Hey everybody, we know that It's been a long time since Arena of the Gods' last update and it's likely left many players wondering where Arena of the Gods is headed and if it's still under active development. For those wondering if the project is dead, no, Arena of the Gods is very much so alive and is being continuously improved every day. In the time since our last update, Mixtape and I have been hard at work preparing content for this absolutely massive update. Almost everything in the game is being overhauled; There will be a new and finalized arena, new weapons, the long awaited shop, abilities and items that are chosen randomly upon starting, leveling up which allows you to access new weapons and increase your stats, the perk system which massively changes the way you play the game and much more!


New changes aside, in the past year there have been a lot of radical changes in every aspect of our lives our lives that have caused this update to take this long, but now we can safely say that the v1.7 update is in it's home stretch and should be launching in the coming weeks. I, Dave also plan to occasionally create Dev Log videos for the Craptop Studios youtube channel about Arena of the Gods to let people know what's going on with development and share my thoughts so subscribe to us for more ATG content! To support Arena of the Gods' development with a donation or see more of our story, {LINK REMOVED}check our GoFundMe page!

See you in the v1.7 update!

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Arena of the Gods v1.6 is now live! Here's a rundown of the changes:

- Vital information
To promote enhanced readability, the player's healthbar now has a background behind it instead of showing the arena through it's empty space. Enemies now have health bars that appear when they take damage and disappear after a few seconds for reduced clutter.

- Eternal life, endless torture
Added a new, tanky demon giant called the Ghast. The Ghast lumbers around slowly, but relentlessly, crushing any opposition under it's slow but mighty fists. The Ghast's slam deals 35% of your current health as damage. The slam's shockwave deals a small amount of flat damage.

- Supersanic
Added a new, speedy flying demon called the saberwing. The Saberwing patrols the arena at high speeds, slicing any would be arena champions to bits with their blade-like wings and fierce wind gusts. The Saberwings fly ahead of the player, preventing him from fleeing their assault by cutting off his escape routes with well timed spin attacks.

- Not the bots you're looking for
Enemies have completely revamped AI, making them react much more intelligently and realistically. Enemies now have object permanence causing them to leave combat after losing track of the player for too long.

- Guiding Light
Improved overall lighting quality. Time of day changes simulate smoother than before. Enemy projectiles give off less light.

- Dusk
Night time is darker than before, making visivility more limited.

- 1000 yard stare
The Caster, Launcher, and Seeker mages' eyes shine much brighter to more accurately reflect their eerie, demonic existence.

- Making me dizzy
Enemies no longer perfectly track the player in combat allowing the player to break their line of sight through motion.

- Water is not wet
The waterfalls in the arena were in the need of some dire TLC, so they're sporting a new look that actually reacts to the time of day and various other lighting changes. Water material improved to look a lot less flattened.

- Extroverted
Feeling talkative? Arena of the Gods now has a Discord channel [discord.gg] where you can keep up with news, get free promotional content in the future, report bugs, or even just have a chill chat and post a few memes.

We have a HUGE amount of changes to the game that we plan to ship very soon, so be ready for a lot of anticipated features in our next few updates!

That's all for now! Have fun, and I'll see you in our next update!


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Arena of the Gods v1.5a is now live! Here's what we changed in this update:

- The Arena Sees All!
Added current game stats to the pause menu. Said stats track many variables such as, the amount of enemies slain, damage dealt, attack accuracy, rolls performed, damage taken, distance traveled, etc. In future updates, the info menu will also rate your performance in the arena with a grade from D- to S+.

- UI AI
Added custom cursors to the game. The cursors are context sensitive and change when you attack an enemy, and based on what you hover over.
Silver: Base Cursor
Blue: Hovering over the player
Red: Hovering over an enemy/enemy projectile

- Size Matters
Updated Lance/Shortsword hitboxes to be more accurate. Lance hitbox length slightly decreased. Shortsword hitbox is now thiccer than a bowl of oatmeal.

- Smooth As Butter
Demon spawning is more random and enemies dont pop up next to you nearly as much. No more gangs of enemies popping up in your face!

- To Infinity, And Beyond!
The current Horde mode is ACTUALLY endless now. To those of you that actually lived long enough to run out of enemies, I salute you.

- Stop And Go
Fixed a bug where Magic Bridges would not reactivate after time passed, resulting in the player being cut off from said bridge, permanently.


Version 1.5a Hotfix:

- UI AI (cont'd)
Added Cursor to the main/pause menus.

- Chameleon
Blue Caster enemies no longer switch from white to blue after spawning.

- Tis But A Flesh Wound!
Blue Caster enemies now deal the correct amount of damage instead of a miniscule amount.

- Photographic Memory
Video settings are now saved upon leaving the menu and exiting the game.


That's all for now! Have fun, and I'll see you in our next update!

Arena of the Gods is now available for purchase on Steam! Also, along with the steam release comes A LOT of improvements since our last update so here's all the changes!

- Spooky, Scary Dungeons!
Removed the old, bland main menu, in place of a lil' spooky dungeon that better fits the game's tone. This scene will also act as a shop in later updates.

- *Click* *Click* *Tap*
Removed the old user interface, in place of one that better fits the game's tone. No more ugly blue background!

- The Sound Of Music
Added actual music to the main menu(instead of the never-ending choir going “ahhhhhhh...”), and Multiple possible battle themes to listen to while fighting in the arena. When one track finishes, it will fade into the other. Added new sound effects to all weapon/enemy interactions such as sounds when a player hits an enemy, or when an enemy's spell is destroyed, etc. You can now hear rushing water as you get closer to the waterfall, and gusts of wind in the center of the arena.

- Pretty Pretty, Shiny Shiny
Added visual effects to add clarity/feedback to player actions. Sparks fly when an arrow strikes a wall, or if a player hits an enemy. Destroyed demons now burst into clouds of darkness. Spells explode violently when striking the player or when their caster is destroyed etc.

- B.K. Have It Your Way!
Added a options menu so that players can adjust graphics settings, pause the game or return to the main menu.

- Remote Control
Added Xbox controller support. Pressing 'Select' activates the controller in-game.

- Where There Is Dark, There Is Light
Added a Day/Night cycle to the arena to show the passage of time and lower visibility at night.

- Wait, That's Not Right
In previous versions of arena of the gods, the health bar wasn't correctly showing the amount of health the player had. It does now though. :)

- Illumination
The scene lighting has been greatly improved in quality. Also, the lighting updates with the time of day, lowering visibility at night, and increasing it in the daytime.

- More Zoom Levels Than The Hubble Telescope
Added the ability to zoom in and out with the scrollbar. Zooming out is especially useful when scouting for enemies or when using ranged weapons. Zooming in is especially useful for melee characters.

That's all for now! Have fun, and I'll see you in our next update!

It's been a while since our last update, but the new and improved Arena of the Gods is finally here, so thank you for your patience and without further ado lets get on with the changes.

- Gimme the green light!
WOOOOOO! Guess who got greenlit on steam? We did. A short while before steam announced the closing of it's greenlight function to help new developers get their game onto the store, we received enough upvotes to ensure our game was greenlit on steam so it will soon be reaching the store so that everyone can play! This is a huge milestone both for Arena of the Gods as a game, and to me and my partner Marquis as indie developers, so we're excited to see what the future holds. Thank you to everyone that voted for us! You'll see our game on steam soon!

- It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a massively updated arena that looks infinitely better!
We've felt for some time now that while we like the idea we had in mind for the Arena of the Gods, it was SORELY lacking in any real flair or personality so we took the time to redesign and add many aspects to it that weren't currently performing well or were lacking in detail. This means that along with a complete color swap, The massive bricks on the edges are now more detailed, the tiles (that ate up way too much of the polygon budget) are now detailed on the floor which massively improved performance, The grass patches (for those of you wondering what those random green areas were) now have ACTUAL GRASS in them so you don't have to jump into imaginationland to guess what it might've been and the edges of the arena cascade into flowing waterfalls. Also the rotating pools have been removed (I'll miss you, my short lived friend) and replaced by...

- A clever ruse indeed!
The rotator pools seemed like an interesting addition to the game at the time because they were intended to be temporary blockers that you could use to escape a pack of chasing enemies or potentially get yourself into even more trouble but in reality, they weren't much more than a minor inconvenience. Waiting the 3 or so seconds for an open part of the pools to turn your way didn't really add anything to the experience of the game and didn't function well as a trap so we scrapped it for our first stage hazard (the first of many to come) being the magic bridges. When walked across, their color slowly begins to change from blue to red. if you're still on the bridge when it changes then it's lights out for you! This makes it so that on hectic stages you still have a hazard to deal with but it ACTUALLY poses a real threat of falling and stresses the importance of being decisive in combat. Don't dawdle! You don't have much time!

- Got my dancing shoes on
Enemy Mage AI pathing is now smarter and more realistic. At first, the enemy mages were frustrating to deal with because they would always kite you with damn near surgical precision, always choosing the EXACT furthest path to run from you which made them a pain to chase after but once they were cornered they didn't know what to do. Now the AI behaves more realistically, meaning that it will attempt to run from, and around you in multiple directions (and will sometimes just straight up juke you out of your shoes) which feels a lot more believable and less robotic.

- Smooth as butter
Transitions between enemy animations sync with their movements better. Also attacks and flinching when hit are much smoother and feels less choppy.

- THERMAL OPTICS ENGAGED
Fixed a bug that would cause enemies to cast spells through walls. Now an enemy will only attack if they are in a direct line of sight of you

- 2 Birds, 1 Stone
Fixed a bug that deleted enemy spells even when the player dodged through them which basically allowed them to come out on top in a 2 for one deal; Escape damage with the dodge roll's invincibility AND delete the projectile if it was homing in on you, which made it a win-win in pretty much every situation. Now in order to destroy an enemy projectile you must defeat the enemy, dodge the attack, or take the damage, as intended. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

That's all for now! Have fun, and I'll see you in our next update!

Now that we've been greenlit, expect to see us on the steam store soon!

Hey guys, so after a lot of planning on our part, we've decided that (for the moment) we'll be moving away from smaller, weekly updates into larger, more spread out updates that don't run on a schedule in an effort to produce higher quality content. The weekly updates achieved what we were looking for in terms of communication with our audience, but from a development standpoint stressing a time limit on yourself can feel a bit forced if an update needs to be out on Wednesday, but putting one more feature in that might take a few more days to create would make the update so much better. With the removal of a weekly update cadence, this gives us more time to create new features like shops/glory, stage hazards, and bosses every few floors without having to worry on rushing out content, which in turn makes each update feel like it brings a lot more to the table in terms of improvement. Overall, we feel like this is the best direction to push Arena of the Gods' development for the time being, and we look forward to hearing your feedback on our next few updates to see how you like the changes!
Have a good day, and we'll see you in our next update!

- Let the funky jams flow through you...
Alright so while the old ingame music was hyped up and good for a fast paced game, the electronic sounds didn't really match the game's setting or subject matter very well so we changed it out for some better fitting, more Renaissance-y (Yes I just made that word up) background music that fit's the game's theme a lot better.

- Frozen in fear!

Before this update, rolling would make the character dodge incoming attacks for a brief moment as well as move him a short distance, but after the roll he would be essentially defenseless for a short moment for apparently no reason. This definitely was NOT working as intended, so these changes should fix that!

- And now for my next trick, I'm gonna make your health bar... DISAPPEAR!

The orbs that drop from enemies and bestow positive or negative effects are meant to reward the player for defeating enemies, and punish the player for not paying attention by dropping things like health and damage orbs. The problem is that sometimes touching one, would one kit kill you or completely heal you sometimes without warning. This has been fixed so now the punishment is less severe, and the rewards aren't disproportionate to the difficulty of the game.

- Take your time, Take your time, I GOT ALL DAY!

We all had that moment at least once where you'd kill an enemy who then dropped WHAT LOOKED LIKE a slow, and then out of nowhere it turns into a damage pickup and kills you. That's a thing of the past now. All orbs now properly match their effects upon spawning so that you don't have to wait a million years to figure out if an orb will kill you or not.

That's all for now! Have fun, and I'll see you in our next update!

Vote for us on Steam Greenlight!

- New sky, new me!
This one's pretty self explanatory. The old background we had in the scene was way too bright(so bright it glowed!), didn't match the lighting, and distracted from the game so we changed it out for a much better looking one that fits the sunset lighting, and isn't so much of an eyesore.

- Temporary Cage Matches!

The circular areas of the map near the center now have rotating walls that block you in while travelling through them. You can use them to block enemies who are pursuing you, or to cut off enemies from their allies, making them easier to deal with.(or harder if there's a lot of them waiting on the other side) Enjoy your brief cage matches!

- No more "Wait, where did all my health go?"

In an attempt to make what's going on a little more clear, on top of the usual grunt your character makes (that can be pretty difficult to hear when you're not paying attention) your screen will darken around the edges, and have a tiny shake when you take damage. Oh and the edges get darker the more you take damage continuously, so if your screen gets too hectic, it's easy to tell if it's better to fight or run without being forced to look at your health bar which makes figuring out who's giving, and who's receiving the ass whoopings is a little more clear.

- More waves than an ocean!

In addition to smaller changes, we also have 5 more waves of enemies, that make the game MUCH tougher than it was before with the base 5. Have fun dying!

That's all for now! Have fun, and I'll see you this coming Wednesday for our next update!

Vote for us on Steam Greenlight!

/// Please note that this game is a work in progress and does not represent the final version of the game. ///

Vote for us on Steam Greenlight!

After dying what his gods deemed to be a dishonorable death, a knight must fight through countless waves of demons to amass glory, escape purgatory and come back to life! Do you have what it takes to earn the salvation of your soul?

Summary
Slay demons, gain glory, and save your soul in this difficult, action packed, top down, hack n' slash! Every time you challenge the arena, you receive a random weapon that you've unlocked so far. Defeat enemies to earn glory, and purchase new weapons, each with their own unique abilities, playstyles, and movesets!

Upcoming Features
Broad Goals:

- Weekly Updates! New weapons, enemies, arenas, and features every Wednesday!

- HUGE arsenal of weapons to unlock, each one having different and unique abilities! (Not all of them are helpful though!)

- Difficult, but rewarding gameplay. Easy to learn, difficult to master.

- 50 grueling waves of gear craving, demon slaying, action packed gameplay.

- Open development! We as a team guarantee that we will be very vocal about upcoming features, bug fixing, suggestions, and answering various questions about development as a whole.

Specific Goals: (In order of importance)

- More Waves

- More Enemies

- More weapons

- Glory Accumulation/Shop System(Glory is earned from defeating enemies and is used as EXP and Currency for unlocking items in the shop.)

- Loading/Saving System

- Stage Hazards

- Options Menu

- Improved Optimization

- Various Sound Improvements

- Various UI Improvements

- Various Graphical Improvements