Legend of Etad Chapter One: The Garden of Etad Y'Alp - available for Playdate now on itch.io

Yay! Release day is here! I'm nervous and excited to finally get Etad out there after five months of working on the game. However, this is just the beginning! Read on to find out what's in the game, and what comes next...

What is Legend of Etad?
Etad is a dungeon crawler inspired by classic such as Dungeon Master and Eye of the Beholder - except, it's somewhat lighter than those games. Designed from the ground-up specifically for Playdate, I wanted to create a crawler that is suited for short pick-up-n-play sessions that the pocket-sized Playdate is perfect for.

The biggest difference from those classics is that you're in control of a solo crawler rather than a party of four, and I hide all the pesky stats away so you're not encumbered with tiny text or playing inventory tetris. Etad's an arcadey game very much played by feel, with light combat and puzzles that shouldn't be too taxing.

What do I get for my six bucks?
Aside from my eternal gratitude? After the initial outdoor intro/tutorial area, Chapter One contains three hand-crafted dungeons joined by a large outdoor "hub" area. My aim for Etad is to make each dungeon unique, with new tilesets, enemies, puzzles and items. I always want there to be something new behind a load screen.

It takes me 30 mins (pretty much exactly) to speedrun Chapter One, so I would expect your first playthrough to last anywhere from 90mins to three hours. I'm aiming for a similar length for all three chapters.

Chapter One is kind of a "soft" launch - a bit early access, so expect bugs! That aside, you are getting a complete game from start to end credits roll. I'll be updating the game with bugfixes and quality-of-life improvements going forward.

So what's next?
I'll be taking at least a week off of gamedev to free up my spare time to play Return to Monkey Island and a bunch of other games that have come out recently! After that I'll be taking care of any bugs and addressing feedback (please be nice!), implementing what I can in patches.

I've already fleshed out Chapter Two and know how the game will flow, with some puzzles already planned and at least three new game mechanics. I'll be ramping up development in October and November, with a release tentatively in December.

Chapter Two (and Three) will release as regular updates to the main game, and your save will carry over - you'll simply get the next chapter rather than a credits scroll when you go through the final door(s)!

I hope you enjoy Etad! Hit me up in comments here or on the game page, on the Playdate Squad discord, Twitter, or Reddit (@garethiw on all three).