Renegade Game Studios
CREATOR
6 days ago
Project Update: Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable Producer & Developer Update
Happy Friday, Crawlers!
It’s time to turn our attention to Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable!
We know it’s been a little while since our last dedicated Unstoppable update, and we’re excited to have lots of good news to share. Helping share that news today will be special guest Dan Bojanowski, Sr. Producer for Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable!
We’re also pulling back the curtain on how the developers brought the world, characters, and wonderfully ridiculous details of Dungeon Crawler Carl to life in the game.
Plus, we’ve got a some photos of Crawlers trying out the game at Gen Con!
It’s time to turn our attention to Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable!
We know it’s been a little while since our last dedicated Unstoppable update, and we’re excited to have lots of good news to share. Helping share that news today will be special guest Dan Bojanowski, Sr. Producer for Dungeon Crawler Carl: Unstoppable!
We’re also pulling back the curtain on how the developers brought the world, characters, and wonderfully ridiculous details of Dungeon Crawler Carl to life in the game.
Plus, we’ve got a some photos of Crawlers trying out the game at Gen Con!
Before we jump in, mini-reminder that if you backed for any of the CarlRPG PDFs, the Starter Set and Core Rulebook, your survey needs to be done by Sunday August 23rd at 11:59 PM PT. We also recommend making your Renegade Webstore Account ahead of time for ease of redemption.
Check out our last update [linked here] to get more info on the PDF distribution process.
On to Unstoppable!
Hey Backers! Dan Bojanowski here, the Sr. Producer on the Dungeon Crawler Carl Unstoppable game line.
We wanted to give you an update on your pledges. There is really only good news to share! At this point, everything for the launch is in full production. We've reviewed and approved everything. I've gotten the "first off line" sample and have been busy playing... er... I mean testing it in order to make sure it's good enough for your table.
I'm happy to report that it's great! I've been enjoying playing through Arcade Mode, and now Campaign mode with my son. We've narrowly beaten floors 1-3 on the easiest difficulty and are excited to get to the Iron Tangle soon. During the production process, the only hiccup that we ran into was the box. Due to the stretch goal you unlocked for the dual layer player boards, we had to make the box deeper to accommodate. That's all corrected now and it's full speed ahead!
All that's left now is to get them all made (in process currently) and then shipped to you! We're already working on the next expansion, but that's a ways away and you'll have plenty of time to explore this first wave of Unstoppable content!
From The Developers:
Hey, we’re the Development team on Dungeon Crawler Carl Unstoppable.
The developers work with the designer (John D. Clair) to bring the game from prototype to product!
Today, we wanted to show a bit of the behind the scenes process in bringing Dungeon Crawler Carl to life as a card game. We’re all huge fans of the books (many members of the team are on their 4th or 5th re-reads) and really tried to push that love and care for the series into the mechanical and creative designs of the game. Plus, we have some amazing art previews for you!
For our first spotlights, we wanted to highlight some of our favorite ways the card game captures the spirit of DCC:
What existing part of Dungeon Crawler Carl are you most excited about that made it into Unstoppable?
Bryan “Duckie” Lue - Developer
If the original Unstoppable has a #1 fan, it would be me. I would credit Unstoppable as how I got involved in the board game industry, and it has literally changed my life. I’ve also followed Dungeon Crawler Carl ever since the first book on Royal Road. So when I was presented the opportunity to work on this game, it felt like a dream come true. It was personally important to me that we do both the Unstoppable series and the world Dungeon Crawler Carl justice, and we hope that’ll be felt through the gameplay.
While we had a two person co-op mode in original Unstoppable, it was less of the main focus. However, we knew that fans of Dungeon Crawler Carl would want to play as Donut and Carl as a team, so we wanted to improve the co-op experience without sacrificing what makes Unstoppable an excellent solo game.
One of the ways we decided to push the boundaries on co-op was by introducing cards that give bonuses to each player. Although it may seem like a small change, being able to assist your fellow crawler by giving them health, Gold, or Mana makes it feel like you're really working together. Sometimes, with a card like Quest Complete, you are faced with a choice: Do you take a bigger prize for yourself and be selfish, or split the prize and help the team out more overall? This was a sneaky way for us to balance for both solo and co-op, while making it feel interesting in both modes.
Donut and Carl are obviously central to the series, so we really thought hard about how each of them interacted with each other, and their canonical race/class. For example, if you play as Donut and pick the Cat race (the objectively correct choice), you’ll notice that you’ll need to build Constitution in order to survive, just like in the books. Carl, being the bodyguard, will tend to want to tank Retaliate damage from threats to protect Donut, since he can stay at high health easily with cards like Protective Shell.
We put a lot of love into this game for the fans and we really hope it shows when it gets to the table.
Dan Bojanowski - Senior Producer
I was excited to contribute to the cover illustration of the game box. I’m certainly not an artist – that was done by the talented Ciao Cacau – but I wrote the art description that led to this beautiful piece.
A couple major inspirations for the direction it took.
#1 was the original Unstoppable box cover. It was a hero-focused collage of everything in the box. I wanted to create a similar vibe, since the gameplay is so related.
#2 inspiration were the brilliant movie posters of Drew Struzan. From Star Wars, to Indiana Jones, to Back to the Future, these were all memorable and epic.
The content in this core box of Unstoppable covers Floors 1-3, so the cover should represent only elements from those floors. We obviously needed to have Carl & Donut be our heroes. Add in some support characters like Rat-kin Mordecai and baby Mongo, and some early mobs like Goblin Bombards, Brindle Grubs, and Street Urchins, and it’s looking pretty sweet. For the final element, we needed a big bad, and the Ball of Swine seemed like a perfect representation of the awesomeness of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Epic, grotesque, absurd, dangerous and amazing! Top it off with some pew pew lasers from Donut’s Magic Missiles. Yeah! I’m super happy with how it turned out and hope that fans love having it on their shelves!
John Brieger - Lead Developer
One thing I’ve always loved in DCC is how the crawl feeds into the wider world. The time on talk shows, dungeon broadcasts, CrawlCon, etc give us snippets that put the exploitation of the crawlers into a bigger context.
We wanted to bring a little bit of the feeling that The Crawl is entertainment for the rest of the Syndicate into your deckbuilding options. One way you can become an unstoppable crawler is to play the public relations game and become a fan favorite. This is a little more subtle than a stat-focused build: not something you need to pay attention to every game, but when it matters, it matters.
We wanted to bring a little bit of the feeling that The Crawl is entertainment for the rest of the Syndicate into your deckbuilding options. One way you can become an unstoppable crawler is to play the public relations game and become a fan favorite. This is a little more subtle than a stat-focused build: not something you need to pay attention to every game, but when it matters, it matters.
So throughout Dungeon Crawler Carl Unstoppable, you’ll see cards with the tag “Show”, which is a new small subtheme you can work into your build. Allies like Lexis and Odette will give you bonuses for having them host shows for you, but most Show cards will work fine on their own. Plus, Hyperbolic Snick has what I think is my single favorite piece of art in this whole game.
Unstoppable Dev Wrap-Up
Thanks for joining us at a peek inside the process. There are so many little details packed into the design of Dungeon Crawler Carl Unstoppable and its expansion. We hope you’ll be discovering many easter eggs as you play through the game!
P-P-P-Poll!
Our Top Three Sidequests Are Here!
Surprise! Or not a surprise if you read my clarification post from earlier this week🤣, all three of these sidequests will be coming to life at some point in the future.
But there's two more polls, isn't there?
We wanted to give you guys one last opportunity toscrew over your players have some say in what comes with your Sidequest.
These three have been pretty close in votes this whole time so we're going to be pitting them head-to-head for the next week. Next week's final poll will give you three options for a new aspect to premiere in the final winning sidequest. Which aspect? Well, either a new spell, a new race, or a new class.
So reread these descriptions, choose your sidequest, and think about what you might want to pull out of your inventory.
If You Give A Mouse A Cookie
Surprise! Or not a surprise if you read my clarification post from earlier this week🤣, all three of these sidequests will be coming to life at some point in the future.
But there's two more polls, isn't there?
We wanted to give you guys one last opportunity to
These three have been pretty close in votes this whole time so we're going to be pitting them head-to-head for the next week. Next week's final poll will give you three options for a new aspect to premiere in the final winning sidequest. Which aspect? Well, either a new spell, a new race, or a new class.
So reread these descriptions, choose your sidequest, and think about what you might want to pull out of your inventory.
If You Give A Mouse A Cookie
For some unknown reason, this lazy fuck NPC healer, Doc Ought, can’t get across town on his own to deliver a package of urgently needed medicine to The Green Cross, the local clinic for tragically dying orphans.
Meanwhile, Annice, the woman running The Green Cross, can’t distribute this vital medicine until someone helps her get a package of time-sensitive registration papers to Mayor Blindel for her signature. And well, if Mayor Blindel needs a hand redoing the rose garden before she could possibly sign the clinic’s papers…
Gosh… It’s hard work being the only functional person around, isn’t it?
Railed
The train on the Phlox rail line is out of control and will crash unless someone (you) can slow it down and bring it under control. The conductor, Zha, is an old dwarf struggling towards the engine car to talk with the engineer. He needs help making it through the mobs and the dangerous, unstable rail cars. If he can be safely guided to the engineering car, maybe the juiced-up mantaur can be reasoned with before the train derails and kills you all.
The Missing Boa
The Missing Boa
A prized possession, a neon green feather boa, has gone missing from Desperado club stripper Candybeak’s locker. Someone stole it from right under her nose, and she wants it back. After all, that’s her lucky charm for her scandalous Chicken Dance routine. A crawler with sticky fingers, a fellow dancer named Ohlala, and a drunken NPC named Error were all seen with the boa, but only one could have stolen it. Get it back to earn some free drinks.
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• about 16 hours left
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