This week, Teddy has been implementing the new Zhamla mechanics for hard mode we showed last week – his stealing your barrier and smashing your health potion! Here’s a couple of short videos showcasing what this looks like in game right now:

Meanwhile, Fred has been doing a ton of animations for the bad/normal ending (most of which we don’t want to show on here for spoiler reasons), new projectiles for Zhamla’s (and everyone elses) bullet hell attacks as well as cleaning up the Frosty walk animation:

We’re also working through the list of all the things we’ve found to improve, change or add during our most recent and final playthrough of the game. We’re sorting these items into three categories:

Vital for release (mainly bugs and/or things that are broken in some way)

“Would-Be-Nice-For-Release” (things that could definitely run or look a bit better, which we’ll add as many as we have time for)

and, finally:

“Post Release”, in which we put all things we’d ideally like to add but are minor or involve a lot of development time for the improvement you get (a lot of purely visual improvements go here, many of which might never end getting added depending on how we feel after release).

Right now the ‘Vital for release’ list isn’t too long, and we intend to keep it that way. After all, we’re on the final stretch now and though some may not believe it, nobody wants to finally get to 1.0 more than us! :)

Another week, and lots of progress on the final battle(s)!

This week we’ve been working on two major things: Zhamla’s boss battle (hard mode version), and fine-tuning the ‘normal’ ending.

When it comes to Zhamla’s boss battle in hard mode, we’ve felt that health potions and some supportive spell (Barrier, I’m looking at you) pose a bit of a design challenge for us. Every opening and every cinematic attack will give your barrier and potion time to recharge, and since the battle is long the amount healed with that combination can become quite insane. This isn’t an issue on the Normal difficulty, as it’s not designed to be as much of a challenge and we expect they will each serve as vital means for many to be able to defeat him at all. However, on hard mode, you’re basically asking for a challenge.

So how have we decided to solve this? Here’s a clue:

Basically, if you try to drink a health potion in hard mode, Zhamla will snatch the potion from your hand and smash it to the floor!

As for Barrier….

It might not be clearly illustrated here, but Zhamla will actually steal your barrier, getting it as a shield for himself!

In other words, barrier and health pots are off limits if you wish to defeat Zhamla on hard mode :)

As for the Normal Ending cutscene, we’re adding some minor animations and changing up some timings (editing some of the “directing”, if you will), to give the end a bit more oomph than it currently has. Though our first intention was for it to be pretty clear it wasn’t the true ending, we also don’t want it to feel too rushed, which has turned out to be a fine line to walk.

That’s all for now! See you next week :D

Hey guys! How’s your week been? Ours has been filled with art creation, bug testing, release discussions and animation making. And a bunch of programming, of course!

To start off the showcase of this week, we have a ruined version of the final battle area, which you’ll see if you climb all the way back to the top after completing the game and starting it again:

We’ve also made a bunch of details for Grindea’s island, which will feature in one of the endings – we changed some colours around and created some constellations in the sky:

Fred has been doing some work on Grindea as well, giving her some new animations:

And of course, a bunch of new animations for the final boss, which is definitely turning out the be the most graphic heavy boss of the entire game:

He’s also started recording a bunch of videos for the release trailer, which is something he’ll have to start working on for real pretty soon. It also gives him the opportunity to play through the game and try to catch any of the bugs of fixes Vilya might have missed during her playthrough.

Finally, just like the last couple of weeks there’s a ton of stuff being made that we can’t show just yet. As always, while we’re pretty liberal with spoilers on this blog there’s just some things in the ending cutscenes and post-end game state we’d rather you experience for yourself. Hopefully you’ll be able to soon!

Vilya is unavailable, which means it’s time for one final(?) Fred guest appearance! Lesss go!

It’s become increasingly harder and harder for me to show content here on the blog since everything I’m working on now either falls in the camp of “Oh, this is way too spoiler-y” or “this is waaay too boring and uninteresting”. This is kind of sad since it makes for pretty bare-boned posts here, but overall it’s great because it means; the game is soon finished!

Anyway, been scraping the barrel and here’s some stuff from last week:

I can also report, after spending almost one week in our new office, that it kicks absolutley ass so far! It’s been slightly overwhelming getting used to being around other people again (fellow introverts rise up!), but I’m already starting to feel settled in, my production levels have been through the roof AND there’s unlimited free fruit! What’s not to love?

Tiny tour of my little spot:

And yeah, I dunno, I think Imma head back to the animation dungeon! Love you guys, Fred OUT!