Demons Hand - card roguelike

[beandaddy]

Hello Defold community! This is Demons Hand. A card roguelike with MMO PvE multiplayer. We’ve been working part time on this in a team of three for almost 1.5 years now!

Influences: Diablo, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, Slay the Spire, NetHack

MMO PvE

Ok what are we talking about here?

MMO

This is an online only game (maybe it should be called Demons Hand Online, hmmm). ALL the game logic is implemented on our servers. The Defold game is actually a “thin client”. It receives events (eg. draw card, play effect, remove card, etc) and the client just obliges.

PvE

Players start by themselves but then in the later levels can enter rooms that have other players in them. We’ve crammed in cards that synergise with other players, so try to cooperate nicely! Party up and slay the demons together!

Why Defold?

Because it’s awesome! Ok, but seriously, I have a dream of making a super low latency mobile game that throws you straight into game as soon as you open the app. Defold is amazing for this because the app size is smaller than all the other engines. Our design goal is to make a rich multiplayer game world that is easy to get into (ie. fast boot up, fast connect, etc)

Cards

Lots of cards. So many cards. Maybe too many cards?

This is a deck builder. You pick a unique class character (eg. Samurai) and then build your card deck by: 1. Picking up loot, 2. Selling cards, 3. Buying cards, 4. Fusing two cards into a new card, 5. Using skill stones to get class exclusive cards, 6. Slamming cards on the anvil shrine to upgrade them

Timeline

“When it’s done” Haha, we actually really want to do an external beta in the near future.

[britzl]

The game looks amazing! I really look forward to playing it!!! How can we follow the progress of this game?

[jhonny.goransson]

Wow how come this is the first time I’m seeing it, looks absolutely stunning! I really want to play it

[Potota]

I’ll be sure to mark “when it’s done” on my calendar!

[beandaddy]

Thanks for your kind responses! We are busy trying to do some spring cleaning (we’re aussie developers ) so that we can start handing out beta access to Android users at some point. If you want to follow along please check our instagram: https://www.instagram.com/demonshandgame/

[Pawel]

This looks amazing and if you release it, I will again lose hours if not days of my life

[Ragetto]

@beandaddy

Influences: Diablo, Hearthstone, World of Warcraft…

I can see that But so am I!

And your game really looks great.

[beandaddy]

Android beta is live! Join our discord to get access!

We just finished exhibiting at PAX Australia. We talked to a thousand people.

Some learnings from PAX:

1. Remove MMO from our marketing

Even though technically we have all players play in the same global dungeon, the “MMO” description is pushing our genre too far (ie. deck builder roguelike). It seemed like an awesome marketing idea at the time but players really want to understand what your game is immediately. “MMO” confuses players more than anything, ie. MMO players don’t want to try your deck builder game out, and deck builder players don’t want to touch MMO, lose-lose.

2. Start marketing cooperative play

It was surprising to see a ton of players (eg. parent and child, board game friends, etc) were excited about being able to play cooperatively. We’ll build out some social features to cater for this, eg. “Summon friend portal” which sends a deep link to friends. One of our key design goals now is to reduce barriers to getting friends to play with each other.

3. Put up a steam page ASAP

A large number of people want to play on Steam. We’re going to get cracking on releasing a desktop version! Having the game be crossplay is going to improve the experience on mobile (ie. there will be more players online). The longer we don’t have a Steam page the more wishlists we are missing out on!

4. Some UX changes are necessary

0% of players ever tapped the level up button! We are going to make this button more prominent. Can you spot the level up arrow button at the bottom of this screenshot?

One player was adamant that we speed up the card reveal animation which is (checks source code) 600ms at the moment. Wow we really need to half that… at least. This is another one of those developer times when you’ve been playing the game so much but fail to question fundamental basics you’ve grown used to.

For the most part the game is intuitive once someone has SHOWN you how to play. We need to spend some more time on the tutorial because not all players will have someone around to explain!! In this screenshot at the very beginning, the game is suggesting that you play the Strike card at the gate, OR the “belt” slots. This is not so good, because the belt is a concept we should teach later on in the dungeon. The proper fix here is to HIDE the belt until the player gets further along

[GooseSwanson]

Looks great, and I’m happy to hear that you’re jumping on Steam too!

If you’re new to Steam (I am), I can recommend howtomarketagame.com, run by Chris Zukowski, as a guide to the platform. On the HTMAG Discord you can get feedback on your Steam page, trailer, capsule design etc., and there’s a tracker there for upcoming Steam festivals so that you don’t miss out on signing up for any.

[britzl]

@beandaddy

Android beta is live! Join our discord to get access!

For anyone else looking for the Discord URL: https://discord.gg/QMbE4FaYh8

@beandaddy, I had to work a bit to find the link. The Discord server is mentioned on Instagram but not linked to.

And on the webpage it also mentions the Discord server but doesn’t link to it:

I had to scroll up again to discover the Discord icon:

[britzl]

Oh no:

[beandaddy]

Crikey! Thanks for the heads up. Just fixed Instagram and the website

[Jerakin]

But you still didn’t link it here! You should really spam your social media at any opportunity someone gives you, people can’t click your social media links if you don’t link them to begin with

[britzl]

@britzl

For anyone else looking for the Discord URL: https://discord.gg/QMbE4FaYh8

Correct link is

Join the Demons Hand Discord Server!