First off, we are happy to announce that Watch Out For Goblins! will be participating in Steam’s October Next Fest which runs Oct 14th - 21st. This is very exciting for us. It also sets some hard deadlines for when we need to have a complete demo. So that’s what we are working on now: a cool demo.
Read on to learn more about what we have been working on and what we will be working on this summer.
State of Dev Report
Dev milestones in the last month
- Smoothed out and squashed bugs in our character controller. Feeling pretty good now, though we will be continuing to tweak settings here and there.
- Setup a basic system for NPC behaviors. This will let us add quirky goblins to the world, set them up with lines of dialogue, and let them change behaviors based on milestones the players achieve.
- Reworked the sprint system. Now you hold the button to boost your sprint speed and the sprint continues as long as the goblin has enough forward momentum.
- Started a new map. “The Skrimble Isles” are a smaller chain of islands which will eventually become our demo level.
- Prototyped our first non-goblin NPCs. These are big flies that buzz about and try to headbutt nearby goblins.
- Overall game juice. This includes a bunch of new particles, sound effects, and textures.
Dev goals in the next month
- More love for keyboard and mouse players. Although we are designing the game to be played with a controller we want to support keyboard and mouse controls too. We will be working on a system to add dynamic button prompts and implementing control rebinding.
- Create a player sub-menu. We want a menu that can: track collections (cogs, pages, cosmetics, etc.); allow players to customize their goblin’s name, voice, skin tone, and loincloth colour; and let players respawn at any checkpoint on the map that’s already been activated.
- Adding new animations. The new goblin voices have added a lot of character to our NPCs. We want more. Top priority are death and respawning animations for when the goblins drown in sludge. A goblin “explaining” animation for when the NPCs talk to you would be nice too.
- Re-implementing IK. The goblins should look at interesting nearby things. We have a system for “look at” IK from very early in the project, just need to clean it up and re-enable it.
- More explosions and breakable structures. Goblins need more fun stuff to smash! We also have these red barrels that don’t blow up- which I’m pretty sure is against video game law…
- Prototype more features for the character controller. There are still a few more things we want to try- just to see if they are fun. I’ll tell you about them if they work out.
The Playtest
Did you know? Watch Out For Goblins! has an open playtest, and it just got a major update. We’ve been posting our “in development” builds on Steam and collecting feedback on bugs and game mechanics. If you'd like to help us out and get involved as the game grows head over to our store page and click “Join Playtest”. There’s already plenty of fun to be had with 1 - 4 players in split screen multiplayer. Please keep in mind that we are planning to close the playtest when the demo is ready.
Early feedback has already helped us learn what players are connecting with which lets us focus our dev time on what’s most important. We are regularly checking the steam community discussion board for your notes. If you’d like to chat with us devs directly we have a humble discord server where we are always happy to talk goblins.
If you’ve already played, thank you very much for your feedback and support. It means a lot to see people responding to our game. :)
Wow. Are you still reading this? Cool. I like WOFG! as well. I’m all done with the announcement though. Until next time: Watch Out for Goblins!