Defender's Quest 2 is released

Defender's Quest 2, at long last, is available to play.

Defender's Quest 2 is released

Howdy Defender's Quest fans!

This is Lars, and I have good news. Defender's Quest 2 is released. You can get it now on Steam. Like right now.

There was a brief one hour window where we posted a massively outdated build, but that's been fixed now. So if that happened to you, sorry. Launch day issues are like that. Go play the game!

To be honest, I never thought I would see the day. Those of you who have been following development closely will know this, but for those of you who haven't, in October of 2023 my seven-year old son Nikolas suffered a tragic accident, forcing me to leave game development behind for good. My wife and I spent the next year taking care of him day and day, until his sudden death by cardiac arrest last November.

After I left Level Up Labs, I did not have the heart to ask the team to soldier on in my absence, and I expected that meant the end for DQ2. The remaining team, led by my co-founder Anthony Pecorella, shocked me by insisting on seeing the project through. Through heroic efforts, and at great personal sacrifice (especially from Patrick McCarthy, as unsung and heroic as an unsung hero could ever possibly be), the game is now here.

I want to thank everyone who made this game possible – Anthony, Patrick, all the folks at Armor games past and present, Alexey Zelikin and his team, our musician Kevin Penkin, our writers present and past Xalavier Nelson and James Cavin, and too many others to list. I am incredibly grateful to you all, and undeserving of your efforts. See the credits for a full listing, and seek them out for your next projects.

Anthony has asked me to share this last update:

Hello everyone! I’m as shocked as anyone else to say this, but Defender’s Quest II is now available on Steam! It has been a long journey with a development schedule in the Duke Nukem Forever timescale (though still shorter!), but we’re finally here!

This is obviously not how we planned things, and we regret that our backers had to wait half a generation to see the results of our work. But, we were committed to finishing the project despite all of the challenges, and we can now say we’ve accomplished that.

Development speed picked up over the past 18 months or so when we secured support and funding from our fantastic publisher, Armor Games. Just after that, Patrick McCarthy joined the team and really drove the game forward. While intending to focus on level design, he ended up doing a ton of programming, and when Lars had to step away from the project Patrick took over and almost completely shouldered the development. I can’t express how much we appreciate the Herculean effort he has put in over this time, going far above and beyond what he had signed up for.

The game has also changed a lot over the past decade. It’s a sequel in the Final Fantasy sense of the word - many of the mechanics and feel of the game are consistent, but the art, characters, world, and plot are quite different. We’ve made some core changes that we believe improve the gameplay and create interesting decisions. And Patrick’s puzzle-designer background means that the Advanced versions of some of the maps can get _quite_ tricky!

In any case, we are so grateful to everyone who has given us support in myriad ways over the years, and we’re excited to finally be able to share this game with you. We hope you all enjoy it!

Sincerely,
Anthony

P.S. - If you had problems with getting an early demo version of the game (literally almost 2 years old!) when you first bought it, we apologize for the confusion and it is fixed now. We had everything set up except for one little flag on the backend. It’s always something! 
😅

P.P.S. - If you purchased the game from our website, you should have a Steam key available in your Humble Library (we used a Humble Bundle widget to manage sales, so it is stored in their library). We will do our best to stay on top of support requests and are trying to figure out how to send out a reminder email to everyone.

Because I know I will get some emails asking about this, I will address them briefly here:

  1. Who do I contact if I have questions/issues/problems?
    Please continue to email leveluplabs@gmail.com with all your support requests and we will do our best to process them.
  2. Can I still email you (Lars) about stuff?
    I myself am no longer part of Level Up Labs, but will route your requests to the right place, and I always appreciate any personal messages.
  3. Can I hire some or all of you?
    If you are looking for talented developers you came to the right place. You can and should reach out to the team and everyone in the credits list. I am happy to provide a detailed and enthusiastic reference for any and all of them. The game industry has fallen on hard times and everyone involved would sincerely appreciate any opportunities. I (Lars) am no longer in the games industry, but everybody still is, to my knowledge.
  4. What are you (Lars) going to do now?
    Ever since my son's death last year I have been at a crossroads and taking a step back from working while I piece my life back together. I'll post an announcement soon about what I'm doing.

Finally, a note about this mailing list. This list was made for the express purpose of communicating Defender's Quest and Level Up Labs related news, and it will continue to exist for that sole purpose.

I will continue blogging here at www.fortressofdoors.com on the topics that continue to interest me – Land Economics, Video Games, Business, and Technology. If you would like to follow me (Lars) and my writing, you may subscribe separately by clicking this link.

Thank you for all your support on this incredibly long and incredibly hard journey.

On behalf of the team I sincerely hope you enjoy our video game.