slowly the workload piles up, making the game almost impossible to be completed by myself in a reasonable time frame. That was when I truly learned the old lessons of “Plan small and Deliver quick” and it is vital to keep project in a manageable manner. The good thing about develop a game solo is the freedom to make things that you like, but that also could have negative impact on a project. Since there is no restriction, it is very easy for the creative mind to run wildly, and that will hurt the development plan. 

 It was very hard to let things go, but after some rest, I cleared my head and decided to return to the original plan of a simple linear rougelite style game play. Even with the cut down of project scope, there are still a lot to be done, but at least there is hope to have the game completed as planned by end of this year. 

In comparison with the pervious v0.1.0, the current v0.5.0 features 

• Redesigned Entry Hall
• More NPC with dialogues for little background story
• Random weapons arrangement
• Survival style battle room
• One fabled skill attack
• Player upgrade mechanism
• New level boss 

The current demo contains most aspects of the first level, the plan is to keep improving the demo to showcase it in the Steam Next Fest next month. At the same time, development for the game will continue. More levels, enemies, bosses will be on the scope. Thank everyone for their patience and support for the game, as always, feedback will be most welcome.