I’ll stay concise. I want to get back to work! 😀
This month my goal was to make major progress on the first boss and surrounding story content. As I briefly guessed last month, with my “month or three” before Alpha launch, I’ve only made it a short distance into this major milestone.
First Boss
First I designed Gynkatuul’Gakreare:
Then I converted the design into basic stills from multiple perspectives:
As I designed boss mechanics and worked on this fella’s art, I realized how nice it’d be to have to delve boss lairs before confronting the boss. This would also later provide a home environment for each revived “guardian species” that Nectira unlocks. I sketched out multiple screens and did a first-pass of game art for each room, doubling back and finishing a couple of them. I’ll be spending another week or so making all the “Chogi Chasm” rooms look as good as the first two. More props, debris and plant-life will be added later, from within the game builder, to further dress up these rooms. Then I’ll fill them with Dark Chogi enemies and Gynkatuul:
I’m sure I’ll put more thought into these cave areas of the Chogi Chasm, to make the whole level more fun, and less of a winding grind. I plan for the Dark Chogi/ Restored Chogi to have burrowing tunnels, to make it feel like a home for them, and present a strategic challenge in Nectira’s descent. Once I finish all the level elements, I’ll get to play with finishing the boss animations and mechanics, sounds and musics (August?) and then the story elements that surround defeating said boss (September?).
Aside from some minor fixes to the game itself, that’s what I’ve knocked out this past month. I’ve also put some thought into reiterating upon previous designs…
Using Your Enemies
Months in the future, Yarku will be more useful to Nectira than as relentless enemies which drop sap. Hives will be more than Yarku production chambers which drop gemstones. Bosses will likewise be more than beasts to slay, to simply reclaim a land. All of these will carry a dose of “life force” to harness, and also have a purified form, which will do multiple things:
For one, Nectira will have to strategically position her enemies to make use of the unlocked surge of life released with their defeat. Celaemus (through his vines at each vine level) can use this raw energy to grow ground-cover, chained together to the vine, and therefore develop Celaem Vines. It’ll no longer be up to Nectira’s tail to bring healing and lay a foundation for traps. This will do a lot of interesting things with level flow, which I’m opting to make more enjoyable as I add other elements not yet in the game.
The defeat of each Yarku will also bring a critter, large or small, back into existence in Raeos, returning the life which the Yarku possessed back to it’s original owner. I can picture Raeos’ equivalent of sparrows, crows, mice, rabbits and foxes ejecting from each poof of each defeated Yarku, in relative assortments and in many color variations.
In addition to that, as guardian species are introduced with each boss victory, Nectira will have more reasons to work Celaemus’ reach towards reviving strategically-placed guardian bushes, where she/Celaemus can use Yarku life-force to grow guardian species; critters purposed to fight back against the Yarku, at Nectira’s side on the battlefield.
Hives will release a blast of lesser critters too (resembling all of the to-be-spawned Yarku, developed inside), but also each unlock a Dynis, one of Nectira’s kin, whom has been saved and thus befriended by Nectira. Nothing like a new face to impart a little tidbit of information and the gift of a super-powered gemstone!
Bosses, as previously designed, will give birth to the once-slain, great beast kings of Raeos! (I’ll let you experience the depth of that for yourself in a few months.)
Thanks for reading up on what I’ve been working on. Now back to development…
-Adam