Goblin Solitaire Releases July 10

Over the past year, many people have asked what I was working on after releasing Goblin and Coins II: The Lost Recipes. The honest answer is: a little bit of everything.

While I was relatively quiet publicly, I spent a lot of time after work experimenting with different game ideas, prototypes, and small projects. Some of them were abandoned quickly. Some of them turned out to be too ambitious for a solo developer. A few were promising, but never quite came together.

Eventually, one of those small prototypes kept pulling me back: a cozy fantasy-themed solitaire game.

Once my workload outside game development became lighter, I decided to fully commit to finishing it. Over the last few weeks, I spent long days polishing features, fixing bugs, improving the user experience, creating content, preparing the Steam page, and making sure the game was ready for release.

The result is Goblin Solitaire, a classic Klondike solitaire game wrapped in a charming goblin-themed fantasy world.

 

What is Goblin Solitaire?

Goblin Solitaire is built around the classic Klondike solitaire rules that many players already know and love.

The goal wasn't to reinvent solitaire, but to create a relaxing and polished version of it with a cozy fantasy atmosphere and modern quality-of-life features.

The game includes:

• Classic Klondike Solitaire gameplay

• Draw One and Draw Three modes

• Multiple difficulty options

• Achievements

• Detailed statistics tracking

• Win streak tracking

• Card and background customization

• Save and continue functionality

• Auto-complete for solved games

• Relaxing fantasy-inspired music

Why Solitaire?

After working on larger projects, I wanted to create something with a much smaller scope that I could finish, polish, and release without spending years in development.

Solitaire felt like a perfect fit.

It allowed me to focus on creating a comfortable experience, refining small details, improving usability, and building something complete from start to finish.

About the Art

As a solo developer, I simply do not have the budget to hire a full-time artist for every project.

For Goblin Solitaire, I used AI-assisted tools to help create many of the fantasy background illustrations while focusing my development time on gameplay systems, features, testing, polish, localization, achievements, and overall presentation.

I know opinions on AI-generated artwork vary, but it allowed me to create the fantasy atmosphere I envisioned while keeping the project within the limits of what a solo developer can realistically accomplish.

The Goblins Continue

A few people have asked why everything I make seems to involve goblins.

At this point, I honestly think they've become my unofficial mascot.

Goblin and Coins II: The Lost Recipes featured goblins. Goblin Solitaire features goblins. Somehow every project eventually ends up with goblins sneaking into it.

I've stopped fighting it.

Release Information

Goblin Solitaire launches on July 10 on Steam.

Steam Store Page:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4854700/Goblin_Solitaire/ 

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oMmPq-fPVk 

Press Kit:
https://www.indiedb.com/games/goblin-solitaire/presskit 

Thank you to everyone who provided feedback, tested early builds, reported bugs, commented on screenshots, watched the trailer, and supported my projects over the years.

I hope you'll enjoy spending some time in this small goblin world.

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Goblin and Coins II: The Lost Recipes announced for Q1 2024

 Standalone expansion to Goblin and Coins II should arrive on Steam in Q1 2024. The game is in development for a while and will bring 25 handcrafted levels of pure platforming, but will also bridge the gap in difficulty between Goblin and Coins and Goblin and Coins II by providing the player with unlimited continues. Even better, double-jump will be unlocked from the very beginning of the game.

 For those who want to be the first to find out latest news and updates, there's a steam page available to wishlist and follow, and thus support the project in gaining visibility. If you have additional questions you can join the discord community and ask directly.

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Where are the lost recipes?

 A question on everyone's mind after finishing Goblin and Coins II. Well, here they come (TBA)!

• 5 areas with 25 levels total 
• familiar and new enemies and traps 
• unlimited continues for a casual experience 
• new recipes to collect 
• TBA 

 (follow the dev page or discord to be the first to know, store page coming later)

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World map

Before we see the world map (well, part of it) as it will appear in Goblin and Coins 2, let's first talk quickly of the "level end" screen. One of the most criticized things in the first game was that there were no level end screen with a feedback on how well a player did. My idea was to avoid cutting the flow of the game and to focus on the levels, story panels, the experience... Making the coins, time and all of the other "gamey" things sort of unimportant in the process.

But most experienced gamers hated it, couldn't cope with not knowing if they did well or not. So, one of the most wanted features for GnC2:

Now you will know that you have indeed finished a level in a video game, what your time was, how many coins you've collected... It will also calculate and auto-save your level score, and some other things. Mostly because we need to show them later in the map screen. Oh yes, the map!

Here it is! On the left side you can see a selected level's name, relative size, if you've finished it already, how many coins you've potentially missed to collect, and what was your best time. On the right side of the screen you'll see the visual representation of the world map, with a pointer in the shape of goblin's head, and levels represented by... kidney beans, of course.

All you see should be considered work in progress and not the final look of the game. 

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Goblin and Coins II screenshots and trailer

Goblin and Coins II store page is finally up and you can check it out, follow, wishlist... Any comments are welcome, of course. If you're a member of the press, and are seeking screenshots without watermarks or a teaser trailer, you can find all of it right here. If you want me to include a link to your news article in my press section, feel free to send me an email.

YoutubeTrailer

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First ever view of the GnC2 (work in progress) graphics

First ever publicly shown GIF of work-in-progress Goblin and Coins 2 level... This is cropped, not the entire camera view.

Stay tuned!

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Introducing plans for Goblin and Coins 2

It's been more than a year and a half since the release of Goblin and Coins and I'm really happy with how it turned out. It was a great fun making it and only now I'm getting to fully appreciate the experience. It started as a practice and grew up... mostly thanks to support from great people who tried it and liked it and encouraged me to continue... but it was also very hard to finish it and not go crazy from the pressure. At some point I knew I have to release it or it will never be done... and just save improvements for the next game... so I did.

And it wasn't perfect, but I think people liked it enough to warrant a better, improved game to follow. My initial idea was to rest and then make something else. So I started prototyping 2-3 new games, worked on some smaller and bigger ideas... but eventually came back to Goblin. It's just... so much fun working on it.

Anyway, what is the plan:

• Higher resolution, better graphics
• Basically the same mechanics but with improvements (like double jump, slopes, upgrading...)
• Everything is more animated and alive, incl. backgrounds and static objects
• Semi-open world (more on this later)
• Repeatable levels that show you what you've already picked up
• Mini-games that have to be unlocked (incl. simple puzzles)
• More things to collect besides coins and recipes
• Even weirder enemies and story line
• Larger levels with potential "continue spots" instead of previous "respawn" mechanics
• Built in multi language support (GnC had it added later awkwardly)
• Main menu and settings menu remember where you were before leaving/returning (people really want this a lot)
• Improved key rebinding feature
• Prettier menus 😋
• DX11 required instead of DX9

What's done so far and working (alpha v0.3, October 2017 - March 2018):

• Functional menus (main, settings, credits), working on finishing graphics and animations for UI
• Functional in-game multi language support
• Basic mechanics including slopes and double jump
• Basic enemy script and sprites/animations for one enemy in 2 variants
• Bunch of writing, diagrams, algorithms and other things that will be useful later
• Improved Goblin sprites
• Popup menus (quit/pause/tutorial and so on)
• gamepad support (x-input and d-input)

When to expect it?
Not before 2019

The idea is to keep the same spirit of the game, so all the improvements don't... destroy it from within. We'll see if I make it. Wish me luck.

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