I Am Overburdened, a silly roguelike (now at 1.2.10)

[Spidi]

Hi there!

Been pretty much out of touch with the online world in the last few weeks. So I guess it is time to break the silence with an I Am Overburdened update and some news about the expansion ?!

The update

Showcasing version 1.2.7. will be short as it is a refinement build. Nothing spectacular, just a bunch of fixes and tunings.

DPI/mouse issue bug-fix

There was a problem limiting the mouse movement which occurred on non-default DPI settings and/or high desktop resolutions. Now it is fixed and there is no need for using the workaround posted on the community forums of the game.

Book of monsters enhancements



To fix the confusion around the monster unlocks I've added progress visualization. You just have to kill a single monster from a given kind and then you can check how much more of it you have to fight to successfully open detailed information about them. As a tiny addition mouse-wheel scrolling is also supported in the book (forgot to add it in the last update).

Treasury and stash upgrades



To make the item selection more streamlined in treasury mode I moved the "Random artifact" option to the first slot and implemented in-game inventory highlights based on the currently focused item. It works the same way as with other pickups (e.g.: in the shop).



Repositioned the random stash item selection too mainly for consistency.

The expansion pack

It's almost at the finish line, but not properly baked yet. Let see what it already brings to the table!

Warning, spoilers ahead...

New boss fights

The original boss fight feels underwhelming to me mechanically. I like how the story, the characters, and the outcomes turned out, but the fight itself is a bit lame. More like a randomized stronger special enemy and less like a boss
I decided to introduce 3 new completely different scenarios, to keep you on your toes while battling the Buzzard wizard.



As you can imagine the new fights will not only make the conclusion of a run more varied, but new strategies will be possible and the value of many existing items will be altered.

New artifacts

More than a dozen new items will find their way into the expanded version. I haven't settled on the final number yet, but at the moment it is close to 140 artifacts total ! They will introduce new skills and allow way different strategies especially on the early levels (e.g.: stash choices) and in the end game (e.g.: boss fights).



Another goal with the new set is to introduce more synergies and heavier focus on "neglected" attributes (vitality and defense) too.

New monsters



All the 5 new creatures planed for the update pack are ready to be released. They will work as "variations" of certain enemies. Kind of like mobs in many other dungeon crawlers. In some runs you may encounter the "Leach", in others, you will have to fight the new "Ooze" in the sewers instead. Of course, you'll be able to unlock info about these variants the same way.
This system besides making the existing game more varied will be the foundation for adding even more monsters in the future

New features



These changes are still a bit WIP and subject to change, but they are now in a shape where I can reveal them:

• Attribute redesign! "Defense" will get a bigger boost and both "Vitality" and "Speed" will receive a little reinforcement.
• The help menus will get more detailed information on certain topics (attributes & pickups).
• A new game mode affecting pickups is under development.
• Enhancements on the unlocks and statistics front.
• Re-balancing some of the existing items and obviously the boss battle(s).
• + A big secret I'm keeping to myself until release

The release?

All that is left is the when and how!
I really wanted to let this package loose this year as a Christmas present latest, but I'm not 100% sure I can do it. Will try my best and in the worst case, it will be an early new year's gift
I settled on the pricing though. Essentially it will be a free DLC. But! I'm going to charge more for the game once it is out in the wild. Only raising it by a few bucks, since charging 10$ for it would not be reasonable.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my post and thanks for your continued support.
Stay tuned!

[Spidi]

A trail of broken dreams.

Hello there!

Not much news on my front, but I'm doing game development (at least some, sort-of) and I'm still alive

Where have you been?

I disappeared for a looong time from the online world and from I Am Overburdened development. I really wanted to continue releasing updates for the game, but I wasn't in a good place and my circumstances did not allow it. I hope you can understand and forgive the prolonged silence.

Where are you going to?

Not a Blue Cafe specifically, but I wish to finish my plans. I wasn't putting in many hours, but progress did happen bit by bit on the I Am Overburdened content update. I'm excited to return to it. I don't know if I'll be releasing it piece by piece or as a big package, but you can come with me if you are still interested in this journey

I want to know what is new!

Hold your horses (and your enthusiasm) just yet. This is a tiny update. Kind of a "first step" for me as well towards the release of the long-awaited expansion.

New dungeon templates



5 new assets were added for allowing the map generator to create even more varied levels. The game launched with 20, now reaching 40 with this update. These new ones were carefully balanced to fit into the difficulty range of the existing game well.

Level balance fixes

Many of the existing levels had balance "bugs". The underlying dungeon templates allowed the generator to create too easy setups, or just the opposite, quite grueling ones with too big of a chance. On a few levels you easily had to fight 3 or 4 enemies to open the way to the stairs, but sometimes 0 were put in your path.



9 dungeons from the existing ones were retouched to make these less frequent and/or less extreme.

An achievement hint

I remembered that the "Van Helsing" achievement left some players confused or puzzled about the last monster. Now a small hint appears if you unlocked all the other monsters and met the one you are supposed to unlock, to "nudge" you in the right direction.



Miles of endless roads

Yep, that is it and indeed it is not much. Regardless for me, it feels like a lot, since it means I still have the drive to release updates for this lovely project and hopefully the expansion pack will materialize.

To keep my momentum up and to not leave you waiting indefinitely again, I'm planning to write another post in about a week or so. Sort of like a follow-up to detail how and when this eluding expansion can happen.
Maybe it will be accompanied by another tiny update too

Thanks for your relentless interest.
I really appreciated all your inquiries and kind words even if and when I had no strength in me to show it to you in any form!
Take care, talk to you soon.

[Spidi]

Two steps forward, one step back.

Hi everyone!

As the title suggests progress has been made, but I took a really bumpy road to get here. I'm done with a new update, but even though I mentioned around two weeks multiple times, it took more than a month :/

Big-ish? Or lots of small-ish?

I wanted to release some of the new goodies of the planned expansion pack without spoiling the new content. Just new functionality. For this to happen I had to make a version of the game which is halfway between my current development build and the existing released builds, which took way more time than I originally expected. Silly me. Regardless of not featuring new content, it does bring lots of convenience features and quality of life changes

Teleport to target

There's a new mouse control mode in town: teleport!
If you play the game a lot and dislike waiting for the movement animations this will speed it up to be *instantaneous.



Path-finding is still the default option for mouse controls, but you can change your settings within the "Options" menu under the "Mouse" sub-menu using the "Control" entry.



* Only the tile-to-tile movement is changed to be lightning fast. Picking up stuff, fighting battles, or opening chests still animate the same way for the sake of clarity.

Localization

The game has been localized to Polish ( )! I'm hoping I Am Overburdened will be enjoyed by more players in Poland thanks to this. Ahoy from Hungary my dear friends

Special thanks to Daniel Oskar Moroz (MorDan) for his awesome work!



This build also includes a bunch of localization text fixes. Typos corrected, a few things renamed, some sentences re-worded, and such in multiple languages.

I would love to add even more supported languages, but at the moment the translation of the updated content is still ongoing. New translations will probably not happen in the near future. I did add support for non-Latin characters/languages (e.g.: Cyrillic or CJK) though, so strides have been made in this direction.
Maybe...

Where credit is due



The game officially supports 8 languages already. For this to happen many people contributed and I wanted to honor their work more appropriately. Previously only the translators of the currently selected language were shown in the credits menu, but now there's a menu entry to cycle through the names of everyone who worked on the texts of the game.

Nightmare and Treasury confusion



There was a "discrepancy" between the Main Menu and the Inn area in the way the Treasury game variant and the Nightmare difficulty can be accessed. In the Inn, the Nightmare difficulty (goat-skull statue) worked as a difficulty toggle and the Treasury mode was a special trapdoor.



Personally, I liked the functionality of the Main Menu much better and it made more sense (to me at least). Nightmare being a different more vicious dungeon and Treasury is simply a game alteration toggle (like the Elite variant or the Stash items).



Now the Inn matches the Main Menu. There's a separate trapdoor for Nightmare difficulty and a toggle (golden lock) for the Treasury variant.

Only fools seek their own destruction



From now on Nightmare difficulty can be unlocked and accessed immediately (without completing a dungeon on Normal first). A present for those who are feeling a bit overconfident

Quality of life

Quite a few menu changes and fixes found their way into the game with this update.



I re-organized the Help menu screens to (better) describe all the inn entities.



For multiple menu entries, "page-turner" widgets were added for enhancing mouse support. These include the "Language" entry of the Options menu, the "Window" and "Scaling" entries within the Graphics menu, and the "Control" entry in the Mouse menu.



Multiple mouse right-click handling and mouse movement focus handling bugs were fixed (Start and Controls screens).

Is it over?

The change list for this update is, but the work on the big content patch is not yet. I know this must be tiring but it is really, really close though. In fact, I'm so close to finishing it, that I don't plan to publish more tiny updates beforehand.

It looks like the next one will be the one and only long-awaited expansion pack which I'm dubbing "The Encumbered Edition"

I still don't want to pick a date since I'm super bad with deadlines ( as you can see :giggle: ), but I want to give some structure to its release. I will start preparing and posting more info (+screenshots and gifs) about it in the following days.

Stay tuned and take care!

[Spidi]

Hello there!

Hot-fix time. Sadly version 1.2.9. contained some "glitches"

Bugs everywhere

First and foremost please accept my apology for the bugs that I left in the game. Multiple discussions were started and you reached out to me with detailed descriptions and useful reproduction steps. I'm really thankful for having such an understanding and helping community. You are awesome!

Besides delivering the fixes I will do my best to minimize the occurrence of issues of any caliber in future updates.
That is a promise

Nightmare retry

A glaring issue. I'm really sorry about it. I don't know how I could miss this. Originally (before the 1.2.9. update) when retrying or restarting the game on Nightmare difficulty, the new game would also start on Nightmare difficulty. I messed this up with the Nightmare and Treasury shuffling and changes in the Inn and it always switches back to Normal.



Now it's fixed and I wrote some new automated tests to make sure I never break this feature again!

Achievements

An achievement (more specifically Nightmare achievements) related problem was described in a community discussion. I could not reproduce any related errors on my local build, but I did make changes to Nightmare and Treasury mode handling for update 1.2.9., so I decided to look into it. I haven't found any blatant mistakes, but I did put in some extra safety code changes.
Hopefully, if there was any bug in Nightmare achievements handling it is squashed now.

Teleport path-NOT-finding

The new movement mode (teleport) seems to be very well received, which makes me super happy
On the other hand, I did manage to leave a bug in this feature as well



Not a show-stopper, but the path-(NOT-)finding and navigation systems do not handle broken chests correctly (the "Toolbelt" item allows you to break them).



Normally you should be able to plan your movement through the broken chests without a necessary stop.
Now it works as intended.

Next stop

Progress is slower than expected on tying up the loose ends of the expansion pack. Steady, but a bit slow. I may change my mind in the end and release another smaller update beforehand. Will get back to you with the decision soon

Thank you very much for your patience and understanding.
Until then, take care and stay tuned!