Domain of Hallucination

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• Announcements·1 Oct 2026Official

  v.0.4.2: Foreshadowing!

  We're not dead! (Bit of a grim thing to write under a post titled "Foreshadowing!", but I'll take my chances.)Yeah, it's been a second since you've heard from us, but I assure you, we've been busy. Not necessarily on DoH, but largely with, y'know, life stuff. And... some other projects! If things go well, you might get a glimpse at what some of us have been cooking up in the future. If you happen to be at HeroFest in Berne the next three days, come on over to our booth to see us in the flesh! We even have a lil goodie for you this time, apart from the sick stickers: If you beat the first boss, you'll get a code that grants you access to a secret conversation. Never tried something like that before, so I'm genuinely excited to see how that turns out!Coming up in the "features"-department: Tiles now get a preview before they're placed. You might think this is not a big deal, but it does change the strategy a bit, since you can now see where tile modifiers go. For instance, if you're in desperate need of healing, knowing if you need to cross an entire tile to reach a mango tree is useful information. (Kudos to Marcel, he had to take apart the entire map-code for that one.)The Fruit Market got a long overdue update as well, now using a menu-based interface instead of having to awkwardly throw your fruit into its general vicinity. It's not exactly a looker, but it's a lot more understandable compared to the previous system. Finally, I've added a transition screen for the engraving questline that comes after beating hard mode. It's not too expanded on yet, since what follows would be the new final bosses, but you might get a glimpse someone that didn't have too active a role in the story so far...So, all-in-all, largely just a bunch of long overdue QoL changes, with a bit of story sprinkled in to make it go down a bit easier. Except, no tower rework. All my homies hate doing the tower rework. Have a good one! Jonas Wiesli Team Quintuple-APatch NotesChangesTiles are now sh...
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• Announcements·8 Jul 2026Official

  v.0.4.1: Visions & Vignettes!

  Sup! Originally, my plan was to take a bit of a break from DoH, to fix some issues with older projects up on itch. Then I got the idea for an overlay shader that didn't leave my brain for a week, and now we're here. So, now there's this moving vignette on-screen while you're hallucinating. Had to tweak it a bunch so it doesn't interfere with gameplay and/or make you sick, but I think it adds a lot to the feeling of differentation between fantasy & reality. As I was in a groove to play around with shaders, I added the first half of the engraving-quest you get after beating the final boss. Here's a lil sneak peek:I've added these as milestones when beating bosses in hard mode, in addition to a series of strong machine part unlocks only accessible there. Those turn the challenge from an unbeatable onslaught into something actually pretty fun, since your build can now compete with the escalation of power during a run. It's not a flashy update otherwise, mostly a bunch of tweaks for stability & understandability. A bugfix here, a tutorial there, another tooltip for that, a small change for this conversation, a bit of foreshadowing there... I guess there's always room to keep polishing.Planning-wise, I've figured out a rough structure I can go with to finish up the game. The plan is to finish Act II (this part with hard mode & the engraving quest) till the end of this month (although it's shaping up to be a busy one, so no promises). Act III has been sketched out and will be capping off the story in a (hopefully) satisfying way, and it'll be done in some form till the end of the year. After that, I'll probably get busy with some other projects, if I can physically stop myself from working on this thing before I hit retirement age. Also, for the three people that actually read the previous blog posts: Tower upgrades will come eventually. Probably. When I got time. And I feel like it. Don't put your life savings on it. And for a last little tidbit, here's an easter egg that...
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• Announcements·7 Jun 2026Official

  v.0.4: Dialogue and Tutorials!

  Heya! Been a second. Nice to see ya! Three weeks ago, we were at Fantasy Basel again this year, showing off the update lil bit early. Look at this awesome sticker design Carla made! If you've missed it, maybe you can pick up one at HeroFest in Berne. Due to all the other team members being significantly more employed than me, this update was largely a one-man-show. Well, not quite. First of all, as usual, Maisa did a fantastic job on the sound again, adding tons of audio to make the game feel more lively. Never underestimate the power of a good soundscape. Second, a lot of the story being told was already loosely conceptualized back when we were working on the bachelor project version one year ago. So, it's not like we're grafting a story onto something that works as a self-contained game, we're telling you what we envisioned back when we were building the earlier versions. So, here it is! A lot of work went into the writing, programming and spriting. I definitely think there's more drive to get to the end now, as opposed to before. These characters are getting more fleshed out, and it's gonna be interesting to see how people react to the more long-term storytelling. There's a system that will show you certain dialogues only once you've reached a certain point within a run, and almost every dialogue adapts to what you already know as a player. Interesting system to build as well. You gotta structure your story in a way where the order you get it in doesn't necessarily matter. But, if you wanna have some satisfying pacing, you need to have certain events take precedence over others. I'm curious what the overall reaction is gonna be once someone has beaten the final boss with this configuration. Another neat thing to go over was tutorialisation. You now get to see your controls at the start, and the metaprogression machine gets explained to you. A lotta small changes with tooltips and minor stuff as well. I think some parts could use a tad more explanation, particular...
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• Announcements·15 Mar 2026Official

  v.0.3: Memories, Towers and tons of QoL!

  Sup! Kept you waiting, huh? We're back with some more more changes, this time again with a bigger rework. Before we get into the specifics, here's a little something regarding planning: On the Steam page, we've set Winter 25/26 as out goal for the full release. What we kinda forgot after three years of higher education is that having a job or looking for a job is time-consuming! So, our timeline has been pushed back somewhat. Which is fine, since we're still planning on finishing the project this year and the current version of the game keeps getting updates, which we're making good progress on. But y'know, just so you know. Onto the update itself! We've rearranged the guts of our beloved creation once more. It was necessary, though: Something that really screwed with pacing was having to choose the same engravings twice, once during tile selection and once during level up. This, combined with the fact that half the players didn't understand how the system worked even after playing for a while, meant that we had to rethink the way we distributed upgrades. The answer was an abstraction: Instead of giving adding engravings to tiles directly, we've changed it to a point based system. It's simple: You get colored points on each tile. (We call them memories, for flavor.) Count all the memories of each color on all connected tiles. The higher the total, the higher the possible tier of randomly chosen engravings on levelups. Memories fade after an engraving has been chosen. Now, this went through a bunch of iterations in and of itself. Something we've had to tweak is the resulting tiers of the engravings: Go too low, and your build feels underpowered & your choice feels meaningless. Go too high, and you end up with kneecapped build variety and having nothing to do all run because everything has been looted already. We ended up retooling the weights a bunch of times until we felt we reached something that felt satisfying. Also added in this update: Towers! These pillars wil...
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• Announcements·21 Dec 2025Official

  v0.2.3: Unique Engravings!

  Merry Christmas everyone! (Or whatever you wanna celebrate, I don't care as long as you have a good time :) )Before we get into the update, some news: We've been nominated in the category "Best Student Game 2025" at the SGDA Awards! Unfortunately, our plans to win were foiled by Pale Abyss, a first-person action RPG with a PS1-like art style. This makes us very upset, and we hope Permanent Crab Studios is struck by a terrible fate, like forgetting the keys at home when going out, or eating fajitas that are a bit too spicy. (Jokes aside, congrats! The game looks sick as hell, wishing you luck on future endeavors >:] ) Now, to the actual update: We've adjusted some of the engravings from the last update. In playtesting, there was a bit of information overload & on some playthroughs, descriptions were ignored entirely, so we've reduced some of the clutter. Also, some were a bit too polarizing, so we've reduced the individual effects on those. Here's the big change: We've added a bunch of new engravings, each with a unique effect! These aren't just stat upgrades, but provide effects that only they can offer. For instance, look at these: All-Consuming Hunger (■ Power) \This engraving gives you a considerable damage boost, but requires you to keep killing enemies to maintain that bonus. This is very useful against the hordes, but requires some balancing of weapons & prep for boss fights. Expertise (▲ Finesse) \This one is for character-builders. It doesn't do much right away when you equip it, but with a bit of planning, you can get a lot of value out of it. Plus, it synergizes well with the anvil, allowing massive stat increases! Emblem of Chaos (☽ Arcana) \This is just a fun one, seeing what comes out when you travel! It can also be useful when you get some engravings that just aren't doing anything for your run. For boss fights, I suggest rerolling a bunch of times to get a good build to face Shadigi. (Also, please don't tell Edmund McMillen that I stole his iconic rep...
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