How’s it going? Phil here. Beatdown Dungeon launched roughly three months ago and got quite the positive reception. Can’t thank all of you enough for that. When I wrote the game’s postmortem, I mentioned, that I was still unsure, where to go after finishing work on my game. Well, I’ve pretty much come to a conclusion:

Time for a sequel!

There are many aspects of Beatdown Dungeon, that I want to improve and feel like a simple update won’t fix. This includes dungeon designs, battle mechanics, animation quality and a better story. Those who follow me on Twitter might have already seen me updating Nitro’s sprites to a significant degree – this is why.

The project currently runs under the working title “Beatdown Dungeon: Demon Day” and is a direct sequel, with the heroes from the first game now being stuck in the underworld after defeating Queen and trying to find a way back home. The first game’s art direction was already inspired by street art and had a (somewhat goofy) punk vibe to it. This is the natural progression, with the game taking place in the otherworldly city of San Fiasco and dungeons consisting of back alleys, parks, office buildings and other urban settings.

On the gameplay side of things, I’m in the middle of reworking the combat quite a bit: KOF-style running replaces the clunky forward-step, air-dashes are now completely horizontal instead of at an angle and most characters will gain longer-reaching medium and heavy normals. I’m even experimenting with more mid-air movement, like directional influence or triangle jumps, but these aren’t set in stone yet. Outside of battle, dungeons will now feature fixed designs, instead of being random. This might sound like a step back, but most players tried to beat each dungeon in one run anyway, so the replayability offered by RNG didn’t really shine. Perhaps I’ll keep random dungeons as optional areas – we’ll see. The main menu will also be replaced by a small hub area, to make the world a bit more immersive.

Anyway, thanks again to all that played the first game. I hope you’re looking forward to what comes next!

If you want to follow the development more closely, just follow me on Twitter under @BeatdownDungeon.

Happy holidays, everyone!