A warm hello to each and everyone of you who are interested in the development of Versebound! Days are short here in Helsinki, and that cuts the energy to do anything to half (at least for some of us). Even with snow on the ground, it's already dark outside after the first sip of the morning coffee xD Nevertheless, we have made some good progress:
First secret boss for our second map!
And estimated the working hours for this task way too low (the estimate was 6h and actual hours almost double).. xD Usually these days we get them quite on point, but I guess that sometimes it’s good to drop the ball big time to remind ourselves of our mortality, especially when it comes to quaternions.. Also there was one really funny bug resulting from Unity thinking floats are ints. It turned our game into a real bullet hell!
The second map is now mostly finished!
It took some playtests, feedback rounds and reworking or scrapping material but I believe the end result plays to our game's strengths while offering a meaningful contrast to our first level.
Hacked together a shader to make one status effect transition better.
Being blinded has never looked this beautiful.
Added new icons & runestones for Poem of Henki!
Can you guess what it does?
And also the most important part of our progression:
our placeholder name game is on another level!
We usually name stuff in our game with some fitting placeholder names whenever the correct name is not known yet. Two of the newest additions have been Markku (a Trial where enemies get a “Mark” on time intervals) and Esko (a classic ESCOrt mission), which are very traditional Finnish names!
Here's a list of other changes & news:
- Added our newest Artifact to the Hub! In our game, whenever you unlock a new Artifact or a Weapon, it will be visible in your Hub in some way. We feel that it is a nice way to make the players feel that they’ve made some progression in the game. Also decorating your home is always nice 🙂
- Created second to last Trial for the game! Trials work as difficulty modifiers, creating layers of difficulty into Versebound, while also adding replayability for the players who like to come up with different challenges. When this Trial is active, on time intervals a random enemy gets “Cursed”, becoming more durable and immune to all status effects. After a cooldown, the cursed enemy starts blasting our protagonist with waves of bullets. So you really want to get rid of the Cursed enemies as fast as possible!
- While our graphic and lore master Jyri has been working on the second map of the game, Pertti has been busy with creating the content for the map! This time, he created the first Ritual for it. Rituals are timed challenges, which reward the player with an upgrade to their utility Skill. This Ritual is a classic escort mission, where you’ll have to guide a spirit through Tuonela so they can finally find their everlasting peace (Tuonela is all about death, after all). But don’t worry, the spirit cannot be harmed by enemies, so you only have to look after yourself!
- Made a modular particle system effect for the environment in our upcoming level 2! It is a thick and evil looking (Jyri will handle this) fog that covers the river that will work as a boundary for the player!
- Updated the sprites for the final Trial of Versebound (bye bye placeholder art)! Normally Jyri and Joonas would update the sprites in the editor themselves, but this time the system Pertti had made was so confusing that it took quite a long time even for himself to understand how it works xD
- Two more trials have their graphics now! Hope you like being haunted by either the flames of war or a stinky old man.
- Workshopped the names and flavor texts for some weapons, some passives, some artifacts, a ritual, a bestiary entry…
- Added a new SFX to the weapon Vengeful Tears… Swoosh!
Next time we have an update for you will be after the christmas holidays. So marry christmas to all of you! May it be full of happiness and good food :)