We’re drawing closer to the second patch of the Temple of Seasons testing. So close, in fact, we’re going to unleash it tomorrow, together with some fixes for bugs you guys hunted down in the past couple of weeks!

The patch will feature more progression (everything except the boss), drops for all the enemies, ability to get the actual cards, and also the proper music for the temple. Below are some of the drops you’ll going to find (the hats not included):

After this patch has been uploaded, we’ll turn all our attention towards finishing up the boss of the temple! Fred has already done a good chunk of animation work on him, and we think he’ll turn out great, but we’ll keep him out of this blog so that not everything is revealed!

Vilya, being done for now with everything she can do on the temple, has worked on things both from before and after Seasonne and the Temple of Seasons! For example, she made this Crystal Bug card (an enemy from Mt. Bloom), and also some slight style changes on a few characters in the very beginning of the game:

So for anyone that missed it, we kept our promise from two weeks ago and updated the Frontline version of the beta! This updates includes the first part of the Temple of Seasons, including two of the three planned bosses. If you have no idea of who or what the Frontline beta is, head over here for more information.

We are really interested to hear what you guys think about the dungeon so far, in terms of difficulty and just pure entertainment value. It’s easy for us to stare ourselves blind while working on the game each and everyday so your thoughts are highly valued!

So with the first part of the dungeon out of the picture for now, we’ve naturally focused last weeks attention on the second part.
We’ve added graphics and animation to one of the brain teasers you’ll stumble upon which we fittingly dubbed “the water puzzle”. Below is an animated GIF that hopefully covers the basics of how it works.

We also began prototyping a room we’ve elected to call “the obstacle course” (we have a way with names, what can we say!). Like the name implies, the room is supposed to put players through a series of challenges before they can reach the exit.
We’ve tried to mix some combat together with some short but sweet obstacle navigation that players will have to complete in succession.

What sets this room apart from all other rooms in the temple is that all seasons will be active at the same time. This makes the combat encounter especially interesting since all enemies will have access to their special abilities, paving way for some enjoyable chaos!

While the prototype is still in need of some tweeking and adjustment, Vilya went ahead and created the base graphics for the room in all its mixed up glory.

Click to view!

This week we’ve been working on two things: the main boss of the Temple of Seasons, as well as getting the first half of the temple ready for beta testing.

We want to keep the boss stuff hidden for now, but if you want a sneak-peek of what you’ll be facing, be sure to check Vilya’s blog in the coming days, as she’ll be uploading his boss portrait there.

In the meanwhile, here’s a bunch of expressions that Vilya has been making for the Temple of Seasons cutscenes:

She also finally got around to updating the library back in Evergrind City, which means you might eventually be able to go there as well:

One of the quirks that sets the Temple of Seasons apart from the rest of our dungeons is of course the Season Change ability we showcased a while back. While combat kind of takes a lead role, navigating through out the temple using the seasons will hopefully be a strong co-star!

Fred has been creating a bunch of different obstacles that block and open up different areas of the temple depending on the active season within the room.

The past couple of weeks have been spent with friends and family, but as of yesterday we are all gathered back on the island again! Today we had a customary work meeting at a local hamburger joint, where we discussed the last stretch of the temple, including the main boss.

Another thing we talked about was the state of the beta update cycles, where we feel we’ve fallen into a pattern of using Frontline as a Stable and Stable as some kind of Super Stable. Thus, we’re going to attempt increasing the update frequency of the Frontline beta, as well as the Stable beta.

The point of the Frontline beta was, after all, to allow users to test things as they were implemented. As a first step towards going back to this, we’re going to patch in the first and second part of the Season Temple sometime during the coming couple of weeks, including the Season Hydra miniboss.

We’ll get back to the proper Weekly Recap format next Monday, when we’ve gotten proper new material to show!