It’s been a while since I had a new build available for backers because I’d been just trying to crank out almost all of the environmental art in the game. You’ll notice the build size has more than doubled because I’ve added so many assets to the game. You won’t be able to see all of these right away though. I’m in the process of grayboxing out the entire world of Slumberland, and as I do you’ll get to see more of these environments. Things will start to get in a much rougher state as I’d like to give you all more unfettered access to what the game is currently looking like. In this build for instance, you’ll be able to battle a new boss which still needs some VFX, SFX, and music, as well as see more of the domains, even when they don’t have enemies or music (or even more proper level design in some cases) ready yet.
So I want this to be the start of getting more frequent builds to you trying to work up to getting the entire world of Slumberland in front of you, even if some of that content is placeholder.
So what is new since the last update? Well, there’s a ton of stuff, I’ll try to break down the relevant things:
- A first pass at nearly all of the Gumdrop Gardens is available. The boss of the domain is still a WIP, and the entire area hasn’t had a visual polish pass, but you can see how the entire area flows, and also how it connects to other domains. (Also there’s a brand new candy hazard tileset in there that I just finished up and haven’t shown off yet).
- Also in the Gumdrop Gardens you can get the Bubble Wand. This is the first new toy you can get access to, but as we get the whole world greyboxed out, expect to get access to even more of the toys soon. Related to the Bubble Wand, there are also Bubble Gates which will slam down on you and prevent you from crossing a threshold without the Bubble Wand.
- More of the Mushroom Marsh is available to explore (no enemies yet) and you can toy around on the bouncy mushrooms and play in the marsh gunk.
- You can wrap all the way around the world. The Gumdrop Gardens and Mushroom Marsh meet on their outer sides, despite being on either side of the world (Note: the map doesn’t properly reflect this yet).
- You can also get a peek at the Haunted Hollow. There are a few preliminary explorations of the general vibe and platforming style of that area we’re playing with that you can check out.
- You can get a quick peek at the Palace exterior. It’s just one room, but I also recently added some nice metallic sheen to the gold detailing on the tiles in that area, so give it a peek (you can get there from the Gumdrop Gardens currently).
- There are now Pneumatic Tubes in Slumberland! Nemo can use them for fast vertical traversal over short distances. I’ll probably talk more about it in a Kickstarter update but essentially I wanted ladders without the boring locomotion of ladders. I’m pretty happy with how these are shaping up, but lemme know what you think!
- Nemo’s bedroom is full of Backer toys! For now you can only see them in the nighttime lighting, but if you’re a Playful Sleepwalker, let me know what you think of how your toy looks in there.
- In Settings > Gameplay, there is now an option to change Nemo’s cat, Leo to the Cat Guardian backers’ cats. It’s a quick test so it is currently missing most of the cats, and one of them isn’t animated yet. So if you happen across that and don’t see your cat in there but were expecting it, don’t worry, it will be coming soon.
- Manually using a bed no longer resets Slumberland. This means you won’t lose moons or candy and enemies won’t respawn. That now only happens if you’re forcefully awoken by taking too much damage.
- Aerial drag physics have changed ever so slightly. This results in you have slightly less control of Nemo after receiving an impulse force (from knockback for instance). This is something I want to improve, it results from changing how friction with surfaces and aerial drag work when working on the ice for the Valley of Silence.
What’s not in here that you might have expected:
- You can’t reach the Observatory yet to view pet statues and constellations. The statues are ready, but the constellations are not. Also the early path here is intended to be gated by a Monster Claw requirement, so you won’t be able to come here until later anyways.
- The Backer Statues aren’t available yet. They’re all done (I’ll show them off in the next update), but you can’t actually get into the Palace interior yet (ultimately you’ll need to rescue all seven Guardians to get in there).
- The new dialogue portraits are not in there yet. I hope to get them in there soon, but I want to do some minor overhaul of the UI and systems logic as part of incorporating João’s new portraits.
- There’s no early look at the Valley of Silence. I wanted to get that in there (the ice is really fun to play around on) but just didn’t have time. Expect to see an early peek in the next build.
And how about known issues I think you might bump into?
- If a Bubble Gate (the large gate that slams down into you and requires the Bubble Wand to get past) gets scrolled off screen while it’s still down, Unity’s animator gets confused and it can get stuck blocking you. Sorry about that, I meant to fix that in this build but didn’t have time. We’ll get it in for the next build.
- The honey on the walls of Gumdrop Gardens just isn’t super fun yet. This was a first pass, but would love to hear your feedback on it.
- Sometimes the Gelatonne (big green jello enemy) can hurt you when it jumps up and you’re above it. This is not intended (it should only hurt you when you are next to or below it during its jump). It also only deals 1 damage for now, but ultimately this enemy will deal 2 damage.
- I’m not sure how this will work with any old save data you have, so you may want to wipe your Little Nemo save directory, or just start a New Game.
I probably missed some things because it’s been quite some time since the last build was pushed, but that should be most of what is in there that’s new that you’ll have access to right now.
Feedback Request!
We’d love to get your thoughts on the Gumdrop Gardens level design. How is it feeling? Is it too hard? Too easy? Difficult to navigate? How about the boss fight? I would love to hear your thoughts. Or even better: if you’re willing to record your playthrough of that area, video footage would be super helpful. And it’s even more helpful if you’re able and willing to record your voice over and/or face while playing (the way your face reacts to things tells me tons about how things land).
Also, if you like this direction I’m trying to take things of getting less restricted access to the current state of the world even if some of it is placeholder or a bit barebones, I appreciate feedback about in general how the Backer Builds are handled.
That’s all for now. Thank you, Sleepwalkers and Guardians!
-Dave