It looks like I’m late, a whole week to be precise, but it’s time (finally) for another Saturday Update!
I started my job last week, and the work has certainly taken its toll on development time, but worry not, for I have still managed to get some things done!
Hyper Gauntlet
I’ve not gotten a huge amount done to Hyper Gauntlet. There’s been a lot of testing undertaken, and some more bugs fixed, but mainly I’ve been video editing and compiling. That sort of thing takes a while and I didn’t expect that.
Done
Trailer
Launch announcement text
To do
Screenshots!
Pick a release date!
Difficulty tweaks
ZenCell
On the other hand, ZenCell has been flying along! So fast has it flown in fact that I should put a dedicated page up on here soon.
Most importantly, you can now see a trailer of sorts for it, including typical game play. Do me a favour and check it out.
Done
Loading
Saving
Main menu
Intro
GUI
Scoring
Trailer
To do
Tool-tip help
High score system
Fixes
Difficulty tweaks
That’s it for this week, tune in next time for another great Saturday Update!
Welcome to the first ever Saturday Update! This one goes live later than I’d normally like because I was doing old-man things like sleeping.
Hyper Gauntlet
Lots of progress on Hyper Gauntlet this week, the main point being that I’ve finished the beta version! Right now I’m building a folder of PR material before the big push, but expect a release data and price sometime this coming week. Are you excited? I know I am!
Looking for more concrete changes? Allow me to show you using pixels!
I changed the background colours to ease confusion
I’ve altered how level ups work (now they give you power-ups!)
Transparent blocks now show you when you’re immune to certain obstacles.
I’ve made ever so tiny cosmetic changes to the menu!
ZenCell
ZenCell is a small project I’ve been working on in-between Hyper Gauntlet bug-fixes. It’s a port of my old HTML5 game Cell into Unity. The process has gone faster than expected and after only two days of work, I have a surprisingly polished-feeling game. Given two more days I might finish it, which is a strange feeling after months of Hyper Gauntlet development.
ZenCell, like it’s predecessor is a game about matching colours together. Each cell has a certain amount available colours it can switch to when clicked on. The aim of the game is to find the right pattern of colours such that each cell’s colour is the same as or next to the colours of all neighbouring cells in the colour spectrum. But these are mere words, in the single digits. Lets look at this in kilowords:
The main menu
I wanted bright, calming and clean colours here. I took a lot of inspiration from the original Cell, but also from some puzzle games like Sokobond. As you can see, I plan to offer a daily seed challenge where you aim to complete an entire round in as few moves as possible.
Starting a game
Every game starts with this 3×3 cell structure. In the bottom right you can see a colour wheel showing which colours will be accepted as next to which other colours. When you hover the mouse over a cell the unavailable colours are darkened in the wheel so you can better plan your solution.
Almost done
All we have left is the bottom-left cell, and it looks like I can change that cell to the same blue that’s all around it. Bingo!
Now more blocks come into play with a snazzy circle animation!
Keep going in the same way
Until you’ve filled the screen!
I find it an incredibly calming game, and it’s filled to the brim with simple, instrumental music from Kevin McLeod’s fantastic website. I’ll make a video for you all to see it in action soon, but the priority for now is getting that Hyper Gauntlet release ready.
So that’s it for this week, tune in some time next week for another Saturday Update!
I was interviewed by the awesome Man vs. Game on the Indie Dev Supershow, who managed to keep a coherent conversation going while racking up some impressive Hyper Gauntlet runs (and one bug found, yay!). It was a great experience, and the first time my ultra-posh voice has graced the internet airwaves. You’d be a fool to miss it.
It’s been a fairly slow time for me, as you may have noticed. I managed to annihilate my development PC over the Christmas period, and had to send it off for repairs. Turns out I’d fried the motherboard, and my processor wouldn’t fit the new one. Consequently I’m now rocking a pretty powerful new i7 and a large solid state drive. This computer fully boots Windows 8.1 before my monitor has woken itself up. Amazing.
Additionally, I’ve been very quiet on the article front. Sorry about that, it’s become very difficult working on Hyper Gauntlet while keeping the energy to write detailed blog posts. As such, I’ve decided to change my posting schedule a little. From now on you’ll get updates every Saturday (although I’ll probably aim for a time like 3PM GMT instead of this late), which will detail the progress I’ve made on Hyper Gauntlet, etc. Expect screenshots, videos, and detailed bug reports. In addition to this, I’ll try to post some more in-depth articles when I can. This draws the focus of this website away from the technical matters and towards the games, which is something I always intended.
So here’s a quick update: work continues on Hyper Gauntlet, and I’ve swapped out a few of the old systems with newer, shinier, more advanced ones which let me take control of the various systems in much more detail. It also means adding new features later will be a piece of cake.
All new features are complete, and all that remains is bug fixing. Not too many to go now. Expect a new build as soon as I’m satisfied with it, and then a release!
Speaking of releases, Noble Kale – a friend of mine – has just released his awesome rogue-like mining game Quarries of Scred on itch.io. The game is great fun and now you can get it for a discounted price, so what are you waiting for?
Greetings, Indie Dev Supershow viewers! Welcome to Udell Games, and thanks for checking out Hyper Gauntlet! If you’re interested in some of my other, smaller, less-polished games, here’s a list:
