Hi! This is Jan, Dungeon Realms designer and co-founder. Today I’ll tell you more about the ways we want to start monetizing our app. I will also share more about what we’re working on and what’s next for us. 🔥
The App Will Stay in Beta - But You’ll Be Able to Find It on App Stores!
We want to grow the number of Dungeon Realms role-players, so there can be more campaigns for you to join. To do that, we want to remove roadblocks like installing Testflight or going through the Google Beta Program.
We’re working hard on making the app ready for App Stores! So you’ll be able to go to the Apple App Store or Google Play, type in “Dungeon Realms,” and download. Don’t worry; all your existing campaigns and characters will be available. 🧝
The app will still be labeled as Beta. When we’ll be removing the Beta tag? For me, that’s when most of the 5E mechanics are working; there is a battle map and way more levels for all your characters and NPCs. You can always check our Roadmap to see what’s happening.
Our Priorities: Combat & Mechanics
We’re finishing a user experience design of the battle map. I’m pretty excited about it! It will finally enable you to launch combat and set positions. We’re also designing movement limits, range limits, and much more.
Of course, the next big thing is better 5E mechanics. That means more levels, better rolls, subclasses, and functional class features! We’ve put a lot of the company’s resources into it this year, and we believe it will come to the app soon!
One More New Adventure!
In the 2022 Summer Announcement, we promised three ready-made adventures. There will be one more! 📖
The new adventure’s name is The First Step, and it will be a free tutorial adventure. It will teach you how to play or Game Master play-by-post campaigns (in case you’re a beginner in the hobby).
We believe ready-made adventures will be a great way to get more people into Game Mastering. They’ll make it much easier to start a campaign and keep it going.
Monetization
We were thinking a lot about monetization. We don’t want to monetize a product in Beta, but on the other hand, it isn’t cheap to develop an app like this. So we have an idea about what to do. We also know what we DO NOT want to do:
No pay to win. We don’t like this model in any mobile game. Does it even make sense in role-playing? Can you really win, for example, a D&D game? We think it’s more about having fun with your friends.
No ads if possible. We won’t be adding any advertisements to the app because we don’t want to spoil your immersion. Our team will add ads as a last resort option only.
Kickstarter Passes & Perks
We’re dedicated to giving all our Kickstarter Backers precisely what they pay for.
There has already been a year and a half of the Early Access. However, that was not all that we had promised.
We’ll also fulfill the promises of Character Builder and World Builder Passes. As a Kickstarter backer, you’ll have access to premium content according to your pledge.
For example, if your pledge was a “Sausage in a Bun,” you get six months World Builder Pass of unlimited premium Map Assets, Monsters & Adventures. Once we add them into the app, you can get an active free pass for any of those features anytime.
In-Game Currency: Fire Gems 💎
In Dungeon Realms, you’ll be able to get Fire Gems. Fire Gems is a Fireball Studio in-game currency.
Things you’ll be able to get with Fire Gems in the future:
Premium Pre-made Adventures
Premium Clothing & Faces for Characters & NPCs
Premium World Map & Location Map Assets
Premium Music and SFX
Premium Monsters
Character Slots
Character Slots
We also realized that a lot of premium stuff we’re producing is for Game Masters. It makes sense because GMs are the ones who are creating fantasy worlds. It’s also just a minority of all role-players in the app. We had to figure out if there was something that players might want to pay for.
There are going to be Character Slots. Those are “boxes” for your characters. Everyone will have one slot for free forever. You can have one character in this slot, which you can use to join and play any campaign. If you delete the character, you can create a new one and use the same slot again. So in case you don’t want to pay anything, you can reuse the same slot with different characters and keep playing absolutely for free forever.
You'll need more character slots if you want to play more campaigns simultaneously. Once you get a slot, it’s yours forever.
We hope it’s a friendly one-time payment option for players who are passionate about the app.
Exciting Times Ahead!
We can’t wait to implement new features as soon as possible - especially adventures, improved mechanics, and battle maps. The whole team is grateful to have such a fantastic community with us!
Jan