Good morning Defenders!

We’re almost there! Steam Early Access (check it out here) is just a few hours away, and on behalf of everyone at Chromatic Games, THANK YOU. To our players new and old, wider community, backers, and advocates, you have paved the way for us to continue to breathe life into this franchise, and Dungeon Defenders is truly stronger than ever!

I wanted to take a quick moment to drop a few fun never before seen pieces of content, as well as a message about what you should expect not only today, but in the coming months. If you’re new or haven’t already checked out the DDA Early Access Roadmap here, please be sure to do so.

As many of you know, we started on Awakened a little under a year ago. Making a game like Dungeon Defenders is not easy. For those who don’t know what goes into making a systems heavy game like ours, here are some numbers to give you better context as to how much we’ve gotten done and what is reflected in the Early Access experience you’ll be playing today and for the next few months...

Characters: Over 40 (heroes, enemies, NPCs, and Pets)

Maps: ~12 tile sets over 15 maps

Unique weapons: Over 80, with over 80,000 total color combinations possible (be sure to grind for those rare white and gold weapons!)

Unique armor pieces and accessories: 50

Animations per hero: Over 50 each

Animations per enemy: On average about 10

Hand drawn / illustrated icons: Over 200

100’s of concept art pieces / illustrations

Music tracks: Over 20

UI Scenes and Widgets: Over 250

Over 200 design documents

Dozens of game features and systems, totalling over 90,832 lines of code and counting

All with under 30 developers, in a newly formed studio, in less than a year. The amount of work and love put into this has been nothing less than incredible! And what better to celebrate this achievement with our community than with Early Access launching in a few hours? Oh! I know what’s better! How about a teaser? Click here to see what’s coming later to DD:A!

We’ve already heard tons of feedback from our beta in November and have been working towards addressing the biggest concerns from our fans. If you missed this blog, give it a read for more information on our post beta survey. Much of that feedback will be represented in today’s build, and much will be rolled out in the coming months.

Until then, we ask you to bear with us while we iron out some kinks. More specifically, but not exclusively, we’re currently working to improve upon these areas over the coming weeks and months, leading all the way up to our 1.0 launch:

Performance optimizations

4P split screen support

More polished gamepad controls

Continuous UI aesthetic transformation & polish

Hero progression updates

Polishing up some epic boss battles

Rolling out the higher difficulties

Implementing our story elements via beautiful new in game cinematics

Finishing up the Kickstarter and Pre-order rewards for 1.0

Anti Hacking measures

The list goes on...

Anyhoo, the time is NOW for hype! We need your help to spread the word today! Grab your friends, and join us online at 1PM ET for the Early Access launch of Dungeon Defenders: Awakened!

Sincerely,

Chromatic Games