The deadline for the IGF – the Independent Games Festival – is a week away, and then the other competition we are excited about, on IndiePub.com, is at the end of the month. So we’ve been working non-stop to get a build out for that. I’m really excited about the new build: It’s got a nice smooth progression, none of this throw-everything-we-have-into-every-level stuff. Instead, it walks you through it gradually, so that each new level adds just one new thing or trick or weapon or skill. It keeps the forward momentum going at a nice pace. My friend Joe, who is a designer at Paragon on ‘City of Heroes,’ mentioned getting sucked into the “Just one more level, I want to see what’s added in this one” mode, which is exactly what we were shooting for! How many levels do we have? A full 24! 7 tile-sets, 6 monsters, 2 traps, one power-up, 4 weapons, and a whole mess of dialogue! There’s still a lot to do for the final game, but I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and how well it holds together.
(Oh, and wait ’til you hear all the new music that Nick’s been working on. It just rocks! (In a Nordic folksy kind of way, of course.))
We’re getting ready for a new demo here, and have been striving to put a lot more polished artwork into the game. I (Mike) wanted to share some of the painted – as opposed to pixel – art that I’ve been creating to help flesh out the game. Here’s the new look for our main menu screen:
Here is a loading screen for going between levels:
To share some process with you, here is some line art for the Game Over screen if you are defeated by Yngvarr or one of his many minions:
…And here’s the final painting done from the line art:
We’re very excited about this latest build now live on mage-maze.com: We’ve got four full levels, each with its own distinct monsters and challenges and tile artwork, new weapon classes, a new soundtrack, new sound effects, and new dialogue. It’s actually feeling a lot like a real game, not just a single continuous level. It’s got us all very excited.
Sorry the blog has been a tad quiet of late. I (Mike) have been working on more particle effects and nothing new to show. Kristof has been doing a lot of UI work and tutorial flow, with a similar lack of visuals to present. But one thing that we have finalized is what the name of our team/studio will be. Allow me to introduce ourselves: We are RoboDojo!
RoboDojoLogo
… and now we have a spiffy logo to insert into the beginning of our game. (Our sound company, Output Audio, has one, so we had to keep up.)
