Goblin and Coins II: The Lost Recipes coming in late August 2024

The stand-alone expansion to Goblin and Coins II, "The Lost Recipes", should be expected in the last week of August. Most of the levels are done, the last ones are being finished and tested. Some finishing touches are needed, but you can expect more running, jumping, double-jumping and collecting coins to arrive to Steam in about a month. It's not a completely new game, a lot of known enemies and traps return, but it should be far less difficult than the original game that scared a lot of players away with the fake "game-over" screen looming over their heads. 

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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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End of the year update

The last time I've wrote in August, mentioning some new levels. Well, it's been a few months since, this year is slowly coming to an end, there's a few more levels in the latest alpha2 build being tested right now, and I'm working on the next one as we speak. So, what's new?

Before the Cpt. Greenbeard boss fight and the shipwreck level, there's a run through the Piratopia. It's a short but hectic level.



After the shipwreck, we continue on into the Dwarven territory, and the first level there is industrial zone where dwarven forges and saws are, where stone is cut and... hammers are thrown. Unlike GnC1, this time hammer-throwing enemies hammers don't hone in into you, they just fly... toward a certain point. Also if a player is too low beneath their platform, they won't throw at all.



If you survive that, you actually get down under into the dwarven mines and halls, where even some unique Easter eggs can be found. Not gonna write any spoilers here, though.



This is the first underground area with real dwarves inside, as previous caves and mines were basically abandoned by them. There are constructs like flying security bot and similar remnants of previously technological civilization that is now trying to survive and live another day. After exiting this area, you'll end up on an ancient bridge that connects it to abandoned halls in the next mountain peak, where otherworldly things rule now and dwarves are no more... But they still hold the bridge, or at least part of it.



That's it for now. I've recently finished "Abandoned halls" level, which will introduce some new mechanics and will is an L sized underground maze. Following that, there's a third boss fight that is in testing phase right now...and that finishes the second third of the campaign map, thus making the latest build alpha3. 

Once I finish all the story/campaign levels it will transform into beta, which might happen during 2023 if everything goes well, and then it's "just" polishing graphics a bit, testing a lot, adding achievements and... releasing at some point. 

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First quarter of the map done... for now.

 I'm proud to say, with the implementation of the "Downhill" level and a "Cpt. Greenbeard" boss fight, the first quarter of the map/campaign is done. There's an into level, store, 5 regular levels, 1 boss fight and "the underground", so the game is finally shaping into something solid. The plan was never to fill all four quarters at release but only three - some 25 to 30 levels total - the last peace of the map was always meant for additional content some time later, like bonus missions, seasonal content and so on, maybe even an unrelated mini-story. To be decided later. 

Easy boss fight: Cpt. Greenbeard - Indie DB

So, at minimum, I have to make another 19 levels and 5 secret levels to finish the game, not counting further boss fights. In theory, if my day job doesn't get me too busy, I could finish by the next summer... or autumn. Otherwise, hard to say.

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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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