Hello again everyone! I hope this update finds you well. Last month we were working on several large tasks, most of which we can't really show you without spoiling things (backgrounds for the final boss, level design for late-game sections, etc) so I decided to just hold off on the update until this month.
Various improved FX A few exciting things have been in the works though. When we analyzed the game back over the summer and made our final list of improvements, one of the things we realized we really needed to improve was the visual FX. This meant going back through everything and beefing up FX for various things like hits, deaths, breaking props, picking up items, leveling up, etc. Check out the GIF above for a preview of this work (please note it doesn't look as smooth as the real thing since it's running at half the framerate). Right now the team is mainly focused on finishing up the core content. Dan is working on various pieces of background art for late-game rooms, Jimi is working on boss and enemy sound effects, Glauber is working on enemy death animations, Tim is optimizing engine code and tackling the remaining programming tasks, and I'm going through the main path of the game with a fine-toothed comb to find all the stuff we missed and wrap up work on the areas.
A new platforming challenge in the Gardens I know everyone is anxious for us to reach Beta, but we still have a little further to go. Once this core stuff is done we will focus on the secondary content tasks like beefing up the backtracking and adding more weapons, items, and secrets to find. Lastly, once all the content is completed, we'll turn our attention to the final polish tasks like balancing, text cleanup, UI polishing, and of course testing. Well, that's it for now! We'll be in touch again this fall to let you know how things are progressing as we steadily march towards the finish line. Thanks again for your support and patience!