Greetings, fellow Vampires!
We've been hard at work on the most challenging system in the game: procedurally generated dungeons. Our goal from the very beginning was to avoid the feeling of "procedural nonsense" - endless random rooms stitched together without purpose. We wanted dungeons that feel hand-crafted, while still offering the replayability and unpredictability that procedural generation makes possible. It's taken years to get this right, and we're finally at a point where we're proud of the results.
*For clarity, all dungeon screenshots in this update were captured with the UI disabled.
Bloody Hell Hotel is set in a world where resources are scarce, and running a successful hotel business is nearly impossible without finding building materials and cooking ingredients somewhere. That "somewhere" is where the dungeons come into play.
As revealed in the previous update, the dungeons are also where you'll recover ancient artifacts that uncover pieces of the game's lore and allow you to unlock new vampiric skills in your class-specific tree.
While there is combat involved, the dungeons aren't meant to be an adrenaline-fueled combat challenge. Exploration, mining, looting, and discovery are just as important. And if dungeon crawling isn't your thing, you can send gnomes on expeditions to recover resources and ingredients for you instead - slower and not as fun, but it is an alternative way to play. Like every major system in Bloody Hell Hotel, dungeons are optional, too. But exploring them yourself opens up an entirely different layer of progression, rewards, and replayability.
Dungeons are currently endlessly deep and we'll likely keep it that way. Each run is unique - dungeon layout changes completely each time you enter. To reach a lower floor, you'll need to jump into a hatch.
Once you enter a lower floor, there's no going back - the hatch locks behind you. How do you get out? More on that below.
The deeper you descend, the better the rewards become. Richer ore veins (for crafting better tools and weapons), rarer loot, more valuable artifacts - and, of course, tougher enemies. We'll be covering combat in a future update, but just to set the expectations -think more Stardew Valley rather than a Soulslike experience.
As you descend, floors also become larger and more elaborate. We wanted exploration to feel rewarding without becoming frustrating, so we worked hard to avoid the usual procedural dungeon pitfalls. There is no mini-map, no maze-like layouts, and no backtracking. Getting lost shouldn't be the challenge - deciding whether to risk going deeper should be.
OK, so how do you get out? There are two ways.
The first is the Coffin Elevator. Every floor contains one, and it serves as your emergency exit. Conveniently, it connects directly to your coffin in the crypt.
You get to return "alive" (ha-ha), but there's a catch: you leave all dungeon loot behind. Coffin Elevators are meant for those moments when your health is low and pushing deeper feels a little too ambitious. Dying isn't the end of the world, but it does cost in-game time - and while you're recovering in your coffin, hotel guests may leave without paying and thieves might raid your storage room while you're taking a coffin beauty nap.
There's a better option. Every few floors you'll discover a Minecart Station - abandoned remnants of the Vampiric Council's underground transportation network. When first discovered, stations are in ruins. You can either repair them (costly) or use them. Using a station lets you return to the surface with all your loot intact, but the escape route collapses behind you. Repairing a station turns it into a permanent checkpoint. You won't be able to use it during the current run, so you'll need to keep descending, but future expeditions can start from that floor instead of from the beginning.
Do you take the loot and run, or invest in a checkpoint and risk going deeper? That's a decision you'll be making a lot.
Dungeons can get quite large, so for faster traversal you can always transform into a bat (there are 5 species to choose from, very different gameplay-wise). Flying is fast, intuitive, and a great way to move through large areas - just make sure there are no enemies nearby. Bats are much better at flying away from danger than flying into it.
And of course, you don't have to explore the depths alone. You can bring one of the 6 pets with you on your adventures.
There's a lot more to the dungeons than we've shown today. So much remains hidden below the surface, but some secrets are best left undisclosed until you find them yourself.
We're still aiming for an end-of-year release.
To be fully transparent, dungeons ended up taking much longer than we originally expected. They're one of the most ambitious systems in the game, and getting them to feel hand-crafted while being fully procedural turned out to be a much bigger challenge than anticipated.
The good news is that we're happy with where things stand today. The system is finally delivering the kind of experience we set out to create, and we've managed to make up for the extra development time along the way.
Our release plans haven't changed. That said, dungeons were a good reminder that game development can be somewhat unpredictable. If we happen to stumble somewhere along the way, we'll own it and make sure to give you a proper heads-up. For now, though, we're on track and focused on bringing Bloody Hell Hotel across the finish line.
We're also getting closer to sharing new trailers and gameplay previews. We'd like to release them as close to launch as possible, so the game you see is as close as possible to the game you'll actually be playing on day one.
It's been a long road, and we know many of you have been following Bloody Hell Hotel for years at this point. Seeing the excitement around the game keeps us motivated every day, and we're looking forward to showing you what we've been building for nearly 6 years.
P.S.: We'll be hosting an AMA with the Game Director on Discord on Friday, June 19th at 8 PM CEST / 11 AM PT. If you have questions about the game, come hang out!