Retro dungeon crawler Dwarf Quest

Hey everyone!

I'd like to share with you my upcoming iOS game, Dwarf Quest. It was released today, August 24th.

http://www.dwarfquestgame.com

The design, programming and publishing are my handiwork. 3D art, GUI, sound and music were done by contractors.

Check out the trailer!

Anyone attending Unite this week: see if you can find me to get a preview! Instead of a penny for your thoughts I'll give you a limited edition Dwarf Quest collector's card.



Cheers!

Dylan

 

Wow great job, game looks fantastic

 

this looks really good!! Great work! Congrats for the release!

 

Seems lots of fun! congrats!

The game will be paid or free?

 

Thanks a lot guys! And great news: the game just got approved by Apple, so the launch is definitely on Friday!

Dwarf Quest will be yours for $2.99 / € 2,39 , but will be on sale in the first week. So grab it as soon as it hits the store, for only $0.99 / € 0,79!

 

Utterly awesome, fantastic work and much success to you!

 

Looks great - will definitely be buying a copy

 

Thanks, gentlemen! Only one more day before launch!

 

Looks good, I will pick it up when released!

 

Couldn't really tell from the video, is this turn based or real time?

As it is on special for first week will probably just pick it up anyway as sucker for any RPG game.

Out of interest did you use any unity assets to help with the coding?

 

Combat is turn-based, so you can take all the time you want to battle monsters. The rest of the game is real-time though, so you can get around fast!
To answer your other question: no, I did not use any ready-made code assets, programmed the whole game from scratch.

I'm actually waiting now for Dwarf Quest to come out in Europe (The Netherlands)... Come on, Apple!

 

Sounds like best of both worlds.

Just searched on Australian iTunes store and is there

Accidentally clicked on Buy App and the confirmation dialog so it is now downloading. Can't say when I will get a chance to actually play it.

 

Purchased (Australian store)! Looking forward to getting into it while I'm stuck in a hotel this weekend

 

I just bought it on the spanish store, after going down 3 levels I have one complaint

-The menu runs reaaaaally bad on my ipad1G, it seems that it barely hits 20fps the most, of course it's just the menu, but.....

 

Thanks everyone!

Eskema: sorry to hear that. Truth be told when I tested on the iPad 1, I did notice the performance in the main menu wasn't fantastic. I decided to go ahead and publish the game anyway, including support for the iPad 1, because today's special significance (20 year anniversary since the first "Dwarf Quest").

I'll definitely do a round of overall optimization, and I already have a few ideas to improve the menu.

Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks a lot for hanging in there!

 

I can tell you, unfortunately the performance is the same on my iphone4G, the same "horrible" experience, not a big deal because it's just the main menu, but it's something you should address in future updates (if possible)

 

Hrm... I used to have an iPhone 3G, and at some point it wouldn't run anything anymore. I had waited too long to switch to a new device, until finally I upgraded straight to the iPhone 4S. I guess I should be a bit more sensitive to the slightly older generations again.

It's probably the shader on the main character though, there's a lot going on in there. Either that, or there are too many torches and flame particles in the scene.

 

Had a quick play (down to level 3) and quite enjoying it. Got an iPad 3 so no issues with menu. Also got an iTouch but not yet tried it on that.

Is gold used to buy anything or just a 'score' for treasure?

 

Great to hear!

Regarding the gold: there's an update just around the corner that will allow you to exchange gold for Battle Cards at those altars you've been seeing.

 

I'm sure you know this, but just in case let me share with you some thoughts, maybe this can point you to better optimisations.....

The performance of different devices is really annoying, for example you should be targeting the iphone 3GS as the minimum device as well as ipad1g.
Now the problem comes with the gpu, both iphone 3gs and ipad1g share the same gpu, that gpu is good for the small resolution of the 3gs, but suffers of fillrate and general performance when it has to fill the whole 1024x768 ipad screen.
The same goes for the iPhone 4G, it has the same gpu and it suffers a lot with any alpha content on the screen, so your test on the iPhone 4S was good, because the 4S has a proper GPU, you don't suffer any issue (well not the same issues you can have with an iphone4G).
Also the same goes for ipad2G and ipad3G, both have a decent GPU, so the performance will be good on those devices....

At the end as a small indie you should have an iphone 3GS, iphone4G and ipad1G to test, if tests goes well in these devices, you can safely assume they will run better on the other devices as they are more powerful....

 

Thanks a lot for sharing your insights! Maybe I should indeed find an iPhone 3GS and test on that as well.

I'm also glad to hear that if it runs well on iPad 1, that will mean it will run pretty well on other devices too. Seems like I have some homework!

 

Well, unless apple screw us again in the future, we expect to have the new iphone5 (or however will be called) to have a decent GPU, which in theory will offer the same amount of power as the 4S or even a better one....

Either the iphone4G or the ipad1G are the biggest pieces of S*** I've ever saw, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but I cannot understand how those bastards of apple released a device with almost 4 times more resolution 480x320 original iphone3G/3GS and iPods vs 1024x768 iPad (or 960x640 retina iPhone) with the same underpowered GPU

 

Hello guys!

It's been a while since I posted any updates on Dwarf Quest. It's been out on iOS since August 2012, and on PC and Mac since February 2013. Overall, I'm happy to report I recouped all of the out-of-pocket costs (about €5000). Truth be told, that leaves me with about 10 weeks of my own personal time that I'd need to get back somehow.

Still, very happy with how everything turned out! So much in fact that I started pre-production on a sequel. Maybe you could help out a fellow dev by taking a short survey?

http://www.wcrd.co/DQ2Survey

Thanks a lot for considering. Have a great day everyone!

Dylan

 

Hi everyone!

I'm very excited to let you know about the Dwarf Quest 2 crowdfunding campaign!

http://gambitious.com/projects/3126-dwarf-quest-2


Please have a look at the page, the video and all of the shiny perks. Thank you in advance for your time, and certainly for your support should you choose to pledge.


For glory!

Dylan

 

Hey, Dylan, your game looks very interesting! I will give it a try for sure.

 

Thanks! And good luck with the launch of your game beyond Canada!

 

Looks great!

 

haha cheers!
Icons must be from game-icons.net which I'm following
That small circles above heads were brilliant idea
I thought retro was something with very bright colors and crazy combinations of those but I'm not sure anymore

 

Thanks! And you are correct: the game makes use of some of those icons.

I'm currently improving Dwarf Quest, to make it ready for Steam... no guarantees but it's almost in the top 100 on Greenlight, so maybe it'll be accepted in two or three months!