Children of the Eclipse Release Date

26 Oct 2021Developer post

An important announcement about the state of the game.

Hello, folks! An important announcement for all the people that have been waiting for the release of Children of the Eclipse in the near future. As some of you know we struggled to find funding for Children of the Eclipse. It’s not easy being a first-time indie developer. Out of

01 Dec 2020Developer post

Playtest applications closed - info on the next steps!

Alright! We had a pretty exciting weekend with almost four times the amount of test applications we planned for! Right now we're not accepting any more testers for this first round, but don't worry... there will be more to come. For the people that got in, we would really appreci

25 Nov 2020Developer post

Children of the Eclipse playtesting is LIVE!

Hello! THIS is an exciting day! And it came (almost) out of nowhere! We opened the signups for the FIRST EVER playtest session for Children of the Eclipse. This is your chance to try out the game SUPER early, give us priceless feedback on how the game plays, talk directly with Nu

26 Nov 2019Developer post

General announcement post for November!

Well hello, action adventurists / top down shootists / sci-fi fans, and everybody else we can and cannot think of! First of all, we updated the screenshots for our store page AND added a cool little gameplay teaser from our current development build. Still a lot of polish to do w

Well hello, action adventurists / top down shootists / sci-fi fans, and everybody else we can and cannot think of!

First of all, we updated the screenshots for our store page AND added a cool little gameplay teaser from our current development build. Still a lot of polish to do with the effects and animations, but we're getting there, definitely!

So, development-wise, we've got the core mechanics down, which I'll briefly go through here:

Player health and movement

We've got a shared health system, where both players use the same health pool. It works surprisingly well and completely removes the need to wait for the other player to revive you or slowly fail the mission without your help. All player movement mechanics are in place: Players can dash, activate shields and merge into a single powerful tank unit.

Enemy health

Enemies can have one or several types of health: Organic, Robotic and Shield. The players need to use different weapons to effectively deal with different enemy types. There are also enemies that have several hit boxes and/or phases (sort of like mini-bosses). All these mechanics are in place and we're currently balancing them for maximum enjoyment.

Enemy AI systems

Our AI system consists of separate modules that can be easily combined to build awesomely simple or unbelieveably complex enemy & NPC behaviours. All the core AI modules are in place and we have built several enemy types to playtest with. There is a lot of balancing to do with these still, but the mechanics work well and give us a lot of freedom in designing interesting and challenging enemies.

Weapon systems

Our heroes always carry two basic weapons, plus a "megaweapon" that can be used at a cost of energy credits. The weapon system, like with enemy AI, is highly modular and lets us design a wide variety of different weapons ranging from machine guns and shotguns to crazy lightning guns, shield-homing rocket swarms and acid flamethrowers.

Boss fights

Boss fights are really a straight development from the modular core AI system, so we can apply all the same behaviors to bosses as well. There are certainly some unique attacks and reactions for every boss as well, but this again gives us a wide range of tools to work with.

Hub worlds and side quests

Hub worlds are places for chilling, talking to new interesting people, making friends, partying and doing increasingly strange side quests. These can range from simple item collection to eliminating Nasty Boys to traveling to a dream dimension, and are a big part of story telling and a way to earn some extra Energy Credits. The bulk of these mechanics are in place, and we are currently working on the data saving layer for quests, so you can actually continue where you left off.

Music system

Yes, we have a music system. Right now we're triggering parameters from level, so the music is dynamic and changes according to the mood of the level and player progress. We are currently working on implementing player health and combat intensity into the equation, so when players are not in combat, the music is more chilled, and intensifies when the going gets tougher. Also, when player health drops to a certain level, we can have it affecting the music track.

Music is a really big part of the world of Children of the Eclipse, so there might be a post about that next.. There is a pretty hefty amount of content planned for the full version, with the possibility of actual in-game performances of actual real-life artists, so stay tuned - it's going to get HOT.

That's it for today! Have an AWESOME day/night/space journey.

Cheers,
Ari / Nutfarm

Original post

Children of the Eclipse

Updates & announcements

An important announcement about the state of the game.

Playtest applications closed - info on the next steps!

Children of the Eclipse playtesting is LIVE!

Hello!

THIS is an exciting day! And it came (almost) out of nowhere!

It's going to be epic!

Nutfarm News!

Hello, people!

Sorry for not posting much on Steam.

Why push the release date?

What has changed?

Did you say Exploding Babies?!

To recap...

See you soon!

Exciting times & happy 2020!

It's 2020!