Thank You!

I have been thoroughly planning out what our next steps would be over these last few months as I have found myself becoming increasingly busy and super focused on building more marketable game development skills beyond Dragonica.

At the start of 2023 I was accepted into a paid trainee programmers scheme and now have an 18 month contract working with various game development studios, I'm approaching my first 6 months of that contract and have a better reflection on how much time I have available to spend on hobbies and side projects.

Dragonica Plus is and always has been, a very ambitious project, which was a consequence of the burning passion I have had for this game both as a player and as a developer since it released, I wanted to push the boundaries of player expectations and deliver the dream experience that I've always wanted to see and at the same time make it completely free.

I was naive to the concept of money before I started working and I have very quickly come to realise that time IS money, no matter how you approach it.

As a result of this, Dragonica Plus is being dissolved into "Dragonica Games", this will let me free up the domain fees that are not necessary, I have moved the dev blog onto a subdomain of Dragonica Games and we will no longer be operating under a separate name.

https://dragonica.plus will be operating until it expires and will direct players to this blog post, once the domain expires it will be free again so you may see a new server open with this domain in 2036 by Iostream.

If you would like to keep up with future dev logs and progress on new features and mechanics developed by my team you should join us at: http://join.dragonica.games

We will soon be launching a patreon where you can support our efforts :]

What does this mean for you?

I won't be shutting off my development server, it will remain open for myself, Azu and the rest of the team to keep innovating on Dragonica content and features for all Dragonica Games partners.

But we are no longer trying to deliver on our own player experience, we simply do not have the time or resources to execute such a vision, especially on our own, I know this will be a disappointment to many.

But there is still some good news! we will keep expanding our team, bringing in new developers and helping them on their journey into Dragonica Development, this will keep a healthy amount of innovation for the games future especially as many of us veteran Devs become increasingly more busy.

Private testing periods will happen from time to time and there may be a day where we are open to hosting a playable experience on a smaller scale but that is far into the future.

New Tutorial Preview

Before putting development on hold again, I had been working on a new / revamped tutorial for the game involving story around Drakos Tower, the idea was to have players play-through this custom section of Drakos and kill Paris as part of the tutorial, seeing elga become free. The plan following this was to have level 1-10 of the game be focused on fighting Elga as custom content (revamped for the purpose of this gameplay) and the game would start after Elga was defeated, the players are still inside Elgas heart chamber when he is sucked into the void. My intentions were to make Dragonica+ expand upon the story as a sequel rather than repeating the same old content that had been done already.

Where should you play now?

Fiso is branching away from Adept Dragon Saga and is launching his own server called Raid Dragonica, you will find me there working strictly as a designer bringing new content into the game (this is much more feasible with my limited time).

Fiso has been working tirelessly on improving the game and has done far more in terms of development than we have on Dragonica Plus so this is why I deemed this to be the best decision moving forward.

For those who don't know, Fiso & I started to work together on Dragonica around the same time-frame, Fiso became a GM for Lost Dragonica (Ver2) while I was trying to learn how to be a designer, inspired by his new position.

We first met by playing on Dragonica Lost (Ver1) together all those years ago!

When I first started working for AdeptGamer's Dragon Saga I invited Fiso to join us as the third? itteration of Lost was being shut-down, and since then he has worked extremely hard on improving the game.

Now we are going almost full-circle, and I'm very happy to be supporting Fiso in continuing his Dragonica journey.

You can learn more about Raid Dragonica in the discord server: https://discord.gg/jUpFYPVbk2

What about Dragonica Plus?

I have some exciting news to share with you all who were still hopeful about this project in particular, I have just began my very first steps to building a real game studio with my best friend here in Northern Ireland, it's going to be a long and slow road forward but this is going to be a huge focus of mine for the next few years as we intend to secure funding and publish to steam!

Why should this be of interest to you? Well I am developing a 3D Side Scrolling, Hack & Slash, RPG taking inspiration from games like Maple Story, Maple Story 2 and Dragonica!

The game will not be an MMORPG but will instead be co-operative, at least 4 players if not more and will be networked through the steam API.

If you want to see my vision for Dragonica Plus come to life under a brand new IP on a public and commercial level feel free to follow our Game Studio and Game twitter accounts and join our discord server!

Studio: https://twitter.com/Craftimals

Game: https://twitter.com/LootlingsGame

Lootlings Discord: http://join.lootlings.com

Our project is called Lootlings and will be focused on the best aspects of games like Dragonica that we all know and love (Dungeons, Farming Materials, Upgrading Gear) etc but will have many unique features and content added on top.

I hope you will follow us on this new journey, I'm founding this studio and project with my 3D/2D artist & friend Holly https://hollystrutt.xyz/!

We have been working together on various game-jam projects since October 2022.

We make a very good team :]!

Keep in mind that this is the very early begining of our journey so there's not much to see yet, but we would love to have you follow our progress!

Conclusion

We are eternally greatful for the support we have recieved from the community over the years both through Dragonica Plus and through Dragonica Games. While working with Fiso across various projects I have come to know a very loyal and entusiastic player-base that has started to feel almost like a second family. I hope to see many of you make your way to Raid Dragonica so we can continue on this journey together expanding the game far into the future :]

And for those of you who do not wish to journey to that server in particular, I hope you will consider Following & Supporting our team at Dragonica Games, or following me on my personal journey as a Game Developer.

Thank You!