Another month of sweet game development under the belt and it’s time for another update. But actually there’s some future facing news for once!
Later this month, Bad Juice Games will be at A MAZE in Berlin with a demo of Hibera, and will be at GamerFest in Dublin the weekend after that! It will be a great time to stop by and get to play the game!
In other exciting news we have a Kickstarter! It’s in preview mode right now but it will be going live very soon so sign up to be notified when it does.! The game has come so far since the early days (go check previous blog posts) and I just need some additional help to fill out the bulk of the game content, so that’s what the fundraiser is for.
Ok now this IS a dev blog so I can also talk about all the new features and work going into the game since last time. Since last update here’s our change notes:
Added first part of Support Conversation system (gaining support XP, registering thresholds)
New Defeat Screen
Path Arrow display
Weapon Triangle Indicator
Dialogue Continue Indicator
Big Audio push, overhauled ALL the SFX.
Animations landed for Bowman & Savant
Drai magic got a re-style
Updated castle wall and chest-high wall assets
Water tile color presets
Fixes with the camera especially in the death sequence.
So many little bugs fixed.
The first set of features I want to talk about all came from some good playtesting we did at FIS Games Summit in Galway this year. We had a ton of developers, industry professionals, and university students come by, play the game, and inform me of a bunch of Quality-of-Life UX features that were missing. So we got the Path Arrow display, I don’t know why it took so long to add this, literally every game in the genre uses one. We also got a new indicator for when you’re going to get a weapon triangle bonus or malus. And finally some tweaks to how the dialogue continue button works. Tapping A while the text is still typing finishes the typing effect and THEN a further tap moves to the next line.
The next set of features are really a group of polish items that had been left in a partially done state for far too long. Adding the animations for the Bowman and Savant (there’s still more to go), re-exporting the castle walls and chest-high walls so they have proper lighting, the new defeat screen, and finally hooking up the water tile color presets so swamps aren’t the same blue as rivers as oceans, etc. So much of creative work can be boiled down to “make something kind of right and then refine it and then refine it and then refine it”
Raf has been burning the midnight oil and has completely re-done all our SFX, taking inspiration from Hades / Hades II we’ve moved away from the classic chip-tune beep boops into something more tactile and earthy. Feels like the game got a mechanical keyboard. We also spent some time in the studio recording specific parts for the music. There’s a strong violin in the new victory stinger to keep your ears open for!
Finally I rebranded our Drai magic school. When I started the game I stubbed in Light, Dark, and Elemental magic because that’s what Fire Emblem had and it was a good place to start. But as we’ve developed the story, Dark magic has taken on the role of the magic of ancient things. It's pre-civilization magic, the magic of nature and also of heritage. And it has a distinctly Irish theme running through it. And I really just didn’t want the Irish magic to be the “bad” magic. So Dark magic has become Drai and is more nature focused. The other schools have also found their roles but didn’t need significant rebranding. Elemental magic has just become Fire magic and is the magic of humans, civilization, and the everyday. Light magic has become Sancte, the magic of the church and the divine (which was not a terrible stretch). And finally we have Zodia magic, which exists outside of the weapon triangle and is a very new school developed and developing as part of the ongoing renaissance. It is a magic of abstraction, of knowledge, and of concepts.
This next month will wrap up my current development milestone and we’re honestly looking pretty good for it. I have some goals around content which still need work, and continuing work on the Support Conversation system. I hope to have a deep dive on that in the next one of these.
It promises to be an auspicious month with a lot of Hibera happening so I expect there will be a lot to talk about in June.
Until then.