Tag «Mops&Mobs»

More dev logs from Mops & Mobs!

Apologies for not posting here more often - we really should get back to that. The truth is that we do not get much feedback here, so most of our game updates are currently posted on Discord, where we reach our small community directly, on the Steam forum and on IndieDB. But yeah, Discord, Steam and IndieDB are owned by other people, and this blog is actually ours. And it's also very long-lived now, which is pretty cool and it would be sad to let it die just because of convenience.

For a few months now we post weekly updates of Mops & Mobs. The basic idea was to let each team member (Jana, Patrick and myself) write a few sentences of what they achieved the last week and then collect that, add a screenshot, and post this small dev log on the game's Steam forum. As Jana created an IndieDB page for Mops & Mobs, it also made sense to use the articles section there for this (with the additional benefit of having a site to host the screenshots). And finally, just posting the updates on Discord was a no-brainer anyway. But of course feeding three different platforms is already a bit exhausting, and I'm not automating this in any way, so I didn't even think of this blog.

Still, a little update here is in order. This is what the latest entry of our dev log looks like (yes, it actually spans two weeks, because life got a bit into the way).

Dev log for the weeks from 26-05-25:

Friedrich:
So this is another two-week devlog entry, because we had some off-time for a few days (no laptops during the weekend :O), and in the second week I got pretty sick. Still, I did some stuff. I gray-boxed the fourth level and did some more quest plans for it. Right now I try to make these plans more concrete, which somehow is more difficult than ever, probably because my own standards raised during the process. Other than that I added small bits to the levels, wrote dialogs, added a quest, and fixed a few bugs. One big change to our project was switching the extension of our dialog files - don't laugh, this was much more involved than it sounds, and it was necessary because I got very annoyed how Godot would always reformat the JSON dialogs and pollute our commits this way … Finally, I made sure that the demo will soon have an additional localisation. I hope next week I'll be back on track.

Jana:
In preparation of gamescom I sent out some material for our group exhibition, followed by the pitch deck for potential publishers. Fingers crossed we eventually draw attention to a cool supportive publishing team.
The other big task was planning: I'm working on the character arcs for two of our main monsters, Wyrmheimer the dragon and Odette the lich knight, while also creating a character with Friedrich (writing) and Johannes (art) who you'll meet in the later chapters. And who has quite the story AND look AND involvement – so agreeing on a look is quite the challenge.

Patrick:
The only thing I made (modelled and textured) the first week was a mysterious stele. You need it to get into … a special room. That's all I can say. I was a bit down that week so I was going to make some 3D stuff at the weekend. Do you like digging through walls? If yes, then I made the perfect thing for you in the second week … a super heavy drilling machine! It rumbles, it puffs, and it'll soon be blazing its way into the depths of the dungeon… known as Level 4. :D I've also started working on this particular level. Friedrich created some cool level block-out for me, which I now have to fill in with nice looking 3D models.

Let's see if I can cater our official blog with the weekly dev log too. Would be nice. Oh, and there's a second AND third video now, with the fourth one coming soon:


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That's a lot of Mops & Mobs to digest, I guess. If this is TL;DR for you, just be assured that we're still working on the game, that we're still motivated, and that we hope to finish it this year. Which might be a tad too optimistic.

New demo of Mops & Mobs dropped!

After a very long silence we finally released a new-ish demo of Mops & Mobs! While the story and level of the demo is largely the same as before, there's now the combat gameplay we already talked about. It's a non-demanding card game, and like everything it's still a WIP (and probably will be until release). We'd like to know what you think of it, so with this new demo we also added a new feedback form, but of course you can also write in the comments (here, itch or Steam).

Other added content includes:

  • saving and loading (only one slot for now)
  • several new settings, for changing the FOV, reducing movement animations, and more
  • improved decoration mode
  • improved dialog visuals
  • improved in-game map
  • optimized performance

We also replaced the art for Odette, one of the inhabitants of the dungeon - so currently she looks a bit different from the rest of the lot. This is because over time we will upgrade all the characters, which is a longer process, and we wanted to showcase it already.

As we started full production some time ago, there are actually much more internal updates. We're now in the process of building more levels and implementing the full story. And while the gameplay of Mops & Mobs is "complete" feature-wise, every area - combat, decoration mode, dialogues, UI, etc - is still being expanded and polished. There's always a lot to do!

Don't forget to wishlist to support the development and follow us on Mastodon, BlueSky and/or Discord!

A Maze Open Screens and festival baby

There's one festival that's an absolute no-brainer, a must-go-every-year event for us: the incredibly colourful, inspiring, and inventive A MAZE. Festival in Berlin. With its talks, a huge exhibition, and wonderful attendees, all set in the relaxing atmosphere of Silent Green — a former crematorium right next to a cemetery — it’s weird, but in a very Berlin way.

We were there to enjoy new games, meet friends and colleagues, and show Mops & Mobs around a bit. Like every year, there was a space to showcase games outside the official award competition: the Open Screens. For two hours, Friedrich presented our Dungeon Novel to curious festival-goers.

Our slot at the Open Screens was on Friday from 12pm to 2pm (together with a few other games). While there was almost always someone playing Mops & Mobs, the attendance was pretty low overall, especially compared to the Long Night of Computer Games from the weekend before. Of course the game wasn't to blame for this, there just was a lot of great looking competition to play all around us — and midday maybe isn't the best time for showcasing? We're not disappointed by the outcome, though, as we got valuable feedback once again. Big thanks go to Phillip Gong for organising the Open Screens!

By the way, the only person who actually played the demo till the end (quite a feat, considering there were no chairs) left quite quickly without saying a word… our guess is that they were satisfied.

A Baby At A MAZE. – What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

This year also brought a new twist for us: we attended A MAZE. with our child. That alone was a whole new experience. Would it work out? Would it even be possible to enjoy the festival while caring for a baby?

In the end — no, it wasn't the same. I missed just forgetting time and space to submerge myself into the exhibited games and talks. I didn't watch any talk, but played more games than I expected. We took turns with childcare and split up, so we both could enjoy the festival. We even brought her to the exhibition - but that didn't work out for very long.

But after nearly a year with her, if we learned anything, it's this: be patient and let go of expectations. It was exhausting at times, but also fun and meaningful to bring her along. Indie games have always been something personal for us — it would be strange to exclude something so beautiful and personal when work and private life are so intertwined anyway.

So, yes, it works and we didn't regret it. (Okay, maybe the weather. That was annoying. Our plan to chill with her on the meadow in the festival area fell through for most parts.)

Looking forward to how next year will be.


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The Long Night of finding out your core gameplay

(Photo 3 by Friedrich Lüder, Photo 4 by René Meyer)

Right now we are in a crucial phase of development: all core features have been programmed, implemented and can be tested as part of our demo. But as we recently started production phase, it's up to us how often players will talk to characters, fight with cards, decorate the dungeon, or do tasks as part of quests inside the dungeon.

If you would ask us, dialogue is the heart of our game. It's all about meeting quirky monsters and getting to know them better. And the card game? We added that to make everything more (inter)active for players, to provide some kind of "conflict solving". Plus, it's inspired by our own Mondar's Dungeon, which is our most played and best rated free game on itch. So this new addition to Mops & Mobs wasn't well tested, but we liked it enough. Still, we knew it might be at odds with the expectations of players that are into hardcore deck builders like Magic or Hearthstone.

Therefore, we attended the Lange Nacht der Computerspiele (Long Night of video games), a huge event on many floors featuring indie games, board games, card games, tabletop, Pen & Paper, retro games as well as hardware.

We wanted to find out: are five card battles in the demo too much?

Well. Turns out - quite the opposite! Some even asked why they had to light torches or clean the table before they could get back to playing MORE card battles. Now we have to find out if that was genuine excitement? Or just a side-effect of our booth's proximity to the trading card room where they hosted games like Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon?

Come to our Discord if you want to answer that question and play-test the latest demo - not yet on Itch or Steam!

And of course: a big thank you to the wonderful team of the Lange Nacht! It was a wonderful possibility and great fun for us!

➤