Hey folks, with Roguelike Celebration wrapped up I've been focusing back on Shattered work, specifically on the next patch for v4.0.

I'm aiming to make a few technical improvements to the game in this patch, and a big one is a better brightness slider. Due to technical affordances for very old Android devices, the current brightness slider doesn't really do much, it just affects the opacity of the fog of war.

Those affordances don't really make sense anymore, as those devices are no longer compatible with Shattered anyway, and so with some feedback about people wanting a bit more brightness accessibility in general, I'm changing the slider to actually do something! It will now amp up(or down) brightness/contrast across the entire game screen, making the image overall brighter and easier to see.

Here's how that looks in action, swapping through -2/-1/0/+1/+2 brightness:

Hey folks, something a little different today. Over the last few months I've been helping out with organizing this year's Roguelike Celebration, which is happening this weekend!

Roguelike Celebration is a yearly community-generated weekend of talks, games, and conversations about roguelikes and related topics, including procedural generation and game design. It's for fans, players, developers, scholars, and everyone else!

Its tickets are under a pay-what-you-want model, so if that description interests you at all you should check it out: https://www.roguelike.club/event2026.html

There are a bunch of great talks lined up this year, but a few highlights are:

• Brian Bucklew and Corey Frang are sharing the in-progress text templating framework that has been taking on the huge task of localizing Caves of Qud, with its complicated grammar structures.
• Dan Stormont and Michael Howk are presenting a 45 minute special feature on how the source code of Hack (one of the oldest Roguelikes) was recovered and what it took to make a game written for the PDP-11 playable on modern hardware.
• Andrew Plotkin is going to explore the commonalities of mazes across many genres to try and discover what it is about mazes that leaves you feeling lost.
• Matt Carney is going to explore how to balance procedural generation and authorial intent, using Terry Riley’s minimalist musical composition tool In C (1964), as a template

I've mostly been doing behind-the-scenes work this year, so you won't see me in the actual conference, but if you see the little gameboy chiptune segments during break periods (this time brought to you by my 3DS!), that is streaming from my desk this year.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon v4.0.2 is now releasing!

Just a quick followup bugfix patch this time. In particular v4.0.2 fixes a nasty bug added in v4.0.1 that caused crystal weapons to degrade MUCH faster than intended.

Here's a full list of changes:

Bugfixes:

Fixed the following bugs:

Caused by v4.0.1:

• Crystal enchantment having lower durability than intended at melee weapon levels above +6 (it got VERY low around +10 and higher, it should now correctly cap at 30 avg uses at +6, sorry!)

Caused by v4.0.0:

• Traps appearing over carpet in rare cases
• Further crashes when loading during vault boss fight

Existed Prior to v4.0:

• Metamorphed weapon recharging talent not applying its bonus damage correctly
• Kunai and Knives not benefitting from projectile momentum when surprise attacking
• Cursed wands of warding being limited by ward spawning rules, despite not spawning wards

Hey Dungeoneers!

After a bit too long of a wait, the first patch for v4.0 has now released! This one is mainly aimed at smaller changes to improve content added in v4.0, although there are pretty big changes to the new crystal enchantment, and unseen enemy visibility in the vault quest:

Enemies now visually appear when you 'hear' them out of your vision, and fade over a second or so. You can even see them in areas you haven't discovered yet. I'm hoping this change helps make some of the new stealth mechanics a bit more intuitive:

I plan to keep an eye on feedback as more time goes on and will keep making adjustments to the new quest as needed. Overall I'm thrilled that people are having fun with it, but it's definitely showing as a larger increase to overall game difficulty than I intended right now.

Here's a full list of changes:

Enchantment Balance Changes

Crystal weapons are weak overall currently, so I'm giving them some major buffs, especially at lower levels:

• Crystal damage bonus up to +33% from +25%
• Avg uses until breaking up to 50 at +0, from 33
• Uses until breaking steadily scale down with level, capping at 30 at +6
• The crystal bow specifically always has 50 avg uses

Crystal thrown weapons specifically are also getting a nerf:

• Max uses until breaking for crystal thrown weapons down to 30, from 50.

Also, three other enchantments are getting smaller boosts:

• Eldritch base proc chance up to 25% from 20%
• Blooming base avg grass created up to 1.5 from 1
• Corrupting base proc chance up to 25% from 20%

Vault Balance Tweaks

I'm making some changes aimed at improving clarity and giving players a little more space to get their bearings as the quest starts:

• Overhauled visuals for 'hearing' enemies outside of your view in the vault. These visuals are now much clearer, show the type of enemy, and reveal unseen tiles.
• Added an extra potion of healing to the vault that spawns near the entrance.
• Rooms near the entrance now cannot contain caves+ enemies that are awake.

I've also softened up three standard hazard rooms:

• Slowed down the scanning speed of the sentry in the circular scan room.
• Reduced the frequency of zaps in the room with many semi-random laser sentries.
• Room of alternating fire traps now has a 1-tile safe border.

Misc Changes

• Added new visuals for the doors in the final vault room

• Vault boss now plays sfx when swapping forms

• Darkened new 'investigating' thought bubble to make it more distinct from 'hunting'

• Slightly darkened the highlights on new runestone visuals

• Improved visuals on crystal spire when it becomes damaged

• Traps which cannot spawn in hallways now also can't spawn adjacent to each other

• Removed (hopefully) unnecessary permissions from the Android version

Bugfixes

Fixed the following bugs:

Caused by v4.0:

• Incoming DOT display not showing correctly in specific cases
• Vault boss being able to spawn on top of characters
• Vault boss shocking form using direct attack more often than intended, and environment attack less often than intended
• Beacon of Returning being usable to return to the vault in specific cases
• Various rare crash bugs
• Various minor visual & textual errors

Existed Prior to v4.0:

• Left stick controller inputs being eaten in various cases
• Chalice death chance display being slightly incorrect in some cases
• Scroll of retribution from unstable spellbook not triggering artifact-effects (such as priest illuminate trigger) on enemies
• Rat skull affecting levelgen in very specific cases

Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered v4.0.0 has been released!

v4.0.0 is arguably Shattered's biggest update yet! There's a massive new quest, a bunch of new in-game art, 6 new enchantments, and plenty smaller changes and adjustments.

Read the Full Post Here

Hey Dungeoneers, after far too long of a wait, v4.0.0 is finally ready for beta!

This update ended up ballooning in size from just adding a new quest, I'd say it's arguably Shattered's biggest update yet at this point! There's a massive new quest, a bunch of new in-game art, 6 new enchantments, and plenty smaller changes and adjustments.

In this blog post I'm going to quickly show off some of the now-finished new quest. Don't expect all the details though, I wouldn't want to spoil everything!

Read the Full Blog Post Here

Hey Dungeoneers,

v3.1.1 released a few days ago, containing a somewhat small amount of followup tweaks to v3.1.0. The most notable changes are some visual tweaks to the Warrior's splash art in response to feedback, and some performance improvements for users on modern iPhones.

Here's a full list of changes:

Followup Warrior Tweaks

Gameplay-wise the Warrior is doing well after his mini-rework. I will likely make some changes in v3.2 but for now I'm just making one buff to an early talent:

• Hearty Meal HP threshold increased to 33% from 30%, healing increased to 4/6 at +1/+2 from 3/5 at +1/+2.

There are also some tweaks to the Warrior's new splash in response to feedback:

• Significantly brightened the broken seal so that new details are easier to see
• Added back in scarring and some muscle definition to the Warrior's arms
• Deepened shadowing along the Warrior's figure
• Added various small details to make the armor appear more worn and the Warrior more rugged

Misc. Changes

• Switched Shattered's rendering backend on iOS to use Metal (new) instead of OpenGL (legacy). This should result in better performance and higher frame rates on supported devices.

• Enemies and items can no longer spawn on top of plants generated by garden rooms

• Added a new language: Traditional Chinese!

• Renamed Chinese language to Simplified Chinese

• Updated translations and translator credits

• Increased the HP threshold for status pane blinking red to 33% from 30%, for consistency with hearty meal change.

Bugfixes

Fixed the following bugs:

Caused By v3.1:

• Incorrect landmark entries for beacon of returning

Existed Prior to v3.1:

• Thrown weapons sticking to broken crystal guardians
• Ebony mimics always appearing hidden after ankh revive
• Various issues with how the game handles animation logic at very low framerates
• Haptics not working properly on more modern iOS devices
• Website links not working on modern iOS versions
• Indonesian language not working on desktop platforms

Hey Dungeoneers, Shattered Pixel Dungeon v3.1.0 has been released!

v3.1 includes a mini Warrior Rework, new terrain/rooms, a new trinket, and a bunch of other smaller changes and additions!

Read the Full Post Here

Hey Dungeoneers,

There's going to be one more new thing in the next Shattered Pixel Dungeon update: new splash art for the Warrior! As usual the art for this is by Aleksandar Komitov, here's a little sneak peek.

This (plus other hiccups) has delayed v3.1's release a little past the '1-1.5 weeks' estimate I gave earlier though, expect another beta patch soon and hopefully a release in very early June.

(Image Description: A pixel-blurred image teasing the Warrior's new splash art)

Hey Dungeoneers, v3.1 is ready for beta, just in time to meet the estimate I gave (for once)!

In this blog post I'm going to go over what's coming in v3.1! This update has a a mini Warrior rework, some new rooms in the dungeon, a new trinket, and an assortment of other changes and additions.

Read the Full Post Here

Hey folks,

Shattered Pixel Dungeon v3.1 is getting very close to being ready for beta hopefully you'll hear more about it in this coming week. One other new thing in it that I haven't mentioned yet are two new rare enemies! Both are encountered in the Sewers, here one of them: Gnoll Exiles!

Gnoll Exiles are super powerful gnoll scouts, but they aren't as aggressive. Years of solitude has made them pretty shrewd, and they won't pick a fight with you of your allies. Of course they will retaliate, but the extra loot in their backpack might be worth the very tough fight.

(Image Description: A screenshot showing the Cleric hero approaching a gnoll exile. The exile looks similar to a regular gnoll scout, but wields a spear and has grey fur.)

Hey Dungeoneers,

The next Shattered Pixel Dungeon update will include a new trinket! It's a simpler one this time, with more of a cute aesthetic. It's a little reference to a favorite ferret.

The Ferret Tuft boosts evasion for all characters, including both allies and enemies! That might sound like a mixed bag, but keep in mind that there are lots of ways to counter enemy evasion: magic, most ability attacks, surprise attacks, etc. You'll need to make more use of these than usual to benefit from the trinket, but the extra defensive power can be well worth it.

(Image Description: An image showing the item info window for the new Ferret Tuft item. It reads: "Ferret Tuft +3: A tuft of silky white ferret fur, held together by a lime green ribbon tied into a bow. Ferrets are known for their agility, mischievousness, and lack of integrity. Some of that power seems to radiate from the trinket, enhancing the evasion of anything nearby. At its current level this trinket will increase the evasion of all characters by 60%.")