Hey Everyone,
First, a few things about ourselves. We are a small company (a crew of 2, my wife and me), working at home in our office-livingroom hybrid, located in Budapest, Hungary. My name is Peter Hargitai, I’m the developer behind our games, and I will write most of the blog posts here.
It was more than a year ago when we released our last game, GemCraft chapter zero, and since then, we haven’t given any lifesign, except a few comments here and there, and replying to e-mails asking whether we’re still alive. Now it’s over, from now on, you can follow us here (put our RSS feed in your feed reader, like Thunderbird) or on Twitter, and you will get first hand info about the things going on here.
And so, what happened since last May? Why does making a new game take so long?
Our plans changed constantly, we spent months on planning a multiplayer game, then an other one, in the end abandoning those projects because they would have taken too much time to complete. In about November, we started working on a sci-fi themed base builder/shooter game, which is now on hold, but will be continued once we release our current project.
This March, frustrated for not being able to at last release a game, we switched to making a new chapter for the GemCraft series. I thought it would be done quickly, after all we have a working GC0 base, we don’t have to write all the game mechanics from scratch. But as the project progressed, it became more filled with new features, and now we can say it will be a full chapter (and major part of the storyline), not just a cheap repacking of GC0.
So now we have a project on hold, named “Terran Twilight episode I: New contact”, and an ongoing project, “GemCraft Lost chapter: Labyrinth”. (GemCraft chapter two: Chasing Shadows is still in our plans, we didn’t forget about it)
The events of GemCraft Labyrinth will happen after chapter 1 and at roughly the same time with chapter 2.
We’ll get back to telling you more about the delayed sci-fi game when it’s time, but for now let’s see some of the changes in GC Labyrinth:
- The game’s area will grow to 800×600 pixels (GC1 was 640×480, GC0 was 690×540), which means bigger stages.
- The game will take place in a labyrinth having 13×13 stages (1..13, A..M grid).
- Monsters can now roam freely in wide open areas (depends on stage layout), you can build towers and walls on the path tiles.
- You can pick what type of gem you want (each stage has its available gem types just as before, but now your success won’t depend on what random gems you get).
- You can create gems up to grade 12 without mass combining, gems from grade 1 to 12 have distinct looks.
- New summonable structures: walls (build a labyrinth cheap and fast) and amplifiers (use them to boost your other structures) – walls can be further upgraded to either tower or amplifier.
- Towers can attack enemy buildings now when no monster is around.
- Drop gem bombs on your structures to destroy them (it takes time until a structure disappears completely).
- Shrines can be built now; simplified shrine system (2 types left: charged bolts and beams); Shrine projectiles depend more on the gem inserted; Charged bolt shrines have a limited range; shrines, instead of having a use limit, recharge slowly after each use.
Coming next week with screenshots!
Oh wow.
Thanks god you alive.
listen veri intresting the new plans for the gemcraft series.
I will hapen the scifi game 😉
Wish you good luck and best regards
Oliver
HI 🙂 I just love gemcraft… I played it more than once (both GC1 and GC0)…can’t wait for the next one :D:D:D
It is unfortunate to hear that multiplayer based game was too much work for the moment. I also hope the sci-fi game put on hold will become something as popular as Gemcraft.
It’s great that the Gemcraft update isn’t for “Chapter 2”, but that there will be yet another game in the series, which for us fans means at least 4 Gemcraft games. The amplifier system and wall system sounds very fun, since many other tower defense games have utilized those aspects. If balanced right, it can become extremely addictive (Gemcraft is already awesome without those features, so I can imagine playing this new version for over 100 hours).
Good luck to you two, can’t wait for screenshots next week!
damn, was hoping this update would bring us a new GC today.
Oh, well. Patience is a virtue.
Good luck with you projects, keep rocking!
What’s the release date (approx) for the nex gemcraft game to be released?
And will the difficulty scale more like chapter 1 or chapter 0?
Thanks for doing all this btw, some insights into the design and coding process would be awesome 🙂
Nice! I have been visiting this page daily for months and at accelerating pace since relaunch was announced! GC is my favorite Tower Defence, thanks for that and keep up the good work!
Was the multiplayer game a tower defence? I have been longing for one for ages!
I too waited a new game today! 🙁 But, like Miyamoto says, its better to get a good game than hasty games.
HI 🙂 I just love gemcraft… I played it more than once (both GC1 and GC0)…can’t wait for the next one 😀 :D:D [2]
Also, I am happy that small developers(small in number, not quality) make such good games. I sent three emails to you and you always awnser me.
Good Luck, I hope you have success because you deserve 🙂
Good to finally hear something from you, but I always thought there where more people behind GameInABottle.
I’m looking forward to the new GC. Especially since it sounds like there will be more to do late-game rather than just generating mana and combining gems, while invincible hordes circulate the map at 0.2 fps.
If one could buy/upgrade to some automatic gemcombining feature, or upgrade gem-creation-levels, as one would upgrade mana-pool, that would be nice. The cost could be really high, as I max out my mana-pool faster than I can upgrade it in those late games.
WOW what a first blog post. i loved the other two gemcraft games and can’t wait to play the new one. best of luck making it.
improvements needed:
new gems: purple gem-starts of with only doing 1dmg and and a 10%chance of adding a extra point of dmg
the cursor is usless, apart from the gem bomb and all that, i want the cursor to get out there are do some dmg
you realy think that 1 damage will do something.It WON’T!If the cursor did something that would spoil the game making it way too easy,And if you think an extra damage will do somethng to the damage,THAT WON’T HELP MUCH AT ALL!
This is wonderful news. Gemcraft is one of my favourite games, one I keep coming back to over and over, and it even interested my incredibly picky boyfriend because it is so very consistant all the way through.
Keep going and I will be delighted to play your latest baby.
What happened to Gem Shooter?
It is no longer where it used to be.
The Arcade Lounge, where we hosted many games from other authors, was closed when we relaunched the site, but you can find all the games that were there, on newgrounds.com.
Thanks for letting us know your projects, I’m glad your working on GC, it’s probably my favourite game on the Internet. Keep up the good working.
Thanks again for this wonderful game,
A fan!
Köszi szépen az új gemcraft ismertetését. Tudom, hogy azt mondtad, hogy nem szabtok határidőket magatoknak, de körül-belül mikor lesz teljesen kész? Csak úgy nagyjából, mondjuk 1 hét, vagy valami. Már “halálra nyúztam” a chapter0-át Nagyon tettszett. Szerintem ez a flash játékok legjobbja. Ne haragudj, csak tényleg nagyon várom a folytatást.
Oh great, now that I’m finally out of rehab and trying to live GemCraft-free one day at a time, you go and put me in danger of relapse!
GACK
I need to know approx when a new GC is comming! I can’t wait!
*waves hands in the air excitedly* Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU for making another GemCraft game! Keep us posted.
Great news!
These changes are revolutionary, but I’m sure you know what you’re doing. Chapters 1 and 0 were amazing!
Are you planning on writing some kind of postmortem on previous GemCraft games here in your blog? I certainly would love to hear reasoning and circumstances in which you made some of your decisions in previous games.
I see you pay much attention to the plot, the story. But to tell the truth, the story in 1 and 0 chapter was small and toneless, you could tell it in one sentence.
I think you could greatly improve that if you’d tie the story and the game process together. For example, in chapter 0 you could introduce Endurance mode with a story that would explain why it was important to last as long as possible but wasn’t important to beat all the waves.
Or each Lost amulet could add a sentence to a scroll that reveals something (for example it could reveal a way to unlock certain hidden levels).
Or the character could comment something on the result of the latest battle. Like “oh, that one was tough” or “I just calculated, I killed more then a thousands monsters this time, it’s the first time there were so many” or “Poisonous gems were very helpful this time” and so on. Not after every battle of course.
Anyway, it’s not the plot that makes me love GemCraft, it’s the gameplay.
I agree, it’s not about the plot, so we’ll rather make it light and not tied too closely to the gameplay. Illustrated story panels will appear from time to time, and some of the stages will be more closely connected to the story, but that will be all about it, at least for now.
Sziasztok! Nem is tudtam h magyar fejlesztoi vannak a Gemcraftnak 😀
Szoval Ebben a honapban erkezik az uj GEmcraft? 😀
Hargitatol azert jo messzire kerultel.:)
Szia! 🙂 Ebben a hónapban még szinte biztosan nem, nagyon sok teendő van még hátra, de folyamatosan írni fogok a fejleményekről.
I can’t wait no longer!lol 😀
I am still playing Chapter 0, and eagerly awaiting a new game. My wife tells me it is silly to keep playing when I can no longer use my upgrade points (level 217 and counting). Thank you for your time, and effort creating such playable games 🙂
I like the sound of the gemcraft story, 2 more games in the pipeline!
At present I’m disappointed the shrines are down to 2 types, i liked the different types (particularly the transmute one to make loads of oranges gems!), but i shall reserve judgment until i’ve played it!
I think the orange gem anomaly made GC0 both a good and a bad game, bad because the balance was totally broken, but good as many players enjoyed taking advantage of the mana farming/summoning glitch and reaching wizard level 1000+.
I plan to fix this balance issue, making the mana gem lass brutal, but I hope it won’t take away all the fun from the game for those who liked GC0 for its flaws.
I dont think that the orange gem was brutal at all. I think that it was a very welcome bump in mana for many of the maps and the cost to “clone” them in maps without the trans shrine was a very fair and in some cases maybe not worth it. But thats just my opinion.
I agree. I think that the orange gem is a kind of tutorial to people who are starting. After knowing the “secrets” of the game, mana farm is just fairly necessary.
Anyway, GC is a game that stole my brain =)
I was never aware of an orange gem glitch/anomaly!
I’m actually a little disappointed to hear that we’ll no longer have to put up with random new gems, but I think I’ll be able to deal with it in anticipation of a whole new GC.
Keep up the great work guys, you rock!
Another Gemcraft, now that’s a good news! If you need beta testers, let me know 🙂
YES!
While playing today, I had some ideas. Perhaps, the storyline could include the need to play levels like sudden death, which would increase a wizards ability to stop monsters by 1% (i.e. some slowing effect, or extra damage). Defeating a swarm board could increase the area effect of gems that have area effect… Another idea would be for towers to have power as well as gems. Perhaps a tower could increase the area of effect of a gem by 3%? Another tower could add poison… Thank you again for such a fun game to play 🙂
we need a lvl editor, like once everything has been done, then this shall pop in, the ultmate lvl editor.
thanks for letting us know you’re well and thinking. Just have tried to create a TD, well a month ongoing and nothing yet works, so I have an insight at what takes to build a TD game. You seem to shift towards maze-builder game rather than to remain in a path-based style – well, hope your game’s inside will eliminate juggling, as the hardest and most disputed thing about say DTD, BTTD and clones. And looking forward to actually play GC1.5 🙂 thank God I still have patience to wait… indefinitely.
Hi gratulations to your site and best wishes for the future. Hope to see more cool games form you. Please think about making a Facebook TD game because I believe you guys can easily get rich that way! 😀
Hi,
I love GC0, but for some reason bounce thingy is maxed at 40%, although the magic skill says it affects any and all gems with active bounce…
Raising the max bounce chance above 40% made that gem type too powerful (in extreme cases, like 80% chance, some shots were bouncing through dozens of monsters, so with the tower constantly adding new bouncy shots to the scene, all you could see was bouncing shots all along the path).
omg, that would be great 🙂
just make it hard enough to get above the 40% and this cool effect of mass-bouncing shall be a reward for players who like to max their bounce-stats!
yeah yeah yeah 🙂
Wooo. Can’t wait for another Gem Craft. Keep up the good work.
How about posting a beta test for us to play btw? =p
haha, yeah. I don’t mind a few flaws here and there I just wanna play GC now a.s.a.p.!
Nekem valamikor télen esett le hogy magyarok csinálták a gemcraftot és annyira meglepődtem hogy még:D:D Minden elismerésem mert ti példázzátok az amit sok embernek kéne csinálni kis hazánkban!!! És én sem hagyhatom k a kérdést, hogy mikor jön az új rész mert már nagyon nagyon kíváncsi vagyok rá..csak egy kis infót csöpögtessetek:D
Amazing game, wasted(?) more than 40hours (total) in it and still playing!
use a easy setting medium and hard
Simply cannot wait for the next Gemcraft. Was desperately hoping it would have been out on the 1st! Any luck it will be released today 😀
Hey I absolutely adore the Gemcraft games, and have been waiting for this update for a long time. I have spent too many hours playing the games.
Anyway, one small thing: after completing the last Gemcraft game, I discovered that ‘cheat’ where you just keep filling a level 3 gem with more gems to bump up the strength, speed etc. This kind of ruined the game for me, as it is an easy way to destory everything, unless of course the Endurance battles play out forever, which as an above posted commented, kills the frame rate, and isn’t that fun.
If you can fix this, like with a strength, speed and special limit for each level of a gem (but maybe leaving it unlimited for level 12 and above (or something relative to the new game) so that a player cannot complete most levels with one level 3 beast gem that would definitely make the game more addictive!
Other than that, keep up the very good work, I have rarely played as balanced a game.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll have a look at it!
Keep in mind that to make a level 3 gem that is the equivalent or more of a level 12 gem, you have to spend just as much mana buffing that level 3 as you would on a level 12.
This feature is one I and many others (some of the diehard oldschool billion/trillion point clubmembers) really liked.
– Different Pete / InThrees
I see your point – and did figure that the huge scores on the leader-boards were built using this trick, but I find that it is often simply the easy solution to a difficult level: if I’m struggling to complete a level and I know I can bump the gems up like this then it would be hard for me to resist: I have played through a few of the first levels in GC:0 again and it is definitely a lot easier when this trick is applied – one gem can literally kill everything – and in fact basically leaves the game as finish-able with a single strategy – rather than each level/course etc. needing a different angle.
Other than capping the gems at a level/strength etc, I guess making it an upgradable power, like say one of the last you unlock and one of the hardest to fill, that lifts the cap further for lower grade gems, or off completely at the highest level, so that when the game is almost/initially finished it is possible to go back and take a stab at endurance and other levels with this skill developed.
But I’m only gesticulating-
Peter – (the first poster – confusing… )
Thanks for pointing that out.I love doing the grade three trick.
Hey! Just wanted to say a big THANK YOU!
I’m always complaining that there’s not another GemCraft episode yet… but then I remember what you guys do FOR US.
So, in short, the GemCraft games are great – but you two are AMAZING.
XX
Great to hear you’re still alive – have loved all of your games so far (never have time to re-play them, though – too busy these days) – and can’t wait for more GC.. or another great original! 🙂
Hello Peter!
Thanks for the life sign and it’s good to see that you are still developing GC. I guess everybody still waits for GC ch2, however GC: Labirynth seems to be very interesting idea. Let the gem power be with you. 😉
Can’t wait for the new GC! Was wondering about where the game might appear though, I would love to see it on Steam and support you! I would settle for a cloud save state so I could switch from one computer to another 😀
PS Never realized it was all a two person job, incredible!
We don’t know yet if there will be a sponsor/primary licensee for the game, but it won’t appear on Steam, not in the near future at least. It’s written for the Flash player (in ActionScript 3), which makes it very merely possible to convert to a “normal” win/mac/linux executable, not to mention porting it to the Steam system.
Ah, well thanks for the reply, I’ll play it wherever it ends up.
Hi Peter and wife 🙂
you should not look back to chapter 0 and insert a gem for farming or something similar. People who like to mana farming or other tings of chapter 0 should still play this “old” chapter.
I just would say, make a good new gemcraft game and not a copy. Use the good features and make these better, you and your wife have good talent and ideas.
Im looking hopefully forward and i think youre make it right.
How done is the development in percent (circa)?
many greets
Nekem is tetszik nagyon a készített játékok.
Annyi kérdésem lenne,hogy esetleg a következő játékban van esély arra,hogy lehessen nyelvet választani?
Mert az angolul nem értőknek valamennyivel könnyebb lenne.
Vagy esetleg a magyar nyelvre utalások 🙂
Először biztosan csak angolul jelenik meg, a többit majd meglátjuk, de egyelőre nem ígérek semmit.
Magyar utalások? 🙂 Többször gondoltam rá, hogy vmi magyar szó lehetne pl. egy játék “angol” címe, még lehet, hogy lesz belőle valami egyszer.
I would love to see a system where one could build a special tower using a combination of gems in a tower that is able to hold more than one gem. I dont know if your familar with a a Warcraft 3 TD called BK’s gem td. That is similar to the concept. Most of the towers would be more support towers than damage towers.
Anyways, i have been inspired by your game to try to write out a concept for a td, but I know nothing about programing.
wheres our screen shots!!!!!!!! i want them now, jks, take your time with this game and take our comments into consideration ok, have fun making
Lol I agree. I’m obsessed with coming to this site to check if the game is up!
you could also make a computer bot where they help fight evil
Just a small suggestion for Chapter 2; I always thought it would be neat if you had one gem (or a small, upgradeable number of gems) that you could carry throughout the journey, rather than having to rebuild from scratch every level. Maintaining that gem, and picking the moments to upgrade it, would be a whole other layer of tactics/strategy; you could make it cost skill points to do so, or experience.
Finely a new GemCraft game!I’ve been waiting forever for this.I’m still stuck on chapter 1 the first one on the very first epic level and need severe help.
Could we make epic bosses easier.That would be nice.