Hello again, and welcome to the final devlog before Drop Duchy’s release! I hope you’re ready to play this tiny game I started in my bedroom two years ago.
Do you want a final dose of insight into what you can expect from the game? Well, you’re in luck because today I’m revealing (for the first time!) the two other bosses and the challenging modes for the courageous who can complete a run.
The Wall, The Keep, The Dungeon
I didn’t think about adding bosses to Drop Duchy until it was pretty advanced – but as soon as I realized that it could be an awesome addition to the game, I had this intention: each boss should be a scary and challenging mega-structure.
You’ve already discovered and faced The Wall in the demo, a boss whose design evolved throughout development to ensure it was achievable using all sorts of strategies. The Wall is mobile, forcing you to play compactly and place pieces (including additional enemies) in sub-optimal positions.
At the end of Act 2, you’ll face The Keep, which has an entirely different design: strong, sturdy, and impassible. The Keep is already placed on a massive grid and has many units to begin with. The additional challenge here is to avoid boosting its surveillance towers, which is easier said than done since they watch over most of the grid! The wide grid and abundance of terrains make some buildings easier to play, but on the other hand, large buildings are more challenging to place.
But The Keep is relatively simple compared to the game’s final boss, The Dungeon.
First, The Dungeon has "traps" that grant additional units for every piece placed over them (not just the buildings!), and their position changes every time.
Second, it recruits additional Mercenaries every few turns unless you bribe them first: yes, to beat the final boss, collecting resources through exploration & buildings is essential to prevent him from gaining too much power too quickly!
The bosses in Drop Duchy have been tested a lot, and we ensured that all sorts of strategies are viable against them. Yes, they’re hard, but that’s the point of bosses, right?
Raise the Difficulty
When you’ve defeated The Dungeon, you win the run! Does the game end there? "Pack it up, boys, we’re uninstalling it to make some room on the SSD"? Of course not!
First, you can try to complete every quest and challenge to finish the progress tree, and second, you can play again with a greater challenge.
There are two modes in the game: Classic & Trials.
Classic comes in five difficulties, so if you want to challenge your strategic skills, try beating the game with each faction up to Nightmare mode. As difficulty increases, you’ll face more enemy units, receive fewer resources from exploration, and you won't be able to place the enemy pieces in reserve anymore.
Trials, on the other hand, are unlocked after beating the game for the first time, and they’re variants that alter the game’s rules, making you think twice about the correct approach.
Some Trials add fierce advantages to enemies; for instance, in Consolidation mode, placing two enemy buildings next to each other will grant both of them additional troops.
Others, such as Mini Grids, will change which buildings are stronger or weaker (and make it generally more challenging to optimize the positioning).
If you feel confident, you could even take on the Fearless challenge, in which you start the run with a single point of defense and will therefore lose unless you eliminate all the enemies each round.
With such a variety of modes, we’re sure you’ll be able to spend countless hours in the game before getting bored (and I haven’t even talked about optimizing your high score).
One last thing before the conclusion: we’ve added seals to the cards in the Collection menu to let you know the highest difficulty you’ve beaten the game with each card. As in Balatro (the game that inspired this mechanic), you must use the card in the final encounter against The Dungeon to earn the seal. That’d be too easy if we let you gain the seal when you didn't use the card or if you sold it during the run – winning a Nightmare run with a Windmill is about as crazy as it sounds, but it is definitely doable!
Wrap-Up
Thanks for reading this last devlog of Drop Duchy. I hope this series gave you a good sense of what you can expect in the game at its release. I also hope you’ll enjoy discovering and playing with all this content as much as I enjoyed working on it these past few years!
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JB Oger - Game Director
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