Shattered Pixel Dungeon in 2025

Hey Rat Punchers, happy new year once again!

After a bit of a holiday break, I’m back to work on Shattered Pixel Dungeon, which includes laying out some plans for the coming year! This post starts with a year in review, and then lists the major changes and additions that I have planned for Shattered Pixel Dungeon in 2025 and beyond.

I’ve written one of these posts every year since 2019, you can take a look at the previous ones here: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019.

2024 In Review

2024 saw the release of 3 updates and one beta, which overall completed 3.5 out of the 5 items listed for 2024 in last year’s post. It seems I’ve settled into a steady cadence of an update every 3-4 months, especially as I’ve been moving toward making bigger content additions these days.

• v2.3 released in January, adding a second variant to the caves quest!
• v2.4 released in May, adding a new category of item: Trinkets!
• v2.5 released in September, overhauling the journal and adding new splash art!
• v3.0 went to beta in December, giving an early look at the game’s sixth hero!

While I’d obviously like to do more, I am happy to be able to consistently check off more than half of the things I’d like to do every year. Clearing the whole list would be ideal, but that’s always set as more of a best case scenario, and reaching 70% of that is just fine.

On the business side of things Shattered continues to outdo itself. Growth on Android and Steam has been nice and steady, but on iOS Shattered has done extremely well this year. This has led to Shattered’s strongest sales year yet, despite not releasing on any new platforms! I’m thrilled to be able to continue sustaining my development with free updates to Shattered.

The Plan for 2025

Here are the major pieces of content that I’d like to add in 2025. The higher something is on the list, the more I’m prioritizing it for this year. Please note that while I’d very much like to stick to this, game development rarely works out exactly as planned. It’s very likely that I won’t get through everything here this year, and it’s also possible that the order may shift or things may change entirely.

Releasing The Cleric!

Just like with 2024, this year starts with an update partway through development. My first priority this year is to get v3.0.0 and the Cleric finished and released! Right now the Cleric is missing some polish, one subclass, and two armor abilities. Expect to see those get filled in very soon.

Warrior & Misc Improvements

After v3.0 I’m going to do a smaller update so that I can quickly address any issues with the Cleric. As part of that update, I’d also like to take a look at the Warrior! I’m not planning any fundamental changes, but I think I can make his base gameplay feel stronger and more engaging, without making him harder to play.

I expect to do other small changes this year as well, both in v3.1 and later. These tend to get pinned down right when I start work on an update though, so I can’t really say what specific smaller things will happen. Despite that, here’s a quick list of some smaller things I may do this year:

• Further improvements and additions to item categories, mainly trinkets
• UI and UX improvements for larger screens, and keyboard/controller players
• More badges or a challenge to test the skill of experienced players
• Further improvements to shops, possibly including some new ones
• New room types and general improvements to level generation
• And, of course, every update comes with a bunch of bugfixes and small QoL tweaks

City Quest

After these hero changes, I’d like to add a new quest in 2025 as well. My current concept is to have the Imp ask the player to raid a special dwarven vault. The major catch will be that none of the player’s items can go with them, leading to a little microcosm of gear progression that will only exist within the vault.

Hero Lore

With the game’s sixth hero releasing soon, there’s finally opportunity to start fleshing out the game’s characters a bit! This lore could include journals written by the heroes from their perspectives, or documents that describe interactions and conversations between the heroes.

3rd Caves Quest

The caves quest is also currently missing a 3rd variant. While I decided to focus on other content through 2024, I would like to finish this quest up in 2025 if there’s time or I come up with a great concept. I do still think that other content should take priority though, such as a quest in the city.

In-Game Art!

Lastly, there’s the new art I previously showed off. Progress on this has been slow, so I don’t have anything new to share. However, the reaction to the WIP new art has made it very clear to me that there’s a strong demand for this, so I will be trying to make some progress here this year, and hopefully have more to show later.

Longer-Term Plans

Here are some other things I’d like to do in Shattered that I’m definitely not going to have time for in 2025. Think of these as possible longer term ideas or ‘stretch goals’. The higher an item is on this list, the more clearly defined my idea is for it.

Halls Quest

While I don’t want to make the game overly long, a bit more gameplay at the tail end of the game is sorely needed to give players a bit more time with finished builds and time to make use of armor abilities. I have a few ideas for interesting quests that could test an endgame character.

More Subclasses

It would be nice to add one more subclass to each hero to better take advantage of Shattered’s increased equipment and class diversity. However, it’s important that I have a good idea for all six heroes to ensure that all of the new subclasses are interesting. I’ve started to come up with some ideas here, but nothing concrete yet.

Endless Mode

Some form of endless mode is a very common request. This partly ties in to the last region of the game being the shortest, but also there’s just a desire for players to see how far they can get with strong character builds. I have a few loose ideas for how endless might work, but want to focus on other things like new quests first.

Alt Paths?

Another common request is to have more dungeon floors, but just adding more risks making the game too long. An alt path could offer new environments and enemies without making the game directly longer. This would be a huge time commitment though, so I’d only really consider it when ShatteredPD is otherwise finished.

Something New?

Lastly, you might have noticed that the lists on these posts have been slowly shrinking over the years. Eventually everything here will be cleared, and it’ll be time for something new! This is still a ways off though, and I have no current plans for what form this may take, it could be more ideas for Shattered, or something else entirely.

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And those are my current major plans for 2025 and the future! Thanks to Shattered’s continued success (thank you!) I expect to get to pretty much everything here eventually, it’s all a question of ordering and prioritizing.

If you’d like more frequent incremental updates on Shattered’s development (including further work on the Cleric!), you can:
- Subscribe to the Shattered Pixel Newsletter
- Follow me on Mastodon
- Follow me on Bluesky

If you enjoy Shattered and want to help me keep making it, please consider supporting me on Patreon! Patrons get access to exclusive weekly mini blogs about upcoming updates, monthly Q&As and content polls, physical loyalty rewards, and early alpha access to updates!

You can discuss this blog post on the Pixel Dungeon Lemmy Community, or on the Steam Community Forums!