Arbiter - Monthly Recap - September 2021 (Patreon)

Hey there gamers! 

Hope everyone's been doing well, as usual. Apologies for the late update—it's been a very exciting couple of months and I wasn't entirely sure what I could/couldn't share publicly. But now I know! The answer? Absolutely nothing!

What I can say is that it's all good news, so no worries there. But this update will likely be a bit shorter as I can only talk about the stuff I worked on outside of that. With all that said, let's get to it!

I finished work on the important enemy revisions I wanted to do earlier in September. This included about four enemies and a mini-boss that are now all super fun to play against (until people start playtesting of course). For the TIME BEING at least, they're pretty rad and I'm happy with how they came out!

Due to <spoilers>, my schedule has changed a bit from what I described previously, but I can now say with the utmost excitement that I've moved onto working on Ashe's transformations!

For those that don't know, this is one of the game's core mechanics alongside the phasing system. Basically, Ashe (the main character) can fuse his soul with the bosses he defeats, giving him all new looks, quirks, and an entirely new moveset. This system was inspired by all sorts of stuff, including Kingdom Hearts 2's Drive Forms, DMC's Weapon Swapping, and Naruto's Jinchūriki.

I'm going to save the juicier details for next month's update, but for now, I'll just say that I've begun work on the first form (Wolf: The Hunter's Pride) and it's been going well! I've been spending the majority of my time animating, with the occasional brainstorming sessions in-between. 

You can essentially think of the forms as entirely different characters to switch between. They each have their own unique mechanics and gameplay style that fundamentally change how Ashe plays. Hunter's Pride, for example, is a form focused on combos and speed. As a result, this form has a much easier time creating combos and stringing together all of its various actions, making it ideal for styling on single targets as fast as possible. 

It also has the longest base combo in the entire game.

My goal in the coming months will be to inject as many fun little quirks/differences as I can into the forms and give the game a healthy variety of ways to play. I'm already having an absolute blast implementing the different ideas for Wolf's form, including all kinds of crazy mechanics like drifting, infinite combo strings, and perhaps even a homing attack. 

I've planned out the majority of their movesets, but the deeper I go, the more I want to add! How in-depth these forms will be when they're finished is beyond me, but I'm having fun discovering their potential the more I work on them. By the time we reach the finish line, we might end up with some seriously CUHRAYZEE stuff, so please look forward to it!

In the meantime, thanks for your patience and support everybody! I'll be sure to share the details for <spoilers> once I'm able to, but until then I'm excited to start showing off Wolf's form in November! See you then!

Cheers,
Jordy