Rules for the $500 Competition
With new gameplay elements, two new game modes and a superstar cast of streamers to voice in a brand new story that follows Richard Bankman as he attempts to take on The Doinkler Portfolio.
Unlike the main game, we wanted players to experience the game in a less "punishing" way and enjoy the controls and movement, which is why we built individual levels!
With a restart button!
For the main game, we really had to tone down the difficulty of the jumps, because of how brutal the falls were, but with a restart button, you can instantly retry and learn how to properly hit the obstacles without having to climb all the way back up.
Which means, we were able to bump the difficulty up by like…. 300%.
Some of the levels are HARD.
But don't worry, you can skip ahead if you get stuck and play the first level of each world.
Compare your best times (or number of attempts) with your friends!
Across 62 new levels, with a ton of new mechanics and variety of challenges!
After the initial release, we got such an overwhelmingly positive response to the story, that we just couldn't help ourselves.... and wrote an entirely new story (that has just as much narrative as the main game)
And with the help of some of our favorite streamers to voice in the game, you'll be able to experience the story of Richard Bankman as he takes on The Doinkler Portfolio!
But that's not all! We decided to keep going and add a SECOND game mode. Introducing...
This is the Doinkler Special, a giant tower that uses most of the pieces from The Doinkler Portfolio, but removes all of the forgiveness of the restart button, because we figured, if you fall, you can always practice in The Doinkler Portfolio and then come back.
We really wanted to challenge the most hardcore players and because of that, there's way less recovery
(Don't get me wrong, there's still some, we're not animals). Everyone will still be able to make some progress but the further you go up, the less recovery there is.
You'll also notice that we're using this basic prototype texture all throughout the tower, and there's a reason for this - The DLC is free.
But more importantly, the tower is way more performant because we don't have to load textures, and more importantly baked lightmaps. The tower runs faster than the main game, with no loading hitches despite having way longer sightlines.
Most big tower rage games just have stuff pop in and out, but I think we've done a good job of optimizing it to look seamless.
Since this level was made to be nearly impossible, we figured it'd be more fun to see how far you can get, and rub it in your friends' faces.
So with steam leaderboard integration, you can compare both in the main menu and in the world how far you and your friends have gotten.
And of course, we want to build some hype for the DLC, so we're excited to announce, The Doinkler Special Challenge - A $500 dollar cash prize for the first person to complete the entire tower from start to finish live on stream.
If you're curious, click the link above to learn more
As always, a huge thank you to everyone who has played the game, and continues to support our small indie team.
Good luck and have fun!
Stephen & The Isto Inc Team