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Annual Recap & Plans for 2023
🕑 Added 2023-01-16 13:06:43 +0000 UTCHi everyone! Things have been suddenly super busy in my personal life, but here’s the recap & planning post for 2023!
Before we dive in, tho…
Personal Note
Most of the time I don’t get very personal in my posts but the last couple of months have been very rough and left us raw and it has impacted our productivity, so I thought you guys deserve to know what’s been going on. First, bunny had a serious case of covid despite being triple vaccinated. While he was still on the road to recovery we had massive water damage in our home. We had loud construction going on as they had to open up walls and the floor fill to get to the pipes, every day from morning until evening, while we tried to work. The repairs and renovations lasted up until shortly before Christmas. On Christmas, Null had a terrible death in the family and in early January another family member got hospitalized with a life threatening issue (luckily she pulled through and is recovering).
Suffice to say, things have been tough, but we’re grateful for your love and support and we hope we can finally return to calmer days.
On that note, we hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a good start into the New Year!
Let’s talk about the game then! ^w^
2022 Recap
Before I go into the plans we mapped out for this year I wanted to go over last year’s finished work!
Expanded Kincaid’s moveset and abilities. Ziplines, rail grinding, hand over hand, crawling and ledge grabbing/climbing. We also did another pass over how combat feels.
Increased gameplay resolution. We decided to increase the gameplay resolution of the game to make exploration, platforming and combat easier. In the old version many enemies would appear not too far away from you on the screen. Even simple enemies like the bombers were hard to incorporate in levels because they’d either be placed obviously or they’d throw bombs at you from off screen. The more we experimented with new enemy ideas the more it became painfully obvious that our chosen resolution was not ideal.
Overhaul of Jungle Environment Artwork. As we worked together with Fabian to create tilesets for the upcoming planets and built the test levels with it, it quickly became obvious how much my style and his style clashed. I think my character art and his environments work really well together, but in terms of environment art, my stuff just wasn’t up to snuff. So we decided to invest in another pass over the jungle art, starting completely from scratch. He also touched up the Kobold Village, trying to bridge the gap between my style and his style, bringing it close together. It was a big and long project but I think it was worth it!
Started on Jungle Rebuild. With the new movement options, the new jungle art and an increased resolution being done, we got to the point where we decided it was finally time to rebuild the jungle levels. We’ve talked about it from almost the beginning of the project that it would at some point be necessary to start at least a good chunk of it from scratch. We planned out the whole of the jungle world in a world planning session and now we’re turning them into actual levels. Altogether, we’ve already created 30+ completely new rooms.
Stories & Cutscenes. We made our first couple of cutscenes, introducing new characters, like our evil sorceress Kaha, and showing the first bits and pieces of the story we have plotted out.
Bear Enemy. To take a break from Kobold stuff I worked on another new enemy for the upcoming planet: Bear, including the act animation.
Kobold Boss Lewds. Only an unlocked gallery entry for now, this is going to be the quest reward for defeating the big & mean Kobold boss! ^w~
More Kobold Lewds. The “eye candy” quest reward for helping the village out with their water problems!
Bugfixes, Quality of Life Changes & Visual Polish. Just a potpourri of things that slightly improved the overall quality of the game. Things like small VFX animations, endlessly tweaking some numbers and replaying the game to nail the game feel, weeding out annoying and stubborn bugs, implementing a new save game system to make it more future proof and easier to debug.
Background Planning & Design. Aside from that we also did a lot of planning and design work for future content, such as refining our stories, coming up with NPCs and plot lines for the upcoming worlds, putting together concepts and mood boards for Fabian for upcoming environments, prototyping features in separate projects to be integrated into the game when they are ready, such as a new dialogue system, etc. A big part of this kind of work just takes place during conversations over dinner or when going on walks, but I thought I’d still mention it since it’s also love and attention that goes into the game.
Overall, I am very happy with what we have accomplished in 2022! It might not feel like much, because a lot of it is quality improvement and laying better foundations for Kincaid’s future. But I think we navigated this transitional phase well. Things got very rough towards the end of the year, but I am eager to see what we can accomplish in 2023!
Hopes & Dreams for 2023
Okay, let’s look at our goals and plans for this year!
Start work on Haven. Haven is going to be a space station that serves as the game’s central hub. You’ll be able to return here between major beats for plot progression and also to visit shops, talk to NPCs and accept smaller side quests.
Build out the rest of the jungle planet. We have created a map of the areas the planet is going to have (see previous Weekly Roundups). We’ll continue building out the corresponding levels, connecting them and filling them with goodies, baddies and secrets!
More Story Cutscenes. As we build out the rest of the map, we’re also going to weave the story beats into it. That means more cutscenes with Kaha and some other cutscenes.
New minor enemies and traps. To spice up the gameplay a bit, I am going to create a couple of smaller enemies that won’t be receiving any lewd animations, in the same vein as the current crawlies and insects.
Final Jungle Boss. There is going to be one more main story boss fight on the jungle!
Start work on the UI Overhaul. The old minimap was a place holder and a lot of the UI elements, like energy, heal charges etc. are still place holders and they have definitely overstayed their welcome. I’d like to add actual graphics and effects for these to give the game a more polished feel.
Build out the OST. We’re going to contract Moon Mink for a couple of new songs as well as sound effects.
Continue polishing the game’s visuals and Kincaid’s movement. Things like rail grinding and ziplines already work fine but they still need some of the numbers tweaked and edge cases need to be smoothed out for them to feel as good as the old core gameplay. The dash looks a bit boring and has no impact. The water needs a fresh look to flow better with the new background art and some of the visual effects for combat leave much to be desired!
Plans for the next build
Here’s what we are currently working on for the upcoming build:
- Redesigned “Ruins” area that can be accessed with Pohaku’s elevator.
- Some smaller enemies and critters (like the mosquito and bug).
- Last but not least, new lewds!
Reminder: New Art Pack & Build is out!
If you haven’t had a chance yet, grab the latest build! It features a brand new animation.
Read the release post here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/kincaid-build-12-76590633
The new animation is also available as an art pack her: https://www.patreon.com/posts/kobold-boss-art-76586958
Thank you for reading and until next week!
Cookie & Bunny
Comments
DoctorDiscord
So sorry to hear, but glad that you have been vaccinated and boosted, absolutely making the impact of the virus a lot lighter. Please take care of yourselves first and don't push yourselves too much!
pj wolf
Covid sucks, but it's still so, so good that you're vaccinated and boosted. Otherwise that Covid would have been a lot worse, most likely. Good luck with the game development!
Gavin Morrison
I’m sorry to hear about what’s been going on and I hope everything turns out for the better for you guys, and if you need to take a break in order to get your lives back on track I’m sure we would understand.
