Hello everyone,


I thought it might be time for another little update on things. It might not seem like much has been moving in this first half of the year but behind the scenes the wheels are turning.

For me with the visuals I have been finishing up the sprite system as well as working on portraits, finishing up enemies and a few other secret things coming up in the near future. I thought I would update things here and I think it will give you a good idea of the type of game we are going for and how much of an extra step we are taking to make things feel special.





At the moment there are 8 different archetypes to choose from, all of which can be equipped with a variety of weapons, hats, different armour sets: Polearm/spear, dual weapons, single handed/shield, two handed melee, crossbow, bow, single handed caster and staff based caster.

It was really important for us to make sure each had custom animation types depending on the type of weapon your party member has equipped. You will be able to choose which sprite each character has at any time, regardless of weapon equipped.

Sure we could just use the same sprite for every base type and have a really generic animation for each to cut down on a lot of work but going that extra little bit to make things feel special is important to us.

You will also notice there are now walking animations including separate ones for dungeons where most of the characters pull out torches. I thought it would add a little more immersion than simply having characters 'bopping' around step by step to see them actually walking around the world.

There will also be more weapons and armour sets that you unlock as you level up, find unique items etc to really give your characters that sense of progression visually and also give you some things to try and go out into the world to find.




Another aspect I have been (trying) to improve upon are the player portraits. I really want to capture that old school classic fantasy feel to the characters and so have been going back to update the older portraits a bit. I've been adding in a bit more detail and generally trying to make them look slightly better. It is a juggling act with so many different hair styles and colours and trying to get everything looking decent in combination.





The really cool thing with this is the more variations I add in not only does it give you more variety for players but we can also use it as a base for a lot of NPCs in the game such as the Cheesemaster here.



I know it might not look too impressive compared to other pixel artists out there but for me it is quite an achievement when the portraits originally started out like this many years ago! Yikes!





Finally I have started adding in some more lower level enemies to the game as well as updating previous ones. I don't want to spoil too many but we now have a classic: The Giant Rat!



Another thing I have been doing with some of the earlier Goblins as well as updating them is adding a little more visual variation. So instead of just encountering the same 'Goblin' the game will pull from a pool of them, all with little differences to add a bit of variety and add a little extra immersion.



I hope this little update gives you more of an idea of the kind of world you will get to explore and the care we are taking with it. It really is a labour of love for us and we can't wait for everyone to be able to explore a little bit of it soon.

The pace should pick up soon so stay tuned and thank for your reading!