Hey everyone!
A quick update on the goal for Those Who Rule. If you've followed the last two months, you know I was trying to get two chapters a month done to hit a Q4 release date. I told myself if I didn't get chapter 4 complete by the halfway point this month, I would look into bringing on more help. Well come Feb 15th, I still didn't have the chapter done, and I identified the writing as the part that was taking me the longest to complete. So I started looking to hire a writer for the rest of the game! This will let me narrow my focus to level/gameplay designs, which will give me a lot of extra breathing room. I currently am down to two candidates, and both seem like great fits that'll be able to hit the ground running!
I made a bit of a significant "game style" overhaul this past month. When I started Those Who Rule, I was always caught between a more washed out color scheme, or more saturation/outlines/cel-shading. With the new level, I decided to try out the latter, and I really liked the results. Asking people in the Discord and Twitter many agreed it was a much better style, so I'd love to hear what everyone on Steam thinks. Here is a quick example of the change:
And moving on I have chapter 4 complete and will be moving on to chapter 5! Chapter 4 comes with a whole slew of new events. Your optional objectives are to stop enemies escaping the map, so you'll need to get the most out of every move to go through the map at a good pace to catch up to the fleeing enemies. Here is a small glimpse at a part of the map:
We've also got the first little bit of voice acting in the game with the world map scenes! If you're interested here is a short snippet of what it will look like from the game's Twitter.
Changelog
- Chapter 4 complete.
- New characters. (Kaelith and Cassidy).
- New world map scenes with full voice acting.
- New map events (escape, talk events).
- Art style update.
- Fixed issues that made the camera movement feel unresponsive/sticky.
- Slight increase to tooltip popup time.
- Small bug fixes.
Thanks everyone for your continued support. I know it's not the best to hear we didn't get two chapters done this month. But moving forward with another person handling all the writing, I'm confident the pace will pick up. Like always, I'll keep you posted with updates here, in Discord, and on Twitter!
Cheers,
Eldin T.