Shattered Pixel Dungeon in 2025 | Patreon Weekly #292

Hey Patrons, after a bit of a holiday break, I'm back to work on Shattered Pixel Dungeon, which includes laying out some plans for the coming year! In this post I’m going to share an early excerpt from the ‘plan for 2025’ blog post that I’ve mostly already written. I plan to make the post public on Friday.

I’ve also started on some more v3.0 work, though so far it’s just balance tweaks and bugfixes. BETA-1.2 released yesterday, and I plan to release a followup BETA-1.3 today. Expect more Cleric content soon, possibly later this week.

Plans for 2025

Here are the major pieces of content that I'd like to add in 2025. The higher something is on the list, the more I'm prioritizing it for this year. Please note that while I'd very much like to stick to this, game development rarely works out exactly as planned. It's very likely that I won't get through everything here this year, and it's also possible that the order may shift or things may change entirely.

• Releasing The Cleric: Just like with 2024, this year starts with an update partway through development. My first priority this year is to get v3.0.0 and the Cleric finished and released! Right now the Cleric is missing some polish, one subclass, and two armor abilities. Expect to see those get filled in very soon.

• Warrior Improvements: After v3.0 I'm going to do a smaller update so that I can quickly address any issues with the Cleric. As part of that update, I'd also like to take a look at the Warrior! I'm not planning any fundamental changes, but I think I can make his base gameplay feel stronger and more engaging, without making him harder to play.

• City Quest: After these hero changes, I'd like to add a new quest in 2025 as well. My current concept is to have the Imp ask the player to raid a special dwarven vault. The major catch will be that none of the player's items can go with them, leading to a little microcosm of gear progression that will only exist within the vault.

• Hero Lore: With the game's sixth hero releasing soon, there's finally opportunity to start fleshing out the game's characters a bit! This lore could include journals written by the heroes from their perspectives, or documents that describe interactions and conversations between the heroes.

• 3rd Caves Quest: The caves quest is also currently missing a 3rd variant. While I decided to focus on other content through 2024, I would like to finish this quest up in 2025 if there's time or I come up with a great concept. I do still think that other content should take priority though, such as a quest in the city.

• In-Game Art: Lastly, there's the new art I previously showed off. Unfortunately things have stalled a bit here, so I don't have anything new to share. However, the reaction to the WIP new art has made it very clear to me that there's a strong demand for this, so I will be trying to make some progress here this year one way or another.