On this day, 10 years ago, I released Shattered Pixel Dungeon v0.1.0. This tiny initial release was my first serious attempt at gamedev and was distributed to maybe 50 people on the Pixel Dungeon subreddit.
Fast forward 10 years and Shattered is my full-time job, with roughly 5 million combined downloads and roughly 150 thousand combined sales over several platforms. Even after all these years, more new people are discovering Shattered now than ever before, and the updates I make are getting bigger and better.
Join me for a quick walk down memory lane, and for a preview of something very exciting that’s yet to come…
Wow, congratulations on 10 years! And on having the skills to make this your full time job, that’s impressive.
I generally like the new sprites, but I’d caution that more detail and shading does not always improve readability of small sprites. A good example I think is the kunai, while the new graphic is technically more detailed in terms of more colors used in the shading, I think it makes it harder to tell at a glance where the inside “edges” are supposed to be because it’s a smoother gradient now.
Pixel art requires a fair bit of stylization, and sometimes I think that means sacrificing detail to ensure readability.
Others have commented about the succubus sprite. I think it’s the… elbow pads? that really make it hard to tell what she’s supposed to be wearing. Fighter’s signature armor and duelist’s are both a little busy and hard to read as well.
Overall though, I’m loving the new graphics, and looking forward to what you have in store for us over the next stretch of years!