Nov 29, 2019

New Demo - Other Updates

It's been a while, but I've been hard at work improving the demo design, in addition to the overall completion of the game (almost complete!). I put together a small demo trailer below.

Music is from the amazing Stephen Crawford.

New Area / Puzzle

Added many new art assets, animations, puzzles and effects, including a different area that the previous demo didn't have.

Impact Event & Juice

There are a couple areas of the game where the player needs to avoid these "Uzumaki Spirals" - essentially large, slow moving, one hit kill objects. Previously, the camera would just zoom in and a single sprite object would appear. The spiral wouldn't disappear either - it would just stop right where it hit the player, not doing anything. This bothered me immensely. I wouldn't say it was boring, but it could certainly be improved.

I changed it so that upon impact, several smaller spirals instantiate along with the single sprite. The Uzumaki Spiral also disappears as well. making for a smooth transition to the game over screen.

I got a lot of my ideas from a video by blackthronprod, it's really good!

Scripted Event

I decided to remove the story panels that were previously scattered throughout the game world. Instead, I'll leave the story vague. However, to provide some context, I inserted a scripted event at the very beginning.

The player will walk over to the wounded villager. Upon interacting, a light from the heavens reveals a thumbtack object which will "go into" the player. The purpose of this is to inform the player that the character does indeed have some sort of special ability passed down to him.

And when the player walks away, the villager is consumed by the Haustorium curse.

Last Stretch

I'm still developing the last section of the game, and still need to revisit some previous sections for touch ups on sound and art design. If all goes well, I'm hoping to release the game Feb 2020.