Look, let's be honest, game development takes a long, especially so when you're doing everything by yourself. Though I'm eternally thankful I don't have to score level music, thank you Daniel.
To start, there is not a playable update yet.
I want to be clear about that, but I'm still working hard chugging away at it. I would say I'm nearing 75% of a new playable demo. I wanted to give an update about some new features.
Something I did not anticipate was how long it would take me to expand the character creator, which admittedly, I probably got carried away with, but I also plan on continuing to add things to it for the full release of the game. As a quick overview, the opening of the game where you make your character has been streamlined. There was some frustrations as to how many screens the current demo has in the character creator (and maybe some frustrations as to how many achievements I tacked onto it in steam, but to be fair that was my own private joke).
When picking almost any character option, you now have the option of picking a color from a pallet, or adjusting color values to taste. I really want people to have fun making an original character in the character creator. There's also the randomizer button for anyone who doesn't want to spend a lot of time in the character creator, or just wants to see a mash of options.
Character classes now come with different stats per class, which you can see in the character creator. Different classes also come with different starting equipment, and different starting trading cards to equip that hold class specific skills. The class trading cards can also be acquired through game exploration, and if you equip 2 of the same kind it increases the effectiveness of that skill. There's also a sixth class now, which is None, where your character will have no weapon sprite, average stats, no starting equipment or starting cards. This is meant to be more of a starting challenge to the game, but it's also for anyone who does want their character holding a weapon in combat, and would rather punch.
Level reworks should be done soon, something I touched on in my last update is a new merchant character. zYxl will still be a game merchant, but They'll only be dealing in trading cards with the new card system, Skralmf is going to be your new seedy item and equipment dealer. I made this change because I knew I wanted a card shop, and I originally rolled both in zYxl's shop, but I realized it would be better if they were separate. zYxl and Skralmf have a shared backstory I hope to hint at in game, and are both delightful to write dialogue for.
I really hope you are all looking forward to a new demo coming out. I apologize for the radio silence, there's been a lot of work done on very few features, so not much to update about despite all the work being done. I definitely won't be able to keep these news letters up, but please follow the game on Twitter and Tumblr if you want updates, I try to post sprites and screenshots of things I'm working on.