- Neongarten released! - 22 April 2025
Hello! Today, I'm releasing my latest creation onto Steam! Neongarten is a roguelike "city block" builder where buildings are piled on top of each other in complete disregard or safety, decency, or regard for anything but profit. But there is profit to be made! Buildings will provide bonuses to certain other types of neighboring buildings, and you can get filthy rich if you learn to stack your city the right way. Inspired by ISLANDERS and Luck Be a Landlord, Neongarten has been a ton of fun to make - I loved playing around in Luck Be a Landlord's design space and seeing how far I could push it. I've partnered with Goblinz Studios to publish the game, and they were able to help make the game really shine. (They helped with an art pass from an earlier prototype, and man does the game look gorgeous now.) If you enjoyed my work on Moondrop and Within a Dead City, take a look at Neongarten!…
- Version 1.4 released - Dwarves, Nobles, and Graveyards - 8 February 2024
The new content update is out! It was a lot of fun diving back into the code and working with the little heroes again. So much fun, in fact, that I'm happy to announce I'll be making a sorta sequel to the game! I say sorta sequel, because the game will be doing a little genre switch. I wanted to make the games last longer (much longer), increase the activities that the heroes can do (especially during peacetime), and dynamically craft epic story arcs for heroes to take part in. After a lot of thought, I think this new game resembles a colony sim more than an RTS. The autonomous heroes greedily responding to bounties won't change, haha. Enough about the future - back to the present! Here's what you can look forward to in the new version. -- New Hero: The Dwarf. High HP and high attack values, but slow and low defense. (Think more berserker dwarf rather than armored tin-can dwarf.) Dwarve…
- New content in the works!! - 15 December 2023
Hello all, It's been a few months since I've put an update out for Within a Dead City. I've been hard at work on a new game called Neongarten, a vertical cyberpunk city builder. You can check that out at https://joshuagalecki.itch.io/neongarten. But, now that I've belted that out, I'm happy to get back to Within a Dead City and add some new experiences to the game. Expect something new to pop out after the holiday rush is over :) I've got a couple of cool ideas for what to add to the game - feel free add any suggestions in the comments. I always like hearing what the community comes up with.
- Minor Patch v 1.3.4 - 30 September 2023
This patch fixes a few bugs from the latest 1.3 version and adds a nice new feature for Wizards. - If a wizard would be killed by a monster and they have a Teleport spell ready, they will instead teleport back to the Guild Hall with 1 HP. - Support missions now end if the supported hero is resting at home. - Fixed a bug where legendary weapons only gave half the bonus they were supposed to. - Fixed a typo with the Thief's starting weapon. - Merchants now gain 1 Exp. each turn they spend improving or repairing a building.
- Version 1.3 Released! - 28 September 2023
Version 1.3 has been released! This update focuses on the titular Dead City and fleshes out the exploration of it. It also adds two new heroes, four new spells, and a whole slew of Quality-of-Life improvements and bug fixes - many of these suggested by the community. Thanks, community! You're the best. The update introduces a new tier of Ruined Tower for heroes to explore. The Ruined Library contains loot that can upgrade a hero or a guild's capabilities significantly and even alter late-game strategies. There are six different loot drops that can occur when a Ruined Library is explored. - The guild gains a random Lvl 8 hero. This hero does not take up any 'slots' at the guild. - The hero exploring the library gains Legendary Gear. These add +10 / +10 to attack and defense, compared with +6 / +6 from gold gear. - The hero exploring the library gains a permanent speed boost - All future…
- Campaign Mode Arrives - 3 September 2023
The city is overrun by cultists, taking over and desecrating ancient temples! Drive them out before they complete the summoning ritual! This version 1.2 update adds a new Campaign mode to Within a Dead City. Fight for supremacy against the goblins and drive them from their temples. At the end of the campaign, call forth an army of your strongest heroes and drive off the powerful goblin army and their dead god. The campaign takes place on a 4x4 grid. The player has 8 turns to claim as much territory as possible and destroy the three ancient temples occupied by the goblin cult. Along the way, you can pick up powerful bonuses from special grid tiles that give bonus heroes and powerups. With each campaign mission you play, the top two highest-level heroes will be welcomed into your Hall of Champions. Once the campaign reaches it end, all of these champions will join forces in a climatic fin…
- Update notes: 1.1.3 - 23 August 2023
Small update this morning: - In addition a pleasant "click" sound, the Spawn Goblin Base button now spawns a goblin base. - Fixed a bug where the Spawn menu would remain visible after clicking on an enemy or lair.
- Goblin Cult invades! Also, now playable in Japanese! - 21 August 2023
Hello all! I'm pleased to announce the first major update to Within a Dead City is ready to roll out! This update introduces the goblin cult, a faction of fanatical monsters that plays by the same rules as your own heroes. When playing a game against them, you'll need to destroy their base before they destroy yours. I'm also excited that Within a Dead City can now be played in Japanese! I consider this update part 1 of 2 goblin updates. The second part will introduce a new Campaign mode, forcing the guild to claim sections of the Dead City against the goblin cult. At the end of the campaign, the mightiest heroes from the different campaign missions will join forces for a climatic battle against the goblin army - and perhaps even Nidhogg himself. I'm doing this update as two parts chiefly so that 1) people don't assume I've finished or abandoned the game and 2) I can get feedback on bala…
- Update notes 1.0.5 (tiny update) - 11 August 2023
This update is even tinier than the last! During the 1.0.4 update, I messed up a translation file and the game froze when Simplified Chinese was the selected language. Woof. This update simply corrects this mistake. I think part of the reason this happened is the rapid pace of releases. I've been doing one small update nightly, and I think that bugs like this are slipping through because of it. I'm going to slow down the update schedule to be weekly instead. This should allow more time for testing and QA.
- Update notes 1.0.4 - 10 August 2023
This update mostly has bug fixes and some some quality of life upgrades. - Fixed a bug where monster sprites would stay frozen in place after a monster was defeated - Fixed a bug where a melee hero resting at home would not move to attack a ranged monster sniping the hero - Fixed a bug where hotkeys wouldn't work when the mouse was hovering over the info sidebar - Added a Remove Bounty button. Sorry, no refunds haha - Added a teaser option for the work-in-progress Invasion mode on the New Game screen - Fixed a bug where the hotkey icons and spell buttons would be removed if nothing was selected or a selected unit or building dies - Fixed a bug where merchants prioritized tax collection waaaay to much over repair and improvement missions - Fixed a bug where a Survival mode victory displayed a Conquest mode description Work continues! Keep that awesome feedback coming :D
- Dev update - more content coming! - 8 August 2023
Hello all, First, a big thanks to everyone who bought the game. I hope you have as much fun playing it as I've had making it. The first round of player reviews are in, and... woof. I'm looking at 4 positive and 5 negative reviews right now. No bueno. The silver lining is that most of the negative reviews aren't saying that it's a bad game. Instead, they're saying that there's not enough of the game. "The game doesn't have enough content" is the common thread running through those. Good news: I can make more content, haha. I'm gonna do a two-week sprint of coding and playtesting in order to improve the game before the Steam Strategy Fest begins on August 28th. The major thing I plan to add in is an additional game mode where you fight off and invading goblin cult. (Of course, they'll be worshiping Nidhogg the World Eater.) Unlike other monster types, these goblins will be following the s…
- Within a Dead City released! - 7 August 2023
Within a Dead City is finally out and released! Woooooooo! Thanks to everyone for their support and feedback during development. People responded enthusiastically to the initial itch.io version and the Steam Next Fest demo. There's been a lot of work that's gone into the game since the Next Fest, and I tried to focus on making the game's strengths even stronger. Here's the major changes since the demo was released: - Two new hero classes - the bard and the cleric. The bard can cause two monsters to fight each other (a shoutout to my days playing Ultima Online) and the cleric heals and buffs other heroes. - Both of these new heroes have a "Support" mission where they follow another hero around and help deal with any monsters or nearby lairs. - The game no longer starts with a ranger already trained. The player must choose which hero they train first. This should add a bit more strategy t…
- Dev Livestream - 17 June 2023
Within a Dead City is a tiny 4X game with autonomous heroes. I'll have a warm mug of black tea and an hour to try to get through games with all three enemy types on the hardest difficulty setting!
- Dev Livestream - 17 June 2023
观看游戏开发者在最高难度级别下玩他的游戏。 ゲーム開発者が彼のゲームを最も困難な難易度でプレイするのを見る。 I'll be grabbing a cup or two of strong coffee and playing Within a Dead City for the Next Fest! I'll be playing on the hardest Challenging difficulty level - no guarantees that I'll always win, haha.
- Check out Million Monster Militia - another great Tiny Mass game! - 16 June 2023
Hello all! Within a Dead City was developed as part of Tiny Mass Games, an extremely cool game dev collective dedicated to making polished games in a shorter timeline. Some of my friends in TMG have released Million Monster Militia, a strategy roguelite similar to Luck Be a Landlord. It's a great game, and I've lost evenings trying to figure out the best synergies and combos for a given run. If you're a fan of strategy games (and you probably are, if you're reading this!), then you owe it to yourself to check out the demo. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2358770/Million_Monster_Militia/ (edited)
- Within a Dead City demo released! - 9 June 2023
I am quite pleased to announce that the demo for Within a Dead City is now available on Steam! I'm hard at work on improvements and new features for the game, but I want to start getting feedback on the game. Soon to come - additional languages! jajajaja
