Vilya's Workblog

One thing we've been talking about a lot recently is the difficulty setting for Arcade Mode and how to adjust it to make it the best possible experience for the most people. Our recent idea is to introduce something we call loops, that I think is a quite popular theme in roguelike style games: the game starts out fairly easy (well, not easy - but easier compared to the current default difficulty setting!), and once you've finished all floors once, you'll unlock a more difficult version.

This will be done through accessing an item you can activate through Bishop, and there will be more than one difficult increase; for instance, our current idea is that Arcade will begin on what could be equivalent to Story Mode's normal difficulty setting, then once you complete it once you'll access Arcade Mode's current difficulty setting through activating the item at Bishop. Complete that difficulty and you'll unlock another item that will trigger your next runs to be as difficult as the current difficulty setting plus Candy's Hard Mode curse.

The true ending for Arcade and the final battle would only be accessible if you manage to complete the whole game with all difficulty increasing items activated. You'll also be able to deactivate them if you find the difficulty has become too much for you to handle.

How do you feel about this "loop" idea? Is it something you think you'd enjoy or do you prefer it the way things are now?

Now, time for the last of James fans! We felt like two were a bit too few to give a sense of him having a following, so we decided to make one more:

Sorry for the lack of update yesterday! We've been busy turning the guest house into an office; which turns out involved two full days of carrying stuff back and forth as well as disassembling and reassembling a whole bunch of furniture... Phew!

Even after these two days we're not completely done; we've been looking into getting new desks (of the kind you can also use to stand up and work), and new, better chairs, seeing as we've had these for an incredibly long time and they're pretty much just the most basic type of IKEA chairs. I spent most of the evening yesterday doing some research on that topic, so hopefully we'll have a better and prettier looking office soon :)

For now though, it's good to be able to work together again! And being this close to home, it's a lot easier with lunch breaks and the like as well. Feels great so far!

And here's Fred's renditions of both James and his two fans! We've decided to add yet another fan to his bunch of followers, but that one will probably appear a bit later:

And second, that of the fanboy:

These characters will follow James along wherever he appears, cheering him on! Oh my..

Two new characters we're gonna introduce in story mode are part of the fanclub surrounding James Fawkes! Starting off with the fangirl:

So one of the main topics on our minds lately has been the Pin Collector. Who is he, how will the pins be unlocked and at what part of the game? We've decided that he will appear randomly in a room after the player has played a certain amount: not too long, but at least a few runs so that they're familiar with the way the game works without pins added.

He will appear through a dimension rift which will happen in the midst of a room. Here's our first prototype of the scene:

Obvious use of placeholders including Marino, of course... haha!

Next, we've been playing around with adding some effects to give the impression of the pins scattering away:

This is also still a work in progress! We're not completely happy with the way the pins literally seem to "scatter like a wind" if you want. We might look into having them scatter from him more like coins from a defeated enemy; or we might keep the effect separate from his appearance altogether. In any case, the testing continues! :)

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