It’s a new week, and a new recap!

Last week ended up being spent both on the final Mount Bloom things as well as the next temple. Teddy started off the week prototyping the optional phase puzzle challenge(s), and while we were sending them around for in-house testing, we simultaneously worked ahead with designing the next upcoming enemy visuals and improving our old temple backgrounds.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves – first, let’s take a look at said prototypes….

First up is a new type of puzzle mechanic, where you have to avoid getting hit by sparks by shooting yourself back and forth between two of those “donkey barrels”. This gets increasingly harder, starting with you just having to avoid tiny stationary sparks, but after a while there will be long lines of spark moving in the opposite direction of your barrels.

When we’re adding the real artwork for this (keep in mind all you see here is strictly WIP and/or placeholder), we want the sparks exchanged for fields of electricity instead, that can be short or long depending on the difficulty of the part of the challenge.

There will, of course, be regular puzzles as well – only much harder than the ones you encountered in the main story portion of the game! Figuring out where to go, how to get there and – perhaps most important of all – knowing exactly when to shoot yourself out of the barrels will be crucial in these puzzles!

Once we were satisfied with the prototypes, Vilya went ahead and started working on getting the actual background art in place:

Okay, but what about the temple stuff?! Well, as you may remember, a while ago Vilya was working on the first zone of the temple (which in fact is a time travel village, so we should probably stop calling it a temple). This week she continued this work, adding a bunch of details to the upper part of the map:

As for the enemies, here’s what the current lineup looks like:

As always, these are subject to change or redesign as we work ahead! For now though, there’s a cute little worm, a mysterious patch of moss (?!), an annoying monkey, and a statue on a rampage!

These guys will appear in the present state of the time travel village, where everything is abandoned, ruined and overgrown (kind of continuing on the whole Mount Bloom theme, but using a different approach). Provoked by the presence of the artifact, even the statues come to life to haunt you! Oh no!

But first, we gotta finish those Mount Bloom side quests….. So, see you next week! :D

This week we’ve worked on refining the challenges, especially the Flower Challenge we showed you some prototype GIFs of last week. It’s coming along nicely, with more and more proper graphics added (still needs a new background, though):

We still have a bit of tweaking to do, but we’re getting there!

Meanwhile, Vilya made a proper background for the Spinsect challenge, which will be further improved by Fred later on, who will add animated Spinsects looking out through the holes in the wall:

She also went over the map with the statue, adding a bit more details (more moss & crystals in the stone circles):

There’s also another character being made, who will appear a bit earlier than Mt Bloom! :o

Finally, here’s a couple of animation reels made by Fred, featuring some of the thing he has been working on this week:

This week a lot of our focus has gone into prototyping more of the challenges you’ll be facing in Mt Bloom! Here are a few gifs from our prototype of the poisonous flower challenge (keep in mind that a lot of the art is still WIP):

Basically, the small flowers will increase in size over time, releasing their poison once they reach their final form. If you hit the flowers, they’ll shrink, until they die and disappear from the map.

The big one works a bit differently. Instead of releasing poison in its final form, it heals the other flowers and shields them, meaning you can’t damage them until you’ve dealt with the bigger one. Also, while hitting it causes it to shrink, there’s a limit to how small it can get, at least until you’ve worked through its HP bar!

After a little while, it’ll launch a special attack which clears any enemies on the map. Instead, a new type of flower will spawn, while the big one launches a beam spinning around the room. You now have to dodge a bunch of projectiles shooting out from the exploding smaller flowers (again, artwork will differ in it’s final form):

We also started doing some tests for the gas effect in the third and final challenge, where you’ll run through a room filled with poison gas:

More on that next week, hopefully!

Other than this mayhem of prototyping & testing, we’ve been doing some more work on Mt Bloom in general. Here’s a background that Vilya has been working on, which happens to be the entrance to the next temple:

Close-up of the statue:

GIF of the statue WIP:

She also made a bunch of variations of the Caveling portrait from last week:

Phew!

Finally, look at how cool our office door looks now, thanks to some signs printed and given to us by one of Fred’s friends:

Pretty neat, huh? Gonna help motivate us as we step into the office every morning! :D

As we’re moving on to implementing Mt. Bloom, it’s about time we added a way into the actual cave system, right? That’s one of the tasks Vilya was working on last week:

As you might have guessed, you’ll be using a Season Orb to turn part of the area into a frozen winter state! There will also be an ice bridge, animated by Fred, that will appear and take you across :)

On the inside of Mt. Bloom, we’re still in the process of adding greenery, making it properly bloom-y:

We also started implementing and prototyping the enemies that will appear in the cave! Here are a few GIFs of that in action:

As you can see, there’s a lot of placeholder art here: the tiny mushrooms and acid will be recolored, and the enemy mushrooms won’t turn into Jumpkins when you hit them… ;) Overall, these GIFs should give you an idea of how the enemies work, though!

Basically, the Spinsects spin around the room, bouncing off the walls. They’ll speed up if you hit them, so be careful where you stand! The mushrooms are a typical Jumpkin enemy, chasing you across the map. Once they die, they’ll leave a bunch of tiny mushrooms on the ground that blind you if you step on them. The larva ignores you, but leaves a trail of acid that deals damage over time if you step in it. Like the Spinsects, it will go faster if you hit it, but will stop to catch it’s breath after a little while :)

In order to unlock the way into the next temple, you’ll be doing a set of challenges inside the mountain. Last week we started prototyping one of them, where you’ll direct Spinsects into a large boulder in order to break it.

Here’s a suuuper early sneak peak, using only placeholder art that will be replaced in the near future:

Stay tuned for next week and more Mt. Bloom stuff! :D

GIFs! GIFs everywhere! In this post, we  go berserk with the GIFs, and we start off with Vilya who has tried something new: step-by-step GIFs!

Typically Vilya also records videos of her progress with sprites and portraits (which can be seen on her blog), but this time she also tried her hands on making GIFs of the steps. Here’s the result, featuring a portrait and a rework of the Slime card:

Most of our time has been spent dealing with the upcoming Black Ferrets battle, though!

First up, the new boss portrait:

Then, a few GIFs with the battle itself, from our early test runs:

And finally, some of the sprite work Fred has been working on for this battle:

Excited for the battle? We are too, and hopefully the patch where you’ll be able to try it out won’t be too far away! Stay tuned for more next week :)

Yes, it’s another week of festival stuff! And most likely there will be at least one more before we’re completely done :)

Vilya has started working on the treasure cave, where the flashback cutscene involving your mother Charlotte and the dragon will take place:

The cave will be filled with gold and treasures of various kinds, and this here is only the WIP of the left part of it – in the end it’ll be twice as big!

We also decided (thanks to Owns suggestion on the forums), to add cutouts to the festival, which you can stand behind:

In the end our idea is that you’ll be able to ask Luke & Marino (whom you’re at the festival with) to stand behind them as well, and we’re currently looking into the possibility of having a cameraman who will create a screenshot for you after you press a button. Not 100% sure if that will work yet though, but we think it’d be pretty fun!

Other than that, a lot of new expressions have been made in order for the characters to express the right feeling(s), both in the flashback cutscene (young dad!) as well as in and around the festival:

More to come next week!

Finally, Fred has started working on another mini-boss battle that will take place near the festival in time, and I’m sure you’ve been missing these guys:

Excited yet? Hang in there for a bit longer, the festival is just around the corner! :3

With the core enemies of the dungeon reaching a pretty complete state, we’re moving on to the juicy stuff. Bosses!

The game up to this point has been relatively boss heavy, which is a trend we are aiming to keep going. Designing and creating all the different bosses has definitely been one of the highlights of the production. Hopefully you guys feel the same way about playing them!

The Temple of Season will feature two mini-bosses on top of the “real” Dungeon boss. As with prior bosses, keeping every fight different (but still fun and challenging) has been our main goal when designing them.

Fred spent parts of last week working on the sprites for one of the two mini-bosses, the Season Hydra.

The premise of the fight is that each head will grow stronger whenever it’s matched up with its season. Players will have the ability to change the seasons during the battle and will have to do so on a regular basis to avoid making one of the heads too powerful.

Vilya, on the other hand, has kept making portraits! Here’s a bunch of WIP’s, as well as their finished sprites:

Picking up from last week, the three different types of Wizards are now in the game and working properly. The Wizard is a ranged support type of enemy, with each variation having its own unique special ability. Just like their melee counter-parts, the Wizard can only use their special abilities if the current season matches its color.

Click to see the animated GIF!

We have tried our best to make each Knight/Wizard pair have a set of abilities that work in symbiosis with each other. As seen above the Summer Wizard can imprison players, making it harder to avoid the Knights heavy hitting special attack.

The winter Wizard can summon a Ice Shield around a target monster that will slow and damage players within close range. The shield can be destroyed by shielding, attacking or taking damage from it. Paired together with the agility of the winter Knight, it could turn into a deadly threat!

Last but not least the fall Wizard can summon a bunch of tornados that move around at a seemingly random pattern. Players getting too close will be sent flying into any nearby enemy. The tornados can also fuse with fall Knights performing their Spinning Attack, making them super charged in terms of speed and damage.

Vilya has kept on making portraits! Here’s some of her WIP’s from this week:

And here are the finished sprites:

Fred has been soldiering on with the temple’s basic enemies, finishing up the knights! As we’ve mentioned previously, they would share many similarities, but all have different special attacks they can use if the current season match their color.

The Autumn Knight spins his sword and chases after players
much like Giga Slime’s saw spin!

The Winter Knight dashes through the playfield
akin to the player’s own Piercing Dash-ability

The Summer Knight unleashes a powerful, uninterruptable smash,
breaking shields and dealing tons of damage

Next week we’ll be focusing on the different Season Wizard’s special abilities!

Since Vilya’s now reached a roadblock on the temple rooms (since the few left must be discussed in detail before she can make them), she’s returned to the portrait factory, remaking and revamping!

One of these portraits are the plushie collector in the city. We decided to make her a bit younger when we updated the portrait, as well!

Here’s how she used to look:

And here’s the step-by-step for the new portrait:

Talking about portraits, don’t forget that you can get more in-depth information of Vilya’s work over at her personal blog!

We keep working on the Temple, which is coming alone nicely! Vilya has finished almost all rooms, except for a few which will house special challenges or (mini-) bosses that we need to design a bit more before creating their rooms.

Here’s the last few rooms she made before returning to portrait painting:

Some of these rooms will have animated obstacles and details added by Fred at a later stage, so stay tuned for that!

Teddy, in the meanwhile, has been working on prototyping some of the enemies that you’ll encounter in the temple. Here’s a screen of one such battle in action: