- How to play the Unity and Sandbox version - 14 August 2026
I am working through the basics of Unreal. It takes a great amount of effort, which is, why I want to let you play the previous version. Through the game settings you can now select the Unity or Sandbox version. Unity was the most advanced and will be the standard again.
- Very sad news - 31 July 2026
It is with a heavy heart that I write this. For the past 3 month I have worked on the Sandbox version of Monarchs Dawn. The early part was very fast and a great experience. Having worked with it however has shown me that it is half baked and not up for the task. The best example is devestating bugs. I could not use Terrain because it disappeared one day and a fix for the issue has not been done. It has been a month. Because of this, I had to model game objects to create the arena. Another bug recently showed itself, as all of the modelled objects disappeared. Again, no recognition from the developers. The final straw was that I could to build the game for a full day, because Facepunch did not take care of their server. Because of all this, I have devided to remake the hole game in the Unreal Engine. This will be the final straw. I have long enough shied away from using it, but it has be…
- Monsters are nearly done + Level up finished - 24 July 2026
MonstersA few of the early player remember this image. It is from the early days of the Unity version. It just looks great. The more proud I am that I am nearly ready to add the Monsters back into the jungle. Specially the golem has some great animations that will give the giant of the arena the respect it deservs. LevelsThe level system I worked on last time has been improved too. You not get a nice VFX when you level up. Also, your enemy can now see your level. Further You can level up your abilities. More to come very soonWith the rappid progress we have, I think in a month we can start our first playtests.
- Attack Animations + Ability UI : Weekly Update #5 - 17 July 2026
With attack animations and the basic UI done, we have a good basis for the next steps. Level and experience is not gone be too hard to add. Likely I will also have gold done by next week.
- Weekly Update #4 Walljump animations - 10 July 2026
UpdateThe biggest part of Monarchs Dawn is walljumping.For it to feel right, you need a good mix of code and animations, so it feels snappy and looks the part.The later was the focus of the week. After a long fight with the spaghetti monster, we came out victorious. Now your character will kick off the wall depending on where you jumped off, making it feel natural.Attack animations are nextFor next week, I plan on refining the attack animations. The big problem is the merging of the lower body, which is running around/wall jumping, with the swinging animation of the upper body. In addition, in special cases, for example, when activating your ultimate, the entire body needs to be one animation.
- Have a look at what we are working towards. - 3 July 2026
TOTAL GOALThe best place to start is the fantasy.What do you love about MOBAs? What makes them so fun?You want to be an epic champion.Fighting big monsters and cunning foes.Use powerful abilities and spells.Outsmart and outmanoeuvre your enemies.The image above shows it just perfectlyBut why do we not have games that give us the experience?Monarchs Dawn is the answer. I want to make a game that makes you feel like the hero. That puts you inside the bombastic fights. That lets you use parkour on the entire map, just like you would do in a fantasy world.I want to make the ultimate MOBA. Ruff stepsThe Ultimate MOBA is a titanic task.For an overview, we will give you basic steps in development from barely playable to a full game.The first is the minimal playable game. A champion, minions, towers and basic abilities for the player.The second stage adds more fun. More champions and abilities,…
- Weekly Update #3 Tower attacks home in + melee and ranged minions - 26 June 2026
Another week is over, another great step forward.The overarching goal was to get the basics done. We already have abilities, multiplayer and towers. Next, homing attacks for towers and afterward minions.Because I could copy most of the old code, it was fast at first. Homing was done.However, Minions is another soup. Spawning them, attacking each other, and walking is simple. What I did not expect is for them to struggle to hit the tower. For some reason they stood in front of the tower and spawned their projectile, but it did not hurt the tower.After spending hours debugging it, it worked. Don't know why, I changed nothing from my test setup, but it all of a sudden worked and I had no problems akin afterwards.This was midday today, so I had more time to also add another type of minions with ranged attacks.I'm not sure about them, as another player joining makes him spawn his own minions…
- Weekly Update #1 - Map looks nice, Abilities nearly done. Playtest soon - 19 June 2026
Weekly summary #1Two big updates this week. We finished the arena. Looks very nice. The system that lets you use abilities. The map AbilitiesIn every MOBA you can use abilities of many different kinds. To make this possible there are many different systems in play. Looking at your input, specially cases that you hold down the button to reactivate the ability, automatic activation and of course networking.The biggest and hardest part is behind us. Only a few conversions remain. For example Minions, Towers and monsters. But that isn’t that hard. All in all, a great week.
- Weekly Update #2 - Explaining the Map - 12 June 2026
Because I am once more designing a map, I would like to share my thoughts with you. GoalsThe highest good is of course for players to have fun. This asks for a 1v1 map. A duel specifically, because you easily find a friend to play. It takes maximum of ten min to complete, while giving you a good way to figure out a character’s strength and weaknesses. The second goal is to show off, the parkour movement. As a result, it needs verticality, different levels and many parkour objects. Third, it shows the progress. With time Minions, Towers and jungle monsters will join the arena. Step by step, we will make a great game. Layout The map is divided into 2 different parts. The Minion Lane bring confrontation, a lot of strategy and the typical back and forth of a duel. Jungle area adds strategic depth with more possibilities and helps champions that are not good in 1v1s. A big monster givers maj…
- First feedback update - 3 June 2026
We heard that the wall jump feels a little off comared to MD Unity.It is a little bit different to it, because you have to face the way you want to jump off. For me, it made sense, as that is how i ususally do it. For others however, they noted that jumping off sideways is not possible anymore.Long story short, I am working on getting the same feeling as before. The one you like.This is a great time to explain how it works.There are two ways you can check for contact with a wall. Collider and Raycast.Currently, the inner box checks if you are in contact with a wall. If so, you can jump off it.This imposess limitations. You have to be very close to the wall or have another box around your character that makes the hole mechanic less performant.The second option is sending out rays to check if a wall is close. The major advantage for you is that i can fine tune the distance.The other essen…
- It is all we can ask for. Looks better, runs better, plays better. - 30 May 2026
We have really BIG news. We are switching to Source 2.Why?The player numbers do not lie. Monarchs Dawn has had less than 10 players on average, while 1000 people signed up for the playtest.I understand. If you looked at the game and thought it was in a very early state. Maybe you wanted to play when it is more matured.For those who played, you saw constant jitters, especially for other players.We still had fun, but it could have been better.You can be assured that it wasn't better for us devs.After spending a very long time developing, we are stuck on an old version of Unity that would break if we tried to update to newer versions. The looks can hardly be improved because many of the assets in the store are not high quality enough to, for example, scale up a tree 10x so it would fit the theme of Tainted Pass. The finishing blow and reason for many hours of headache is the networking. It…
- Playtest today @ 20:00 UTC - 6 December 2025
Just a small heads-up. The playtest starts today and will be held every second Saturday from 20:00 UTC to 21:00. Fresh for it, we uploaded the map and fixed a pesky bug. See you there, and if not, Merry Christmas.
- Players no longer vibrate (big bugfix) - 6 December 2025
We got a lod of feedback that sometimes the players character "vibrates". Turns out, the camera and the character where on different refresh cycles. For non game devs, in games, a ball is moved, then the frame you see is made. When these are on different timings tho, you sometimes see the ball before it is moved and sometimes after. This creates a vibrating effect that hurts the eyes.
- Map update 2 - 1 November 2025
See you at UTC 20:00
- Map update - 24 October 2025
As you might have seen on X i started to majorly rework the map, specially the jungle.The goal is to make a more parkour focused jungle, specially for assassins.
- We are putting more parkour into the MOBA - 18 October 2025
Playtest today UTC-20:00Recently I thought about why we have no traction. Im sure you know why. The game does not look very parkour-y. Especially the tank has issues lifting his feet off the ground.That is why the next patches will be more experimental. We WILL bring you the epic fantasy feeling we promised. Specially for me the 2014 League of Legends cinematic where Rengar and Katarina fight on the treetops show how cool parkour movement can be.
- Playtest starts in an hour - 4 October 2025
The newest game version is online. The unity vulrability is fixed.Everything is ready.Sadly I had to remove the Mac version because it was unpredictable unstable. Some weapons would not appear, random crashes and funnily, all audio was slowed down. How did this happen? I dont know.
- Good day, this is a small reminder for the playtest next week 4th of October. - 27 September 2025
Because we have many new players, I would like to give you a feeling for the different weapons you can play.AxeIf you love being directly in the action, this tank is for you. He is an absolute monster that can deal devastating blows while healing from the damage dealt.BoltthrowerBad in the early game, a unit in the late game. If you want to play a hyper carry, the boltthrower is for you. Sporting fast attacks with a crossbow-like weapon has a massive AOE ultimate that can decide a battle.DragonmirrorThe backbone of every sustained combat. The dragon mirror brings high single-target healing power to the battlefield.DusackIf you want to make insane jumps and use the parkour movement to the fullest, zooming around, the assassin is your choice. In addition to high speed, she also packs a punch, catching people with a thrown shuriken and increasing all damage an enemy takes for a short time.
- You want it, you get it. More playtests! - 20 September 2025
Hello everyone.We are excited to bring back playtests, as we got a lot of feedback that people could not make it in time. That is why we are starting regular playtests.We’ll be hanging out every second Saturday from 9:00 to 10:00 PM CEST on our DISCORD You can check your time here: https://www.timeanddate.de/zeitzonen/zeitzonenrechner?iso=20250927T190000&p1=37&p2=136&p3=213&p4=263&p5=224 The first days are4. Oktober18. Oktober1. NovemberMajor Points- Better balancing to keep the fights fair- Mac support: A friend asked for it, so here it is- Big bug fixes to smooth out the experience. Thank you for all the feedback, it has taught us a lot. With the lessons in mind, we will make the game even more fun. We have more coming, but we don't know when it will be finished. We will see you at the playtests Jason
- Final Playtest moved to 19th of April 18:00 UTC - 1 April 2025
Looking through my planner, I noticed that I will be very busy the weekend of the playtest. Not to worry, the next week is a far better option. Why? Because the first GitHub Commit for Monarchs Dawn was made on the 19th of April 2019, nearly 5 years ago. The final playtest will be on Monarchs Dawn's 5th anniversary. See you there
