I’ve released DarkMaus on the Steam Store!
It all started from my Dark Souls transformation, where I first ragequit but eventually ascended into a lover of challenging (but fair) games. After Dark Souls, nothing out there was satisfying to me so I had to make my own. Indie games provide the opportunity to focus on gameplay above production values and that’s just what I needed. Along the way, it developed an identity of its own, and later matured into a deep combat experience.
I’m half terrified to have released it, half relieved. This thing was a major labor of love, being created entirely as a hobby project, but also something that I dreaded working on a lot of the time, as it was never making enough progress, or looking as good as I wanted it to. I think many indie developers know the feeling. Thankfully I was able to make a lot of progress in the last 6 months and now I can say that I’m truly proud of it.
I’ve learned a ton in the process too. A few years ago I had no clue how to make art, animation, effects, sound, etc. Now I’ve done it all – at an indie capacity of course.
Here’s to DarkMaus – you were a difficult child, but I love you.
Congratulations on finishing the game. Looks and feels great. Can’t wait to play more of it when I get some time. Love the new logo btw. Hopefully this game gets some attention.
Gratz nice game, I will buy it, bring it to consoles too
Congrats on the release! Been following this game for a long time now. I can’t buy the game yet since i am completely out of money but i will get it as soon as i can!
Congrats you’ve made a great game!
during the first hour of play I though that you forgot what “fair difficulty” means … But now that I’m swinging my flamming sword through the guards bodies like a madrat it feels GREAT !
a few things could be improved :
The tooltip for the enhanced dodge ability should show that the lvl 2 gives invincibility frames, so the player understand that the basic dodge is only a repositionning tool.
Lot of laptops players complain about the bad framerate that is often caused by the game not using the dedicated GPU by default. If you can’t change it, a note on the steampage might be usefull.
Thanks for the tips, those are good ideas.
Awesome game, absolutely loving it. Dark, sinister, beautiful, and all those other adjectives. The game has it all, simply complex is how i would put it.
Ultimately i posted here because i needed help and cannot find the email address. Its an outlook link that won’t tell me the secret address since outlook have i not.
SOOOO here’s what happened. POSSIBLE SPOILER, but its like 2% of the way through the game so hardly a secret. I rescue the white archer rat lady, and bring her back to her village – crowd cheers. But i tried poking one of the village rats with the spear because i learned a new move and hey, i needed a victim. White rat archer lady does NOT take kindly to that, even tho i hit her multiple times during our travels with no vengeance….gotta keep her in line, haha oh geez. So she skewers me with arrows and down goes my hero. It brings me back to the campfire in her town, but lo and behold she is still angry and skewers me again before i could even run over and grab my marrow, so i lost like 80 marrows. Hardly an issue because every time I re-spawn she starts unloading on me again. So I managed to finish looting all the animal skeletons in the town, and got out before dying. Now i am unable to return to the town without being fired upon. I have tried saving other campfires or restarting the game, to no avail.
Two questions. (1) Is there a way to fix this or reset it? (2) Is that town/archer lady important? Do i need access to it to finish the game or draw quests from her? REALLY WANT TO PLAY THIS OVER THE WEEKEND SO WE NEED TO GET THIS SORTED ASAP. OTHERWISE I WILL BE RE-
I started really slow and explored everything and got all the bonus stuffs. Would absolutely HATE having to start over again as it would ruin the flow and experience of this beautiful game.
REPLY TO MY EMAIL I SUPPOSE ASAP. THANKS DANIEL. MY NAME IS DANIEL ALSO.
Hi Daniel,
It sounds like you committed an atrocity in the village and Lady Anna witnessed it. Do you expect her to forgive you? You deserve your fate.
I can’t answer question 2 as that’s a big spoiler. You can ask in the Steam community though or reddit.com/r/darkmaus.
So you are saying that i should restart from the beginning?
Also a way to zoom in on the map would be amazing. I purchased a Steam Link and i have a fairly big TV but I often find myself getting off the couch to get a closer look at the map to try and find my corpse or see POI’s. Just a thought, man I love this game tho. Guess I am just gonna start again, and just learn to play nice with others. Would also be cool if instead of overwriting every saved game with the next one, it kept a rolling 3 saves that overwrote the oldest ones. So in the event something like that happens you can revert to two or three campfire saves ago. Or even a corrupted save wouldn’t lose you all your progress. WOW, thanks for the quick responses. I have already got 3 friends to purchase this game in only one day haha. More to follow!!!
You don’t HAVE to restart, it’s up to you. But yes, some branches of the story are now unavailable to you.
Your game looks awesome. I watched the Jim Sterling Videos and DarkMaus looks beesknees. Unfortunately I’m not a PC player. Are you planning to release it on consoles?
your games looks fantastic. i’m a huge souls fan. please bring this to ps4. i would buy it in a heartbeat.
Hey, can you play the game with a gamepad?
Hi Daniel, I’m a game journalist and I’d love to review your game. How do I get in touch with you?
Hi Sabine, daniel@darkmaus.com
Thanks Daniel, mailed you.
Hi, I’m a huge souls fan,I like this game but when I get some scenes that have fire , the fps always get low and I almost can’t control my charactor fluently.So can you optimize fire in the game?
Dear Daniel,
I’ve just finished my first Playthrough of DarkMaus and I’ve gotta say that I’m very impressed. Thank you, for making DarkMaus it was a real treat to play through it and I do hope that it does well. You did a really great job with it and i love the little cute ideas you put into it with the mouse bumping its chest or the little micekids playing ball. I am hugely in love with the game. Thank you again and I do hope to see more games from you in the future.
All the best,
crow
I’m glad you like it! Thanks for your encouragement.
Hi there. I’m moderating the speedrun.com leaderboards for this game. Could someone give me the names of all the bosses in this game? All I need are the names, for the rules for the “all bosses” category, to specify that the player must kill those particular enemies. Much obliged 🙂
Just purchased it off of Steam, loving it so far! The atmosphere is great, the gameplay feels tight and responsive. Very, very impressive and fun. It must feel amazing to have a labor of love turn become a reality and also be REALLY good!
Hey,
I have not been playing much games for a while…Fallout 4 and DD:Dark Arisen but I got bored of both of em.
Your game completely mops the floor with the current releases. I still need a website to find hotkeys (I don’t how how to use morsels during fights for example or how to parry/backstab if those features are there, note I’m playing with mouse/keyboard cause my Logitech Rumblepad doesn’t get recognized) but apart from that it’s an extremely fun game even though I’m dying often, in some passages I thought I couldn’t make it through but as a Dark Souls 1/2 fan I enjoy that part. Apart from Souls games I hate dying cause most games are too boring to replay the same section over and over again, with Dark Maus I get a similar fun feeling that I get in the Souls games – and I suck at Dark Maus bigtime, I hold on to my melee only mentality that I have in Souls games so no magic for me.
I hope you get a real dev team to make a sequel – Dark Maus hands down mops the floor with Lords of The Fallen apart from graphics which I have also played, and looking at other Souls like games like Eitr I like your approach better too. When you can make such a great game by yourself (and the Sound Designer/Composer), who knows what you could come up with if you had a team and some budget. Hope your Steam Sales will give you the support you need. I’m usually very anti-capitalist/materialist – but people like you deserve to make some money off your hobby. You understand the Souls games and what makes them great and you did a near perfect 2D conversion of their mechanics.
Thank you for your praise, and I’m glad you like it! I did spend a ton of time tweaking the gameplay and trying to come up with interesting combat designs.
Use morsel: Q
Parry is replaced with Timed block and it’s an ability you unlock, once you have it you just have to block at the last possible second. Only works against enemy quick attacks.
Backstab is not a sync animation, you get extra damage for hitting an enemy in the back and guaranteed stun.
For the rumblepad, I think you need to find one of those emulators that treats it as a 360 controller, same as you need to use a playstation controller.
Just bought the game after watching the VaatiVidya souls-like video on it. Looking forward to playing it. Great work! Hope to see more games from you!
This game looks amazing, I love the style of graphics with the darkness and smoke animations along with it. I haven’t seen too much gameplay (because I’d like to do a play through with my own experience) but as a souls fan I can already tell that I’ll enjoy this game. Bring it to console and I’ll buy it for sure.
Hi, great game you did there!
I’m a bit confused with the cat.
sploiler
I went to the toxic swamp, find an item witch name I forgot, them “give” it to the cat, them nothing… Is their an hidden thing to do here? If the story line is as cryptic as in the souls series, I’m never gonna find more…
Would you please at least give my a clue?
Thanks