Hello, everybody!
It’s been a long time since the last dev update. Hope you are all doing well. I know we have kept quiet lately, but we were working hard on Tunche. We are beginning a series of monthly Dev Blogs in the months leading to the release of the game!
Even though we are currently in the middle of quarantine in our country (Peru) the team at LEAP Game Studios have been hard at work from each of our homes developing Tunche and what better way to get in touch again that to let you know about some of the many things we’ve been working on since our last update.
So let’s begin.
1 - Our final playable character: Pancho
Many of you had the chance to try out Tunche’s most recent demo during Steam’s Spring and Summer Games Festivals. In both of them, the players could pick from 4 different characters: Our original hero Rumi, the small bird-boy Qaru, the fierce and quite popular warrior Nayra and of course our beloved guest character HatKid from A Hat in Time. However, they are not the only playable protagonists that will be included in the final game.
There’s a fifth hero, the big but gentle music-loving Pancho is the latest and final one to join the roster for Tunche.
Even though he clearly fits in the “big guy” category, he is also quite agile like the rest of the team. Pancho uses his fists and body for his melee attacks and combo finishers and makes up for their lack in range with his magical guitar which can produce sonic waves that can actually hurt many enemies at once.
We have put a lot of effort into making Pancho another viable option for Tunche’s players and hopefully, he will be a favorite of many of you once you get the chance to play as him.
2 - New backgrounds and procedural structure
As stated from the very beginning of our campaign, Tunche is a procedural beat 'em up title. As such, and as many other games with rogue-lite mechanics, all of its levels are formed by combining many playable blocks one after the other. You could consider these blocks as the equivalent to “dungeon rooms” in games like Rogue Legacy or Hades.
Of course, most of Tunche’s environments are not closed rooms or dark dungeons, but parts of the jungle. Whether you are fighting in the middle of the jungle, near the amazon river, or within a cave, you will always find nature-based backgrounds and elements in each one of our playable blocks.
On all of our public demos, including the original Tunche Arena demo, we have always made sure to only include blocks from our first level, which we commonly refer to as “The Jungle” (not the final name) We did this on purpose in order to keep as much of the game’s world as a surprise for the final game.
Then again, we also know this might make some players feel like all of the blocks are way too similar. That is why I wanted to show some a bit of what levels 2 and 3 will look like while also letting you see how even within the same levels, backgrounds will constantly change to let the player know they are getting closer to each boss lair.
Our artists have been hard at work to make sure that, even though blocks are procedurally generated, they look different enough from each other while keeping the beauty of Tunche’s art direction intact.
3 - Backer Enemies and other Backer Content
One thing all of Tunche’s level will have in common is that they will all have enemies within for the player to face and defeat in combat and here’s where our dear backers have helped us out during these last few months.
Back during the Kickstarter campaign, many of you earned the chance to be a part of the game design process by lending your creations to the game in the form of new enemies, collectible items, or power-ups and we couldn’t be more thankful for that.
This time, however, I wanted to write specifically about our backer-designed enemies. Our design team received many interesting and amazing creatures from you and managed to work together in an effort to make sure they fit within the universe of Tunche. Thanks to that developer/backer team effort we managed to animate and code many really cool enemies for our heroes to fight, some of which I’d like to share here. As a matter of fact, one of those enemies was already present in our latest limited time demo!
I want to send a special thanks to each enemy’s creator for their time and support and I’m sure you will all be happy and satisfied with your monsters once you finally get the chance to fight against them.
4 - The Future
And on that last note, I don’t want to close this dev blog before saying a few things related to the long time Tunche’s development has been taking so far.
Even though we do not have an exact release date yet, we have not stopped working and the game is getting closer to completion every day. I just ask you to please wait for a little longer to allow us to make the best game we can and for you to be proud to have been a part of this campaign.
Like I mentioned at the very beginning of this update, we will write a lot more often from now on (at least once a month) until the game releases. Which might be sooner than you think.
Also, as a final extra little bit of news, Tunche will be featured on Day of the Devs along with many other really cool games this Monday, July 20th, in a whole new video. Here’s the link to the announcement. Don’t miss it!
That is all for today, but I’ll be back with many more Tunche news soon.
Stay safe!
Jorge - Tunche’s game director