Also, check out this sweet stop-motion promo trailer that we put together to celebrate the launch

As I stated in our last post, you’ll still get all the awesome roguelike action gameplay of House of the Lost that made the iPad version so great AND you get the brand new d-pad shooting control scheme! So go grab it from the app store and let me know what you think in the comments!

Now, Mini doesn’t mean that you’re going to get less of the awesome action, or fewer randomly generated levels, or a smaller number of weapon crafting possibilities; it just means that we had to squish the files down to size and rework the controls to better fit the smaller screen size of a phone. Check out the screen below to see what I mean.

Directional Shooting

We’ve also heard the cries of our iPad players who want to see House of the Lost include directional shooting! This means that instead of lining up your character with the left-hand stick and then hitting the fire button to attack you can now attack in any direction (up, down, left, or right) depending on where you tap the attack button.

This is something that we’ve only added in the last week or so and I have a feeling that we’re going to need to continue tweaking it in the weeks ahead, so for now it is not the default control option, but you can turn it on from the settings screen. If you’re one of the players who have been asking for this please let us know what you think about it and how we should continue to improve it.

We’ve still got a few graphics to swap out ( including the d-pad image in these pictures ) before we submit to Apple but you can expect House of the Lost Mini to be available in the next few weeks. Let me know what you think in the comments, and if you have any questions about the game shoot those over as well.

We’ve been hard at work over the last few weeks porting House of the Lost to this year’s Kindle Fire tablets as well as the new Nook HD and HD+. During this process we were able to make some significant performance improvements to the game and add a couple more levels for good measure. All of these enhancements will be present in version 1.0.2 which is launching for Kindle Fire and Nook HD on December 13th!

But don’t worry, if you’re an iPad owner you’re going to get the updates as well. We’ve submitted the 1.0.2 update for iPad to the App store and will let you know as soon as it’s been released. We’ve also been working on an iPhone version of House of the Lost titled, House of the Lost Mini. This version runs like smooth, smooth butter on the iPhone 5, but performance on the iPhone 4 leaves a little to be desired. So we’re going to continue cranking on that throughout the holidays and will hopefully be able to launch it to you in January!

What is this House of the Lost of which you speak?

In case you aren’t familiar with House of the Lost let me take a few minutes to ‘splain it to you. House of the Lost is an action/adventure roguelike, which means it’s built on the principal of player advancement through high difficulty and randomization. You see, each time you play House of the Lost the levels that you will face and the enemies, loot, and items in each room will be randomly selected. This keeps the gameplay fresh through repeated play-throughs, which is a good thing, because when you die in House of the Lost you have to start from the beginning.

This is a return to the old-school style of gaming. Unlike most current games, you don’t get to finish House of the Lost just by showing up, you’ve got to earn it, and so far no-one has. That’s right, after more than a month on the app store no-one, who has Game Center at least, has been able to complete House of the Lost, but some people seem to be getting pretty close!

One aspect that helps you in your quest is that in each play through you get the chance to create new weapons by combining items at the game’s workbenches. Any weapon that you create will then have a chance to be randomly dropped by the enemies in the game, which can give you a huge leg-up in later play throughs. It’s this weapon progression, coupled with the fact that your skills will improve as you play, that makes completing the game possible, but never easy.

We understand that a game like House of the Lost isn’t for everyone, but it is definitely the kind of game that we wanted to play, and to make. So I hope that you’ll try it out, either on the iPad, or very soon with a Kindle or Nook HD, and let me know what you think.

One more bit of news. We here at F5 Games are very excited about the upcoming Ouya console. The idea of app store like accessibility to the TV for our games is really amazing and we’re hopeful that it will be a big success. The good people at Ouya have recently started a contest on Twitter where developers can tweet about what games they want to bring to the Ouya, and the most interesting, and retweeted, entries will get an Ouya dev console early and have the chance to release their games when the console launches this spring!

The game idea that we’ve pitched is an online multiplayer shooter that is similar to House of the Lost, called The Hunted! We really want to bring the Hunted, and House of the Lost, to the Ouya at launch and you can help make that happen simply be retweeting this tweet, so get to it!

An online multiplayer twin-stick shooter similar in style to our game House of the Lost – itunes.apple.com/us/app/house-o… #myouyagame

— Brandon Pollet (@Readmore) December 3, 2012

So there you have it. House of the Lost is going multi-platform, we’ve got a new game in the pipeline, and we can’t wait to see what next year brings (hopefully it’s an Ouya dev-box). I hope you’ll check out House of the Lost, and in case I don’t talk to you before the end of the year, I especially want to wish you a Merry Christmas.
Happy Gaming,

Brandon


Download House of the Lost on iPad for Free!

Hey everyone! I wanted to let you know our update for House of the Lost has just hit the app store. Grab it today and check out the 3 new levels as well as other updates and tweaks.

I also want to point out that NO ONE has been able to beat the game yet. So give it a shot over the long weekend and try to be the first!

Check out House of the Lost on iTunes

Hopefully you’ve all checked out our latest game, House of the Lost, by now and are itching for some new content. If so, I’m happy to inform you that our first update has been submitted to Apple for review and will hopefully be available next week!

Update Features

This first update includes the following features and fixes:

• 3 New Maps – We’ve added new maps to the game for the first 3 levels. These all include new secrets, new room designs, and new enemy combinations. We’re planning to continually update the game with additional levels and we’re already working on the next batch.
• Enemy Animations – We’ve tweaked and updated some enemy animations to make the game look even better.
• Weapon Tweaks – We’ve changed the behavior of some of the weapons to adjust the difficulty of the game. We’ll continue to do this as we go along so if you have any comments about any of the weapons or items please let me know so we can include your feedback.
• Minor bug fixes – We noticed a bug with the water gun that would make the projectiles hit the wall if you were standing right next to it, we’ve fixed that as well as a few other minor tweaks. Thankfully House of the Lost has no where near the bugs that Pocket Heroes did at launch.

House of the Lost Soundtrack Available

I also wanted to let you know that the House of the Lost Soundtrack is now available on SoundCloud! You can give it a listen right here.

I hope you’re enjoying the game so far, we’ve got 5 5-Star ratings on iTunes but no reviews (hint, hint). Also, from what I’ve seen, no one has been able to beat House of the Lost yet. I’m planning to give the first player to complete it a shout out on Twitter, so get in there and give it a try.

Hey everyone, House of the Lost has made it to the App Store just in time for Halloween. If you’re an iPad user ( iPad 2 or newer for now ) click this link , or on the image above, to download it for free!

I hope you’ll check it out, and let me know what you think, thanks!

We first came up with the concept in August, about a month after the release of Pocket Heroes. After a year of working on a turn based RPG we knew that we wanted to work on something that was more action oriented, had a faster pace, and that we could complete quickly. Since all my game prototypes seem to start out as Zelda games it didn’t take long to come up with a randomized dungeon action game about a boy trying to survive in a haunted house. Once we had a game idea and style in mind it didn’t take long to come up with our first ‘gameplay concept’ which you can check out below.

All my prototypes look like Zelda during this stage

It’s good, but it needs something….

From this initial mockup we started fleshing out the concept and built out our first prototype. In the early stages the game was much closer to Binding of Isaac than Zelda, mainly focused on combat, with the addition of the weapon crafting system to provide progression. Once we got the prototype into the hands of our early tester however, we realized that we needed to make some changes. Each tester that we showed the game to quickly made the connection to the early Zelda games and as soon as they did, they started looking for puzzles. From the way that they were pushing every block and checking every wall, it was clear that we needed to focus on more than just combat in House of the Lost.

So we went back and made changes to the game that moved it more into the adventure/exploration style of gameplay while still retaining a fun combat system.

This is the image that really sold me on the game.

Once we started adding more and more secrets and puzzles the game really started to come together. We also started having fun designing ‘crazy rooms’ that didn’t follow the ‘everything must be a rectangle’ method of Zelda and Isaac. This really let us give some of the later levels more of a maze-like feel even through each ‘room’ is the size of one screen.

Random but not Procedural

Early on we made the decision to not have the layout of each map randomly generated. We decided to go this way because we knew that we would be able to do more in the way of clever level design and puzzles if we controlled the map layouts, but we also wanted this to be a game that people would play through over and over again so we needed a way to keep it fresh. The solution we settled on is the same one that we’re currently working on for Pocket Heroes, to have multiple map layouts for each ‘level’ and then randomly pick one when the player starts to play. In addition to the random layouts we also randomize the enemies and items in each room so that even if you’re running through the same level you still won’t know what’s waiting for you behind the next door.

Another fun side effect of this method is that we can hide alternate routes through the game in some of the levels. We’ve got some really cool ideas for secret boss levels that will require you to find a secret entrance if you want to face them. We’re expecting those Game Center Achievements are going to be a real badge of honor.

Is this too much blood, or not enough?

Difficulty

Once we got the secrets/combat balance leveled out the game really came together quickly. The only other tough area has been balancing the difficulty, and that is one that we’re still working on. It’s really hard to find the right balance for a game like this, especially since part of the appeal is that the game really challenge you. We’ve tended to lean toward making the game more difficult instead of less but there is a chance the game could be too tough for some players. I hope it hits the right balance for all of you. Once you get your hands on the game I hope you’ll let us know what you think about the difficulty so we can continue to improve it as we move forward.

Now we wait….

So that’s the story behind House of the Lost’s development, now we’ve just got to get through the toughest part; waiting for all of you to try it out. I’ll continue to post some more info and screenshots here over the next few days before release, so check back soon and keep your eye out for House of the Lost to hit the app store in the near future.

1.0.2 Update List

• We’ve added a button to the invite screen labeled ‘Random Player’ this will allow you to randomly invite an existing player of Pocket Heroes without needing to enter a Game Center ID or email address.
• We’ve updated all Status Effects to last an additional turn. We’ve also fixed the problems with the descriptions not matching the expected effect.
• Instead of saying ‘Waiting for your turn…” the game will now display “Waiting on character-name” and tell you which character is holding up the rotation.
• You can see who the other players are and what class their characters are when you join a party ( this is already working as it was a server change. )
• The chat notification has been changed from ‘*Chat’ to ‘*NEW’ and it is now in a yellow font. This makes it much easier to see.
• The music and sound effect preferences in the settings screen now work correctly.
• Added better labels to the register screen so it’s easier to see what information you are supposed to enter.
• Fixed a bug where the game will crash during the monster turn in some games.
• Fixed the issue where some monsters can knock your character into a wall
• Fixed Power Sap so that it restores more mana in the early game and less in the late game. It also now reduces the magical defense of the target so it is more useful in combat.
• Made Smite and Hot Punch more powerful and fixed a bug that wasn’t taking your weapons damage into account when using these abilities. They should be much more useful now.
• I believe we have fixed the dreaded ‘Party Perished’ bug. This is the bug that people tend to get when they are switching levels that will return them to the first quest. I believe it was caused by a network error during the sync and we have put a ton of checks in place to make sure that bad data is rejected. If you still encounter this bug after the update please let me know so I can continue to investigate.
• Fixed the ( somewhat awesome ) bug that would give you multiple items from a treasure chest.
• Ensured that you can’t leave Quest 6 without the proper Quest item in your inventory
• Players now have the ability to decline an invite if they don’t wish to join the party.
• All players are set to accept Random invites, if you don’t want to receive Random invites please turn off this option in the settings screen ( after downloading the update )
• Fixed issues with the Mechie abilities.
• Added a button in the Settings screen that will allow you to manually connect your Game Center ID with your Pocket Heroes account. This should solve the ‘Game Center Invites not appearing’ problem.
• Added the minimum and maximum range of each ability to the ‘Ability Card’ this gives you a better idea of how close you need to be to use each ability in combat.
• Abilities that only target your own character now target your character automatically when you select them from the ability list.

Gold Changes and Single Player?

Still here? That is a pretty large list, I know, but I wanted to let everyone know that we have been working to not only fix issues that people are having but also enhance gameplay. In addition to the list above, I’ve got two more items that I want to share with you before I go.

In the coming week I’m going to make a change to the server ( which shouldn’t require any update lag through Apple ) that will make all of your gold available across characters. Currently each character has their own gold value and if you purchase gold it stays with that specific character. Based on the feedback we’ve received I think it makes sense to pool all the gold based on the player and that’s what we’re going to try and do. So, sometime in the next week or so you should see a spike in the amount of gold each of your characters has, just know that if you spend it all on one character you’re not going to have any more for your other heroes.

The second thing I’d like to bring up is something that I just learned about today. It seems that one of our players has discovered a way to play a two-player game of Pocket Heroes and control both of the characters. This wasn’t planned functionality, but because there are still so many people who are having trouble finding quality partners I’ve decided to go ahead and describe how to do it. If you’ve been having trouble getting a game going, or the game isn’t moving fast enough for you then this may be your solution.

When you start a new adventure you’re required to invite another player by email address or Game Center ID. While we’re adding the ability to invite a random player in the update it’s still not a guarantee that you’re going to find a partner who is going to take their turn regularly. To fix this, one of our players decided to try sending an email invite to the email address that he used to set up his Pocket Heroes account, and it worked! He was able to take his turn and then accept the invite for the other character from the character list and he now always has a turn waiting for him to play.

Like I said, this wasn’t planned by us. It’s an oversight on our part that I’m going to let stand because I want everyone to be able to play Pocket Heroes. It only works for a two-player game, but if you’re interested in playing through the game ‘single player’ give it a try and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading everyone. Because we’ve had the 1.0.2 update done for nearly a week we’re already working on 1.0.3. As we get a little closer to submitting it I’ll do another one of these posts to let everyone know what’s coming next. If you’ve got any questions just let me know in the comments.

Thank You!

First of all I just want to thank everyone who has picked up Pocket Heroes, a double Thank You to everyone who has invited their friends to play along, and whatever the biggest possible kind of Thank You is to everyone who has said great things about us online or in an App Store Review.
It’s been great to hear about so many people having a great time with the game and really loving the old-school Role Playing style that we were going for. So, once again, Thank You so much!

What’s next?

While we’ve received a lot of great feedback we’ve also heard from people who aren’t enjoying the game because they are having trouble finding people to play the game with. I know a lot of people think that our decision to leave out random match making was a bad one, but we were really afraid that it could create even more situations where people would get into a random game and then never be able to move because the other characters weren’t really interested in playing. However, we’ve heard your thoughts on the matter and we’re now working to get a random match-making solution in place very quickly. We’re working through the weekend to get an immediate fix in for random games and then we’re going to follow that up with a more robust character driven system that I think will add a lot to the game even for players that have no interest in creating a random party. I’ll have more to say about that after we get this first update out but rest assured that we’re working on it and we’ll have a solution for you soon.

We’ve also been getting bug reports from some of you, and I really appreciate the time and effort you’re putting into letting us know when things aren’t working. We were obviously never able to beta test with thousands of players and there are a lot of things that have come up which we never experienced in our testing. I’m cataloging all of these requests and we’re going to get fixes in for as many of them as we can in this first update, and then we’ll follow that up with more updates as quickly as possible.

Nasty Bug Warning!!

There is one particularly nasty bug that I want to let you all know about so that you can hopefully avoid it. I’ve had a few people tell me that upon returning to a game they are presented with a ‘The Party has Perished’ popup when there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the party to be dead. On this popup the only option is to hit ‘Restart’ and, if this happens to you, I highly advise that you DO NOT hit restart. If you were in combat, and you see a replay where the monsters killed the last player in the party then, obviously, your party really did perish and you can safely hit restart to jump back to the last campsite you had visited. However, if this appears out of the blue it appears to be a network error and hitting restart will likely take your party back to the very first level!

If you do run into this bug, try the following. Instead of hitting restart, tap on the menu button in the upper left and tap either back or resync. Because we believe that this is a network issue I believe that re-syncing with the server will fix it and allow you to continue playing the game. If you do run into this bug please let me know! If you try the resync solution please let me know if it worked for you or not. This is definitely something that we are working to fix but it is probably going to require an update through the app store and I don’t want anyone to lose their quest progress in the mean time.

Gameplay Tips!

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s share some tips with everyone! Some of these are ‘gameplay tips’ and some of these are helpful advice to solve some problems you may be having. Again, we’re working to fix these issues and to better explain the game but I wanted to go ahead and share this info with those of you who are playing right now.

• The email field on the register page doesn’t like capital letters in your email address. If you’re having trouble getting it to recognize your email make sure you’re using all lowercase letters.
• Also, there is currently no password confirmation field on the register screen ( we’re going to rework this whole screen to make this more clear ), the last field is for your username.
• To use some of the abilities like Pray, Horn Blast, Camo, etc. you need to target your own character. To do this, double-tap on your character and it will place you in the ‘target square’ in the lower right. Then you can choose the ability you want to use and perform it on yourself. This is also how you heal yourself with an ability.
• Equipping Rings and Amulets is different from other equipment. When you hit equip on these items you need to choose from one of the two bottom equipment slots ( which are highlighted in yellow ).

That is all the tips I can think of off the top of my head. I’ll continue to add to this list as more come to me and if you think of anything that wasn’t obvious at first let me know in the comments and I’ll add it to the main list as well.

Again, thanks to everyone for supporting Pocket Heroes. We’re going to continue to work on the game so we can make it the best co-op RPG out there.

The Mechie

The Dwarves of the steamy mountains rely on their technical prowess to make up for their physical “shortcomings”. However tiny they may be, their machinery is without match. The heavy hitting and sweaty Mechie, in particular, is one dwarf you want to befriend. His massive mechanical rumble suit allows him to get right in the middle of any combat situation, hacking away with his chainsaw, and bashing away with his super-heated fist.

We love the Mechie. From our very first character brainstorm meeting we knew that we wanted to do something different with the Dwarves in our game, and decided that making them technical geniuses was the way to go. Playing the Mechie means that you’ll be the bruiser of the group, thanks to your awesome mechanical suit. You can wade into just about any mob and soak up damage while giving it right back to them through you attacks and steam abilities. I’ve listed out the Mechie’s skills below. If you have any questions let me know in the comments.

Abilities are listed as shown in the image, left to right, top to bottom. Tier 1 abilities are available at the beginning of the game, Tier 2 are available at level 4, and Tier 3 are available at level 8.

1. Horn Blast (Tier 1) – Blast your horn to attract enemies and make them target you instead of your allies.
2. Hot Punch (Tier 1) – Super-heat your fist to cause extra melee damage. You begin the game with this ability.
3. Ground Shaker (Tier 1) – Stomp the ground to slow nearby enemies.
4. Broiler (Tier 2) – Focus built-up steam into a short ranged attack.
5. Scrap Shield (Tier 2) – Patch scrap metal onto your armor to raise your defense for a short time.
6. Steam Cloud (Tier 2) – Surround yourself with steam to make it harder for your enemies to land their attacks.
7. Ramming Speed (Tier 3) – Dash forward and ram into your target. This ability lets you move additional space after your standard move, which really comes in handy.
8. Rev It Up(Tier 3) – Rev up your chainsaw and saw your problems away.

Once again, I’ve built the image at the top of this post to be a great iPhone wallpaper. If you decide to use it shoot me a screenshot on Twitter!