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!
Don’t worry, I’m not going to subject you to slides of myself in various wacky poses in front of inane objects. No, I am here to share with you the work I’ve done on a small game project while I’m on holiday, away from my main machine and unable to work on Fuse-Breaker or my other project.
I call it (tentatively), What Will You Do Next?
What Will You Do Next? is a text-based RPG rogue-like. Procedurally generated text-based worlds to explore chock full of baddies to fight and hardships to endure. Here’s a screenshot of what I hope the end product will resemble:
Most of the UI systems are done, and there’s a good chance I’ll have some bare bones procedural generation in by the end of the weekend, but it’s Screenshot Saturday, so I’d be remiss not to show you something, no matter how premature.