A massive update is live now…

For the past several months, we have been working on a Mobile port of Word Dungeons. Translating the game to have a smoother feel on a handheld device has proven to be a massive undertaking. As a byproduct of this, several design changes have been made to the core game and especially the UI. It would be unfair for us to push these changes only to Mobile users, so we’ve re-worked the PC version as well. While the Mobile version of Word Dungeons is being wrapped up, we figured this would be a good time to push all the exciting changes to the PC version as well.

The changes are quite substantial, so get ready…

• The “Expert word bank” has been completely removed because, quite frankly, it served no purpose.
  
• Hardcore mode has been made more Hardcore:
  
  
  • Every level now contains 1 ‘Deathword.' If you don’t solve the Deathword, it’s game over!
    
  • You now get 1 extra gold per word found to rack up those high scores – high risk, high reward!
    
  • Since there is no Expert word bank, Hardcore mode will use the standard word bank.

• Home Menu:
  
  
  • Everything is labeled now.
    
  • You can now participate in global Leaderboards (along with the Steam ones). Once the mobile version of Word Dungeons releases, all players across all platforms will compete.
    
    • Side note: your existing high scores will be uploaded to the global Leaderboards when you launch the game.
  • You can now choose to load your Dungeon map even if you haven’t completed a run yet.
    
  • The progress screen now shows your current gold as well as your current time.
    
  • Added a help button to highlight the differences in difficulties.
    
  • There is a Loading Screen now…
  
  
• The Main Game:
  
  • Your lives, coins, keys and gold are now displayed in the top left corner and no longer clutter your desk.
    
  • Your extra loot items (Escape Keys for example) are now in their own menu and also off of your desk.
    
  • The tutorial menu is far more in-depth and is now just a UI element instead of a physical object on the desk.
    
  • You can now click on the words you found in the “Found Words” menu to look up their definition.
    
  • There is a “Zoom” feature now, so you can see the words a bit better, especially on levels with many words.
    
  • Curses now have their own UI elements.
    
  • Tapping on most UI elements will now explain their function.
  
  
• The Dungeon Map:
  
  • Re-arranged some of the UI elements.
    
  • You can scroll to zoom in and out now.

• Removed the “Anti-Save Scumming” feature. Save scum away!
  
• Changed the "Fraud" Achievement: Click on a coin as it is flying into the well.
  
• Keys will drop less frequently if you already have 2 (this includes keys found in the Well event).
  
• Gold poofing away is no longer framerate dependent.
  
• Getting the “Lantern Buff” (The golden tablet with a lantern on it) now delays the first occurrence of a “Haunted word” by half of the level duration.
  
• Hitboxes for many of the loot items have been made larger.
  
• Re-balanced how long you have to complete a level to be a bit more forgiving.
  
• Words that become haunted will now show up as purple in your 'found words' menu.
  
• You can no longer get the "High Stakes" curse on Hardcore (lose 2 lives instead of one).
  
• On hard difficulty, cursed words can spawn right from the beginning.
  
• The escape door now spawns whether or not you have the 3 keys.
  
• Escape door spawns are much more consistent and predictable now. You cannot have 2 Escape door spawns back to back, and there will never be more than 5 events in between two Escape doors.
  
• Changed the ‘Sapphire Gem’ requirement to “Skip an Escape door while carrying all 3 Escape Keys.” (It used to be that any Escape Door after the first was a ‘Sapphire Escape Door’)
  
• Sacrificing 5 of the same rune once all Skill Coins and Golden Tablets have been acquired returns 6 runes instead of 5.
  
• The shop keeper does a better job of making sure he doesn’t sell an Escape Key if you already have one…

• Well turns red when you don't have any coins and try to toss one in anyways.
  
• Words now have a more apparent border, making them easier to see on darker screens.
  
• ‘Enhanced borders’ such as those on Cursed or Deathwords are now less visually noisy and easier to read.
  
• The Lantern and Scale’s progress are now easier to read.
  
• Many of the Visual FX have been toned down quite a bit.

• Fixed a bug where the Reduce Difficulty arrow would just not show up when it was supposed to.
  
• Fixed a bug where the signs that informed you of the next event were just lying to your face.
  
• Fixed a bug where Golden Tablets would spawn at the shop before you even had enough coins.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could get a loot item multiple times if you clicked really really fast.
  
• Fixed a bug where you could still buy items even if you were full of runes.
  
• You can no longer get Golden Tablets from chests if you already have them all (unless you open two chests simultaneously).
  
• Fixed a bug where starting a hardcore file, quitting, then starting a non-hardcore file would start you off with 1 life instead of 3.
  
• Probably a bunch of other small bugs...

With the Mobile version of the game well on its way, any future updates will be centered around fixing any major bugs and removing/adding words as needed. We’ll also be working on putting out new media to reflect the new changes.

We've been cooking up a tasty update for you...

It’s been one week since the release, and we are happy to see the feedback we’ve been getting so far. We spent the past week doing our best to analyze feedback and push an update to hopefully address several issues people have with the game thus far. Today, we have a pretty significant balance / quality-of-life update.

Without further ado, here are the notes for this week’s update:

• The default word bank has been completely reworked from the ground up to use more common words. This will be referred to as the Standard Word Bank.
  
• New Option: Expert Word Bank. This option uses the old word bank that the game launched with (you know, the one with all the obtuse words).
  
• Technical differences between the two word banks:
  
  
  • The Expert Word Bank contains nearly 26,000 words, while the Standard Bank contains just over 10,000.
    
  • Because the Expert Word Bank is larger, players are able to achieve higher gold scores using it. So if you’re going for the top of the leaderboard, use the Expert Bank!
    
  • The Standard Bank will be continuously supported to ensure maximum fun and minimum frustration, while the Expert Word Bank will be left more or less ‘as-is.’
    
  • Hardcore difficulty now has the added challenge of always using the Expert Word Bank, in addition to having only one life. We’ll continue to monitor to see if this is a desirable change…

Side Note: We originally intended to leave in some of the more cryptic words to make sure the game wasn’t too easy for advanced wordsmiths, and to encourage use of the Runes against more cryptic words. However, we realized the difficulty was too unforgiving for new players. More seasoned players can continue to use the Expert Word Bank to challenge themselves, or if they feel they have gotten used to it.

• The 'Found Words' page is here! We added a new UI Element to allow players to see what words they have already found on a given level. Access this through a button in the top left, or by pressing the '~' key.
  
• Removed the option to use the ‘cryptic puzzle’ tutorial. We felt this added no value to the game and only made it harder to learn the mechanics of the game.
  
• Slightly sped up certain animations / delays to speed up the general pace of the game

• Hard Difficulty now has slightly shorter halls on average to hopefully subtly reduce the time it takes to complete a run.
  
• Adjusted Gold-Imbued word spawn rates to make Hard difficulty a little easier while making Easy difficulty slightly less of a Rune fest.
  
• Slightly increased the chance for the ‘worst chest possible.’
  
• You can no longer receive Rune upgrades from the well if you already have all of your runes maxed out. Try a harder difficulty next time ya word-slayer!
  
• Updated the Expert Word Bank.

We are aware of a few other minor bugs that don’t seem to be entirely game-breaking, but please let us know in the discussion if you find anything. We still have other major updates cooking up so stay tuned. Thank you again for playing!

Happy Wording,