Hello again all, this will likely be the last Development Update before the release date announcement. I've been spending the past couple of weeks further polishing up the game, making a final pass to ensure everything is where it needs to be, testing steam achievements, and just generally getting my marketing / PR game together (sort of).
In anticipation of the upcoming release, I'd like to invite all of you to join the freshly made Unworthy discord server. Hopefully it can be a hub for the Unworthy community as well as any and all souls / metroidvania enthusiasts.
EDIT: That before I posted a non-permanent link (sorrys) this one should work.
Here's the discord link for ya'll
https://discord.gg/GBACwyQ
As always, I'm super grateful to you all for following along on this wild ride, and I'm super-stoked to put Unworthy in your hands very soon!
Development Update 8
Hello again all,
It's been a little bit over a month since the last update. I haven't been posting many updates as I am really trying to finish the game as soon as possible. Some of the cinematic sequences that are left to do have been taking a little bit longer than I anticipated (but I assure you they're worth it!).
Making a game like Unworthy has, in general, taken a lot longer than I had expected. I grossly underestimated how long it would take to make all of the "connections" between game components. When I say this, I am referring to things like talking to NPC C requires you have spoken to NPC B, which requires you to have spoken to NPC A. This gets even more complicated when some aspects are multi-conditional. The fact that all of the art is also made by me, just adds so much more to my plate. I think this example probably gives you some idea of the kind of side-quest depth you can expect from Unworthy.
Furthermore... some aspects I've been working on recently are not even exactly related to the game. I'm referring to things like Steam Trading Cards. I could've just used in game sprites and stuck them on an empty canvas and called it a day (I know this is a common practice), but I didn't want to cut corners on any aspects pertaining to Unworthy. All of the trading cards and badges and other Steam items will have custom HD art I've been spending a lot of time doing (example above).
Anyways, I have again been getting a lot of inquiries about the release date of the game. I can only answer I am working hard on it... the release is near... when exactly?... I am not sure. Things generally seem to take longer than planned, and something new and unexpected always sneaks up. I can only hope that keeping you guys regularly updated keeps you in the loop and reassures you that I'm working my hardest to make the best product I can. I'm sure you guys won't be disappointed.
Cheers!
As always, thank you for following along and keeping me motivated!
Development Update 7
Hello again all, Hope everyone is doing well, and a Happy Lunar New Year (to those that celebrate).
I've had a few questions about Unworthy's release date coming my way, and it's been a little bit over a month since the last update, and I feel like I'm a bit to overdue, and so here's a quick synopsis of what I've been doing (phew).
First of all, I'd like to address the fact that I keep prolonging the release of Unworthy. I know a lot of you area eager to jump into the game, and trust me when I say I'm just as eager to have you jump into it, but I really want to make sure I am 100% satisfied with what I'm giving to you before I hand it over. Being the sole developer means that there is a lot of work cut out for me, but at the same time it means I have 100% control over the quality of the game, and am not really forced to push out a product before it's actually "finished" due to external deadlines or the like. I am still really aiming to get the game out in Q1 2018 (potentially early Q2 2018) but I just want to make sure I haven't cut any corners when doing so.
For those of you that follow me on Twitter and some other social media, you probably heard that I recently finished up the entire world system layout (yes that means all of the levels are done). The map in Unworthy is pretty substantial and this was no small feet, so I'm quite pleased that this milestone has finally been hit.
I'm still working towards adding some of the final enemies into the game, and I am really pushing myself to make them very unique, dynamic, and memorable. (See gif above for some of the wicked cool acrobatic enemies I've been working on).
After all of the enemies are finished up (hopefully in the next week or so) I'll be moving onto finalizing the questlines and connecting lore dialogue (making it sound cool and all that fun stuff).
Once all of that is done, I will likely need a week or two to integrate the game with Steam and do the QA to make sure as few problems are experienced on your ends when you actually decide to pick the game up (gotta squash as many bugs as I possibly can).
Anyways, I thank you all for being patient with the development cycle and I hope to have a quality piece of work in your hands sometime in the near future. As always, thanks for following along!
Cheers!
Development Update 6
Greetings all and Happy New Year. I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday season and are rowing into 2018 pumped and energized! I've been a bit busy dealing with Christmas shopping, visiting family members and friends (you know how it goes) so I've been a bit behind with the Development Updates. Well anyways... to kick off the new year here's Development Update 6.
As of now, the game is pretty much core content complete. I always hesitate to say it's complete since I try and leave room for new / good ideas even if they weren't originally planned for. Basically if I feel it'll improve the overall experience sufficiently I'll make room for it in development time.
Recently I've been working to polish the additional game content such as the quests / secret items / secret areas / secondary endings / etc...
The rowboat scene above is an example of one of these scenes.
I've also been making a second pass with the bosses in game, fine-tuning making difficulty and making sure they feel good, powerful, and dynamic.
As it stands I'm aiming to have the game ready for release in early 2018, and I hope you're all as stoked and hyped as I am.
As always, thanks for following along with this development journey.
Cheers and Happy New Years again!
Development Update 5
Hey again all,
I've managed to take enough steps forward with development, so it's time for another development update. I've slowly been progressing towards completing the last sections of the game, the game is getting close to being content complete. There's a couple of half-finished bosses that need to be wrapped up and a few levels to finish designing, but it's almost done. After this I will be focusing on fishing some cinematic sequences for the game, as I genuinely try and make sure that every scene is unique and memorable. Since almost everything is hand animated, this takes quite a bit of time. (the gif above shows the kind of stuff I'm talking about).
After the core visuals are wrapped up I'll need to go over the sound stuff with the audio team to make sure that all of the music and SFX are mixed and mastered together to produce a super awesome cohesive and atmospheric experience.
Once all of the audio is out of the way, I will be adding some of the lingering option quest lines, nothing too vast to take away from the whole experience, but this is mostly extra stuff that may or may not lead to alternate endings... or something... basically it's additional lore stuff for those of you that don't like to leave any stone unturned ;)
Anyways, as always thank you all for the support!
Development Update 4
Another quick development update for you all. The tutorial area is just about wrapped up for the game, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. It's minimally intrusive: there's very little text prompt, but the area has been designed very carefully, all obstacles and enemies placed with design in mind so that you can learn everything you need to in a relatively safe environment! *phew*
With that wrapped up, I'm basically getting to adding the auxiliary features to the game (i.e. the stuff that isn't necessary to the core design, but should make the experience more interesting / enjoyable for everyone). One of the features I really wanted to add was flaming weapons. This means all of your melee weapons can ignite!
The white flame in the game is closely tied to the lore of Unworthy, and is a pretty important "weapon", so it makes sense that it be featured more often than not (I also just really like the effects!).
The gif shows the implemented flame feature and the weapon igniting. This basically increases the damage output of your weapon, and can be clutch to defeating some of those tougher bosses.
Anyways, that was just a brief update for you all. As usual, definitely wanna thank you all for following along with this journey. Until next time, Cheers!
Development Update 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjC6rppSEU4
Hello all, it's been a while since the last development update, so I thought I was a bit overdue here. Truth be told, I've been working on the game's tutorial for the past bit. I think a tutorial is actually one of the most important parts in a game, and it's also something that can be very challenging to design well. with Unworthy I really want to incorporate the tutorial into the game in a seamless fashion, that is I want to make it seem as if the tutorial was never there. A lot of games have done similar things, but a lot also just go with the "press A to jump" text prompt method, which is something I'm doing my best to avoid wherever possible.
I've actually been experiencing some creative struggles for the past couple of weeks because of this tutorial challenge, and it was really bogging down the development. To try and get a fresh perspective on things I actually decided to step away from the game for 2 weeks and work on something else from scratch (just to help flex those creative muscles). In this time I also realized that Steam API integration is something I virtually have 0 experience with, and it's something that will be coming up as the game gets closer to completion (which is pretty soon!). As a result I decided to publish the mini game I've worked on over the past 2 weeks to Steam with achievements + leaderboards integrated.
(You can check out the game here if you're interested in what it is):
http://store.steampowered.com/app/750450/Gunlock/
Since getting back to Unworthy I've had a flood of great ideas on how to tackle the tutorial, and I've implemented most of them! We've also decided to beef up the audio in the game and reworked the SFX, as well as add a layer of ambience to each level. A system to change footstep sounds based on the terrain that the player is walking on has also been put into place. I truly believe it's the small details like this that are of paramount importance to creating an immersive and believable world.
Anyways, I'm totally re-energized and looking forward to getting back into the full swing of things!
Until next time, Cheers all! and thank you for being apart of this gamedev journey with me! Your support is huge!
Development Update 2
A tireless maiden hones her noble craft
In hopes of keeping some order with future development posts, I've decided to start numbering from here on in. So even though this isn't exactly update #2... we'll say it's the "OFFICIAL" Dev Update 2.
Since the last update (about 2 weeks ago), this is basically what's been done:
Finished designing another optional boss fight (when I say optional I mean not required to complete the "core" game). This one is particularly challenging, but then... I've really been making an effort to make all of the optional bosses extra challenging!
I've been re-balancing some existing enemies in the game since I finally implemented the skill tree system. The enemies were initially balanced as if the player had no additional upgrades at their disposal. This was done in order to achieve a sort of baseline level of difficulty, as skills were introduced the enemies would be re-balanced according to what exactly these skills would and could do.
A weapon upgrade system has been implemented. I've always wanted to implement a weapon upgrade system, but the straight up higher upgrade level equals higher damage goes against one of the key design mandates I set for Unworthy: "all weapons will have a purpose". This basically means, I don't ever want a weapon to be obsolete. Every weapon will have strengths and weaknesses. If weapon upgrades did increase the weapon damage, it would in effect mean that un-upgraded weapons would be rendered obsolete. To mitigate this problem, I decided that weapon upgrades would only boost the special ability of each weapon. That way they only influence the preferred playstyle of the player in specific situations, rather than outright condemn to single weapon use.
Anyways, I think that just about covers what happened in the past 2 weeks.
Thank you all for following along with the development of Unworthy and lending you support! It genuinely keeps me strong and motivated. This means the world!
Cheers!
New Status Debuffs
Hi all, just another development update for you. I'm continuing to work on content for Unworthy, as well as introducing little features to the game in parallel. One of the things you may have noticed about Unworthy is that there are status effects. This isn't something new or revolutionary, but a few things are different than what is typically seen in other games. One of the little, but very influential differences is that you can only have one status effect applied at a time. Basically the most recently applied status effect would remove the previously existing effect (unless it's the same effect, in which case it just prolongs it).
This was a design decision that I originally adopted because I personally never liked the idea of managing too many status timers while otherwise playing a quick action game; it was just cognitively overwhelming. This decision lead to some interesting gameplay implications.
One thing I found was that it quickly lead to the making the strategic decision of purposely taking a negative status effect in order to remove a more severe or less favorable pre-existing effect. This definitely (in my opinion) added a bit more flavor to the way status effects worked in the game.
The recent effect I've been working on is a bit of a funky one. It's the Toxin effect. It doesn't negatively affect stats, but it does make it more difficult to play. It's something that could quickly become annoying, so it was a pretty quick dissipation time.
Anyways, that's all for now. Until next time. Cheers!
Development Update
Hello again all, so here's another development update.
Been a couple weeks since the last development update. I've sort of been working on many things at once over the past while, instead of attacking individual tasks, so I haven't had any concrete announcements to make. Since a lot of these tasks have now been completed, I feel I can give a more comprehensive development update.
Most of you have known that a skill / perk tree was something that was in the works for the final game. This isn't going to be the world's biggest / most complex skill system, but rather a select few skills that will help guide the player towards a specific build in early game, and create a generalized versatile warrior in late game (NG+++++++++++++++). This was a design decision I made because I really want Unworthy to be a tight and well-balanced experience centered around meticulous and strategic combat. I think this would be extremely difficult to achieve with a less concentrated skill tree system.
Anyways, long story short. Skill tree is finalized and implemented.
More bosses and enemies have been implemented into the game. This makes the unique enemy roster at well over 20+ enemies now, and brings the boss roster to over 8+. I'm not giving specifics as to how many bosses / unique enemies there are, since a lot of them will be accessed in "secret" optional areas of the game.
Upgraded version of enemies have also been implemented. These are intended to serve as both enemies that are introduced in later areas of the game, as well as versions that will replace some enemies in earlier areas at (NG+). The gif above shows the upgraded version of the very first enemies in the game. You'll notice one has a flaming weapon, and the other is now equipped with a repeating crossbow. Yikes!
More areas have been implemented. I try to make sure every area is unique in its own way. Whether that means puzzle elements, specific types of enemies, or some other interesting mechanic (secret), I really try to make sure no 2 areas are quite the same. As of now there are over 8+ unique areas in the game to explore.
Anyways, that's all for now. Until next time!
Cheers!
