- Announcing Blood Builder! - 4 September 2025
Thank you to everyone who has purchased and continues to express interest in Risk & Riches! It was my first commercial game as a solo developer. I’m proud to have released it, and I continue to monitor the feedback for anything that may need to be addressed. Now, I’d like to share with you, Growlery’s second game, Blood Builder! In this dark, yet cozy, world, you will collect resources, craft, and build to restore Dracula’s former home to its past glory. Attract juicy mortals to the inn, harvest their blood, and serve it to traveling vampires to regain your reputation within vampire society. Can you become a vampire lord?
- 5 New Cards, 5 New Pieces of Equipment, and 5 New Events - 22 May 2025
This update adds new content, some effects, and a balancing fix. One of the focuses was providing a way to overcome the dreaded Bound effect, which prevents you from leaving the mine early. To that end, an event (Guardian Angel) and a card (Mysterious Scroll) were added as methods of removing the effect, but they’re not easy to come by. Also in this update is a balancing fix for the Gambler. After a lot of consideration, I decided to make his ‘Fishing’ card an exhaust card to reduce the number of cards he could draw in a single turn. New Content: 5 new Utility cards (Ambrosia, Pouch of Sand, Mysterious Scroll, Steel Spike, and Shovel) 5 new pieces of equipment (Compass, Divining Rods, Dice, Picnic Basket, and Caltrops) 5 new events (Life or Death, Health Potion, Disembodied Voices, Lost to History, and Guardian Angel) Added an explosion effect to the cards Stick of Dynamite, Bundle of D…
- First Post-Launch Update - 3 April 2025
It’s been one week since the release of Risk & Riches. Thank you to everyone who has purchased the game and supported Growlery Games! Most of the feedback has been positive, but a major bug was discovered (situational, but it causes a crash), and there were a couple of design elements that I wanted to improve. So here’s the first post-launch update to Risk & Riches. Changes Made it so the mouse line that follows the cursor after a card is selected in an Encounter first appears red and then switches to yellow when the card is playable (over a relevant character or the play area). This will hopefully improve the indication that cards that are self-targeting or target all can be dropped on the play area without needing to be dragged all the way to the player character or enemy, depending on the type of card. Single target offensive cards do need to be dropped on the target. Changed the mat…
- Time to Mine! - 27 March 2025
Grab your pickaxe or six-shooter, it’s time to delve into an abandoned gold mine infested with monsters, cultists, and folkloric creatures to gain gold, build up a thriving town to unlock characters and upgrades, and ultimately rid the mine of the evil within. Risk & Riches releases today at 12:00 p.m. Eastern. I want to thank everyone who has supported the game during development and to this point. Whether you were a playtester, gave feedback on the demo, or simply wishlisted the game, it all helped to get Risk & Riches to where it is today. It’s a great first entry for the Growlery Games catalog, and it is the first of many to come! Be sure to buy Risk & Riches today!
- It's Almost Time - 13 March 2025
It’s been a long and eventful journey, but Risk & Riches is only two weeks away from its 1.0 release. Well, today, I am releasing the 1.0 version of the demo, which is, as you might imagine, in line with the 1.0 full release. So, the demo is an exact reflection of the upcoming release other than the content locked within the demo. Thank you to everyone that’s been a part of the journey so far in any capacity. Changes in v1.0 Demo: The mouse line (yellow/red indicator line when moving a card around) is no longer affected by shading, so it appears brighter Changed the collision shape of the cards in hand to a rectangle instead of an ellipse (I set it to an ellipse at one point, and I’m not sure why), this means more of the visible card area is selectable Changed the save/load system for settings to a human-readable config file, this was done to more easily implement key rebinds (edit manu…
- Life Isn't Fair, but Games Should Be - 14 February 2025
For the last regular update ahead of Steam Next Fest I’ve focused on balancing the Gunslinger. It was possible to complete the first Circle of Hell with her in the Demo, but she started to fall off a bit in later Circles so she got beefed up. Regular updates will go on pause until after March 3rd so that the Demo remains stable during Next Fest. At this point, there isn’t much more to do for the Demo anyway (maybe a rewrite of the Tutorial to reduce the amount of text). I’m continuing development on the rest of the game, and even that is almost done with the exception of Steam Achievements and a little bit of polish here and there. There is one known bug that I’ll be fixing, but it does not interfere with gameplay. Changes in v0.9.7 Demo: Status icon added under player character when Sore Spot is active Lighting was adjusted for shorter characters so that it better illuminated the sprit…
- Several Small but Meaningful Changes - 30 January 2025
If you’ve been following along with development and noticed that the version number system has changed, yes, yes it did. I will be using 0.x.x as we get closer to the 1.0 build from now on, but that’s the least this new build has to offer. Changes to the demo in 0.8.5: New animation for the Dire Wolf’s summon New animation for the Death Worm’s burrow Improved some enemy animations Added some simple lighting when inside the mine to give the feel of being in a dark hole in the ground As you build up the town additional buildings and roads will now populate Changed the way the bosses are selected (they now alternate based on how many times you’ve entered the mine instead of being completely random) Added a pocket indicator to cards that are (get this) pocketed The number of remaining energy for the player now turns red when it’s at zero Circles of Hell that have not yet been unlocked can b…
- Introducing the Gunslinger - 16 January 2025
To start things off in January, the demo is getting a few major updates! A new playable character has been added, a tutorial has been added, an intro scene has been added to provide some story, a new multi-slot save system has been implemented (which wasn’t originally planned for the demo), and many of the cards have been adjusted slightly for balancing, most notably, almost all of the Utility cards have had their energy costs adjusted. Below is more information on the major updates, BUT there is one piece of bad news. Due to some of the updates to the core game and the new save slot system, *old saves will not work and will be overwritten in version Beta 1.6*. This is the only time I foresee this being the case, but I hope you can agree the additional content is worth the inconvenience. Gunslinger To start things off in January, along with many other improvements, the Gunslinger is bei…
- Risk & Riches is Coming Round the Mountain - 26 December 2024
I hope you’re having a terrific holiday season and end of the year! I’m here to tell you that Risk & Riches has entered its final phase of development and it’s all about polishing for the next couple of months. If you’re interested in playtesting the FULL game early next year, head over to growlerygames.com and sign up for our mailing list. Otherwise, you can look forward to an updated demo early next year and the full release in March 2025! Here’s a quick rundown on the current status of the game: Done Core game-loop Basic save system All 40 enemies and bosses All 4 playable characters All 30 town buildings and the ability to construct them All 192 cards All 30 pieces of equipment All 25 events All 4 floors of the mine All 9 Circles of Hell Shops for purchasing cards and equipment Opening cutscene In-Progress (Expected Finish Date) Tutorial (12/28/24) Save slots (1/4/24 - In full relea…
- Beta 1.2.5 - 6 December 2024
The demo for Risk & Riches has been out for about three weeks and the reception has been great! Thank you all for playing and providing some feedback. While I’m proud of having a demo with multiple hours of playtime, there’s still some work to do, and unfortunately, there were a couple of bugs that did pop up. So here’s a list of most of the updates in Beta 1.2.5! UI and UX Reviewed and improved card description conciseness and consistency Reviewed and improved event description conciseness and consistency (made a few of them much clearer such as “Binding Spell” and “The Man in Black”) Added a key term tooltip for “Bound” in the events “Binding Spell” and “The Man in Black” Added a tooltip when hovering over the Pocket Card slot/icon Made it clear on the End Turn button that you can press “Space” as an alternative to clicking it Improved consistency of several UI elements in menus Added…
- Demo Hotfix - Card "Stickiness" - 21 November 2024
Quick change in the lerp/tween time for playing cards when moving the cursor over them. It should reduce the "stickiness" of the cards in the player's hand.
