I hope to open a casting call for the Dawnsbury Days expansion in late August/early September, and expect it to last about a week. The preliminary voiceover budget for the expansion is $7,300! (I have gone a bit overboard with the game's scale...😅)

Dawnsbury Days now contains a large number of varied spells all the way up to spell level 10, going from Magic Missile and Grease all the way up to Antimagic Field, Horrid Wilting, Power Word Kill, and Time Stop ❤️.

QoL improvements coming to Dawnsbury Days this month, such as a button to send all Magic Missile darts against the last selected target, to save you extra mouse clicks at higher levels. You can still distribute them individually if needed.

I'll be adding advanced search to feat, spell, and item selection to help in sorting through the larger number of options available at higher levels. Other QoL improvements will also come soon, I hope!

There have been 800 responses to the in-game feedback form over the past 2+ years. I have read every single one. Reading from players who have enjoyed Dawnsbury Days makes me super happy and makes me want to continue! Thank you everyone 💛! (I also fixed the bugs reported this way.)

One thing I enjoy both in tabletop play and in Dawnsbury Days is how spell mechanics help develop a story, such as in this case where you can ask yes-or-no questions through a Commune spell to ask the gods for guidance.

We have begun encounter work on chapter 14 of Dawnsbury Days (chapter 5 out of 6 of the upcoming Four-Leaf Clover expansion)! It's early still, but progress is being made!

I saw that Dawnsbury Days has a lot of beautiful characters, so I thought a nalfeshnee, a fat boar demon of greed, could compensate, but I think even he looks fabulous! (Art by @nacraova.bsky.social)

Behold, a small part of the cast of the upcoming expansion to Dawnsbury Days! Thank you to all artists who are working on these characters!

What do you know — it turns out that Wall of Fire and the performance optimizations we made last month do actually have a use 💛. Some lag was still present on Steve's stream, but it was low enough that the "500 kobolds" modded map is now indeed playable 😅 (VOD at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2b5...)

This week, we implemented some of the more unique spells into Dawnsbury Days such as Contingency which allows you to prepare a trigger and a companion spell out of combat, and then have it cast automatically when the trigger condition happens!

Today I saw a new piece of fanart depicting the Dawnsbury Four in heroic poses of an adventure book cover! I think it looks amazing ❤️! Art is by @its-hutao.bsky.social.

They faced undead, devils, and two demon lords with courage, but how can Anna and Scarlet be expected to face such impossible challenges as cold water and holding each other's hand?? (art by @nacraova.bsky.social)

Not all encounters should be solved with might. Some you may tackle in a couple different ways, such as this Great Shrieker! (Shrieker art by Qwert, aquarium art placeholders by me ^^.)

Among the 126 (!!) mods for Dawnsbury Days are a couple of "official" mods that I maintain myself, including one for the variant rule Automatic Bonus Progression. Yesterday, in preparation for the Four-Leaf Clover, I updated it all the way up to level 20! steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/...

I saw this screenshot of a player's Dawnsbury Days character library, which made me feel really proud and realize how far we've come since the beginning, and how expansive in terms of character content Dawnsbury Days now really is ❤️.

Playtesting has begun on level 12 content of the upcoming expansion. Early playtest feedback from the Insane difficulty is "sweet baby jebus this first encounter is BRUTAL" ^^; I must rely on playtest feedback for this because I myself can't win on that difficulty... (that's why it's Insane)

I posted a behind-the-scenes blog post on the Dawnsbury Days art process! Design articles like this are what you sometimes get access to as a bonus when you support Dawnsbury Days development through Patreon, for as little as $1/month. www.patreon.com/posts/159896...

Dawnsbury Days now has armor property runes — you can use these to customize your armor with additional abilities such as fire resistance, invisibility, or flying!

We have giants and demons, yes, but weirder opponents, too! One of the "monsters" you may fight is the Celestial Geometry — an ancient machine stuck in an infinite computation. Will you overcome its bizarre attack patterns?

Speaking of mods, there's such a flurry of modder activity on Dawnsbury Days now that the "recently updated" page reaches only 4 days back! 😮❤️! Thank you, everyone!

Dawnsbury Days underwent performance optimizations this week, and now handles even a map with 500 kobolds! But it's so crowded the poor little kobold doesn't know how to get to the heroes... :(

Evil options in cRPGs I played as a kid were often funnier than the lawful good options. ("Will you help us?" / "Yes, I will help... to lighten that purse!") In Dawnsbury Days, you can't really be evil, but in the upcoming Four-Leaf Clover, you can at least be snarky!

There is a bug in Dawnsbury Days where on the Steam Deck, the magic circle animation around Saffi's mace in the main menu is absurdly huge. A commentor on the bug report said, "Bless was sustained for a few rounds" XD (I will fix, of course)

The upcoming expansion will take us, among other places, to the snow-covered landscapes of the Frozen North! There will be dungeons, still, but also wide open maps like this! Hopefully you put some effort into increasing your Speed!

This month, I'm going to try doing performance optimizations. Currently on my computer, Dawnsbury Days takes 3,4s to load to main menu; or 8,1s if you have all 100+ mods installed; and avg. time spent processing rules is 1,1s per encounter. Let's see how much I can drop these numbers, wish me luck!

Dawnsbury Days doesn't use, has never used, and will never use AI as a matter of ethical principle. Not for art, not for voice, not for code, not for "ideation." (1/5)

Burrowing monsters! Will you maintain a respectful distance to avoid the frost worm's explosive unburrow sequence? Or will you be ready for its emergence from the frozen lake and eat the damage for the chance at that sweet no-MAP attack of opportunity as it unburrows?

Soon, Dawnsbury Days will have a new, fancier main menu screen that shows the Dawnsbury Four overlooking their home town, striking heroic poses! (Some more than others.)

Here's how an upcoming redesign of reactions will look like. When you have several different ways of reacting to the same event, the game will now present them to you all at once so you can best choose what to do.

The Four-Leaf Clover, a level 10–15 expansion for Dawnsbury Days, now has a Steam Store page. If such an expansion sounds interesting to you, please consider wishlisting it! store.steampowered.com/app/4277480/...

One of the features your home base in the Four-Leaf Clover will have — to Scarlet's delight — is a library. You can obtain and read books if you're interested in learning more about the world of Our Point of Light or just want to read something fun. Some books even give you minor combat benefits!

I'm now offering an adjusted cosmetic-only Prestidigitation spell as a Patreon exclusive. If you're interested in supporting the development of Dawnsbury Days with additional money and/or want to make a tint, sound, music or critter during battle, please consider www.patreon.com/dawnsbury!

The new expansion will expand into new biomes, such as this swamp fight against a worm-that-walks! (Classic dungeons will still be there, though!)

There are now more than 100 (!) mods for Dawnsbury Days on the Steam Workshop. From rules tweaks to additional ancestries and classes to total overhauls like Roguelike Mode. I am super happy and grateful that you find modding Dawnsbury Days to be worth your time! 💛

In Dawnsbury Days, you may now stack consumables in your inventory. I hope this will make alchemists more fun to play! (It also works for non-alchemists. Feel free to make a pile of heal scrolls.)

From next build, Dawnsbury Days will have the ability to remap keyboard controls, and so almost complete my list of gamedev technical best practices at hudecekpetr.cz/gamedev-tech...!

Even on higher levels, one of the most satisfying situations, I've found, is where you can fire off a big aoe Heal hitting both a bunch of friends and a bunch of undead at the same time, such as in this Four-Leaf Clover battle, where an enemy ghost-ship pirate attempts to board your vessel!

I plan for all creatures who have a spoken line in the Four-Leaf Clover to have a full-size portrait! I think it could make the cutscenes feel that much more alive! For example, check out this, a treant that has been hit by a lightning and it broke his mind! (art by @nacraova.bsky.social)

The last update, "rules fidelity, magus, and archery update" finally fixed some of the most-often reported issues with the champion's reaction. It felt good to finally cross this many things off the to-do list! Now, it's time again to return to high-level content for the Four-Leaf Clover.

I'm announcing the development of a level 10–15 expansion to Dawnsbury Days called "The Four-Leaf Clover." Experience high-level second edition battles in high-stakes encounters as you work to evict the starborn from our world! Patreon helps fund development: www.patreon.com/dawnsbury (1/4)

Baraquielle is a minor character in Dawnsbury Days, but her artist @nacraova.bsky.social likes drawing her a lot, so modder Pixie1001 added the angel to her Roguelike Mode mod where she appears as a haughty but tsundere ally. If we ever get a dating sim spinoff... XD (VA @celestielleva.bsky.social)

Large creatures will soon be able to squeeze through tighter spaces. Currently, there are no monsters who would need this, but it would already be useful now for savage animal companions!

An upcoming rules fidelity and archery update adds Starlit Span magus and Expansive Spellstrike, among other feats and improvements. So you will be able to do things like shooting an arrow of fireball or arrow of sleep!

I've had trouble finding a bug tracker I would like for Dawnsbury Days. True bug trackers like Trello or GitHub felt too heavy for a mostly single person project. I used a text file for a long time, and lately I've been happy with a To Do app. So here's a view into what I'm thinking about!

One thing I'm proud of in Dawnsbury Days, but which is rarely mentioned in feedback, is that most monsters have a speaking role. Whether it's a kobold, a dretch or an intellect devourer, it's probably going to speak. I think this adds a certain life to the encounter! (pictured: Soul Eater by Lesiu)

Upcoming build will bring a post-encounter loot report to story mode campaigns. I figured instead of always telling the player "You received loot. Check the Party tab to learn more," I could show it immediately, and thus also reduce the amount of repetitive text.

Archibald of Dawnsbury uses the Dawnstaff, his major staff of abjuration, to dispel a barrier in his way. You, too, can now get a wizard staff and name it as you like — perhaps with a more imaginative name than what the hero of Our Point of Light selected... Art by @striga.bsky.social 💛

Adorable fanart of Annacoesta defeating a puny kobold! 💙

Makes rules judgments and interpreting minutiae of in-world fiction in the rules enforcement system is one of my favorite parts of making Dawnsbury Days. I'm very fortunate to have fans willing to send bug reports along the lines of "well actually, you can't banish *native* outsiders". 💛