Dungeon Defenders: Awakened EPISODE DEVELOPMENT

Chromatic Games April 9th, 2021

DEFENDERS,

We’ve been talking a lot about what’s to come in Dungeon Defenders: Awakened future, teasing at various bits here and there, and by making this sentence even longer, we’re still teasing more just putting off the inevitable of what’s coming your way.

Real quick, let’s talk about how Ramsters came to exist. Hamster and ram? That doesn’t even make any sense! Oh wait, you probably wanted to talk about the first thing. Okay, time to talk about the first thing. Let’s get into it.

Episodes

Now what the heck are Episodes? Well in short, they’re our FREE major content updates, but MCU was already taken (you may have heard of it), so Episodes it is! We covered the “in short”, so now it’s time to describe the “in long”.

An Episode continues the story of our heroes adventure but it also does a lot of other things, specifically they ADD A LOT OF NEW CONTENT. But what is “content”, where does it come from, and does it truly exist? To answer in reverse order, yes it exists, we make it, and that first one is too philosophical, and we’re sure you want to get right to the good stuff.So let’s talk about what you can expect.

New Maps

In each episode of Dungeon Defenders Awakened you’ll be receiving four new maps that increase in difficulty off the base campaign. We’re following a formula for the new maps where we provide a brand new map as well as recreate three fan favorite maps. Maybe we’re going to show off the first one later on in this post (spoiler: we are).

New Enemy

With each episode, there will be a new enemy that comes into the fray. The new enemy will be similar to the nightmare enemies, bringing in new mechanics that you’ll need to thwart in order to achieve victory.

New Boss

The last map of each episode contains a brand spankin’ new boss. These are similar to the previous bosses, requiring more active hero combat to take them down. They will be thematic to the content that we’re releasing, as well provide unique and thematic loot.

New Heroes

Yes, that’s correct, PLURAL. Each episode contains two heroes, with one hero being a throwback to a previous hero, and the other being a completely brand new hero. These heroes are meant to stand on their own and feel wholly unique from one another.

New Gear

We’ll be providing a slew of new gear that continues to follow previous item progression. There’s also a ton of fun stuff we’ll be adding (that we’ll get into in the coming weeks), that we’ll continue to build off of. Stay tuned for more info!

New Features

This is going to be super nebulous, but there’s a lot of stuff we’re looking to add that really makes your journeys in Etheria a lot more exciting. More to hunt, more to do, more to conquer, more more more more more!

Quality of Life, Overhauls, and Polish

We’re going to be addressing a lot of systems in the game that were put into a “good enough” state for our release, and getting them into a “great enough” state, if that’s a thing. For our first episode, this means overhauling the inventory and item tooltips (which we’ll be showing off in the coming weeks).

Bug Fixes, Balance, Etc.

This is the stuff you normally see in patches, but of course it’ll be included in our Episodes as well. We’ll continue to get out patches to address these things.

Supporter Packs

With each episode, we will be offering a supporter pack that players can purchase. These things offer cosmetic only items that apply to weapons and accessory slots. Since the episodes are free, we’re offering this as players have asked us for additional ways to support our development, and we thought this would be the most fair way to do so.

Episode 1

We’re going to be showing off pieces of the episode over time, and what better time than right after explaining what’s in an episode?! How about a piece of the first episode? Sounds like a good idea to us, so without further ado, here is the first map of Episode 1: The Mill.

The Mill

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The Mill is the first stop the heroes make upon leaving the castle to continue their journey. They enter a bright and vibrant forest that used to be used to provide lumber and materials for building the castle and nearby towns. Though it seems calm and peaceful, an army of enemies awaits to prevent our heroes from pushing onward with their journey.

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If you squint REALLY hard you’ll notice that this map is a remake of a fan favorite, and highly requested map, Mistymire. We made a couple of changes to make building defenses feel better, as well as modified some lanes to make things play out more smoothly. During the last wave, this map will also introduce our new enemy for the Episode. We’re wanting to make sure that as you play through the maps of each episode, you’re introduced to a new enemy over time while taking on potentially new mechanics depending on your game mode.

What’s Next?

We’re going to continue to reveal more and more about Episode 1 over time, with the goal of revealing something new at the end of the week, every week. If we run into any issues, we’ll let you know, but everything is coming together, so it’s time to start showing off some of our hard work. We hope you enjoy it!