Firstly, Happy new year!
I started development on The Idle Undead near the end of 2021, So this month will mark a year and 2 months probably that i’ve been working on the game!
Last year I had some trouble with getting the motivation to work on the game and combined with starting university I had not done as much development as I had hoped for that year, but the hope for 2023 is to put a lot more time into development!
With that here are some of my plans for this year:
Focus on the Art side of the game
Although this point is very vague at what the “art side” means I’m going to be focussing less on adding new features and a lot more on the appearance of the game as well as aspects like accessibility and such
You might have noticed in game screenshots and such but the zombie clicker game has a lack of zombies, this is because I wouldn’t exactly describe myself as an “artist” and my pixel art skills just aren't really at the point where I can make zombie looking zombies, let alone werewolves and the like!
This year I plan to practise my pixel art skills and create a lot more little icons and sprites for zombies and all kinds of things, even if some of them will be placeholders while I practise to make better ones.
This includes:
- Adding actual zombies to look at
- Making more models to make the background environment look more alive or shall i say dead
- Adding more animations for random UI effects and such
- Adding some more sound effects
The much anticipated “Cards” system
I feel like I've been talking about this every update but I'm still working on the “Cards” system. This is a major mechanic of the game that's a core part of the experience that is yet to be implemented.
I’ve already been working on the design for several of the cards and coming up with the effects each one will have and I plan to have a basic version of the cards system implemented relatively early in this year.
Nearer the time I will have a dedicated blog post and video describing how it works
Boss Battles
I’ve finally started putting more thought into boss enemies and will start adding them pretty soon!
Simply put, there are enemies with a LOT of health, but they’ll give you a pretty good reward and I want every boss to feel like you're hitting a milestone in game progress.
some bosses will give a story upon defeat, some might unlock a new upgrade!
Video Updates
I’ve been doing these blog post style updates for a while now but I also want to do these in video format for each month, So I can more easily show the actual progress of what I've been working on instead of just describing them.
“Marketing”
This is basically just trying to get more people to know about the game, I don’t plan on doing this that much until the end of the year where I have something more interesting to present, But this will include stuff like:
Heavily advertising social media accounts for the game
Making a game trailer
Making merchandise JUST FOR ME (I would never sell merch before my game is fully out, This would be just merch for me to use all the time so if i’m streaming for example, my game merch will be in my camera, its smart i promise)
Mini Games
While I'm bored developing The Idle Undead I plan to make mini games for The Idle Undead, yes yes i’m a genius thank you.
I’ve already started working on one of them, These will be very very simple small mini games I can create in barely any time (1 week - 1 month)
I plan to have these unlocked throughout playing the game and will give you a small optional distraction while you're waiting for a thing to happen in the main game!
Storyline
I know my personal worst nightmare, writing dialogue for characters when I can’t talk to real people (gamer joke)
At first these will be very very basic like a tutorial person who tells you how to do the whole game thing, and later giving you random parts of my really bad game lore.
Right now it will just be a tutorial person, and right now that’s all I have planned. But it will introduce fun visual novel-like elements to the game!
Some secret other stuff
Yes i’m keeping secrets from you, i’m sorry (i’m not)
I get game ideas for features like 5 times a day and I have a long long list of stuff I want to add, I won’t add most of them.
So… I would never announce I'm working on a thing if I decide to scrap it, well I might, but I’m not going to announce every idea I’ve made a tiny concept for.
So this year there'll be a lot more than I’ve said here, a lot more, but you’ll find out more about them nearer the time, they’ll also be a lot more of the same stuff added like upgrades and such!