- 1.0.0 Released! - 9 August 2024
Tower Knight has officially exited early access, and version 1.0.0 is now available. Thank you to everyone who purchased in early access. I used to make iOS games but 1 year ago I wanted to make something with a deeper experience for more dedicated players. Tower Knight started as Early Access so I could get feedback from players and more quickly learn what is expected from games released on Steam. I hope you enjoy playing Tower Knight, I've certainly enjoyed developing it. The idea for Tower Knight changed many times, but the original desire to make a Knight based strategy game came from the book Don Quixote. That story is about a man who, after reading many stories about Knights-errant, loses his mind and invents adventures that are so absurd he eventually becomes a famous knight in his own way. If you've read this far, but can't afford to purchase Tower Knight, feel free to find my t…
- Exiting Early Access (release date + price increase) - 7 August 2024
Hi Everyone. I have been developing Tower Knight for over a year, and it is almost ready to exit Early Access. The expected release date will be Mid September, and the release price will be $6.99. Tower Knight has come a long way. When it first entered Early Access the deck building was based on a suit matching system, the graphics were in their very early stages, and there was zero audio. It did, however, have the core idea ready to be played and ready to receive feedback. Thanks to everyone's help, Tower Knight has developed into a game that I am excited to play, and watch others play. Below is a gif from the latest release, and the first gif posted when Tower Knight entered Early Access.
- Developer Let's Play - 1 August 2024
In this let's play I try out the latest version of Tower Knight (0.9.5) and I share some details about what I plan to work on next. If you're into marketing on Steam I also briefly show some stats regarding impression, visits, wishlists, and sales/returns.
- Update Trees and Ground - 31 July 2024
0.9.5 is a visual update -- the trees are now 3D and the game is going back to using a flat grass ground instead of tiles and fog.
- The Ilkhan and the Cherbi - 28 July 2024
Version 0.9.4 introduces two new enemy types that only appear when their cards are in your hand. When their cards are drawn in your hand, the next wave will include them as additional enemies. If you have enough coins they can be avoided by drawing a new hand. Cherbi The Cherbi is a light enemy, and increases its moving speed 5x when it is two steps away from the knight. Ilkhan The Ilkhan is a medium speed enemy, and has a tremendous amount of hp.
- Projectile trails, and other minor updates - 25 July 2024
Version 0.9.3 adds trails to arrows and cannonballs. This update also improves the knights animation when he gets hit by an enemy. Before, the sword just barely intersected with the knight's helmet, but with this latest update that has been fixed. Also, I've added 1 new challenge mode "Allied knight" which paves the way for more complex challenges that include friendly towers when maps are generated.
- Challenge Modes, and Updated Visuals - 18 July 2024
Version 0.9.2 includes 9 challenge modes, where each challenge has its own starting deck and fixed number of enemy spawn towers. The latest update also includes an update to the visuals, and also to the procedural map layout algorithm. The algorithm is simple for now, but future challenges will have maps with rivers cutting through the world.
- Update world generation, improve deck building & graphics update - 16 July 2024
This update improves world generation and gives the player 4 cards to choose from when a deck card is drawn, and updates the graphics quite a bit. This update also improves the art style.
- Version 0.9.0 quiet release - 12 July 2024
Version 0.9.0 introduces 9 challenge modes to choose from. Challenges consist of different starting decks. The maps and enemy locations are procedurally generated, and the generation parameters are slightly different for each challenge. This is a quiet release because I am still making minor audio and graphics updates, but I couldn't wait to share these updates with you all. Stay tuned for 0.9.1, which is when I will post more details about the changes and update the store page.
- Improve Enemy Health Bar - 29 June 2024
The latest update uses a neat idea to keep the enemy health bar's position and size correct no matter what angle an enemy is viewed from. You can read more about the approach on this Reddit post
- Significant Performance Optimization - 27 June 2024
Overview Version 0.8.5 significantly improves graphics performance so that hundreds of enemies can be on screen with negligible impact on the game's fps. Tech Details You can read more, and see performance graphs at the following links: Twitter Reddit
- Texture Optimization for Enemy Characters - 27 June 2024
Overview This update is a texture optimization that will make the game perform slightly better with larger waves. This is a small update that might yield better performance for some users. I am also working on a more significant optimization right now, but that optimization is going to take a bit more time. Tech Details The optimization for 0.8.4 is very simple: disable "mipmaps" for enemy character images. The enemies in Tower Knight are just PNG images. Game engines (in this case, Godot) use mipmaps to store an image at different sizes, so that the best resolution is used when needed. Enabling mipmaps makes an image's imported size larger, which means when the game is displaying the image, more VRAM needs is used to display the images. This is a very minor improvement, but it should help a little bit. The more significant optimization that I am looking into is to somehow use just one…
- New Deck Building System - 25 June 2024
Overview Version 0.8 removed the suit system (where players had to play cards on tiles with matching suits to build their deck), and replaced it with an automatic deck building system (build your deck at the end of each wave). Version 0.8.3 updates the deck building system by making it based on collecting roses. Rose System Roses appear out of the ground adjacent to tiles that are placed. Place a card on a tile, and collect the roses on that tile. When 3 or more roses are collected, you get to add a new card to your deck (and the rose counter resets to 0)
- What's Next - 17 June 2024
v0.8.2 The latest release contains a significant graphics update. I'm happy with how the game is looking now, and future minor updates will start to add embellishments (sword trails, movement trails, dust, etc ...). What's Next Campaign System I plan to have a campaign system, where your knight has to travel along a map choosing between different types of challenges, until eventually having to fight some sort of a boss tower. Challenges will be a mix of: Capture all enemy Towers, Wave survival, and Search and Destroy. While progressing through challenges there will cards that can be added to your starting deck to help with future challenges. Deck Building System Before I start on the campaign system, I have to figure out how to make the deck building more strategic. Currently, you get to pick a new card between each wave. However, I think there is an opportunity to add more depth to the…
- Graphics Update - 13 June 2024
v0.8.1 introduces the latest graphics updates. The next v0.8.# releases are all going to be graphics and animation related. I plan to start making v0.9 releases in July. v0.9.# updates will start introducing challenge modes.
- Enemy Cards, Difficulty Modes, and Graphics Updates - 11 June 2024
Version 0.8 has many changes. Overall, the game looks better and is less based on luck when it comes to the locations of enemy towers. Graphics I've updated the graphics -- I'll continue to iterate on the graphics as I approach 1.0, but 0.8 is the biggest graphics update so far. Game Mode Update Enemy towers are no longer found by expanding. So, feel free to build as much as you can without fearing the RNG of tower placement. There is now an Enemy Card, which must be played when it is drawn. So you get to choose where enemy towers are. New Cards Health: Fully restore health when added to deck. Bank: Gain 1 coin when drawn. Medic: Heal 1 hp when drawn. Enemy: An enemy tower, which must be placed when drawn. Platform: Doubles the range of an attack tower. Shoppe: Shoppe appears only when this card is in hand. Game Modes There are now 2 game modes: Squire and Knight (easy/hard). Squire mod…
- Developer Let's Play + Shoppe System - 27 May 2024
Version 0.7.4 turns your score into also an asset. Use it to buy more Health, Energy and Coins. Your high score only updates once victory is achieved, so feel free to go into the negative with your score if you have to. Want to see the Shoppe in action? Checkout the latest Let's Play!
- Fast Mode + Update Starting Deck - 26 May 2024
This minor update does the following: Adds a Rampart Card to your starting deck. Removes the Stones card (making room for a more meaningful card in a future update). Adds a fast mode, which makes the simulation speed of each wave 75% faster when enabled.
- High Scores System (now available in v0.7), and Roadmap - 25 May 2024
Flags and High Scores Version 0.7 adds flags to Tower Knight -- plant flags on vacant tiles, Ramparts, or Scouts to increase your score. Your high score will only update if you achieve victory, so you will need to balance expanding land and capturing enemy towers. What's Next? Version 0.7.# The next update will include a control to fast forward enemy waves. I expect to make a few more minor updates to 0.7 to make the game systems more clear -- so if you have any quality of life requests now is a great time to let me know either on the discussions page or on Discord: https://discord.com/invite/vMmVxYuYbg Version 0.8 Version 0.8 will introduce the next major graphics update. In version 0.8 I plan to update all of the towers, the fountain, the treasure chest, and the terrain. Version 0.8 will also include new images on the card, and a legend that shows which cards are Common, Uncommon, and…
- v0.6.1: Minor graphics update. Flags coming soon - 21 May 2024
A flag system is coming soon, and in preparation for designing the flags I needed to update the environment colors to more closely match what I am imagining for the environment when the game exits early access (still aiming for early Q4 of 2024). There is still a lot of work to do on the environment art, but I like the new grass textures, and the rock/grass effects when new tiles appear. As a result, here is 0.6.1! I am now dedicating the next week to flags. Hope you enjoy.
