Heya!
There hasn't been a weekly dev update for a while (I moved to university!) but I promise you I'm still working on Void Strife.
Scope changes!
So let's start with the most hard hitting news - Void Strife will no longer be fully story focused. Well, not static stories anyway. It's going to turn into a roguelike, because frankly I have been working on this game for far too long on my own, and on some further reflection I realized that I was not able to carry out my initial vision for Void Strife on my own. I decided to decrease the scope of the game to a roguelike kind of similar to Binding of Isaac.
So here's the main gameplay loop I'm currently thinking of (Remember, this is still a heavy WIP):
1. Player starts the game - each run, the player will be assigned a different kind of story to follow. This means that the starting level and what the player does inside it will influence the next stage, and eventually what boss you fight.
2. The player interacts with "fish hooks": These are story shifting plot-points in the mini story of the run, which will change the next stage, any fish hooks in the next stage, or the final boss.
3. Player goes through, deciding on the fly what to do and what not to do, until they reach the final boss, after which they defeat it they... go again? Start another run? I'm not 100% sure what would happen after the boss, but I think this small loop has a lot of potential.
4. Between runs, there will be some kind of HUB world, or menu where you could spend your points earned (each run will give you a score on your profile) to upgrade weapons, change the skill trees for them, and maybe some meta abilities available for your character.
For the demo (Hopefully by the end of 2023????), there will only be a static path towards one boss, but I need to build the actual system of traversing through different stages and the fish hooks.
So now for the artstyle!
The above is a small snippet of a part of a dungeon with the new artstyle! The style is still pixelart, however I decided to start transitioning into a single cohesive palette of colours - and I think it's made a massive difference! I especially like how well the Brutes (enemies with the barrels on their back) came out. The floors also look really good - each room will have the possibility of different tiles being applied to their floor.
I hope you like this new style, and I hope you understand my reasoning for the roguelike turn. Pls don't hate me. :P
Have a wonderful evening, and I'll catch you next time!
Andrei xx