Week 28, 29, 30, 31

I'll be honest, it's been a very weird november.

Following the release of the latest demo, the next step was to start working on Act 2.

Act 1 takes place in the mountain range where Enkoure lives on. Act 2 then moves onto the forestat the bottom of it. There is a soft tutorialization of mechanics through Act 1 with its focus on elemental interaction (fire doesnt hurt if you're on fire element, wind element lets yo uride a wind current, water element ignores water currents and so and so), which means that, creative wise, the training wheels are completely off for designing Act 2 as the player is finally used to the controls.

So I started putting to gether a few assets I had prepared already - mostly tile. I have to say I feel very, very proud about how they came out.

Of course, this isnt enough to make for the visual identity of a level, so my goal for november was to quickfire as many gimmicks and mechanics as I could put together.

But then I... well I wouldn't call it a bad decission since it had to be done eventually, but it'll remain as a testament to my hardheadedness. I figured it was a good moment to work on a new, staple enemy of Act 2. I have since been hacking away at their spritesheet since the start of the month and I'm not sure I'm done yet - only that by next week I'll be coding this new enemy in. Act 1 enemies are animatically complexless entities with one, two, three animation loops tops, but this new enemy is a complex one that could rival the player character's own animations.

Working in the main character's spritesheet left me scarred, as, as a relatively newbie pixel artist, it was a multi-month endeavor I was ill prepared for. It's been a hot year or two since then, and I've grown as an artist, causing this spritesheet to come with its own set of challenges - I now had to pair down my current style to match the me from 2 years ago. It would be weird to suddenly find a photorealistic cat as an enemy right? Definitelly funny yes, but weird. I hope to be able to show more on the next post!

Ultimately the restul of all of this is that there wasn't much to share on a weekly basis,  as the project moved from implementation back to design. The reason I was updating weekly was to have something to show for it - game development, specially so solo deving, is a herculean task, so I wanted to have something I can show others of what it is like.Herculean yes, but not impossible. But, matter de facto, I now need to change from weekly to monthly updates,  as I also want Act 2 to be as much of a surprise when the first public build of it releases. December is looming onto us, and I was resolved to spend an extra month or two bugfixing act 1 so maybe I'll just spend the next month creating more gimmicks.  The broader the tools available, the more fascinating Act 2 will end up being.