So, time for some Spookington fixes! First up, a couple new expressions for some of the characters you’ll meet there, namely Jonathan (cured of his cough!) and Luke’s mom (who is a little concerned):

The pathway up to Spookington felt a little claustrophobic so we’re turning it into utter darkness, as far as the eye can see:

And as part of the mechanics on this town, we’ll be using a couple globes, which in this version were what we’d like to call programmer art, now replaced with the real deal:

Finally, adding some more stuff to your childhood home in this Spookington version, making it a bit more messy:

Next up on my list of things is putting someone in that ghostlike shop to manage business there! It took a while for us to decide on a design for this guy; should he be human, a ghost, or something else entirely? In the end though we decided to go for something of a shadowlike demonic creature, just to mix things up a bit lore wise (plus it would be cool to design an actual creature based off of the darkness we’ve introduced this far in the ghost ship).

Without further ado:

Some minor adjustments to the Startington Spooky version, featuring more clutter, stacks of books, and a mysterious night sky:

Next up, what I now honestly believe will be my final contribution to the Ghost Ship for now (or at at least until we finalize the boss battle and I’ll have to make any changes to the boss area and such): Luke’s boss portrait!

And now it’s time to take a look at what’s cooking with the Luke battle! The prototyping stage is in full swing, and we’re currently experimenting with a set of attacks and combos for him to throw at you:

No Grindea battle is complete without a bit of dodging as well, so naturally what other skill would Luke master than Smash:

So far so good, we’re feeling quite excited about this battle and hope you guys will too… :)

Moving on with a new week and new spooky Startington stuff, it’s time to spookify some trees and bushes:

Also making the whole place fly (cause why not?):

For the third and final challenge of spooky Startington we’ll be using this puzzle, which of course in turn needs the appropriate puzzle background:

Another part of this new spooky Startington is a nice little picnic which all of your friends and family will take part in! It will be available both in a nice bright version and an abandoned, dark version after things have taken a turn for the worse:

Next up, another ghost portrait, featuring a long dead diva, who used to be a hell of a singer on the Ghost ship:

Meanwhile, the spooky Startington bit, or should I call it the Spookington bit, has been finished enough for us to try it out! Here are some screens from my playthrough:

Playing through this portion of the game takes approximately 20 minutes and while it’s mostly done there’s some minor thing we’ll need to add and fix before we’re fully satisfied. Shouldn’t take too long though! After that, just the Luke battle remaining. Exciting times!

Meanwhile in the animation department, some further additions to spooky Startington, which will further increase the creep factor of the place:

This week, we’ll start with making a new statue, featuring your mom Charlotte! This statue will be part of one of the spooky Startington challenges and will contain one of the objects needed to progress:

Some more fixes in preparation for the spooky Startington bit, starting with a mysterious hole in the floor of this room:

This hole is there for the perfect guard challenge, making it clear for the player that they are not able to wander off during the challenge.

Next, some minor adjustments to the statue from before, editing her outfit to match what we’ve previously shown Charlotte wearing:

There are also a couple more Ghost portraits to be made, with the first one being a spooky Tai Ming seamstress :

Next, an old man looking for his wife, lost somewhere on the ship:

Finally, as part of the new creepy Startington, Fred has been working on some old NPCs that will be returning:

Exciting times! Slowly but surely, this part of the dungeon comes together as well :)

Next up, we decided to give this cabin a bit of an upgrade decoration wise, to put some emphasis on the fact that there’s a weird circus troupe thing going on in this mini challenge where you need to light torches:

And as mentioned previously, good old Kailan from Flying Fortress needs a ghostified portrait:

Some minor fixes for this room to make it look slightly more interesting! This used to be designed as a boss room for when you were still supposed to battle the Captain twice, but since we replaced the second captain battle with a battle against the eye boss, this room could get some more decorations without it distracting your focus in a boss battle:

As part of a very strange thing happening towards the end of the ghost ship, a huge moon looking thing needed to be made as well! Whatever in the world could we need this for? Wait and see! :)

With work now progressing to the creepy Startington portion, we realized just making the houses fall apart without touching the surrounding areas would look a bit empty, so we decided to make the entire area surrounding each building covered in the darkness once you complete its challenge: