Coming soon... (Patreon)

Just a quick update here to share some good news:   The Scrap Engine is coming to a build near you, and pretty soon! My goal is to have the experimental release out for you by the weekend, and see what you all make of this weird thing.

I've been a bit disappointed at the progress for a number of reasons, not least of all because squeezing something this unorthodox into Cogmind felt like a lot of wasted time compared to all the other content progress that could've been made in the same time, like actually building new maps and encounters and whatnot.

As is, none of the new faction stuff* has happened yet (besides having some time to plan it in the background), so hopefully this little experiment ends up being worth it anyway. Hard to say without a lot of real playtesting though, because it's not the kind of thing Cogmind was built to support, as discussed before. Architecturally it's working out okay, I believe, after accommodating it as described last time, but design-wise it's of course in a rather odd place.

(*Okay technically this Scrap Engine thing is in some way related to the new faction, yes, but actually not as strongly as one might assume, based on my plans for it--it's kind of tangential to everything else.)

So now we have working "evolving weapons" as well (sorry, it does not include melee, launchers, or special weapons--in the end those don't really make much sense to randomize given how everything is balanced and the types of stats/variables available), and a bunch of other little QoL bits to pull it together (added a new UI window and some more sfx just today).

I'll begin some playtesting of my own tomorrow, something this particular update needs a lot of given there are bound to be some weird things going on... Some of these are actually intentional and allowed for now--we'll just have to see how it plays out. But I'll no doubt encounter some issues I'd like to iron out first (like... especially any crashes xD, but who knows maybe more QoL too).

If anything I can at least guarantee that it'll be interesting :P

Above is a QoL demo showing how an active Scrap Engine in COLLECT mode will flash any visible parts that it's willing to eat, saving on some guesswork in that regard, or at least make it more obvious until you're used to what it can and cannot do.

Depot Dungeons

Since I had finished my previous Cogmind run and the next build wasn't quite ready, yesterday I decided to stream a game that's been on my radar for a while: Depot Dungeons.

If you're interested in problem solving in immersive sci-fi worlds (which for some reason I'm guessing you might be!), then you might very well fall in love with it like I have... And if that's not enough, there are even cool ASCII animations and sweet retro tunes!

The video from the stream is uploaded here: https://youtu.be/V7_bcMkYivs 

And you can check out the game for yourself here, built for the retro MegaZeux system but also playable online: https://www.digitalmzx.com/show.php?id=2097

Simply brilliant. A post-apocalyptic puzzle RPG, and it does a great job at all three of those things.

During the stream we were also visited by a couple of the contributing composers and one of the testers who is also a developer working on the  spiritual sequel.