Next up we have the ghost scientist I think I mentioned before - this person will appear in the lab in Evergrind City in the beginning of the game, where she's investigating the spirit world. Later on, she'll play a part in your ghost ship journey:
[.....]
The ghost ship plans continue to unfold, and the next big things we've decided on is to take the player on a strange dream, caused by the ghostly presences on the ship. In this dream, you'll find yourself back in Startington (?!), but it's a quiet, somewhat "wrong" version of itself. Here you need to solve four different challenges in order to find your way back to the ghost ship and continue on your journey.
There will be things in this dream referencing events that have happened in the game this far, with each building in Startington holding its own challenge. In one, you'll need to battle a ton of slimes searching for that one card, in [.....]
In the animation department, Fred continues with the desert stuff and has made a really cool death animation for the Solem, which kind of gets frozen in place before it disintegrates:
There's also a lovely little salamander in progress, which we want running around the place here and there, as a purely decorative detail. Here's a bunch of suggestions he made, with the one we ended up choosing the the red circle:
And of course, it needs a few animations as well, so here's [.....]
This weeks portrait features the pianist, a guy who, as you may have guessed, plays the piano (in the saloon, the be specific). Since he's in the saloon I went with the theme and made him sort of buff looking. Otherwise not much else to say about this guy for now!
WIP:
Finished sprite:
[.....]
Having had another design meeting about the ghost ship and we we want to happen in there, we've decided on dividing the ship in three parts. The first part will be where you first meet the ghost captain, and where you'll get the skill that allows you to enter the spirit world. This part of the ship will be mostly storage, so there will be rooms with lots of crates, barrels, buckets and other kinds of storage. The ship will have had lots of cool cargo, so hopefully [.....]
Speaking of the ghost ship, we've been making a ton of prototypes for various challenges and mechanics we'd like to include. First we have a challenge where you need to go between various platforms, and the only way of doing so is entering the spirit world. Only problem is, there's an angry ghost attacking you if you enter his domain - so you can't stay too long or you'll take guaranteed damage.
We're currently considering whether you'll fall down if you leave the spirit [.....]
Aaaand we return, slightly more well rested and ready to get back into the action!
Now that the desert and desert town is in place, it's time to update the world map into a somewhat final version (there's still the ghost ship remaining, but I'll easily be able to add that later, as it's in the midst of the water anyways)!!
Let's take a look:
So basically, this is what the world map will look like after you've visited all of the areas [.....]
Work on the math puzzle continues, with Fred having made activation animations for each of the numbers and enemy buttons:
Teddy has started prototyping the puzzle as well, with a few edits compared to what we initially wanted. In our first design, we wanted the player to be able to make any path they wanted, however, as we play tested this it felt boring and, honestly, extremely easy. So instead, we made the redesign you can see below - where each of the buttons start inactivated [.....]
Next, let's decide on the names for these new couple of areas!
As you might guess, Dragonbone Dunes is the name of the desert, while Port Monnaie is the name of the port town. Now, Dragonbone Dunes gets its name from the dragon bones and dragon decorations from Map01, but we will add more dragon decorations here and there in the map to make sure the name ties in well to what you actually see, even if you're not on the first map anymore.
Anyway, [.....]
There are still a few portraits left, and this guy seems like he's relaxing by a table near the beach. What a lovely idea in this hot weather (we're in the midst of the Swedish summer over here)!
Finished sprite:
[.....]
Speaking of the desert, things are still not quite done over there, so over the next couple of days (and lets face it - probably weeks) we'll work on editing and adding details to improve the overall feel.
First up, making sure the maps line up properly! Outside the walls on the right side of the town, a lot of grass grows around the exit. In order to make the transition between the maps less jarring, we realized we needed to make sure there was grass on [.....]
Moving on with the Ghost Ship plans, we have a bunch of enemy ideas we'd like to see in this final 'true' dungeon. Some have been planned for a long time - remember the sailors from Merchant Isles with strange hats? They were designed that way specifically so you'd recognize their ghost forms on the ship.
So basically, we knew we wanted Merchant Isles sailors in some shape. What we'll likely do is have weapons (likely swords and such) floating around the rooms in the 'regular world'. [.....]
Meanwhile, Fred has been working on the desert enemies. Here's a zoomed in version of those birds that will attack you after hatching out of eggs, cause it's simply too cute to pass up on showing:
We've also been working on the Solem laser! It's now a lot brighter and more intense, clearly showing the difference between simply aiming and actually attacking you:
Fred has also been working on the puzzle plates we'll use in those math puzzles mentioned. Here you can see the [.....]
You'd think we'd be finished with the desert graphics soon, but oh no, now that things are finally started to get implemented, there are a ton of edits that needs to be made - some things you just don't realize need fixing before they have been properly implemented...
First up, we have the exterior of the desert ruin. Now that the ruins will be slightly bigger than we first though, we felt it needed to look just a little bigger on the outside too:
Then [.....]
Final part of the desert ruins! This time we get into the details, adding those small things that tie everything together.
As you might have guessed, there will be a puzzle of some sort in the middle. While we know approximately what this will look like, we haven't ironed out the specifics yet so for now it will remain empty.
Aside from that, here's what it looks like in its completed state:
[.....]
Cheers!
