Work on the tower continues with a bunch more backgrounds. First, some new elevators for that barrage attack where enemies from various areas will appear at once!

These elevators will feature a Collector’s HQ setting as they’ll show the Black Ferrets, who you last fought over there:

Next, the top of the tower, allowing you to finally exit all of it:

Teddy’s been working on some more puzzle ideas, so here’s a little sneak peek of one we’re fairly certain will make it into the game as one of the three challenges:

I won’t go into the details of how it works as you’ll have to solve it for yourself… But we think it’s gonna be nice, involving time rifts and season swapping!

Speaking of season swapping, as work on the cutscenes continue we’ve utilized the season change effect to transform the Shadow Slime elevators into its Pumpkin Woods themed counterpart:

This is just one of the many small details we’ve been adding and working on in the cutscene department – those things take a lot of time. But hopefully, it’ll all be worth it and look super cool in the end!

Next week and the one after we’ll be taking a little bit of a summer break in order to spend some time with friends and family. Therefore, the next blog post will be available on July 18th, when we’re back in the office! Stay tuned until then :)

The next thing on our to-do list for the final dungeon is a little puzzle section. Yes, originally we said it’ll just be a boss rush, but for pacing’s sake and because a lot of your wanted some variation, we’ve decided to add just a little something – basically, you’ll end up on a floor where the mirror spawns three different rooms which you’ll have to complete in order for the elevator to continue moving. Of course, this means we’ve thought a lot about various puzzle ideas recently, and while none are completely set in stone yet we think we have a couple nice ingredients to make interesting puzzles.

One involves a clock of sorts that automatically changes what season is in a room in fixed intervals, so after being winter for a set time, it’ll change automatically to spring, and so on. This means you’ll need to time what you do before the season is changed again.

This could for instance work with a phase shift puzzle with obstacles that change depending on the season – for instance, a waterfall you can bounce off of when it’s frozen in winter or mirror blocks with large plants growing on top of them that wither and fall down to block the mirrors in autumn and winter.

Another idea, this one by Fred, involving winds and water:

We’d also like to have another puzzle like the one in Puzzle World back in Tai Ming, with statues in the past that you can move and that break and fall in different direction in the present.

Yet another idea is a puzzle with a Lost Ship type mask that flies in a circle with season orbs, and in order to solve the puzzle you need the mask to hit the season orbs in the right order by going back and forth into the spirit world.

And here’s another Phase shift idea, illustrated by Fred:

The puzzles are still in the idea stage, as you can see – so don’t hesitate to share any ideas you have for what you’d like to see in this final puzzle section of the game!

Now, these puzzles need proper backgrounds as well, and to start things off I’ll be making the “hub room” from which you’ll reach the three different puzzles:

In the version above, doors have been added by the Mirror through his magic! But in order for them to appear, we needed a version of the hub without them added as well, so here’s what the floor will look like before the mirror transforms it with his magic:

Steadily moving towards the top of the tower! Almost there now :D

This week it’s all about our old favourite Luke. As part of the Mirror’s boss summoning game, he’ll of course need properly themed elevators:

Fred’s been busy making a ton of animations for him as well, so here’s a look at them:

And here’s the summoning sequence:

Luke will be the final boss summoned by the mirror, so drawing ever closer to the end of this dungeon. Phew!

A new week, and new design decisions! After more discussions surrounding the final part of the final dungeon, we’ve decided to give the final boss(es) a proper area of their own, away from the tower. This is for a number of reasons, one of the key ones being that it’ll be a lot more epic. As such, the layout of things will look like this going forward:

You’ll start off by getting to the “top floor” of the tower, were a door leads out to a “balcony” of sorts:

In this balcony, a path will appear before you, leading you to the building where you’ll face the final boss(es) once and for all. We’d like this path to build a bit like the elevators in the tower, with bits and pieces molding together as you walk across, but we’ll have to do some testing to see how it’ll work out:

Next, you’ll reach Zhamla’s resting grounds, which in this sketch would remind the player of both Tai Ming and the Flying Fortress:

Inside, there will be giant windows that will shatter once the real battle begins, revealing the sky outside:

Meanwhile in Fred’s department, there’s a lot of different things going on. For instance, there’s a giant Grindea hand being animated for a special sequence:

Luke is getting some new animations:

And all of the mirror bosses are getting some more graphics as well:

Speaking of the mirror bosses, one of the other things we’ve been working on recently has been the way they’ll shatter as you defeat them. Here’s a bunch of our latest tests – what do you guys think? :)