Happy holidays, my friends!
It's the tail end of the year and that's a good opportunity to look back at the year and to see how far you've come. I know I have the tendency to always look at all the work I have left to do, which makes me forget to celebrate and appreciate all the work I have already done.
So in the interest of my mental health, I've put together a little video showing the progress on Crownbreakers from the very first pre-prototypes I put together at the end of 2022, all the way to now, three years later in 2025 with the game being almost demo ready:
A video showing the development of Crownbreakers over the years
I've been sharing this video (and other things about Crownbreakers) around social media (okay, mostly Reddit) a bit and I have to say, I was really positively surprised by the many people that piped up to say that they really enjoyed Nowhere Prophet and conversely are looking forward to Crownbreakers. At this point Nowhere Prophet is over 5 years old and while it was quite successful it wasn't really a big hit. So it's really nice to hear that it has found its place among you lovely folks! Warms my heart, I tells ya.
Different screenshots from lovely Reddit comments about Nowhere Prophet
Still, it is a little strange to me because as mentioned, I always have my eye towards what is missing. This means I always look at Nowhere Prophet through the eyes of its creator, thinking about all the things I'd change, improve or just simply do different, if I would make it again. So, why not take a moment to talk about these things, and how I'm addressing them in Crownbreakers.
To my mind there's three main shortcomings in Nowhere Prophet:
Difficulty: It's punishingly high even on the lowest levels, making people bounce off of the game.
Run length: At well north of 1 hour, a proper Nowhere Prophet run is quite a time commitment.
Story voice: It uses a lot of words and prose to tell its story but I don't think it connects well.
So, let's dive into these in a little more depth:
Three difficulties, but even the lowest is tough!
The problem: Nowhere Prophet is frustratingly difficult and so people stop playing early on.
There's actually two different components to this:
One one hand it's the overall difficulty of the game: How tough enemies are to beat, how punishing the events are etc. As a game developer this is really hard to gauge since you know your game so well what seems "normal" to you is probably quite hard for people not as familiar with the game.
I think the lowest difficulty on Nowhere Prophet is still to high. The game should be a chunk easier, with more plentiful resources and easier healing on the map. My position is that on the lowest difficulty, it should be possible for the absolute majority of players to finish the game. In fact, I think that's the purpose of the lowest difficulty: Make the game accessible to as many people as possible
And I don't think Nowhere Prophet quite meets that. Though, I am curious: What would you change to make Nowhere Prophet easier?
And the second component? Well, that's the sense of frustration. That's partly triggered by the difficulty but a big factor is also the fact that the enemy's hand cards are hidden. You don't know what's coming, and if the enemy has the perfect card it might feel like they've cheated. The lack of information creates a lot of unpleasant surprises.
As a player of traditional collectible card games (like Magic: The Gathering), not knowing what the opponent has on their hand is a part of the game. I wanted to translate that to the digital realm, but of course it feels vastly different when playing against a human on even footing, than against enemies that have very different resources (and don't need to worry about wounds either!).
I think this is a trigger for a lot of frustrating moments.
User-selectable difficulty levels (interface still WIP)
The solution: More player choice in difficulty
In Crownbreakers there are a lot more knobs to tweak difficulty with, allowing you to move it up to the level of challenge you prefer.
I took a page from Balatro here, where the increasing stakes are unlocked as you complete runs with a deck. I like the sense of progression and mastery this creates, as you replay the same part with ever more challenging modifiers that make the run interesting in its own way.
Crownbreakers is doing something similar. But instead of difficulty being linked to a deck, it's linked to a district. The first time you fully clear a district you unlock the next difficulty level for that district. Each further full clear on the highest available difficulty gives you access to the next higher difficulty.
So many maps to travel through!
The problem: Nowhere Prophet runs generally take too long, making them feel like a big commitment
This kind of just shook out that way. I wanted the game to have multiple maps. I wanted the journey to feel like a long pilgrimage. I wanted players to get a lot of value for their money. But in the end the runs just need more time than I think is good. Shorter runs make it easier to just jump into one quickly.
Not only that, a long run in a roguelike also incurs a lot of frustration if you die close to the end. Because getting there took such a long time, losing after 100 minutes is much more painful, than after 20.
Breaking open a treasure for a card mid-battle
The solution: Shorter runs
I guess this one is kind of obvious, right? Shorter runs are the solution to runs that are too long. But that opens a whole new can of worms: The general approach of many deck builders (Nowhere Prophet included) is an overworld with its travel rules and deckbuilding options, and different fights to play your deck.
This deck building paradigm means that a certain amount of "map action" is needed to give you enough opportunities to edit and adjust your deck. Cutting that to make the runs shorter also cuts out the deck-building. So how did I approach this in Crownbreakers?
Firstly, Crownbreakers runs are short. Approximately 20-30 minutes only! That's very short for a deck-builder. Obviously it's a turn-based game so you can take however long you want to take, but that's the goal I'm aiming for. Short, snappy runs. Without a map to navigate mid-run. Instead multiple come together to make a bigger thing: Freeing the districts from their tyrants is broken down into individual routes, each their own little run. All need to be cleared to make progress on that district.
But if there's no map, where do you build the deck? Well, you do it while you fight! There are treasures to break to add new cards to your deck, and there are ways to remove cards from your deck during the battle. This makes the entire fight much more dynamic!
So much text, just to click "Fight."
The problem: The Nowhere Prophet world is interesting but the story doesn't grab people
This probably the most disappointing one to me. I've poured a lot of love into the world of Soma but I don't think people connect with it as much as I want to. There's a simple metric here: Fanart.
I think fanart is a wonderful indicator of people connecting to a story or a world so strongly that they want to create their own stuff within it. I think as a creative, making a piece that inspires fanart is a sign of success. Unfortunately Nowhere Prophet hasn't really inspired much fanart. Why?
I think a big reason is that due to the procedurally generated nature of the game, I kept the narrative kind of interchangeable and replaceable. That means there's no recurring characters you get to meet, to love or to hate. I think that's the biggest failing.
There's also another problem with the storytelling in Nowhere Prophet: It wastes a lot of words on prose that, while setting the mood and communicating the world, isn't really read by a lot of people. It's large chunks of text that most people skip through. And considering that every word needs to be translated, that is also a big extra cost for something people don't need.
A character has got something to share with you
The solution: Character-driven storytelling.
In Crownbreakers everything revolves around the characters. Your heroes and champions, your friends and connections, and your tyrants and enemies. These are people you will meet over and over, get to know them, and their world. And over time your relationships will change and adjust.
This also means that 99% of the storytelling text is dialog, not prose. It's much more efficient and that means every word expresses the characters. Granted, writing dialog well is it's own challenge but I think I can get there.
Actually Hades was a big influence on that. I think the writing team does such a good job at portraying and communicating characters and the reactive nature of the dialog to your playthroughs works so well for a roguelike, so I am taking a page out of their book :)
I can't wait for you to meet the people of Cascade!
Anyway, that's it with this deep dive! Ah, see?! Now my "critical eye" has won out again. Maybe next time I'll talk about the things Nowhere Prophet did right and how I'm carrying these over into Crownbreakers. Would that be interesting?
So, what's next for Crownbreakers? I'm still working on the demo. It's going to be ready very shortly!So, if you're interested in that, you might want to join the Sharkbomb Studios Discord to stay up to date!
Other things you might want to check out are:
I've started uploading some short form videos and I've been having fun with them. There are more to come! For example, I'm planning to upload some insights into my time at the Rabbit and Comic Con! So make sure to follow!
It's still a bit away but I am planning a crowdfunding campaign for Crownbreakers in the beginning of next year. Subscribe to the pre-launch page on Kickstarter to get notified immediately once the campaign goes live! The best way to not miss anything!
This one is even further away but I am also planning a printed edition of my (solo) tabletop game Ex Umbra that has you build dungeons as you play. As above, if that sounds interesting follow along on Kickstarter!
And that's it for today!
Talk to you soon,
Martin
I know you're probably sick of it by now, but if you made it this far, you might have forgot to WISHLIST CROWNBREAKERS!