December Update (Patreon)

Hey folks!

I'm a little overdue for an update but that's mostly from being busy, in the good kind of way. Production is still happily rolling forward on the game and we're getting closer to being able to share a playable demo. Recently, I've been finalizing the first level design and beginning to import the final design artwork. Ayla's animations still need a little polishing but the hardest parts are done. It's an honest effort to avoid "feature creep" for the animations, because I'm getting better with each new challenge I face and have to resist the temptation to redo some early animations and ideas. I'll do my best to reign in any ideas that would slow us down; we can save those updates for the future. For now, we're pushing to get the first level finished and out the door.

We aren't quite ready to release a demo yet but I'm laying plans for when we do. The roll out is going to look something like this: the first big release will be a beta of level 1. There might be a few imperfections but it's not going to be the final version yet. The second major release will include the beta for level 2, plus any changes or updates we make to level 1. After that point, it's going to be all about polish, improving visuals, fixing anything that needs to feel better in gameplay, and getting any glitches out of the system. After some fine-tuning, the first two finished levels will be released to patrons and the backers on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

That's the point where we will start looking for funding to finish the whole game and see where things can go! I'm not ready at this time to put solid release dates on any of those stages. After the first release, everything else is likely to roll out pretty quickly. I'm honestly eager to keep the development going (a good sign after doing this for nearly a full year now) and want to wrap up the first two levels so we can finish Ayla's Story.

All of this is only going to be possible because of two very kind and talented gentlemen who have joined the team to work on the coding while I finish up the art and design elements. (PastelStoic and JibeVibes are hard at work doing the really hard work while I draw butts and monsters.) My extremely limited awareness of coding just doesn't cut it for a game with complex interactions, so these guys are really saving the day!

There's no new artwork to share with this update because so much of my current work in the game is painting plants and platform sprites. Creating the backgrounds and whatnot is actually more involved and time-consuming than I expected so when that's done I'm going to give myself a short development break and illustrate some of the Ayla reward pinups from the campaign. Not all of them are going to be released publicly but I'll try to see about including some fun art in the next update.

Cheers!

-RyanC