The Wratch's Den 👹
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
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Dig out a proper dungeon, grow your little villainous society, set up defences against heroes, and survive long enough to retrieve the Orbs of Infinite Power.
The Wratch has been defeated, they have gone into hiding with the pitiful remains of their army. Now it's up to you to dig out a proper base for The Wratch. You'll have to defend them against the heartless heroes come for easy prestige, and retrieve the 3 legendary Orbs of Infinite Power in order to come back out of the Den and crush human society once and for all.
This game features:
🔨 build your own villainous hide-out
👛 hire monsters, buy traps, research techs
👑 defend from heroes come to slay The Wratch
🔥 4 difficulty modes
🧱 a separate scoring/survival mode
⌛ 20-40 minutes sessions on average
🎲 randomized gameplay for considerable replayability
🎧 soundtrack by the amazing Pentadrangle
❓ heroes throw objects in the fountains
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Controls:
This game can be played either with a keyboard or a game controller. We rather recommend playing with a keyboard.
- the arrows, or the left stick or D-pad of a controller: move around, interact with adjacent tiles, navigate prompts
- the X key, or (A): use abilities, confirm prompts
- on keyboard, the space key: switch to the next minion
- on keyboard, ctrl + arrow: select minion according to coordinates
- on gamepad, left and right triggers: switch to previous and next minion
- escape or (back): go backwards when in menus, open the pause menu when in game
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If you'd like you can come to our Discord to talk about the game, discuss strategies and/or get advice!
Of course it's also a very good place to get news of our next projects!
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The game doesn't run!
If you're having trouble running the game please try the following things:
- Extract the game to a different location, like a new folder on your Desktop, and try running it from there.
- Add the game's executable to your antivirus' whitelist. Try launching the game now.
- Still not working? If you see a save.bnk file in the folder, open it with any text editor and replace its contents with this : "10:2:2:00000700070000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000", without the quotation marks. Save the file and try running it now.
- Still no luck? Please come get help on our Discord, or send us an email at [email protected] and attach the 'log.txt' file from the game's folder if it exists.
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Are you press or a content creator?
Come ask us for a key on Twitter, our DMs are open! Just make sure to tell us which game(s) you're interested in, we have a few of different ones!
Also check out our presskit where you'll find more info about us, as well as graphical assets in the downloads, useful for showing off the game or making thumbnails!
We also have a french version of the presskit! 🥐
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About PUNKCAKE
This game was made by PUNKCAKE Délicieux, a game developping duo making and releasing a new game every month through Patreon and itch.io!
Check out our Patreon subscription for advantageous offers and some more options!
PUNKCAKE Délicieux is made up of lovely humans Benjamin Soulé and Rémy Devaux.
Our dedicated composer is Pentadrangle! He's also the musician behind the games Cyber shadow, Roof Rage, Spicy Piggy, VoidRun, Lords of Exile and more! Check out his Bandcamp and follow him on Twitter!
Find us on these platforms:
::👉 Patreon
:: 👉 Twitter
:: 👉 Discord
:: 👉 Itch.io
:: 👉 Steam
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1.2b patch notes:
- The "Turn metal into gold!" course at school was canceled.
- The pause menu will now always appear above in-game units.
1.2 patch notes:
- Blood Moon tech now properly affects all new units after it's researched.
- Goblins can now only carry up to 16 tiles.
- Schooled goblins now keep the gold they were holding.
- Schooled orcs and goblins now keep their smithy upgrades.
- Fixed a bug where an orc would want to become a goblin at school.
- Room options now always appear above other objects.
- Game no longer crashes if trying to use an item on the workbench if the trap room is filled with items.
- Dark ritual achievement fixed so as to properly trigger only when 5 minions have been sacrificed. (also fixed the achievement description)
1.1c patch notes:
- Added back misplaced ending music intro (it used to be just the loop part of the track playing)
- Made it possible to start the game without using openGL at all, see instructions above in the "The game doesn't run" section.
1.1b patch notes:
- Fixed crash on using the smithy.
1.1 patch notes:
- Fixed a bug where the orb could be mixed up with an item upon entering the throne room, enabling a premature win.
- Ninjas and ghosts can now properly interact with special tiles in rooms.
- Ninjas and ghosts have been forbidden to forge pickaxes, as that would be problematic.
- Goblins' tiles and items brought to school will no longer be confiscated upon graduation.
- The goblin tamer formation now includes a task separation course teaching them not to call the wolves when dropping an item.
- Stopped wandering entities to pile up on tiles where there are already two other entities, which would push the oldest entity on that square into a frightening liminal space between states of being where they would be drawn but never again updated. (similar to a constant state of sleep paralysis if you will)
- Swap control prompts will now go away if you ignore them for long enough and use the other swap controls instead.
- Made it impossible for room descriptions to be partially off-screen.
- Giving up in expansion mode will now trigger the score counting sequence.
- Added back misplaced description for the vampire: they do steal enemy HPs.
- Now displaying difficulty and how many in-game years it took to win the run in the ending screen.
- You can now fast-forward through the ending screen with the action key.
- Corrected a few typos.
- Default window size is now smaller.
- Shader can now properly be deactivated from the options. (no visual difference but may affect performences either way depending on your setup - in doubt, we recommend leaving it on)
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $6 USD. Your purchase comes with a Steam key. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Development log
- The Wratch's Den arrived on Steam! ⛏👹💰Aug 17, 2023
- The Wratch's Den 1.1 patch is up!Aug 12, 2021
- The Wratch's Den 👹 Out Now!Aug 10, 2021
Comments
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Well, lost my first game within turns, this needs a tutorial... :P
If there are any updates for the promised Steam release, it'd be nice to have a bit more balancing for the orc and goblin classes and other units. Taking a unit to the library and getting Courier/Tamer or Ninja/Healer at the start of the game and having to restart the whole run because of how much harder those are to use than just a single Warrior/Miner, an Engineer, and infinite archers.
Maybe a way to increase the undead or monster units' move speed? Or more perks that effect any unit other than Goblin Archers? As things stand, spending time and money on any class other than Goblin Archer in endless mode feels like a waste
The mechanic, where after some mining actions game gives me option of placing 2 rooms in random places is very satysfyng for me. Would you like to create a city builder, based on such mechanic?
This was an interesting little game. It was quite fun ^^
Dumb question, how do I shoot with my goblin archer?
Ranged minions attack automatically when they are aligned with enemies and you use turns with other minions. :)
But if you only have 1 minion alive (the goblin archer) you can't do that.
The game lacks a skip turn key so in this case the gobling archer would attack.
When the steam version will come out?
How do you use the goblin archers?
This team is amazing, this little piece, even small that it is, can make you invest in it until you understand it completely, you will die allot yes but you will get better every time, and every new game you will get to understand new pieces of the game until you complete it.
Amazing little Piece
Really really fun, even with controls being a bit funky. I just wish I could understand how to deal with the later heroes instantly killing my undead. Haven't even been able to beat Normal yet.
Love love LOVE this game. Got it in the Ukraine bundle, beaten the Easy and Normal modes, working on beating the remaining levels. One suggestion: would it be possible to make a more "economic" mode for people like me who are just trying to expand as much as possible? Perhaps setting a cap at the degree of difficulty of the fights in that mode, so that there's actually a chance for someone who's just playing casually to max out their technology and just focus on making a functional minion-dom. This would make the game perfect for someone like me, where the current "expansion" mode gets too difficult, too quickly. I get attached to my setup and it becomes a bit of a downer when suddenly I don't have the power to defend it or look away from the Wratch for one second too long!
Do you plan on adding more content to these games?
This game has the most puzzling balance issues in that it is heaviiy RNG reliant, but what is randomized is mostly actions that in other genres are in your control. Unlocking rooms might place them in a useful space or somewhere out of the way. You might get lucky and have a brickmaker + engineer goblin right off the bat or waste hundreds of turns without either or both. The shop might give you useful items/upgrades or a bunch of minions with no beds. Traps you buy might get placed somewhere useful like in a chokepoint or in a random corner where they will never trigger, and so on and so forth.
That and one of my runs was killed from finding the first 2 orbs right at once, but the third being so out of the way even with prospectors and torches I couldn't get it before getting bored of having to fight yet another 10+ heroes wave.
Finally my dreams of building a dungeon and comanding minions has come true
Got this in the Ukraine bundle. It's really great, but mouse compatibility would be greatly appreciated for accessibility purposes.
Hey! I played this game some time ago after it came out, and still feel quite positive about it still. Every time I see the link for it pop up somewhere, I smile and think about my time playing it. It's such a button-masher, but dang if there isn't some strategy involved! I appreciate the continuation of this style of game and recommend it as a top pixel platformer (if you can call it that, this game defies convention really.) And the bartender gag is pretty amusing. I've compiled some similar thoughts over on my blog. If you all are interested in what's going on here, here's a link: https://mrdavepizza.com/the-wratchs-den/ Thank you so much!
Your games are very cool!
But please, add mouse support a.s.a.p!
thx
Hey guys, really fun concept, been enjoying it a lot. That said, I think criticism is the highest compliment because I means I care enough to put some thought into it, so hopefully you understand I mean the following with love :)
I think the choices always being random make it a bit frustrating sometimes and hold it back from having proper tactical depth. Examples of this are room placement, school upgrades, anvil upgrades etc. I get that you want it to be sort of procedural, every playthrough is different, but what it actually means is if I don't get the upgrades I want, I either have to restart (frustrating) or put up with it (also frustrating). Probably not the design you were going for!
Also, I don't know if it exists, but some kind of wiki explaining all the different tech tree progressions and units would also be super helpful.
Then a few minor issues that may be bugs or me misunderstanding the controls;
1. dragons don't seem to have a way to shoot a fireball by choice, and often just stand there taking ranged hits without returning fire
2. there doesn't seem to be any way to skip a turn, or an option to manually fire arrows, so if I have an archer positioned on tiled floor there's no way to wait until enemies come to me to then fire arrows at them. Also is there any way to replenish arrows? with an upgrade or anything?
3. ninjas hide in the walls, but get hit back, even if their attack kills the enemy - surely it's a sneak attack and there's no time to hit back?
Arrows (and darts to restock traps) are refilled after every in-game year.And yeah, besides the higher attack ninjas are pretty useless. Also hitting a wall by mistake is frustrating because it will cost you one turn, either from digging it or sneaking inside of it.
There needs to be a save game/load game feature for when you want to do other things but don't want to leave your computer running.
An automatic save function (after every turn) would be appreciated so that you don't get punished for being too skillful or lucky the longer the runs go (and they can get too lengthy too often for one sitting).
Also, an automatic version check would be appreciated as well (similar to that of Slice & Dice) so that you can be certain without much of a fuzz that you're on the latest build.
What engine is the game written on?
This game was made with the SUGAR engine which we're also developing! It's not publicly available yet, but you can find out more about it here: https://trasevol-dog.itch.io/sugar
Yes! Definitely yes, it's a fun experience. $ 6 is like a cup of coffee at Starbucks. So I didn’t regret the $ 6 for this game at all.
Fun game. I wish I had thought of it. Just finished Nightmare mode. My 9 year old daughter beat it on easy. What a gem! I'm glad I saw it on Splattercat.
Splattercat has enabled my bad spending habits soooooo much over time lol. I hope he gets commission for the amount of selling he effortlessly does.
Bugs/Gripes post-patch 1.1 so far:
-No save function
-All anvil improvement for a unit is reset when a unit is trained
-Random anvil upgrades
-No surefire way to choose from all the classes from the school, retrain, or sacrifice units to get a certain class within the current spawn limit
-Units sacrificed on the dark altar do not vacate the spawn pool, and may not be replaced
-Worldwide unit upgrades don't apply to units that spawn after the upgrade purchase
Lastly, I want to say thanks to the developers for this is a fantastically fun game! It's downright scary how much time disappears when I play it.
Excellent, but absolutely NEEDS a savegame function of some sort...
And make sure to do it for both gamemodes!
Hello devs, this is a really cool looking game, its aesthetics and mechanics look pretty fun, looks kind of short too but I still wanna play it, Is there any Steam release date planned?
Keep the good work :D
Cheers! We do plan on releasing this game on Steam before the end of the year but no precise date as of yet. But if you purchase it here you will get a Steam key when it does get on there!
I do am eager to buy this one, but I have a problem with the payment, I don't have an international credit card and since I'm from Brazil it's quite complicated to pay itch.io with R$(brazillian real), Steam on the other hand accepts any cash already making the conversion, still, don't worry cause I'll have this one in my pixel art collection on the realease :3
This reply was all I needed to buy the game here. Looking forward to that Steam key in the future and to playing this in the time being! Thanks!
When trying to execute the game, it does not work, the log has this error message:
'Could not open 'map.bnk'. No such file or directory'
Any recommendation on how to fix it?
That's very curious, can you see a 'data.sgr' file in the game's folder? If not, you need to download the game again I think, that file needs to be there. Oh also you do need to extract the zip file's contents into a new folder before launching the game in there, you can't launch the game directly from the zip file, maybe that's your issue?
Otherwise, maybe try moving the game's folder to another location and launch it from there? Please let us know if any of these things work.
I extracted everything, and try several folders, the data.sgr is there, in the log you can see 'Opened dat 'data.sgr'. with 28 blocks.'
The only 2 errors are the map.bnk not found and The Discord API could not initialized.
Can you please send the complete log at [email protected]? we'll solve this over mail if that's ok. :)
My antivirus says it is infected with malware.....
We need to figure out how to make antiviruses trust our games but in the meantime you'll have to let your antivirus know the executable is safe yourself. FWIW we're not putting malwares in our games, that would be a pretty bad business practice.
You have a gem here but its definitely unpolished. I beat all the different difficulty levels and even played around on the endless mode and I only bought this roughly 8 hours ago. $6.00 for 8 hours of gameplay is a bit of a letdown. What this game really needs is some rougelite elements imo. Make it so when you get the three orbs the wratch teleports to another area and give a run-permanent powerup. Make hard and nightmare a lot harder but throw in achievement locked permanent upgrades so we need to grind a bit to get strong enough to face them. Love the game but I was left seriously needing more.
this can't be a serious comment, right?
Nah, I'm just an anthropomorphized space squid trolling random comment sections to mess with humans and observe their responses. The galactic zygomats appreciate your contribution to science.
Chill dude, wtf?
This looks really cool. Any chance for a linux version?
Yes! We'll be trying to make it happen before the end of the year!
Seconded on Linux version! This is a gem already. Thank you!
I was sucked into Wratch's Den by the Dungeon Keeper-inspired graphics, but found a totally different game when I fired it up. Not disappointed at all; it's a fantastic experience. Fans of nitty-gritty tactical games (like me) will love it.
While obviously inspired by Dungeon Keeper, it's a totally different game. It's not a builder at all, it's actually a time-based tactical game. And it's loads of fun. 4 difficulty settings and an endless loop survival mode give this game pretty good mileage. Could use a little more love - some balance tweaking in particular - but it's in very good shape as-is.
Punkcake keep knocking it out of the park with their games. The Wratch's Den is a casual dungeon keeper like game. I played it as part of the itch.io vault:
Amazing game! Would love a save option for "Expansion" mode!
How do I fire arrows for ranged attack with my archer?
ranged minions attack automatically when they are aligned with enemies and you use turns with another minion.
Saving for it!
Hi, amazing game :D
I have one question. If I buy this game on itch.io, will I receive a free steam key once it comes out there or will I have to buy it again?
Yes if you buy it here you will get a Steam key when the game gets on there. Same thing if you get the game through our Patreon subscription. :)
Just watched Nookrium play this on youtube and it was fantastic! I will be picking this up next time I have time to play something. Great work, guys!
This game is awesome. The game sessions are short, but you have to actually think a lot in them. There is a lot of strategies to learn as you play over and over again!
10/10, would build my own dungeon again.