Dev Log #51

Hey folks, we’ll be diving into everything we’ve been up to since the last build.

Build 36

First, our next build is near ready just waiting for animation work to be completed! Continuing the main quest, this new story content follows the events of Yela's temple and pushes forward the events of Kaldea. It features a scene for each companion!

We will be introducing three new lavishly designed locations drawn by Etherek and touched by Arbuz, these locations will introduce you to the opulence of the aristocracy, as well as something more mysterious.

New combat sprite and NPCs.

Hiho scene rework

Just like for Samara, we've been cooking a rework of Hiho’s first scene, updating her to be more in line with the quality bar we have set with our earned experience and new team members to the project. This should mark one of the last rework scenes, and will really do Hiho justice while also fixing some pacing issues where players felt her scene was a bit abrupt with her moving far too fast into an amorous relationship.

We are adding a few new bits to her sprites as well! We are adding a rear sprite, this will mean Hiho no longer races the camera perpetually in travel when you should see her back. There may be small touch ups to her first quest in the future pending discussions internally, but these sprite animations have been a long time coming.

Blackfur rework

We redesigned the blackfur sprite, these were the first enemies introduced to you in that ancient build so long ago with Samara as the only companion so… this has been a long time coming. Blackfurs make a huge part of the setting and Avarice, even being an important part of Gold and Sand as well.

Here is the old sprite for comparison:

The new sprite also has a back pose.

We have contracted and tested out a new animator in this process, so it was a great training project for them while updating some sorely needed sprite animations. We do hope this will improve the combat feel, too.

Goat

Camel

Water shader

We've been working on a way to have our 2d sprites interact with water. It's still a work in progress, but here is the current state.

Unity 6

And finally a mention on Unity versions. We recently upgraded the game engine from Unity 2022 to Unity 6, which took a bit more time than planned, but it should now be fully ready. There won’t be any noticeable visual changes or gameplay changes in general though, but it was an important update backend-wise more for future proofing and compatibility.

Gold & Sand

We’ll finish with a little tease for Gold & Sand! Don't forget to wishlist the game on Steam if you haven't already done so. We are pushing to release a demo soon™… most likely. Hopefully! It actually is VERY close, the endings are being worked on already, so it really is just building the demo and smoothing out any wrinkles!

Anyways that's all for now, you can expect Build 36 to release in the next few days!