OK, first let's get these ability icons out of the way. Quite a few of you on Twitter actually guessed their functions as well as their names, so kudos to you! (And kudos to me for drawing icons that made sense to a tiny fraction of you!)
1. Steal Kidney! (Thief)
Deal 1 damage to an adjacent unit; this ability has a boosted crit chance. If this ability crits and you have an open pocket to hold a trinket, you steal the victim's kidney!
Kidney: 1-use consumable item, when used it heals 10hp and cleanses all debuffs.
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2. Diversion! (Hunter)
Toss a 1-damage pebble onto a unit or tile within range 5, all units within AoE 3 around where it hit move towards that unit or tile.
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3. Muscle Memory! (Fighter)
An 8-damage melee attack that costs 8 mana, this spell's damage is reduced by 1 and mana cost reduced by 2 each time you use it.
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4. Boned! (Fighter)
A passive ability that makes it so anytime this unit kills another unit, it steals one of its bones to use as a weapon if you have an empty paw to put it in.
Bone Club: A melee weapon that deals 8 damage but has a 15% chance to break each time you use it.
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5. Learn From Me! (Mage)
This passive allows the caster to teach whatever the last spell they used to all other allied units. So if you cast Fireball, all other units will gain Fireball in their bonus active slot.
Pretty cool, huh!?
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Now on to a little status update.
Tyler is currently working out a rough draft of our in-game tutorial. Mewgenics definitely needs a good but brief tutorial to show you the ropes, so this one will be getting a good deal of attention and revision over time. Once we have this tutorial laid out, we will start testing on a few 100% noobs and people who don't play these kinds of games (my mom will be one of them!) so we can really nail down something that is as close to perfect as possible, as well as fun visually and gameplay-wise since this will be the first impression the game will give to everyone.
Animation-wise, everyone is churning out the remaining bosses and enemies while Kaylan chips away at animating NPCs, especially Butch who will need a few custom poses to be used during the tutorial.
Oh, I just realized I never introduced Kaylan, she's our latest addition! A skilled animator and illustrator who has been working on short cutscenes and NPC animations, as well as drawing the last remaining bits of furniture we have added.
Sony Shock is working on custom backgrounds for the tutorial. This area is kind of a scenic route from city back to your house, so the area will look a bit more rural than what you've seen in our screenshots.
Matthias and Jon are working on the 3 remaining late game tracks, but we are considering doing a custom tutorial track as well, so they will probably move to that once they are at a stopping point.
But what about me? What am I doing? Well, I'm writing this post, right? But earlier this week, I was working on mutations, specifically the really bonkers ones like peg legs and radar tails... they do what you might assume.
But what would you assume this mutation did?
I'll cover it in my next update, and we can compare notes!
And that concludes this blog post! Next week, I'm going to go over the full process of making an enemy in Mewgenics, from concept to final product. Stay tuned!
-Edmund