Happy Holidays, 100 Rogues Fans!

on Dec 26 in Blog tagged by Keith Burgun

Happy Holidays, 100 Rogues Fans!

Enjoy your new Scoundrel and your randomly dropped “Present” items!

(Click for full-size)

Scoundrel Pixel Art Revealed!

on Dec 09 in Blog tagged by Keith Burgun

Being an undead female, there wasn’t much for her in Mine Town. She quickly grew numb to the effects of nights spent knifing cattle, murdering coyotes and stabbing chickens.

She longed for the piercing of thicker skin… oh, to find a creature worthy of the thrust of her blade… to close her eye-sockets and exhale passionately as she disembowels them. “That would be the best”, she thought to herself.

Pixel art by Blake Reynolds!

Rumors of great beasts and warriors alike swelled in the Town, and the Scoundrel was soon drawn to the Court of the High Council.

Killing Satan might be just the thing she needs to take her mind off of violence for awhile.

A demonic obsession with revenge now leads her to adventure in the Bandit Hole.

SKILLS

The Skellyman’s abilities are focused around evasion, trickery, and dealing high damage to a single target. Backstabs are a resource for the Skellyman, not only because they can heal her with Blood Bask, but also they multiply her damage with Skelly Vengenace. She’s also got two passive abilities – one which allows her to eat rotten food, and one which makes her immune to poison.

EVADE UP: Increases the Skellyman’s chance to Evade incoming attacks.
BLOOD BASK: The Skellyman relishes gore so strongly that she regians HP whenever she sheds the blood of a monster.
CRITICAL UP: Increases the Skellyman’s chance to deal critical attacks and backstabs.
SKELLY VENGEANCE: Backstabs are tallied in a special counter. When the skill is activated, you make a melee attack which deals more damage the more back stabs in the counter.
MARKSMAN: While using a ranged weapon, the Skellyman can pierce through targets, pin targets to walls, and get a bonus accuracy.
PICK-POCKET: Attempts to steal an item from an enemy.
SMOKE BOMB: Throw a smoke bomb, making it impossible for anyone to attack or be attacked while in the affected area.
LEAP ATTACK: Jump over an enemy’s head and make an attack, without passing a turn. Higher levels allow more leap attacks per turn.

$1.99 Holiday Sale & Version 2.1!

on Dec 02 in Blog tagged by Keith Burgun

Hey everyone – just wanted to make a couple quick, huge announcements.

Firstly, 100 Rogues is ON SALE for the entire month of December, for $1.99! Pretty awesome!

Secondly, Version 2.1 is out on the App Store now!  It involves tons of improvements – you can listen to your own music now, as well as several new items and better balance!

Skellyman Scoundrel Skill Tree (Day 3) – Complete!

on Nov 26 in Blog tagged by Keith Burgun

There it is – the beautiful Skellyman Scoundrel skill tree.  We’ve worked on this for many, many months, and we’re so happy to finally share it.  Today, we reveal the last two of the Skellyman’s abilities.

Leap Attack was one of the first abilities thought up for the Scoundrel – in fact, it was one of the first abilities thought up for the game at all.  Leap Attack allows the player to jump over an adjacent enemy’s head, and land safely on the other side.  While in mid-air, however, you deal a normal attack!  So it’s moving you out of a potentially harmful situation AND allowing you attack, both in one turn!  But wait – there’s more?  It doesn’t even cost a turn!   Like the Wizard’s Teleport spell, this spell can be cast without any time passing by.  That means that if you’ve got the mana, you could cast this spell 2 or 3 times, bouncing around the dungeon, before any monsters even realize what’s goin’ on!  That’s cool!  And also – I’m sure have have observed that adjacent enemies are almost ALWAYS facing you.  Well, cast Leap attack on them, hit them once, and then you’re in a prime position for a BACKSTAB!  Oh, man!

Did you know that the Skellyman Scoundrel was originally a normal, healthy, living and breathing member of the Skellyman race, until she was brutally murdered in her sleep by her lover?  It’s true.  Now, she travels the dungeons as an undead Skellyman pining for revenge.  With the skill Skelly Vengeance, the Scoundrel can deal massive damage to a single enemy.   Once you have the skill, any backstabs are tallied up in a special new backstab-counter.  When you cast the spell, the Skellyman pulls her lover’s dagger out from her skull, where he wickedly drove it so many years ago, and strikes it deep into the heart of whatever poor beast stands in her way.  The more backstabs in the counter, the higher the damage.  At high levels, Skelly Vengeance will deal the biggest damage numbers ever seen in 100 Rogues.  Satan, beware.

So that’s the Skellyman Scoundrel’s skills.  Please let us know what you think on the forums.  And stay tuned for more news soon!

Skellyman Scoundrel Skill Tree (Day 2)

on Nov 25 in Blog tagged by Keith Burgun

Last night I discussed in detail two of the Skellyman Scoundrel‘s great abilities, and the synergy between them.  Tonight, I have not just two, but FOUR more to share with you.

Pickpocket is a close-range active ability that allows the Skellyman to deftly search an enemy’s pockets for goodies.  Different monsters carry different stuff, and some of the most dangerous monsters carry some of the most excellent treasure.  Picking pockets is tough, though, especially in a battle situation, so it’s not guaranteed to work.

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Enter Evade Up!  This skill’s usefulness in all parts of the game is obvious, but its usefulness is particularly useful when you’re incurring needless attacks from trying to pickpocket everyone!  Having higher evasion, especially when coupled with the Skellyman’s starting armor, can mean the ability to survive with lower Health than normal.

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Speaking of Health, the Scoundrel is 100 Rogues first class that does not have a healing spell of some sort.  Instead, she’s got a passive ability called Blood Bask.  You may not know this about the Scoundrel, but she’s a bit of a psychotic mass-murderer.  With this ability, seeing blood fly from the body of a monster actually heals the player!  Critical hits make a big splash of blood which heals for even more!

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The fourth skill we’ll discuss today is Crit Up.  It’s similar to Evade Up in that it’s a passive ability that simply boosts the Skellyman’s chance to deal a critical hit.  Daggers already have a naturally high chance to crit compared with other weapons, so with this ability the Skellyman should be dishing out huge damage.

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Stay tuned for Day 3 where the last two Skellyman Scoundrel skills shall be revealed!

Skellyman Scoundrel Skill Tree (Day 1)

on Nov 24 in Blog tagged by Keith Burgun

The Skellyman Scoundrel’s got many tricks up her sleeve.  Each of them is powerful on its own, but when combined in just the right way, it’s lethal.  Lethal enough to Go Kill Satan with, even.

One ability is called Smoke-bomb.  This active skill allows the Scoundrel to lay down a 4×4 diamond of “smoke” tiles.  Anyone caught inside the smoke – player included – takes a massive hit to their accuracy, and a massive boost to their evasion.  So, it’s harder to hit, and it’s harder to be hit, while inside the smoke.  Furthermore, monsters have a chance to become confused on each turn they spend inhaling the gases.  There are many uses for this ability – for one, it can allow you to make a clean escape from a bad situation.  Just throw it down at your feet, dodge your way past the enemies and run down the nearest hallway to safety.  Another is in conjunction with the following Skellyman ability…

Marksman. Putting a point into Marksman turns your Skellyman into a ranged weapons expert, unlocking several new passive abilities.  For one thing, your arrows will now pierce the flesh of enemies and hit enemies behind them, multiplying your damage per shot when you line enemies up.  Secondly, if you see a monster who’s near a wall, shoot him, and you’ll pin him to the wall, immobilizing him.  But there’s one more benefit to Marksman, and that’s a 50-percentage-point bonus to accuracy with bows and arrows.  You might be wondering, “50 points?  Isn’t that a bit over-kill?  Bows are already mostly accurate to begin with.”  This is how the ability is synergistic with Smoke-bomb – it allows you to fire with decent accuracy into a smokey area.  So if you’ve got Marksman and Smoke-bomb, toss a canister into a room and then just start picking off all the poor, bewildered monsters.  Oh and one last thing – Marksman works with some throwing weapons too, like throwing knives for example.

We are so excited about the Scoundrel – she’s turning out to be so much fun to play already!  Possibly because we’ve had so much time to cook her up conceptually, it’s been a very smooth process and it seems that we’re gonna get it mostly right on the first try.

2.0 Developer Spotlight: Flour!

on Nov 16 in Blog tagged by WesPaugh

We’ve already gone on in several posts about the wealth of changes and improvements for 100 Rogues.  Today we’d like to go into detail about one monster in particular – Flour!

In open combat, the Flour Sack is a pushover: it has no damaging attacks and relatively few hit points compared to other monsters in Hell. Its main purpose is to act as healing and support for other monsters in nearby mobs, which makes it a challenging target for players to prioritize.

To accommodate many of the new abilities that monsters have, we recently added a basic implementation of Utility Theory that allows monsters to decide what abilities to execute or where to move. Previously, monsters simply attempted to use whatever ability worked, executing the first on they found that could execute at all, and defaulting to movement if none could be found.

The Flour Sack is the first monster to make full use of Utility, as it needs to understand the overall ‘goodness’ of an action and the need to consider whether a support action like healing or debuffing should be used instead of a defensive action like running away (and, if so, it must decide which support action should be used). By tweaking some numbers in some code that calculates the utility of his support actions, the Flour Sack can be made more or less self-sacrificing for the good of those around him.

Another great thing about utility theory is that it functions independent of context within our system, specifically the context of ‘Player’ and ‘Monster’ teams. What this means in game terms is that Flour acts as effectively in a support role no matter which team he’s on; if the Fairy were to confuse a Flour, he would automatically begin healing the player and debuffing nearby monsters for her. The same goes for a confused Vandella that in turn confuses a flour. Similarly, a Bully that misfires and hits a Flour may quickly find himself with a negative armor rating.

This is why I think Hell monsters are the most interesting and challenging monsters that have been included in the game so far; the monsters are dangerous alone and devastating in a team, but not nearly as much so as when you’ve got them working for you.

Finally, we’ll leave you with this mysterious image of the new Dungeon boss.

Aerial photographers have bravely entered the Bandit Hole of Mine Town to explore its many secrets from above, against all sense of self-preservation (and, frankly, logic). One such brave soul has posthumously given us this photo of a single, rogue, lone, rogue rogue, facing an unspeakable evil.

The photographer’s body was returned by the pictured Crusader. Due to what appeared to be electrical damage, this was the only photo able to be retrieved from his camera. What’s more, it appears that the exact frame of the Dungeon’s evil master was blackened out (again, against all logic).

When asked what he saw in that room, the Crusader responded “It was… hrmm. There were all these huge gold buttons, right? And then he appeared. He was this, umm.. well, he was bluish, I think. You know, it’s really really dark down there. But he was big, that’s for sure. So big! And I would have murdered him, and kept murdering him, but… well… you know, the photographer and all. It was my job as a Crusader to bring back his body. But I’ll go back and murder him soon!”

Who could it be?  Who’s behind all the hordes of undead?!  Where did they get those robes!? What madness IS this?!

Halloween Pumpkins!

on Nov 05 in Blog tagged by Keith Burgun

Here are images of a couple pumpkins that people made (that’s right, people MADE these pumpkins, from scratch!) in honor of 100 Rogues! 

The first one is by our own Blake Reynolds

The second pumpkin was carved by Jennifer Brent (who also provided the voices for our Succubus & Vandella monsters, whom you will come to know… IN HELL!)

Enjoy!

100 Rogues – Six Month Anniversary!!!

on Nov 04 in Blog tagged by GeorgeMorgan

Hi everyone,

100 Rogues was released on May 4th, 2010. We are having a one-day sale to celebrate. this is the first time the game has been on sale in its lifetime. We aren’t really promoting this at all. We just hope it is a happy surprise for people today.

Within about a week we expect that Apple will approve our new 2.0 version , complete with new levels, monsters and a new boss battle (and elimination of some pesky bugs). It will be a free upgrade for everyone who has purchased the game to-date.

Thanks to so many of you for your comments, support and constructive criticism over the last six months. We have learned a lot, and the game has evolved a great deal since its first release.

Cheers!

The 100 Rogues Team

P.S. Yes, there will be another one day sale of the game sometime after Version 2.0 is released. Feel free to email us if you want to be notified prior to that date.

100 Rogues – Version 2.0 Formal Announcement!

on Nov 02 in Blog tagged by Keith Burgun

Version 2.0 of 100 Rogues is coming sometime next week (as soon as Apple approves it).  The most significant addition to the game is the third world, “Hell”, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg.  Here’s the full list of improvements, as listed by Mr. Wes Paugh, our lead software engineer:

* Hell! Another world, with new levels, music, monsters and maps to explore, has been added to the end of the game, appropriately situated between the Dungeon and Satan.
* New Boss: A new, Dungeon-themed boss has been placed between the Dungeon and the new Hell world
* Crystal Caltrops: The Fairy Wizard’s basic projectile skill now leaves behind Crystal Caltrops upon impact, each lasting 10 turns dealing damage and slowing monsters that walk on them. Each skill point in Amafyst creates a higher number of damaging crystals.
* New Dungeon monsters - The Necromancer summons skeletons, the Zombie throws poisoned meat chunks and the Jaundice Baby EXPLODES!
* Easy Mode now spans all three game worlds

* New effects by Sir Blake Reynolds!
* Game Center can now be disabled via 100 Rogues user preferences in the Settings App
* Tutorial messages added (Tutorials can be disabled via in the game Menu)

New Balance Features:

* Total rebalancing of the game – You now should be getting about one character level per dungeon level, keeping it nice and clean that way.  Everything from item drops, shop costs, experience yields has been tweaked.
* Map Generation: Each map is now comprised of a mix of handcrafted and randomly generated rooms
* Mob Clustering: Monsters now spawn more tightly in groups, and only spawn in mobs within rooms, increasing the chances of mob vs. player interactions
*Respawning: Only monsters designated by the designer as being appropriate for one-on-one encounters can spawn in hallways or respawn over time.

UI Changes:
* End of game Score Tally Screen cleaned up
* Challenge Mode menu revamped with more information about challenges

Bug Fixes:
* Stability improvements throughout the game
* Monsters from previous levels are no longer reloaded into the game (often appearing stuck in walls)

* Starting stats / inventory adjusted for both classes
* Whack of Glory now has a chance to miss
* Ghost-type monsters now have fast health regen, low armor, and NEGATIVE magic resistance (meaning they take 3x damage from spells)
* Many new tips for loading screen
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So there you have it!  100 Rogues Version 2.0 is in many ways, the game we always wanted 100 Rogues to be!  We’re proud to share it with you and we anxiously await your responses on our forum!