Next up, making some actual pins to try this whole thing out with:
Pins will come in many shapes and colours, but for now I'm starting off with this color, making it in a variety of different shapes with icons to match. They all use the same palette so colour swapping will then hopefully be easy enough! [.....]
So in order to get a true feel for the whole Badge system (which we have renamed into 'Pins' now, by the way!) I've been tasked with making an interface for it where you select whether to equip, replace of throw away a new bag that you get.
We started of with this super basic sketch:
And translated it into something slightly more visually pleasing:
And here's the interface the way it looks currently:
"Attack DMG" in white represents the name [.....]
Another thing we've been playing around with is ideas for how to make each run a bit more unique compared to your previous runs, challenging you to change your play style or at least experience things more differently. We feel that right now each run is very similar to the last one, and a player is rarely encouraged to try new skills. Last week we talked about a feature we wanted to add to help out with that (Badges) and this week we have tried out some of those as well.
As a reminder, a Badge is something that will affect your run in some way, giving you certain bonuses while sometimes coming with a negative on [.....]
Now, back to Arcade Mode for a bit. As you know there are a bunch of changes we've been wanting to make to Arcade Mode, among them a rebalancing and removal of the dual floors per area. We've decided to take some time to focus on Arcade things for now, and so today as part of our meeting we spend a couple hours playtesting the changes that have been made so far.
To start off with, there's now just one floor per area instead of the usual [.....]
Next, a look at what's happening in Fred's department! With us deciding to finish up a bunch of random things, it's time for start looking at some of the many loose ends and one of the most asked such things is when you'll be able to grow those pesky little plants into something you can climb to reach certain places. Well, the answer is soon! And here's the first step on that way, namely Fred making some graphics for it:
There are also more [.....]
Wow, I totally keep messing up with scheduling the posts I've written lately don't I? Sorry about that!
And now, here's the portrait of Marino's mom! She's the lovely lady of the mansion, making lists of all the charities they're gonna contribute to:
[.....]
And here we have the second maid portrait for the mansion! A dark haired young lady dusting the extensive collections :)
[.....]
As work continues all across the game there are a bunch of smaller things added here and there. One such thing is the ability to now "turn off" the fireplace in your house, which used to be burning all the time! As such, a version of it without the fire needed to be made:
And as mentioned a little while ago, we're introducing a new interface indicating when you're in bet room. Here's the initial sketch:
And the progress/final thing:
We [.....]
As you know by now, we've been starting to have daily meetings discussing the upcoming final pieces of the game, and today I thought I'd give you a rundown of some of the Arcade things we've been talking about last week!
We've mentioned before that it is our goal to shorten to length of Arcade Mode now that all of the floors are being added, as two floors per area is a lot and takes a very long time to play through. Our current idea is that there will be one floor per area, and that we'll rebalance it slightly so you'll have come a bit further in the areas before it gets terrifyingly difficult; right now [.....]
But first, a portrait of one of the inhabitants of the mansion, namely one of the maids! There will be more of these later on, but here's a start:
[.....]
And so it begins! Taking the mansion on its first step to completion, starting with the hallway:
You'll notice that this is only just called part 1, and that's because we'll still improve on some things. To start off with, I'll be making new decorations for the fountains, making them look a bit more luxurious and unique to the mansion. We're also gonna replace the bottom pools and put some sort of statues and plants around them, and maybe add some paintings on the wall. [.....]
We're back from our little Easter holiday! Did you guys have a nice holiday? We hope you did try to find some peace even in the midst of this crisis the world is facing!
We've recharged our batteries and are excited to get back to working properly and today we started off the day with a long meeting discussing the mails we've received from a lot of the people who are to design items for the game! As I mentioned before we went on holiday, we would start sending out requests for the designs, and have since received quite a few replies which we've discussed and answered accordingly.
If you bought one of the tiers which [.....]
And so we take a look at the second portrait, that of the Butler:
With Easter now being upon us next week, and the Stable update released and ready, it's time for us to take a week off to rest and gather energy for the next stretch of work: finishing up all the loose threads in Story Mode and adding some more quests! Final stretch soon, can't believe it :)
As usual, the blog will be on pause during our holiday, but it'll be [.....]
So let's start with Marino's dad's portrait! This is a character we've all longed to meet (no? just me?), and for reasons unknown we've decided to be inspired by a famous video game character when designing him, with hints being both in the portrait and the sprite itself. Can you guess who?
[.....]
Now, for a much longed for update from Fred's department! Because of the spoilery nature of nearly every animation he's made for a long time there hasn't been many updates from him, but you can view all of his progress in the update which should also be on stable in one of the coming days if it isn't up already!
Now, however, as we move on to less spoiler-y things, such as the mansion in Evergrind South, we can start showing more stuff again! Here we have [.....]
Cheers!
