First of all after showing the lineart of the Ghost Ship exterior to Teddy and Fred and having some discussions, we’ve decided to change it in a couple ways. First, let’s take a look at what it looked like last:

First thing we wanted was to make the ship a bit higher, so with some quick editing here’s what we came up with:

Then we also wanted to make it longer, adding a broken mast to make sure the area you’ll be fighting in doesn’t get too big. Another sketch of that here:

So with these fixes in mind I went ahead and started with the reworks, also removing the door with the ladder and adding one from the left side instead:

And here’s the finished thing, ready to get colored (unless we decide on changing some more things):

Now, with the ghost ship progressing and most rooms actually already being finished, we’ve come to realize we’ve done something different with this dungeon that we haven’t done before, and we’re not sure it’s a good thing.

Usually we start off with sketches of every room and make sure we can run through each of them in a row, just like the dungeon would actually be, before we make the final art. This time however, because Teddy and Fred were so busy getting the last bits of the desert completed, we decided against that and had me work on making the completed rooms first thing. What that has lead to is that we have a lot of finished rooms, but we haven’t even had a possibility of running through the dungeon in its entirety yet as we usually do.

To remedy this, I’m going to take a break from the ghost ship exterior and focus on making quick sketches for the last bunch of rooms that haven’t been made yet, so that Teddy can put them all into the game and we can try it out and see what it feels like.

That was one of the things we discussed in today’s meeting. The other thing was that strange section I’ve mentioned before, where you’ll find yourself awaken back in Startington, but it’s a Startington that’s weird and kind of off. Previously, we wanted 4 mini “challenges” or events to take place here, but for now we’ve settled for three – each one representing obsession, expectations and deceit. These three elements are key to the story in various ways, and by adding these ‘challenges’ / cutscene things we’d like to put some emphasis on that. The deceit one is still in the sketching phase but will likely involve the artifacts you’ve been collecting in some way… Stay tuned for more on that ;)

…. and here they are! The fantastic sketches made for the remaining rooms of the ghost ship dungeon!

The puzzle one is very unclear right now since we haven’t decided exactly what kind of puzzle we want in there right now. Previously we wanted it to be one of those puzzles where you get chased by something in the ghost world, as I mentioned earlier, but now we’re kind of feeling like putting in a phase shift puzzle instead – can’t have enough of those, right?

The rest of the day we’ve been playing through the dungeon, each room now added by Teddy in a strange world with no colliders or enemies whatsoever, imagining what it’ll all be like when it’s finished. The short of it is that we kind of wish we had done this earlier, but alas, here we are. We got a ton of notes on things to fix now at least, which I’ll be talking about shortly.

Overall though, I think it’ll be fine – it’s a bit of a strange dungeon (but then again, so was Tai Ming), but thanks to the ghost world mechanic and the enemies I think it’ll be interesting.

So the first thing we decided to change when running through the dungeon was the size of the first room – always amazing when your first big change is in the first place you see, right? We felt this room was a bit small and didn’t give the proper introduction to the ship as a big and creepy place the way it should.

Same thing with one of the rooms on the third floor – previously we’ve been making a lot of too large rooms so I started making them a lot smaller since I always overestimated the sizes. Turns out I’ve gone too far the other way not instead, haha! Oh well, for this room it will be an easy fix since it hasn’t even been properly made yet.

Next, there’s a room where we thought we’d have some sort of bullet hell thing going on, but we’ve decided to change that for two reasons: one being that the boss already has a lot of bullet hell elements, and second, the room would be a nice opportunity to embrace the creepiness factor of the world instead. So, instead of an exciting bullet hell, there will be some creepy examining things in an abandoned ghastly kitchen, trying to figure out where a lost key is.

Other than that, there have mostly been minor edits and changes to make, such as more details in some rooms and added features in others, like a bookcase that will fire books at you, and possibly an encounter with a possessed refrigerator and oven – it depends on how further testing goes.

This whole dungeon is pretty strange right now as it’s very finished but also very unfinished, many of the rooms are ready but the encounters and puzzles are not. It’s possible we may need to redesign some parts if the puzzles we want to make don’t work out, but we’ll see! Needless to say, right now we’re doing a lot of discussing and testing back and forth, so we’ll see where things end up when all is said and done.

Meanwhile in Fred’s department, it’s time to finish up the crab enemy! We’ve designed this in a way that is kind of similar to the boar, which I think will become apparent once we start prototyping it. For now, here’s a bunch of its animations during battle:

So cute! I personally think this might be the cutest enemy of the game. Who agrees with me?!

Now that the cabins have all been made, it’s time to bring the darkness down and turn ’em scary and creepy for the spirit world! I’ll mostly be using props from the previous rooms for this, so you kind of know the drill already:

Once everything else is in place, Fred will likely add some moving things to these rooms as well, for the bonus creepiness factor.

Now, we’ve seen a lot of the Ghost Ship interior, but so far we haven’t talked much about what it looks like from the outside! As those of you who have played through the desert know, you’ll catch a ride here from the Black Ferrets little boat. I’ve made a temporary sketch showing what the boat could look like, and placed the camera as it will be when you land there for the first time:

It’s not visible right now but our idea is that the ship will be surrounded by some trash and debris like ropes, nets and plants, and you’ll walk over on them into the ship through a hole in the hull. When you first get there, we’ll pan the camera over the top of the ship to show you what it looks like, and who might be waiting on the deck but…. Yeah, that’s right, Luke!

As a lot of you have figured out already, you will definitely be battling Luke here, so getting the size of the deck right is pretty important as there will be a fight going on. In this first sketch though, we’ve made the ship a little bit smaller than we’d like, but it’s a good place to start. In the above screen you can see another placeholder camera for what the boss fight screen would be like, but again, we’ll probably make the ship bigger and seal off the fight area instead – we’ll see!

So now that we have the sketch in place, let’s transform it into something a bit more clear, getting that lineart up and running. Here’s the first part:

As you can see, we haven’t added anything cool the the bow of the ship yet; we’ll see whether you’ll actually even ever see that part of the ship ingame or not; might be that you won’t and then it’s pretty pointless to spent a bunch of time decorating something nobody will see!

As I mentioned before, we’ll make the ship bigger as well, but for now we’ll start with this basic lineart and start editing it to fit our needs in the next step.

Meanwhile, the prototyping for the challenge room continues! Teddy has been making some tests with the absolutely disgusting bridges. We’ll make a few more to mix the way they look up a bit, but at least now we know they look decent enough to run over:

It wouldn’t really be much of a challenge if there was no way to fail though, so here we have an example of what kind of obstacles you’ll be facing in this room, starting with some eerie eyes:

If these eyes see you in the ghost world, you’ll immediately take a whole bunch of damage and get frozen in place, so you better go back and forth between the spirit world and the regular world to avoid them!

Secondly, we have these masks that float around and will start chasing you in the ghost world. Dangerous stuff! Better make sure you don’t get caught by one of these…

As always, this whole room is very very far from done, especially graphics wise, but this is a neat way of testing gameplay ideas before committing to making the proper graphics for them.

Second to last cabin! This is the one that connects to its neighbor on the left. Again, nothing much interesting to say about this, I think!

Final cabin! This one you’ll reach from the room on the right, and will take you back to the corridor where you came from after you’ve completed everything on the right side (the challenge we haven’t 100% designed yet):

Time for something slightly different! This is one of the “challenges” we’re working on, which is basically a room where you have to move over a bunch of floating platforms – however, the bridges between them will only be visible in the ghost world!

Here you can see a rare glimpse of what it looks like with the colliders in place, as well as what happens if you’re on a bridge when you turn back to the regular world (you fall down):

I’ve been testing out some things in regards to what these bridges might look like, and here we have one of the suggestions, which I think will be the one we’ll go for:

And a small test of what it’d look like when the tables are floating the way they should (the eyes on the wall is another mechanic we’ll be playing with, something that will force you back into the regular world so it won’t be too easy to walk through this room):

 

Since we’re drawing nearer to completing the first boss fight somewhat, it’s time to start tying together the first floor! In doing so, I need to rework the first room a bit, as some things have changed in our design since we made it for the first time:

Basically, we’re adding another “floor”, though all entries and exits are on the first floor of the room. This is so we don’t have to add any level differences in the boss room, which will be the room connecting to this one on the left!

Here’s the new version:

Meanwhile, Fred keeps working on the crab – and look how cute it is! Those tiny legs, aww… I don’t know how I’ll be able to kill this?!

Time to start working on those cabins! Six in total, and here’s the first one. Let’s go:

The next cabin is pretty much a mirror of the first one, but with some different decoration. You’ll reach it from the cabin to the left of it, and exiting it from the bottom door will get you back in the corridor below, but at a place you couldn’t reach before.

The third cabin has a platform leading to a higher level! How intriguing! The room on the right of this hasn’t been designed yet, but we have a few ideas for a sort of ‘puzzle’ (actually more like a challenge, I guess), where you’ll have to go back and forth into the spirit world to avoid some dangerous ghosts!

Now it’s time to start working on the three bottom cabins, starting with the one on the far left. As with the top two, this one will be connected to its neighbor. Other than that, not much to say about this one!

Of course, we’re not only working on backgrounds for the Ghost Ship. There’s still some enemy stuff to do, one of them being designing the last enemy! So let’s take a look at what Fred has been doing:

Congratulations, it’s a crab! We really wanted one enemy that would just be a “normal” kind of enemy without any fancy spirit world mechanics, and what better thing to put on a ghost ship than a killer crab? (don’t answer that)

As you might guess, the final design we went for is the one within the green circle. Stay tuned for all its fancy animations!

Meanwhile in the programming department, Teddy’s started working on the first boss battle! We’ve made a bunch of prototype attacks and patterns, some which can be seen below:

Here you can see the skull walls that force you out of the ghost world, which we’ve shown before in a regular enemy prototype. He also throws a bunch of cannonballs at you; has a dash attack and, of course, a regular whack with the sword.

In the second one you can see two other attacks we’ve been working on; one being some kind of menace that whirls around the room (though we’re not 100% sure about this one yet).

The other is a big rock that gets lifted out of water (it currently spawns from nothing, since the actual boss room with the water isn’t made yet), and as it gets thrown into a wall or some other such thing, it gets broken into a bunch of smaller pieces the player has to avoid. Right now the broken-up pieces use some old bullet hell-type graphic asset, but that won’t be so in the proper version, of course.

We’ve actually not sure whether we want it to be a rock or some sort of water-ball (or something like that). Another option we had was for it to be a ball of all kinds of stuff he pulls out of the water and merges together, but to be honest we kind of feel that one might be a bit too much work to get nice enough. The experiments continue!

New week, old adventures! Since I’ve been making a ton of random props for each of the rooms spirit world version now, I thought it would be a good idea to go over each room and cross-pollute them with props so that creepy spiders won’t only appear in just one room, and so on.

This is also a great moment to make sure all the moss is red and all the vines are sickly purple, as well. So, with all that considered, here we have it, the rooms so far in their creepy glory:

And this is all just the two first floors! One more to go!! :D

So, time to start working on that third floor, beginning with the room with the locked door and character busts that I made before. What better thing to add here than – you know it – more tentacles?!

Also some bones, spiders, and other things from the previous floors. Yum.

And now I think it’s time for a brand new room. This looks like a simple enough corridor with seven different doors, but in part 2, I think you’ll see that it’s not quite so!

The top and bottom doors will lead to cabins where the ship’s guests sleep. As you might remember I’ve already started working on some basic stuff for such rooms, so now it’s just a matter of making them with the correct exits.

Anyway, here’s the corridor WIP:

And the finished thing:

Next up, adding some more stuff to said corridor, and as it turns out, we’ll be moving some things around as well. So the basic idea here is that you have to pass through a bunch of these cabins to get where you want to go, so I have to block the path through in various ways.

By doing so, you’ll first have to go into the first bottom cabin, find a way from that one into the one on its right, go from that one to the first top cabin and exit it through it’s neighbor as well:

Lots of random stuff later, here’s what we end up with:

Hope you all had great holidays! As we’ve been back at work for about a week it’s time for another recap post!

First up, some words about the Ghost Ship boss: we’ve shown you sneak peeks of the Captain previously, but haven’t gone into much detail yet. Our idea is that you’ll battle this guy twice, but that each of those encounters will play out very differently.

During the first encounter, his fight will be pretty straight forward spirit world themed; you won’t be able to fight him unless you see him (by entering the spirit world), and he’ll summon skulls and such that will force you to leave it lest you take damage. Aside from this, he’ll be able to throw his sword at you, and can use telekinesis for return it to his hand. He can also use this telekinetic power to grab swords from weapon stands around the room, which will attack you separately.

The next time you meet him, he’ll have upgraded his gear, taking some of the items that were transported on the ship to aid him. This includes a giant laser sword and a cannon with the ability to produce – you know it – a bullet-hell like attack! The laser sword will have the special ability to extend and give him increased reach for his attacks, and like his original sword, it can be thrown across the room towards any players in its path.

What’s that? “Only two boss battles in this dungeon?” Well, you’re right, there will be a third. It won’t be the captain though, but – …No. I think we’ll save that for later ;)

Let’s get back to Spirit World stuff instead! Can’t have too many creepy tentacles in a creepy ghost ship, can we? Let’s make some more!

When taking the screen below I of course forgot to change the moss color to red. Rest assured, it will be fixed before long:

But first, let’s do something different. Creepy faces, anyone? What could be more menacing than looking down into darkness and seeing creepy red-eyed monstrous faces with giant teeth gaze back at you? These faces will probably be animated by Fred in the end, so at the very least they’ll blink. Can’t ask someone to stare forever at you without blinking, even if it’s a creepy shadow monster, right?

For this second small room, I thought we’d add a further sprinkling of tentacles and another version of the creepy sack-faces from before. In this room, the jar gets a creepy eye as well. Oh my!

And to end this week, we have an update from the animation and programming department!

Teddy is now working on implementing and polishing the Ghost Ship mechanics (and catching the occasional bug in the beta), while Fred’s full focus is on the Captain we talked about earlier!

There’s a lot of strange animation needed for him, and since you’ll only see the sword outside of the spirit world, it’s a bit of a hassle getting everything to work smoothly. Now, the idle animation is completed, and he’s working on getting the attacks down.

Big boss sprites like this are the most difficult to make, so we expect he’ll be busy with this for quite some time while me and Teddy continue working on the other parts of the ship!

When testing something, Fred also accidentally made the funniest animation of the captain laughing. Perhaps it will end up being used!?

Hey guys! Are you ready for the last post before christmas?! It’s actually christmas eve for us Swedes today, so at the moment you’re reading this we’re probably already eating some classic christmas food. We’ll be working between christmas and new years but the blog will go on its usual 2-week holiday break, so the next post will be available on the January 14th when there’s some new stuff to show!

And now, to add a sprinkle of creepiness, which will be the theme for the rest of this post… As you go into the spirit world you begin to see things, shall we say, a bit differently. Dark things appear, and some things may not be what you thought they were… And so on.

It’s a fine line here between going too far into spooky game territory and having just the right touch of spook, so we’ll see how things go with that.

Here’s a video featuring some of the creepiness in the making, anyway:

And the “finished” backgrounds (in fact, I’ll probably return to these and add more stuff later, cause it’s just too much fun making these creepy things up):

Next up, focusing on a single room. There’s skeletons, spiders, eyes, tongues, skulls, oh my! If you get any more cool ideas for creepy stuff to add, feel free to let me know! Some things will be added by Fred as well, and some of the things I’ve made now will probably get some sort of animation by him too. It’s gonna be a blast!

The video:

And here’s a third video, featuring the random battle room of the first floor:

Here I also played around with making the moss red and the water black, a theme I think we’ll follow in the rest of the rooms (including those I already finished). After I saved the image below I also experimented with making the vines on the wall darker and of a slightly purple shade, as well, which I think will add some bonus creepiness to the room as seen through the spirit world lens.

And here you can see those purple-shade vines for yourself, albeit in a different room! For this room I wanted to make more things seem ‘alive’. It’s a theme I want to use more for these spirit world versions of each room; things being ‘possessed’ or seeming to come alive (by getting a face, a mouth or eye/eyes). So I put strange faces on pretty much everything that’s a static piece of decoration such as the buckets and boxes (and the exit). That and more skeleton pieces, of course:

One more room and we can end this week with darkness from start to end. This room is the bunk room with all the beds, so it’s finally come to the point where it’s time to add all of those skeletons. I made a few in various positions, and again added some faces to random props across the room. Also, tentacles, because nothing says creepy ghost world like a set of tentacles, right?

And with that, we at Pixel Ferrets wish you all merry holidays and a happy new year!

Good news everyone! In case you missed it, on Frontline we now have a bunch of new quests, items, craftables, and so on! Also, sound effects!!

So basically, this patch is what we intend as a release for Stable once all the bugs have been ironed out. As always, we’re super interested in hearing your feedback on these new additions, so please go ahead and share your thoughts!

I’d say the main thing we added aside from a bunch of quests are the memory orbs, of which there are five in total. Can you find them all?

These next few days Teddy will be busy with bug fixing (unless through some miracles there’s none to be fixed), while me and Fred will get back to the ghost ship. First though, here’s a few additional things you’ll be able to find in the game now that I didn’t show before:

We also decided to change the name and shop title for the potion salesman, which was previously simply ‘The Potion’ and is now what you see below:

Lastly, after testing a bunch of quests in the desert each of us got quite annoyed with the fact that there’s no teleport plate in Port Monnaie, so as a bonus for people who have a lot of extra gold to spend, we’ll include a salesman selling a teleport plate that will activate for Port Monnaie once you purchase it.

As such, this NPC salesman need not only a sprite, but also a portrait, both which can be seen below:

Now, however, it’s time for more ghost ship backgrounds! In this second smaller room, we’re introducing the first giant hole in a floor on the ghost ship. On the first floor, we kind of wanted to embrace the fact that we’re on a half-ruined ship by having areas filled with water, but on these upper floors we want dark holes here and there instead, which we intend to fill with blinking eyes and other spooky things when you’re in the ghost world:

And here’s the corridor which will connect the two smaller rooms showed previously. For this room, we’ve made some special decorations; cannons and cannon balls!

We’ll probably place these cannon balls here and there on the first floor to serve as ‘ammo’ for the wizard’s telekinesis attack: after all, what better thing to hurl at the hero but a cannon ball? That should do some damage… :)

Next it’s time to slowly begin with the third floor! Here we’ll have a slightly different floor type, and the decorations will be a bit more fancy seeing as we’re moving up to some fancy people’s living quarters. As such I’ve put two busts in this room, and further, similar decorations will be added; though right now I’m a little unsure of how much I can put in this room since I don’t know if it’ll be used for fighting yet.

I think after this room I’ll go back over the rooms I’ve already made and add some creepy decorations for their spirit world counterparts, where everything gets an added dose creepiness! Stay tuned~

We’re drawing closer to the stable patch, and in doing so we’re in need of a few more items! Here we have the creation of a vest, a pair of shoes, a full card album (could it be real?!), a pair of earrings and a new hat: the fez!

 

Since we decided that the shield salesman will be dealing with armor as well, I figured I’d put a random armor among his many shields to illustrate that fact as well:

And here’s a bunch of items that weren’t recorded, featuring a shoulder strap, a battery, a camera lens, a …seven.. three drop appearances for cutouts that will become available as housing items and a ton of weapon sprites for all the weapons Fred has been working on. Phew!

Next up, the background for the professor Pine and Tannie cutscene needed a bunch of new (and old) stuff, and for some reason I decided to make a short video of that process:

 

We’re also introducing a pair of friendly faces in the town of Port Monnaie. Remember where these guys are from?

Perhaps this cutout will serve as an additional reminder:

The girl has been animated by Fred as well:

Next, the shop titles for all of the shop! We’ve been so busy making things for them to sell that we actually managed to forget they need graphics for the shop’s interfaces…. Oh well, that’s an easy fix:

All of the shops in Port Monnaie will carry new unique items, though some will also sell things available earlier in the game. The Potion shop will work just like Remedi’s Alchemy and will allow you to change your potions; which, by the way, will be an added function to the potion shop in Tai Ming as well (though if you’ve played so far as to reach the desert, I’m afraid you won’t be able to access the Tai Ming shop anymore).

The Jar, Souvenir and Carpet shops will all be focused on housing items, while the others will carry new gear; Helmut & Headgear carries hats, Topaz’ accessories, Shield + Guard armors and shields, and Blade and Arms sell, unsurprisingly, weapons.

Another thing that remained was making these expressions for Professor Pine and Tannie in the flashback orb showing their work on stopping Zhamla:

And now, finally, with the addition of this final piece..:

..(which is the graphic for the desert fishing achievement), I think (for like the 5th time) I’m officially done with everything needed for the stable patch. Let’s hope I’m right this time :D

Now, there’s a lot more Ghost Ship backgrounds to do, so let’s jump straight back into it! First up is a bunk room of sorts, where the sailors used to sleep when they were still working on the ship and they weren’t ghosts:

Here you will battle enemies, and once a prototype for the kitchen is ready, I will add the kitchen on the right side, one platform up but on the same screen (I will add a jumpdown back into this bunkroom from there). One idea we have for decorations here when toggling into the ghost world is that you’ll see skeletons of the sailors in their beds… But I’m not sure if this will be too macabre or not. What do you guys think?

Next, we have a set of rooms one next to the other, both of the smaller kind. There will be a corridor above these two rooms, where the path is blocked, so you have to pass through these two rooms to get to the other side. And here’s the first one:

Like with the bunk room, we have a few ideas for ghost world-only decorations here too. In this case, we want to make a spooky version of the painting on the right and possibly some spooky shine around the candles and lanterns on the tables.

Time to make some more portraits for the flashback orbs you’ll be able to find throughout the world in that upcoming stable patch (and the frontline patch that naturally will precede it). Perhaps you’ll be able to recognize this silly young girl, and imagine what awesome trio will be featured in the next orb we’re making:

Any guesses? ;)

Next up, unsurprisingly… Two young gangsters in the making, and now I think you most certainly can start to guess who will be the subject of this flashback orb:

However, there’s one more character involved in the events that will be portrayed…

Hold your horses. Mandrake. Out of all characters, why Mandrake? What did he do in his young days to warrant a portrayal in a flashback orb? What’s his connection to the Black Ferrets? Has he really always looked this ridiculous?!

I guess y’all better find this memory orb and find out (once it’s been implemented) :D

Alright, so previously I’ve mentioned three flashback orbs that will be available, dealing with Zhamla finding his first card, Young Dad meeting equally young Ivy and Charlotte, and Charlotte speaking to the winter elder after saving Santa Fae from the legendary Goblin King.

Since then we’ve decided to add two more such orbs, one that details how the Black Ferrets gang came to be (which yes, weirdly enough involves professor Mandrake!), and one that features Professor Pine and Tannie working on the weapons they used when trying to defeat Zhamla.

The portraits for the mentioned events have been made, but now they all need expressions to fit what’s going on:

Meanwhile, a different piece remaining before the desert is fully ready for the stable patch is a set of treasure maps. These will be given to you by the archaeologist Finder, who is busy doing other things and cannot dig at so many places at the same time. So it’s up to you to find and bring back these ancient treasures to the archaeologist’s collection:

Perhaps by doing so, you might even get some sort of reward?!

As for the maps themselves, they too need to be made. And since you’re here and have read this far, you can have a look at them before anyone else:

Can you figure out where to look for the treasure? :)

And now an update from the programming and animation department! Teddy and Fred have been working hard on adding the remaining Flashback Orbs, which which means there’s a ton of new sprites and animations needed. First one of young Zhamla casting a spell:

Vilya beating someone up:

Young mandrake’s design and animations of him walking threateningly and running away from something scary (wonder what that could be):

And a bunch of designs for an ancient piece of weaponry, once meant for Phaseman. Unfortunately (?) for the player, the piece ended up sold and shipped off on a certain ship instead. The first time we’ll see this ancient relic is in the flashback orb with Tannie and Professor Pine, but I have a feeling you’ll see it again, somewhere…

Since we’re adding a bunch of quests, drops and a few craftables, there’a also a bunch of items to be made. Here we have the given #1 favorite weapon for all classes, a book:

And the #1 favorite housing item for every player in the world, the cat food bowl in action:

Who can’t wait to fill their house with cats?!