Letter from the Developer

I just announced Dark Deity 3 during IGN Live and I couldn't be more excited for this reveal!

If you have been following along, you know that after Dark Deity 1, I wrote a letter poring over what I think we needed to improve on most and some of the direction we were taking for the next game. I’d like to make something of a tradition of these, as I got a lot of really useful feedback the first time.

Big Picture

I’m really proud of the leap in quality between Dark Deity 1 and 2, but I think in my haste to make a better game, we lost some of the identity that made Dark Deity 1 fun in its own ways. I scaled back the ambition a bit (which was necessary) and focused on a more polished experience. While we succeeded with that, I think to a degree we made a better game that was a little less fun pound for pound than DD1 was for a lot of people. I want to try to do a better job of balancing ambition vs. polish, because fun should always be front and center.

Consequences (or lack thereof)

Part of my game dev journey has been my battle with permadeath and what the lack of permadeath does to this little subgenre. I’m not happy with how we tackled it in either game, and I’ve realized that in large part it’s because I didn’t want it to be a fail condition and force people to restart on a crit 50 minutes into a chapter. DD2 had turn limits as an attempt at keeping the stakes present, but they were undertuned and deeply noninteractive. My fear of frustrating resets was overriding the part of the mechanic that actually works best.

Realistically, the wound mechanics were solving a problem that didn’t exist - permadeath isn’t interesting strictly because of the consequence itself, it is interesting because of how it changes your approach to the map from moment to moment and team comp to team comp. That leads us to a new core system in DD3 that I’m very excited about.

The Morale System

Dark Deity 3 will feature a new system that is central to every chapter, turn, and action - Morale. Morale is a value from 0-100 that measures how your army is faring in the battle and alters what actions they are able to take, as well as how other actions play out. Stay above 50 morale to push forward, opening up the opportunity for double attacks in combat. End the player phase below 0 morale, and your army will rout: Game over. 

You’ll take a big hit to morale when losing a player unit, but this system goes far beyond just death punishments. In urgent scenarios, you might lose morale by the turn, or a map might have cultists conducting rituals draining your morale that can be defeated for a big boost. You’ll also be able to designate captains from your army who give you unique ways to gain more morale (or negate morale loss). Just be careful, as losing a captain or commander carries an even greater hit.

Shifting to a system that encapsulates every interaction allows us to make player death meaningful within the chapter itself and actually change how you have to approach strategy - without taking them permanently away. It can of course lead to a game over, but some of the most magical moments in 3 are when you just barely squeak out of the level through daring play while flirting with 0 morale. I think DD1 and DD2 were very much missing that sense of danger, and it also gives us a really interesting tool to design chapters around.

Having breakpoints for core features like double attacking also allows different unit types to shine in different situations - when the going gets tough your bruisers and tanks will be more important than ever. When your morale is flagging, enemy AI might become more aggressive or quicken their reinforcements. Overall it leads to a much more dynamic chapter experience that further broadens how each player might approach situations. I do think I’ll probably have some sort of ‘story mode’ option for folks who just can’t stand game over conditions, but it won’t be the intended design.

Fixing the Class Trees

I feel strongly that the 4-4 format of our class trees is fun and something that we want to keep around, but in both DD1 and DD2 it has heavily restricted what classes we could create and how different units could be designed gameplay-wise. In DD3, we are removing tier 1 classes (Warrior, Vanguard, Shaman, etc) and giving units access to their own unique class pool. This allows us to tailor their options in more interesting ways and build kits and interactivity much more intentionally than with the locked class trees. This way we can have things like Benji going Crusader->Berserker for an anti-mage bruiser with enough HP and Speed to survive a few combats against magic damage (something no Benji has ever managed before).

It also allows us to design new classes outside of the confines of the class tree structure and make more interesting ones, though many of the new classes in DD3 are actually returning redesigned from DD1 as we continue figuring out which classes in the pool we want to be central to the identity of the Dark Deity games. This also allows us to more easily have hero classes for characters that really deserve them, like Gwyn and Arthur (though they are not the only ones).

Progression

What I believe was the weakest point of DD2 was how we doled out progression and how flat the latter half of the game could become once your builds were set and you crafted the rings/runes you wanted. This was largely by design, as we wanted to provide a huge level of player agency with the crafting - but I think in the end it took away more than it gave to the experience. 

I want the late game to continue presenting interesting build decisions every chapter and giving you new loot to get excited about, and so crafting as a whole will not be returning for DD3 in favor of a more static and intentional loot system. We want you to feel that desire deep down to make a risky move for the last chest because the loot is exciting, and that drive is something I don’t feel we delivered on in either DD1 or DD2. Weapons and rings will be stronger individually than they have been in the past, but your access to them will be drip-fed to ensure you always have something new and shiny to strategize around. This also makes randomizer runs way more interesting, but I do want to be clear that that isn’t a primary focus for any piece of our design.

Class and Mechanic Design

Most people really didn’t enjoy the constant percentages in play in Dark Deity 1 and wanted a more easily calculatable set of passives/trinkets/weapons, and I think we managed to make that happen in DD2. I do think, however, that we overcorrected, and the itemization and class design suffered because of it. We’re looking to bring back a decent spread of percentage-based or complicated effects, but trying to keep them to situations where the final number is calculated ahead of you needing to run the numbers. 

There were too many scenarios where you got a +4 for your second-tier class, and you were killing the last boss 30 hours later and it was still a +4. This isn’t to say we’re going back to modifying your damage by 10-40% on every fight and making things a nightmare, but some fun class passives and abilities that aren’t intrusive to the moment-to-moment calculation are going to help keep decisions interesting into the later sections of the game.

Story

I’m not going to comment on story stuff too much here since I think for the most part it is harder to dissect without a much higher word count. I did just want to say that I built DD2 with DD3 in mind the entire time, and because of that, I ended up leaving way too many threads open in DD2. Apologies for that, really not my finest work. Going forward, it is definitely front of mind for me to not get too loose with sequel hooks and to make sure to tell a more complete story with each individual game. But for those who have been paying attention, I do want you to know that those threads we left in 2 were there for a reason! DD2+DD3 were always intended to be sort of Path of Radiance+Radiant Dawn inspired storywise. I think there are a lot of really exciting ways that the two stories strengthen one another.

I feel incredibly blessed that players have given me a chance to refine my craft and try to get better with every game. This industry is tough, and it isn’t lost on me how rare that is as an indie. I’m proud of the leap between DD1 and DD2, and so far and I think Dark Deity 3 is shaping up to continue that trend. I could make 25 more of these games and still be learning something new every day, and truthfully, I just might if people keep having fun with them and want to stick along for the ride. Telling this story over most of a decade and most of my 20’s has been so much fun and formative in a ton of ways - it’s far from perfect, but I promise to keep giving it my all. Thank you all truly, and tell your friends to wishlist Dark Deity 3 or else!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4576910/Dark_Deity_3