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Hear The Bell Toll

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Hear The Bell Toll

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A roguelike city-building game focused on short satisfying runs. Buy unique buildings from a shop, place them strategically and manage class synergies and statuses carefully to meet the tribute requirements and survive for 25 years!

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An update about Hear The Bell Toll

Apr 21

Hey everyone!

I have an update to share: I'm currently putting development for Hear The Bell Toll on hold until my other game Starvester releases. Originally, the plan was to release HTBT late last year, but the demo build wasn't good enough to participate in the October Next Fest, so we pushed it to enter the February Next Fest instead. However, despite multiple updates and months of work, the reception of the game hasn't changed. It has some fundamental problems that I don't think I can currently work through, and I don't feel good about releasing a game that is not set up for a fair shot.

Starvester is still on track (still not locking in the exact date until very close to release!). It's also significantly more anticipated and well received than HTBT, so I feel like I should focus on it and make it the best it possibly can be for now.

So, now what? Well it's actually all good news. Thankfully I can survive even with putting HTBT on hold for now. Pretty Soon have been super supportive of the process and together, we have decided to void our publishing arrangement for HTBT. This allows me to again do anything I want with the game's IP, assets and code, and release it on my terms! So my plan is: After taking a couple of weeks break after Starvester is wrapped up, I will try prototyping and putting together a new demo (maybe another incremental?) using the HTBT assets and code! If you have any ideas about it, please lmk :)

Anyways, a bit unfortunate, but I guess that's how it goes in game dev sometimes. I definitely think this is the right decision to make, and I feel a lot less stressed and more motivated after putting my focus fully on Starvester. Speaking of which, there's some very exciting news coming tomorrow so be on the look out for that (wishlist Starvester and join the Discord to stay up to date!)

See you all soon,

- Shaun (dev)

Hear The Bell Toll

All inns/gold for first 3 turns or ♥♥♥♥♥♥ hell

Didnt get an in every turn for the first 3 turns? Restart run. Literally you cant make enough gold to go on unless you do this. It feels kinda crap to be forced into only 1 way to start. Like the first 3 rounds should just be skipped. Start with a semi custom city alredy built and on a calamity event to guide your first purchaces. If it is as it is now its one of those restart hell games....

DrSalty

Mar 1 @ 9:03am

General Discussions

Major Demo Update for Steam Next Fest!

Feb 23

Hey everyone!

A big demo update is LIVE NOW for Hear The Bell Toll!

This update has the following changes:
- A Full Tutorial rework
- Main Menu rework
- Options menu rework (pause button)
- Only 1 biome + difficulty option is now available at the start (this was done to focus on 1 intended difficulty for the demo and get the most balanced version possible)
- Balancing changes (windmills)
- Reworded times tax from x0.25 to +0.25x- Unlockable biomes + difficulties (meta-progression)
- Shop level text - changed from level 1 to level 1/3
- Buildings/UI elements are highlighted when hovering over synergies, statuses
- Descriptions of buildings show current Tax/Gold/Pop gen (Market, Windmills, City Hall, Aqueduct, Bank, Hospital)
- Explicitly stated what upgrading a shop does
- Banners with times tax should proc 1 frame after other banners \[BUG FIX]
- Score calculation is now slowed down to make it easier to follow
- Adjacency is now explained a bit more clearly
- The 'Divider' banner has been reworked
- An "Are you sure?" button added for any action that ends run
- Better post-run summary and option to view city after run is lost
- UX - wording on certain building/banner effects needs to be reworked
- Hurricane calamity effect has been reworked
- Late game has been rebalanced to make it more engaging
- Status effects have been reworked to on-place instead of on-trigger
- Visual update for advance button, Rarity and Class labels
- Biome + difficulty selection screen is skipped until tutorial has been completed or additional biomes/difficulties have been unlocked

You can try out the updated demo now from the store page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3914450/Hear_The_Bell_Toll_Demo/
Looking forward to hearing your feedback!

See you all soon,

- Shaun (dev)

Hear The Bell Toll

Demo Out Now!

Sep 29, 2025

Hi everyone!

Super excited to announce that the Hear The Bell Toll demo is out now on Steam!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3914450/Hear_The_Bell_Toll_Demo/
This is an expanded version of the playtest, with a bunch of balancing changes, 2 new biomes and 2 new difficulty modifiers, as well as more polishing tweaks!

The demo content includes:
- 30 buildings across 8 classes to build your city and get synergies

- 50 unique game-changing modifiers in the form of Banners

- 3 Status Effects (Crime, Sickness, Unrest) to manage and 15 Calamities to survive

Any and all feedback is welcome :) (best place to give feedback and chat directly with me is the Discord!)
Thanks a lot for playing, and I hope you enjoy it!

Also, check out the shiny new trailer for the game!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HksY8W68OjE

Please stay tuned for more news,

- Shaun (dev)

Hear The Bell Toll

Bug report button wasn't working, so here they are

I am so glad I found this demo, I really like the idea and gameplay loop Bugs I noticed - Whenever I hide and then open the shop, it just automatically buys the leftmost building (So long as I have the gold) Same issue also happens if I hide the shop and then hit start day, it buys the leftmost item in the shop If you build something --> sell it --> undo build, you get the building back and the gold gain. Allows infinite gold QOL Imporvements Undo sell would be SOOOOO amazing, the amount of times I went ...

Aussie Ginger

Mar 5 @ 2:09pm

General Discussions

Bugs

Hello I wanted to report some bugs I found. Gameplay bugs *Hiding and reopening the shop sometimes buys 1 or more buildings. *(Possibly related to previous) sometimes when a new building is bought, the card will either not appear in the inventory or there will be a big gap in the inventory. Drawing order bugs *Placed buildings can be drawn in front of UI such as the "Class Synergies" panel *Hovering over a card in your inventory when a tutorial popup appears leads to the card and its tooltips being drawn ...

NauPhy

Feb 28 @ 4:46pm

General Discussions

No resolution option

Dudes, seriously. No resolution option? And fullscreen is absolutely bugged on my computer. I do not want to play in a tiny window that you gave me. I have 4K monitor. Uninstalled your demo immediately. Didn't even see the gameplay.

metasoma

Feb 27 @ 2:00pm

General Discussions

Demo Feedback

This game shows promise and I will keep it on my wishlist, but there's a number of issues I immediately see that annoy me: 1) My choices of buildings didn't seem to matter much. At the start, you're pretty much stuck with whatever random ones you get. In the middle though, it's more like buy anything with pop OR buy anything with tax. I'm not sure how you want to balance it, but it seemed like I could just buy anything and win. 2) Not enough information given. What's the next faith building bonus going...

Black Unicorn

Oct 11, 2025 @ 11:06pm

General Discussions

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