SWORD: BUTCHERKNIFE

PRIMARY ATTACK

Just the standard sword swing that Esmy starts out with, it's quick and covers a decent arc making it a standard weapon. Balanced in both speed, damage and knockback. Fun fact, the timing of this attack was inspired by the dagger attack from Alundra.

SECONDARY ATTACK: SWORD LUNGE

The sword's secondary attack is a short lunge with an upward swing. It's about as quick as the sword swing as well with added mobility but the hitbox is narrower and the added mobility can end up putting you in hot water if used at a bad time. You could bridge the gap between you and an enemy or end up jumping straight into a projectile or attack with higher priority than yours.

AXE: PIZZAXE

PRIMARY ATTACK

Named the Pizzaxe due to its design being inspired by a pizza cutter but with a gear as the axe-head, this is the power weapon if you want something that can send an enemy flying back while also making them feel the pain. The axe has a more noticeable delay before it's wide swing (wider than the sword with a 180° arc). The size of its hitbox should make it great for clearing crowds of enemies if ever you find yourself in need of some physical based crowd control.

SECONDARY ATTACK: ROLLING CUTTER

While the primary attack is a wide swing, the secondary attack is a narrow downward smash which we're currently setting to break through enemy blocking and follow up with a continuous hit. Once you hit the attack button, the axe comes down and holding the attack button causes the axe head to spin rapidly dealing continuous damage to any enemy caught within while slowly pushing them back. If you choose not to hold the button then Esmy withdraws the axe, cancelling the spin animation.

FISTS: KNUCKLE DUSTERS

PRIMARY ATTACK

The fists are one of the shortest ranged weapons you can use but they make up for it in combo potential and a slight bit of mobility. Each punch brings you forward a little and there's barely much recovery through each attack, what really makes the Knuckle Dusters different from the other weapons though is its secondary attack function.

SECONDARY ATTACK: PARRY

The parry function of the fists are what make the weapon one of the more skill-based choices as timing the secondary attack button press can allow you to parry attacks coming your way. Rob chose to give the fists this function as tribute to fighting games like Street Fighter III or Devil May Cry's 'Royal Guard' style, allowing the player (if they get the hang of it) to become nigh untouchable.

I'm currently polishing up the spear weapon's secondary attack right now but here's a look into what's polished of the spear animations.

SPEAR: JAVELINK

PRIMARY ATTACK

Thanks to Michafrar for contributing his skills to the pixeling of this animation a while back.

The spear is pretty clear cut as a weapon. It's long, it's narrow and pokey and from that animation you can see it's pretty fast as well. Granted we'll be tweaking the speed through code as the previous tests we had with the spear before made it quite overpowered since you could chain 3-4 attacks in one second by mashing the attack button. There's a decent bit of knockback to this weapon but the hitbox is really narrow so be warned.

SECONDARY ATTACK: STINGER

Almost similar to the sword's secondary attack but with way more travel speed and being able to pierce through anything in your way (unless it turns out to be too overpowered in further tests). There is a slight bit of recovery after your dash so you can't chain this that seamlessly but it's a great way to get around while being on the offense.

Name and attack inspired by Dante's 'Stinger' attack from Devil May Cry.

It's been a struggle trying to figure out how to make each weapon stand out from one another while not overshadowing the abilities Esmy has. As much as possible, your condenser should be your bread and butter and the weapons are your back-up while your EP recharges but hey, in the end it's up to you how you'd want to play and there really won't be anything wrong with going a "weapons-only" playthrough for the most part (you'll still need to use abilities for puzzles).

If you're wondering how you'd go about switching weapons, we've decided during our streamlining and fun-factor honing awhile back that Esmy's going to have that traditional gaming "magic backpack" that can hold all the weapons. You're going to start off with the sword first but as you go through the game, you'll be able to unlock more weapons through the town blacksmith and once unlocked will be with you forever and can just be switched around within the quick menu.

I look forward to finishing up the spear animations so I can consider the first four weapons complete with their pixel polish, after that it'll be straight into the build which I still need to add some paints to on a few environments and optimizing the first boss fight so it'll be sure that it's the best foot forward at first go of the game.

That'll be it for this quick update, I'll be putting another one up soon with the next set of progress (likely environment polish and the remaining spear animations) along with another round of Fan Spotlights and Q&A.

Kishou asks the following questions:

Can you change Esmy's appearance? Like, with armor sprites?

Sadly, given how Cryamore’s sprites are designed, it’s too taxing to make armor sprites for Esmy as we’d have to make armor sprites for a lot of unique animations, idle, running, hit, ground cast, mid cast, high cast, Vanish animations, Boulder Dash animations, etc. and then multiply that with 3 or 5 directions each.

The most we can offer for visual customization are palette swaps.

Featured above are palettes for default, Braxton, Bliss, “Dewritos”, and Black & Blue

I just want to see Esmy in something revealing like a swimsuit

Rob can probably arrange that in another artwork. I could sprite Esmy in a swimsuit but I don’t think we have any scenarios written down that feature her in one.

Of course, we could always write one in...

I'm not sure if this is asked before but is there a love interest in mind for Esmy?

Esmy’s too focused on her work and studying cryamore to notice anyone that may have feelings for her.

Right?

There's no "right" or "wrong" way to clear the game right? Like, surely some spells solve puzzles but there will be proficiency in not just weapon choices but spells in fighting too?

We’ve done our best to make sure your offensive/defensive ability and weapon loadouts will always be viable so whether you like playing ranged weapons with hard hitting close combat abilities, using mobility enhancing abilities with melee weapons or whatever playstyle tickles your fancy, we’ve spent a lot of time ensuring we got everything balanced and fun enough so there won’t be an absolute god tier and worst tier loadout.

Phosphatide asks:

About story flow: with games now searching for the perfect balance between "linear progression" and "open world freedom" to avoid blatant in-game walls preventing the possibility of sequence-breaking exploration or aimless wandering with no sense of urgency... what was your goal for Cryamore?

Alan: Honestly, I personally wanted full-on freedom to go explore some of the hardest areas of the game and risk the chance of getting wrecked, but we had to corrall things a bit to ensure you stay within the story bounds. Rob being the lead on this has final say on direction.

Rob: I wanted to instill a sense of survival in the game and make sure that the abilities are a big focal point for both puzzles and combat so we were able to block off certain areas of the world the way Metroidvanias would; give you a hint at what might be ahead, but you're blocked by something that needs a new ability

Alan: There's still freedom to be had but you can only go so far before you either hit a roadblock which needs an ability or sometimes story progression (you need clearance to explore south of the island)

So yeah, the goal was to give some freedom but not too much and I'm hoping we managed to achieve it with the world design I've done and with enough usage of the puzzle solving abilities we've made.

Tomar asks:

Curiosity here. Do you guys do art asset sharing through your VC system, or do you use something simpler like dropbox/google drive?

We’ve mostly used Dropbox all throughout to share asset files.

Above are the four folders we have set for Cryamore. Backgrounds has Rob and me contributing to it, Illustrations has Rob, me, and JC and Juby’s contributions, Inspiration Music has Aivi and surasshu’s work (a lot of unheard of to the public music WIP files) and Sprite-Animations has my work.

Once something like music, animation or an environment asset is set, Rob or I transfer it to Unity, apply any settings necessary (import and display settings for 2DToolkit, audio settings for Master Audio, etc.) and then upload it to the SVN so the file and all its settings will exist for anyone on the team with a Unity key and access to the Cryamore SVN.

Do you use freecamp for like kanban/task management stuff?

When we had more people in our team, we used OpenOffice and then switched to Freedcamp to keep track of tasks and bugs. Now that it’s just Rob and me, and Aivi and surasshu on sound and music, we mostly just keep a personal to-do list.

Xaelon asks:

I have no idea if this is possible with how the game is built, but something you could add to promote replay after the base game is completed would be a "randomizer mode" that shuffles various things into different places.

We could probably apply that to enemy spawns and some cryam deposits but the environment layouts though aren't as flexible sadly as we don’t use tilesets and the collision bounds of the environments aren’t generated by object due to a lot of irregular organic shapes.

We definitely have considered implementing a NG+ option though, maybe with levels and certain abilities intact on the next play but with more mobs and other difficulty boosts. 

shadowreaper5 asks:

Do skills with timers (like the buff to breathe underwater) have a visual representation of the time left?

To a certain extent, yes. Esmy’s going to have a breath meter over her head while underwater without the Oxy Barrier ability.

We initially wanted to just have a blue fill over Esmy’s status portrait (which changes to her holding her breath) while underwater but so it’s easier to keep track of, she’ll have a meter above her head when she isn’t using Oxy Barrier underwater.

While we do have spells with durations, some of them won’t have a meter and rely on visual cues: a timed magma mine will blink when it's about to explode, time paradox clones should blink when they're about to fade, and shadow cloak should fade back to full visibility upon ending. As it is though, we will mention the duration of spells in their info box at the menu.

Tarquinn2049 asks:

Ok. This question is a bit on the other end amd might make me sound like a jerk due to timing. But does it support 4k? And if so is it by pixel doubling? I can totally play it at 1080p if hardware scaling will ultimately look better.

Our native resolution is 720p which we’ll be upscaling to 1080p. We won’t be able to provide 4K support as working primarily in 2D where our target resolution is 720p would require us to rework the assets in a larger size so as not to lose crispness of lines and pixels on a larger resolution.

Rob:  The game looks freaking good on a 50-70 inch, though haha! I for one can't wait to playtest a lot on console (devkit).

DEVELOPMENT UPDATES

Unity editor-wise, Rob has been working on optimizing the code further. The sorting order of the game was archaic and clunky, so Rob decided to squish it down to a simpler and more effective form that relies on Sorting Order that Unity didn’t have early on during our development. We instead relied on Z index which required a lot of fiddling around with when setting objects up.

You can see in that test room video that the “Order in Layer” is changing value. Back then it would be the Z in the Position attributes and we’d have to manually set the value beforehand to make sure things appeared behind or in front of objects right.

Rob also implemented full analog movement instead of just the D-pad, this allows for more control, though it’ll need a bit of tweaking as it currently looks like Esmy’s skating along the ground like she’s about to break it down and provide everyone with boosted shields.

There’s been polish going on in multiple fronts on the graphical end as animations and environment assets get fixed.

Above is the fist weapons, we initially were going to go with brass knuckles but decided that it wouldn’t be that noticeable on the sprite unless we made it large but I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t miss the weapons so I designed these gauntlets that shows a bit of the transition from steamtech to cryamtech and also offers a more interesting silhouette while also making a bit more sense as a viable weapon against dangerous monsters.

The fists primary function work as a mashable combo. One press of the attack button does a jab, two presses in quick succession performs a jab and punch, three does a jab, punch, uppercut combo. It’s quick but it doesn’t have that much range or width in its melee attack range.

The second function is the parry which allows you to negate any damage if timed right. Rob’s in charge of securing the timing for all these as he’s the one in Unity and more well-versed with the parrying system this was inspired from (Street Fighter 3) so I trust he’ll make sure it’s balanced. We wanted to make the fists fun to use but even better if you master it and hopefully it’ll show.

The crossbow also underwent an animation rework during its polish phase. The old animation was too focused on being realistic that it didn’t look interesting (i.e. it looked too slow) and the crossbow already has it tough in being interesting when up against the pistols. So far everyone feels it looks much snappier now while still keeping to the timing of the old animation.

What differentiates the crossbow from the pistol is that Esmy can hold her shot and slowly strafe while doing so, only firing when you let go of the attack button. The crossbow also has different types of bolt quivers that you can equip. Currently we’re playing around with piercing properties and stagger/slowing/knockback properties.

We’re also looking into displaying the ammo/bolt count below Esmy everytime she fires so the player can easily keep track of their shots (we’ve been running on infinite ammo all this time just to get a feel of the weapon first before applying a limit). 

The rapier’s animations will still need the pixel pass but its roughs are ready.

You’ll notice two phases in the rapier animation. The basic thrust and the secondary backdash. These are the primary and secondary functions of the weapon. One allows you to dash forward with a piercing strike and another for quick evasion, making the rapier a weapon all about mobility (which could be handy for speedrunning too).

The Ghilcrest buildings are undergoing their design polish as well. You’ve all seen the Cryatisium and Esmy’s Home and now the Inventorium and the Cafe are joining them in polished goodness.

The overworld environments have also been undergoing its rework. More unique object assets have been made and its design is now following the Overworld map that I completed.

Worry not about the above image. Though we do have Brax (and some other characters) following you at some points in the game, it’s not a dangerous escort mission where you’ll have to struggle to keep your companion alive, the Berribuns were added on the map just for this screenshot (they ignore Brax and only go for Esmy).

I’ve tried to incorporate hints of the past steamtech throughout areas of Noka Island that the settlers covered, some machines like the one on the screenshot above were retrofitted to use cryam instead of steam (I did receive comments on how the smoke blobs look more like rocks so I’ll probably change it to wispy smoke).

The HUD has also undergone a visual polish to make it look more bronze plated to go with the early post steampunk-ish feel.

I’ll be continuously working on more animations and environment asset polish all throughout while Rob cleans up code, works on other background assets or lays said assets out in the Unity editor.

ART SPOTLIGHT

Every now and then, Rob (and sometimes I) take a breather and make some art (which will all eventually end up in the artbook) so here’s some of the choice pieces as of late.

Rob made something that could be wallpaper material once he cleans it up in a higher res, it’s an array of Bliss in a custom outfit.

Another wallpaper-ish piece from Rob with Deseret, Bliss, and Sorbet looking all tough and showing what I’ll just assume to be Ghilcrest gang signs... despite it being a small community.

Here's a more realistic pin-up style Bliss that Rob also made.

Rob also pays tribute to Atlus’ Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series by rendering Esmy in Shigenori Soejima’s style.

I did the same and tried making a Shigenori Soejima tribute using his soft paint style commonly present in Stella Deus and some Persona art. I chose to represent Team Bliss.

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT 

We’ve also got a few new submissions of fanart from the community that we’re proud to share with everyone. We’re grateful to have all your support and enjoy seeing everyone’s renditions of the Cryamore cast.

@Cliffist pays tribute to the fab queen, Bliss because clearly, she’s supposed to be the star.

@boss_ruru also decides to rep Team Bliss with this lovely piece of Ms. Barson in one of her many alternate outfits.

But it’s not all Bliss as MellowMarz aka @HeartlessHat provides a pistol toting pixel-art Esmy.

I’ll be working on the pixel art and animation featurette next. I had to hold it off since I needed to prep this first.

It should give an idea of what the update will cover.

I hope you enjoyed this update and all the news! Thanks for taking time to read through these.

- CM Alan

P.S. I also managed to secure one of the previous builds we made and will be preparing a guide to go with it for the backers on Discord.

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT NEWS

Rob has currently been optimizing the code as we've accumulated a lot of bloat over the years from old textures, deprecated code and a horrible folder hierarchy. He's also improving our control scheme as we're both pulling the trigger on making the attack button R2/RT on a controller (Space on keyboards) and with doing so map the abilities to the face buttons on a controller by default for easier setup. The reason we didn't do this from the get-go was concerns about the interact button (usually a face button like O or B) having a dual-role with a combat button which may cause problems in combat if you're facing an enemy while interactive triggers are around you.

The solution we've come up with involves having your face buttons bound to field commands by default (examining, nap bag, etc.) but holding R1/RB (Shift on keyboards) toggles the face buttons to ability hotkeys. This should make for less worries in combat flow. We may change the key assignments depending on how things feel but we at least want to get that adjustment added into how combat works.

Thanks to experiments done in one of the mini-games to be included in Cryamore, Rob has also implemented the limited camera control system we cooked up for the minigame into Cryamore so the player can move the camera around to see ahead. It's helpful if you're using a ranged weapon or if you want to make sure the coast is clear before you bring out the Nap Bag.

Here's a clip of it in action. Sadly you can't see Rob actually press the keys but trust that it controls well.

The video also shows the in-editor vs. compiled performance. While the in-editor runs fine, the compiled version runs even more smoother as I mentioned awhile back.

Rob's also continuing work on the other character portraits and here's a sketch for one of the children in Ghilcrest, Uni Nauticus.

On my end, I'm wrapping up the last few areas of the Overworld layout. I can't show the whole map like I did in the backer-only update but here's a few of the new additions to it.

We'll look into using the Overworld map I've done as the in-game map as well, with a tweak or so here and there.  

Also here are a couple of monsters that are getting the pixel polish treatment that I never got around to posting here...

Gagak can be found in the Phantom Marshes and Berribun below him can be found around the overworld.

Here's a few of the other development video clips we shared on the Discord server.

Above was an older VFX test for Esmy's Boulder Dash Lv1 skill. The ground crack texture is nice but it does look odd when done near a ledge as the crack texture extends out into what should be air, it's a downside of not having 3D environments. This will be fixed, however, as the angle of the cracks are currently based on the older, "isometric" perspective. The trails also clash with the dust cloud. It's something we're going to have to work on to achieve a look that works.

Above is an older recording of one of our backer monsters, Hubbler, in action (along with another backer monster, Nictate, idling in the corner). Hubbler proved to be one of the most deadliest mobs we've had in the game but ONLY if there are aggro monsters nearby (can you figure out what's going on?). Do excuse Esmy's sprite shaking though, I've yet to animate and pixel her sprite for this condition and also excuse the greyboxed environments, they're going to be prettied up.

Also up above is a test of the emote bubbles that Rob cooked up awhile back up to give NPC sprites an extra bit of expression.

And finally here's an older bug that happened.

Esmy can't stand still as an invisible Chief Silvershark talks to her and Bagel pretends nothing weird is going on... also the camera focus lost control. Thankfully this has been stamped out already.

And to add to all this stuff that our Paypal backers or non-backers may have missed out on from recent backer-only posts, here's a retread on other stuff that aren't too spoilery...

Character portraits are getting polished up.

Ghilcrest's buildings are undergoing some visual polish too to further reflect the transition of the people from steam tech to cryam-tech.

More of Esmy's weapon attacks are getting the visual polish that they need in the form of pixel art, what you see above is the secondary attack for the Axe and the Daggers.

More enemies have been getting their pixel polish too. Topmost is one of our bosses and below him is one of our backer monsters, Black Claw.

FAN SPOTLIGHT

Some of the backers on the Cryamore Discord showed their support for the recent update with some fanart and I wanted to share their awesome works!

Here's an Esmy by Sakurafire, about to channel an ability through her condensers or doing a "we can do it" arm pump, either one works for us!

and here's another awesome looking Esmy looking off into the distance, by doghateburger

We love seeing fan works and I'll be featuring any more that get sent our way (unless you'd rather we keep it to ourselves)!

Again, the next FEATURE update will be talking about..

Not Bliss per se, but the process of animation and pixel art that goes towards making Cryamore.

Stay tuned!

Thanks for everyone’s comments and support on the previous Kickstarter backer only update! A good number of people have joined the Cryamore Backer Discord server that I started up.

We’ve got about 132 members on there right now and it may grow a bit more once I send out the invite to the Paypal backers as a means to get them caught up with what’s been going on behind the backer-only posts. I just have to mirror the backer-only posts in somewhere like Dropbox for their prolonged perusal and prepare a short list of Q&A in case they have any queries and I’ll send out this draft I’ve done.

With that said, I wanted to make a short update reiterating questions gathered from the Discord channels and sharing some of the things we feel we can have non-backers see since it won’t spoil the game... too much.

FoolishWolf asked: I guess my first question is if it is possible to give an ETA on the project at this point?

Rob: We want to be finished this year. We're currently in the "Polish" phase where all the moving and working parts are in, it's just a matter of cleaning up presentation, major bugs, and final art.

Alan: There are going to be gameplay polishes too as we go along. The mechanics we've got are now all adjusted to any suggestions we've taken in from our publisher's testing but we'd like to see if during the backer tests, anyone feels it could be improved further.

That's fair. I guess this is just the marketer in me, but is there gifs and videos that maybe you can release for the community for #Indiedevhour and #screenshotsaturday that we share around. Kinda get the hype train going?

Rob: We want to get back into doing more of that, yeah. Now that we're polishing stuff up.

Alan: We'll be sharing stuff as often as we can on Discord which we'll then pool together for the mini updates.

Clay | Terminally Nerdy asked:

Once the game is in a “playable” preview state, would you all want someone to stream/talk about it?

We’re absolutely okay with it as this would help reinforce the fact that the game is legit. We’ll make sure to mark which builds are public ready.

Can you get Atlus to port the Persona series to PC, and will Jack Frost be in the game?

We sadly don’t have that kind of pull but I personally would like to see the Persona series on PC too.

Phosphatide asked:

How close is it to the proposed "40+ tracks" from the Kickstarter?

We’re pretty much within the forty track count already. I’ll share surasshu’s answer here as it’s better to hear it from one of our composers.

here's a link to a larger version (just adjust the zoom) in case Kickstarter decides to shrink the whole thing to an unreadable point.

fpwong asked:

What do ppl usually use for programming AI in Unity? UE4 has inbuilt behaviour trees but idk if unity has anything of the sort.

Alan: We’re not sure about other people using Unity but for us, we’ve been using a mix of C# and FlowCanvas/NodeCanvas to achieve an easily tweakable AI system. It’s the same thing we used to set up our cutscene/dialogue system too, so it’s multipurpose!

Rob: This video is quite outdated though; It’s mostly the dialogue on example there and a few older bugs but that shows how the dialogue tree is set up, how it can control objects to walk away from the scene, change sprites and more.

Brendan (luigimeistersa) asked:

Hey dev guys. Does Cryamore have any kind of buffs you can apply to Esmy?

Alan: We sadly don’t have much in way of buff abilities besides things like Oxy Barrier which provide you with a protective bubble and allow you to breathe underwater or other abilities like Time Paradox and Shadow Cloak. You do get a Well Rested buff though from sleeping at the inn though and the buff comes at various tiers.

Can you bind them (abilities) to the row of number keys on PC?

Alan: We're using Rewired for Unity to support keybinding and a variety of controllers (here's a list) so you should be able to rebind controls to any key you wish on a desktop keyboard.

Rob: Controllers may be more limited for keybinding in comparison, however.

AreYouSmarterThanACheeseGrater asked:

So, how are you going to work sleeping? Will time advance a set number of hours or will time progress to the next morning/evening?

Alan: Here’s an excerpt from our design document to easily explain how sleeping works.

Take note, costs are subject to change but sleeping in specific beds advances time by a set amount and you get better rest in a shorter amount of time from the more expensive rooms at the inn (to be fully rested and free from fatigue for a day in just two hours would be amazing). You do have the option to be cheap and just sleep in your own bed but you use up more time in a day.

Downing energy drinks is a way to stay awake without having to sleep but you can only carry so much and it won't fully restore your fatigue and you'll eventually find yourself sleeping on the ground, helpless against any threats around you.

shadowreaper5 asked: Are you still looking for help? I can't draw or code, but if you need someone to poke every corner for bugs I'm your man

We'll put out a public call for assistants when there's nothing else left but the art polish push, there's a bit of design polish that Rob and I still have to work on here and there but when the backgrounds and pixel tracing are all that's left, we're hoping we get many applicants that're willing to stick through.

As for poking every corner for bugs, I've currently given 13 members on the Backer Discord @tester status. Having them on Discord will help us all communicate as they run the builds. I expect we're going to have a few questions of why the game won't start when loading a save (recurring bug that happened in old builds regarding data from a previous build being kept in the %appdata% folder on Windows systems and conflicting with the new build)

Does your [insert magic equivalent here] regenerate quicker if you sleep in a bed/inn?

Alan: In our aim to nail down the fun factor without sacrificing too much of the original vision, we decided to make EP regenerate automatically.

You should see it in action in this older stress test video that Rob shared on the Discord server.

As you can see, the blue meter to the lower left goes down each time Esmy uses a skill. The meter is actually comprised of a number of cells but displays as a meter, the cell count is shown to the right of the meter as EP <number>. Each ability eats a number of cells, i.e. an ability like Ignite Lv1 costs = 1 cell but Shadow Cloak of any level will use = 4 cells. A channeled ability like Boulder Dash will eat up a cell every second.

Cells can be increased by finding certain collectibles in the game.

Rob: You can also see in the video above that even in-editor, the game runs pretty smoothly (60FPS+) with 8 monsters and numerous adds it summons.

Alan: I've personally tried it on my own PC with a 1GB video card from 7 years ago and it runs fine in-editor and runs even better on a compiled build.

lemon-rev asked: With your post regarding the update, I can now fully understand why the game looks at is base level, playtime on each of those levels sounds great, but are they leveling, completing quests, just beating up mobs, I am sure each of those other sections that have to be redone for unity as well as the type of content for each one.

Some context is necessary here for the non-backers reading this. During the previous backer update, I mentioned the listed completion times we got for each dungeon when we had testers run through it, here are those numbers...

Northern Caverns v1 Build: 20-30 minutes

Rime Rapids v1 Build: 30-40 minutes

Molten Mountain v1 Build: 30-40 minutes

Terrestrial Woods v1 Build: 40-60 minutes  

Vale of Gale v1 Build: 40-60 minutes  

Sunken Ship v2 Build: 40-120 minutes

Mekanika v2 Build: 40-120 minutes

Phantom Marshes v2 Build: 40-120 minutes

The v1 builds were before I ran a level design revamp over the layouts so those numbers can go up. All in all though, that's currently around 4.6 hours worth of dungeon crawling (and there's one dungeon unaccounted for still).

With that bit of context given, to fully answer lemon-rev's question, take note, these are all approximate numbers as there was a guide provided for the publisher testers to consult and these numbers also DO NOT include boss fights, cutscenes or enemy ambushes. There's also the time required to head out into the overworld and look for and access those dungeons so we estimate that we could hit 12 hours at the very least of regular gameplay without completing any sidequests and hopefully 16-18 hours if you try to 100% the whole game.

sky asked: Is Linux still planned?

Yes! This is also why we're going to have to reach out to our backers for testing assistance as we've only been able to test on PC and Mac so far and do not have much if any Linux testbeds.

We've had a number of people on the Discord server that I've tagged as willing testers and we look forward to working with them soon!

Many of you have been wondering how things are coming along with development on Cryamore as the playable build we wanted to release a few months back was delayed. Now, why has the playable build been delayed?

To put it plain and simple, at it’s current state, since we’re trying to get every single bit of the gameplay down pat, a lot of things in the game are pretty buggy. Some bosses don’t always work right, abilities still need to be tweaked, and monster AI needs to be strengthened to name a few things. We’re sure some of you wouldn’t mind playing in such a rough state but we want to make sure that what we let you, the backers, test out is as close as possible to what we envision the gameplay to be so you’ll all get a clearer idea of what Cryamore’s feel is. We still want to get a build out there for you all to finally test but we ask that you let us get as much of the playground set up before you take a swing at things.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s discuss the many changes so far that was shown in the video available for backers...

HUD REWORK

One of the more noticeable changes in the video is the new HUD. We've done this to be able to convey more information to the player. While it's still being heavily polished, the CHARGE gauge will change depending on the weapon you have equipped, if you have the Butcherknife sword, you'll see the charge gauge represented in the shape of its blade, while the Javelink spear will be slightly thinner with the nib-like spearhead at the end.

The HP and EP bars will also extend the more the maximum amount increases. Some of you may find this similar to Kingdom Hearts (or Brave Fencer Musashi).

There’s also four ability slots now. One of our biggest aims in gameplay is to make sure combat is fun, and there's not much fun to be had when you have to constantly switch out between abilities. Before any of you say that X, Y and the trigger buttons are a horrible control setup, our programming trio are working on the function to remap controls.

The clock, and info hub still remains and will continue its purpose of showing the time, attacked enemy, HP and element along with the weather.

ROUGH SPRITES

The video also shows that we’ve started using “rougher” sprites for many of the animations. Cryamore being primarily a 2D game with 8 directions makes it so that most of our characters, NPCs, monsters and abilities need to be done in at least 3 directions: north, south and west, with east being a mirror, other times we’d need 5 directions since we include a northwest and southwest direction and the lowest we can go is an isometric 2 directions of northwest and southwest only. If you factor in the various states a character has, for example: monsters have an idle, walk, attack (sometimes two attacks) and hurt state, which all need to be animated in the required directions (either 2, 3 or 5), there’s a lot of work that needs to be done.

There’s also the rare case where a monster also requires more than just 5 directions for a special state...

That’s to be used for when monster tracks Esmy’s location throughout the arena.

Still, we’ve got more than half the monster list done already (there were a lot not featured in the video, and more than half of Esmy’s abilities are in the game now also in varying states of completion, which brings us to...

ABILITY STREAMLINING

Throughout the development of Cryamore, we've debated on the usefulness of certain abilities, especially when you have 72 in total. While some of the abilities Esmy can obtain prove to be very useful like the trusty ol' "Spitfyre" projectile, other abilities end up getting shelved later on like "Torchlight", especially when you get abilities like the Light ability "Flashlight" which has a longer range beam of light; other abilities like the Shadow element, "Reveal" end up becoming too situational also which would leave a player to keep it shelved for the most part.

We wanted to make each ability be useful and also cut down on the chaff so we decided to rework the ability list one last time.

There are now 24 abilities in total. Three for each element, split into categories of ATTACK, DEFENSE and UTILITY and along with that are 8 summons, one for each element.

While many of you may be upset at the drastic decrease in abilities, there is one caveat to this. Each of the 24 abilities now have three levels which you can unlock, increasing their effectiveness in both power and/or utility. If you consider this into the numbers, those 24 abilities end up becoming 72 with all the variations.

You can see it in action with Spitfyre now starting off with the single fireball and then changing to the triple-spread and a rapid fire. Other abilities got changed out too with Torchlight becoming Ignite and acting more as a short-ranged flame eruption and once upgraded, can be charged to release a series of eruptions and if charged further can release a larger and more powerful blast.

Abilities like Cubic Ice have been tweaked too for more combat use so it's not just a tool to solve puzzles. Besides blocking projectiles and certain attacks, Cubic Ice once upgraded can not only be more durable and withstand more hits but also shatters into ice shards that can damage the enemy, and when fully charged becomes a cluster of cubes that shatter into ice shards.

(We go into a bit more detail on the implemented abilities and previews of them in the backer-only version on the Kickstarter page)

There are only 7 abilities left to work in and then the summons.

WEAPONS

There’s also glimpses of the new weapons in the backer-only video. So far we’ve got only two weapons left to implement but the current ones still are subject to tweaking for balance and just making sure they look as they should.

Joining the Butcherknife (Sword) is the Pizzaxe (Axe), Javelink (Spear), Matchglocks (Pistols), Megadart (Crossbow), and the Brasskickers (Knuckles).

You’ll only be able to bring one weapon with you to the field (Esmy doesn’t have a magic backpack that can store all her weapons) but you’ll be able to change them up anytime by visiting Areen the Blacksmith in Ghilcrest. Areen can also improve the capabilities of each weapon (for a price), ranging from faster meter refill, extra hits, more ammo, faster reload time, and increased knockback to name a few. 

ENVIRONMENTS

Through all the videos we’ve shown, you should have noticed that we’re moving further away from the dark and gloomy Northern Caverns and showing more of Noka Island. Featured in the video were small sections of Rime Rapids, Molten Mountain, Terrestrial Woods and the Northern Overworld.

These environments are another part of what’s taking long for Cryamore to finish as the process for creating each environment has and still is quite painstaking.

Rob and Alan have gone through three iterations of the Progression spreadsheet which is, to put it in the simplest of terms, the walkthrough for Cryamore. Each ability is taken into consideration for the puzzles and with that, the order of catalysts to get to unlock each ability and making sure each catalyst can actually be obtained with the current abilities you have at that point in the game. They also have to make sure that each puzzle isn’t too difficult or too easy. Once the progression is set for a dungeon (which includes written descriptions of the area), they proceed to do a rough layout of it.

(If you have access to the spoiler-ish backer-only update in Kickstarter, we showcase a downsized version of one of the dungeon maps in the game to show how large a dungeon can be.)

After a map is laid out and considered final, Rob proceeds to do a cleaner pass at each map, doing the lines of each object and backdrop element and once this is done, it’s passed onto Fred, our background painter who proceeds to make the parts of each environment look pretty. After all that’s done, it’s then off to Unity to piece together each object and backdrop into playable form, and then colliders are applied and various other doodads like portals to link maps together, mob placement and triggers for events if needed.

These are done for all the maps and each dungeon (there are eight in total) is pretty much similar in scale to Mechanika, give or take a few areas. Then there’s the Northern and Southern Overworld areas too which are a huge set of linked maps too.

We really want to make a big enough playground for everyone and make sure that said playground looks good and feels good to play in.

With all that being said, let’s do a review of the current state of development...

OVERALL STATUS

So how are things looking overall on the development front? Let’s update the meters from many updates ago...

PROGRAMMING

Has gone up one point. This is because the majority of the first few points has been setting up the core of the game. Everything from movement and controls to databases and setting up tools for the non-coder members of the team to work with. The new point was for finally setting up a framework for the boss AI (which is FAR different from enemy AI), adding in the base functions for the other abilities (registering code-based elevation for things you lob, special functions that don’t fall into the likes of projectile or melee attack) and working in more of the other UI elements that require some back end like discovering new abilities using the catalysts in the Cryatisium and the selections in the options menu along. The final point in programming will pretty much be left for final debugging and optimizations. Mike, Brandon and our new coder, Nathan have the programming front covered.

MUSIC & SOUND

Music has gone up a point as Aivi has come up with more compositions for the continuously growing soundtrack of which there are almost 30 tracks so far. A number of these are still WIPs as Aivi and Surasshu experiment with things and await how exactly areas will look and feel during in-game tests and how cutscenes play out. 

Sound hasn’t gone up any yet though as many of the abilities, monsters and characters are bound to be tweaked so there won’t be much going on there until many of the assets are deemed final.

DESIGNS

Having gone up one point, there are still a couple of minor NPC designs left on the drawing board including a few of the backer NPCs which will be handled by Juby, JC and Rob with Alan offering assist when needed. There’s also a few monsters that still need to be finalized which Alan will be taking care of with JC on assist.

BACKGROUNDS

Up two points. Rob and Alan have had all the “dungeons” reworked to fit with the new abilities. With the new method we have for setting up environments (modular objects) the background layout process should be pretty simple too so. Fred handles the painting of background assets so all the extra visual polish is up to him while the environment setup for dungeons and other interiors in Unity will be up to Rob and Alan. Other members of the team will be pitching in for overworld setup. So far Ghilcrest exteriors have been laid out and some of the building interiors are in. Northern Overworld sections are being filled in along with Northern Caverns, Rime Rapids, Molten Mountain, Terrestrial Woods and Gale Valley.

ANIMATIONS

Gone up four points. Since we resized the sprites and also started not pixeling in every single animation until later on during the polish stage, animation has been moving at a better pace. Alan has only about a quarter of Esmy’s abilities left that need to be animated. He’s also got 26 animated monsters already along with 2 midbosses and 2 bosses with another boss on the way. Once all the “rough” animations are done, Alan will be pixeling in all the animations with Micah and Temmie providing assistance when needed. JC also provides VFX animation support when needed.

SCRIPT

Thanks to Chris who got assigned the executive writing spot and through constant back and forth with Rob and Alan, the script has gone up four points and is near complete with only the day-to-day dialogue needing to be taken care of which Jim will be helping us with. We have spreadsheets to fill out for each period within each day of the week per chapter. There may be some slight adjustments here and there but so far, the story is deemed 99% complete.

VOICE ACTING

No progress yet on voice acting as this is something generally done late in development when cutscenes and lines are all fully set so everyone gets an idea of what tone to go for and there won’t be any re-recordings which can cost if you’re renting out a studio. Some characters also need to be assigned voice actors but we pretty much have our pool of voice talent set thanks to Chris who will also be directing them according to the outlines laid out by Rob.

REWARDS

As some of the backer NPCs have been finalized along with a few wallpapers and backer monster designs are being worked on, rewards have gone up by two points.

We’ve stated to people that asked about reward status and we’ll say it once more, please take note that we won’t be giving out rewards until near the completion of the game as designs of characters and monsters that will be featured on wallpapers may change, the soundtrack is still being added to, art and designs for the artbook are increasing the further development goes and the shipping the figures and all of the other physical rewards separately isn’t very cost-effective. 

We will be setting a period for everyone to update their addresses during the nearing of that point but if you feel the need to update us beforehand in case you’re a busy person that doesn’t always get the notifications, you can always message us on Cryamore Kickstarter about your current address change and we’ll put a note on your backer info as we have for many others that notified us of their many address changes.

WRAPPING UP

We hope you liked this VERY lenghty update and we made sure to fill it with lots of visuals to not overwhelm the eye with nothing but text. 

Development continues as always and as stated in recent updates, NostalgiCO and Atlus have set their sights on a Q3 2016 release date. We hope you all had a Merry Christmas if you celebrate it and enjoy the rest of the holidays. 

Current Developments!

So a lot has been whipped up since the last update. Let’s go down a really quick list really quick:

Weapons! They’re being tested accordingly. We have the Spear and Matchlock Pistols in the build right now and we’re tweaking them so they feel great in combat, and we’re going to be tossing in the Fists, Crossbow, and Axe next.

Bosses! Our boss system is in and we’re testing boss patterns, sequences, and attacks. We’re essentially at a state where we can just drop in the boss sprite assets, set up the sequences, and tweak accordingly.

Gameplay! Right now we’re concentrating very hard on the core gameplay experience. Our test sessions have led to us agreeing that some aspects are kinda monotonous, specifically with the combat. Of course, we don’t have all of the abilities in so we may not be seeing the big picture here, which is going to be the main driving force of the gameplay. We want you to be able to slam a Rock Fist into a shielded enemy breaking its defenses while launching Wind blades towards another putting offensive pressure on you, and feeling really good. So you’re going to start seeing more ability play soon. We don’t want to share everything, of course, but you will definitely get a feel for the flow of gameplay in that upcoming demo.

So still a lot to do, but it’s safe to say that we’re sitting pretty good over here. We’re continuing to go over the entirety of the game and cut out anything that seems excessive and dull, and polish, polish, polish. There’s a lot of changes going on under the hood in reference to the quest aspect of the game, too. We don’t want too much backtracking, ultra-tedious puzzles, and an overwhelming amount of things to collect. We’ll comment more on the specifics of that in a later update, but for now we’ll just share a short video showcasing some of the “upgrades” since the last one.

(Please note that everything you see is all part of testing things out. So for example, when you see Bliss running the Inn, note that she’s technically not supposed to be there. This goes for animations and everything else.)

A Recap, and Looking Toward the Future

Let’s give a recap of development: In March 2013, we were funded, and development started full-on. It was a momentous occasion! One year later, in March 2014, we announced that we had to move the game’s targeted release date to “TBD”. This meant that we had to start watching our remaining financial resources carefully, since at that time we’d been in development for a full year, and we grossly miscalculated our completion date. Even though a few of us on the team shipped games before, this is our first commercial development outing collectively, so we were a bit too bright-eyed, to say the least. Around this time, we also were forced to cut back and work on the game part-time, as we only had a bit of funds left for development time, and the rest was reserved for reward fulfillment.

Some of the general public were not pleased that we had to change our release date, but the reality is, the ins and outs of indie game development are tricky to navigate. Balancing cost and scope, not to mention PR and production, we were able to keep afloat for almost two years off our initial funding... However, we knew we needed to do something before the funds ran out! As such, since May 2014, we have been maintaining correspondence with a fantastic publisher, one of which everyone on the core team has had a personal experience with for many years. They had initially reached out to us, in fact, and expressed interest in helping us finish the game, and as the courting process played out, we knew we had found our publisher:

As of this moment, we are thrilled to announce that NostalgiCO has partnered up with Atlus to ensure Cryamore will be released summer 2016, as previously stated a few months back.

What Does This Mean?

We’re sure you have a bevy of questions (we did too when we were first approached!), so let’s break it down. First, the perks:

Quality Assurance! It’s probably the biggest perk. We want Cryamore to be the best product it can be. Before they contacted us, we hadn’t even made plans for game-testing, and they had already proven to be very resourceful when it came to giving us feedback and suggestions on heavy build-testing and bug reporting. And they do it fast!

Marketing and PR! They will take care of all the important public news stuff, outside of what we share here on Kickstarter and our dev blog/Twitter account. This will help boost Cryamore's visibility, give the title access to more featured news portals and sites, and give us more time to focus on development!

Distribution! They’re already connected with Steam, GoG, and first-parties (Nintendo, Microsoft, Sony), which alleviates a major burden from us!

It has been a blast working with them so far, and we look forward to wrapping this up with them! And now, let's try to deal with any concerns you might have:

“Oh no, does this mean that the game is getting gutted/losing original vision/will be taken over now!?” Not at all! We retain full control of our IP and the development process. The entire reason Atlus reached out to us in the first place was because they liked the property, not because they wanted to overhaul it! Rest assured, this is purely a publishing deal.

Platforms Will Change Though! Because we are now releasing in 2016, it was mutually agreed upon that we need to rethink our release platforms. As such, Cryamore will be released on PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox One, PS4, and the Wii U. You will be free to switch your initial platform preference to whichever choice you like. Also, we are finding that the title is a bit too complex for touch devices, so the iOS and Android versions are likely to be cut from the initial release, so we can focus on the primary platforms.

"What is going to change about the project here on Kickstarter?" Nothing at all. We’re going to do our best to keep up and give you information involving the game’s development right here, as always.

“What about my rewards?” Everyone who backed the game for a specific reward (for example, the game itself) is still going to receive their reward! You will not have to pay again (unless you want to pay for another copy, which we wouldn’t mind). This also does not change anything regarding physical rewards, such as the art book, figurines, etc. DRM-free will still be an option, as well.

Why did we choose Atlus?

Well, we collectively feel that Cryamore fits right at home with Atlus’ core demographic, and Atlus felt this way too. As hinted previously, we have been fans of their catalog of games for decades, so it seems only natural to choose them. We’ve been contacted by many other publishers during the past 2 and a half years, but their enthusiasm and mutual respect made them feel like the right fit for our team.

Are we still considered “Indie"?

Very much so! They are not giving us an extra army of staff and a corporate-friendly coffee machine for our office break room (though a coffee machine would be nice… even a break room would be nice!). We are still working the same as we were; just back to full-time and without the headache of worrying about those publishing pitfalls that Atlus is better suited to handling for us! This benefits us just as much as it does you guys! Cryamore will, indeed, see the light of day!

In short, this has been and continues to be a thrilling experience, ups and downs included, with you guys here on Kickstarter, and we will continue to do our best to make the final version of Cryamore as good as it is in our heads and in your expectations. We thank you all so much for your continued support, your patience, and your faith in us. We promise that when the dust settles, it will all have been well worth the journey! And we want to thank Atlus for throwing in an extra helping hand!

(Also, Atlus will put up their own official statement at some point... We just couldn't resist sharing our excitement with our fans! Expect to hear a lot more about this partnership, from both parties!)

So That Demo…

We are going to polish the playable demo up further and release it in October. We’re sorry for continuing to push it back! We just want to make sure when you finish it, you’ll crave more of it.

And on that note, we shall get back to work. Until next time!

-NostalgiCO Crew

COMFORT ZONES

Ahhhh, a young Stalagcrab in its natural habitat, comfortably enjoying a peaceful, sunny day.

The core principle of combat initiation is all based on basic AI and stealth mechanics: searching, alert, and reaction.

Each mob in Cryamore has a variable radius around them called a Comfort Zone. This acts as the mob's sensory area. This Comfort Zone can also be optionally designated as a Peripheral Cone, allowing some mobs to only be able to detect Esmy when she's in their line of sight.

The Comfort Zone is the base where all detection occurs. The Zone can be ignored if Esmy is using a stealth ability or the enemy is blind.

DETECTING ESMY

It "got real" for both parties involved, here.

Once Esmy steps into a mob's CZ, an exclamation point icon with a light sound effect will pop up over the mob's head, initiating the mob's designated actions. Mob Actions can also be initiated instead of traditional detection via a Cutscene event (for example, lighting a torch may alert a particular mob towards Esmy or the light).

Once detected, an Alert phase will occur. While on Alert, a mob will continue to be aware of Esmy's presence until the Alert phase duration has elapsed. It will then return to its location and to whatever it was doing in its "Comfortable" state, permitted if Esmy is outside of the mob's CZ. A mob could also be aware of Esmy's presence "infinitely" (until she kills it or leaves an area).

With this direction, you could go through a good amount of the game without actually engaging most enemies, as all will follow these rules. Though some are positioned and set up in a way where you will be forced to fight. This is good for speedrunners, but completionists would want to kill every enemy they see, as farming Cryamore from them is vital to learning abilities and running daily errands.

MOB ACTIONS

You’d be smart to not piss off the Magma Hornets, they’ll call their friends. Dishonorable creatures.

Each mob, will have its own Action Arrangement, which is a list of things a mob will perform based on order, chance, and frequency. In the Action Arrangement, there are two condition checks:

COMFORTABLE: The actions a mob performs when not alerted.

ALERTED: The actions a mob performs when alerted. When a mob has not been "Alerted" and is attacked while in its "Comfortable" state, it can be prone to critical hits/preemptive attacks.

Here is a list of some of the varying Mob Actions that each enemy can be designated to do:

CHASE: Enemy will chase Esmy. Once it reaches Esmy or a variable distance away from Esmy, it will perform the next Action in the list.

ATTACK: Enemy's attack and its attack parameters.

HEAL: Enemy healing spell and its healing parameters. Can heal other mobs.

DEFEND: Enemy defensive animation and its defense parameters.

STEAL: Enemy animation where it can steal HP, EP, GHIL, or CRYA. 

SELF-DESTRUCT: Enemy can self-destruct causing an explosion to occur, either by pure attack, elemental attack, or status effect attack.

SUMMON: Summoner mobs can call in other mobs to help them out when under attack.

So just like in real life, these hornets will attack in packs if threatened.

(Needless to say, this is all going to be polished further.) There are quite a considerable number of other actions that enemies can perform, but we’ll keep that under wraps until you play the game for yourself come release time.

ELEMENTAL ACCLIMIZATION

Each mob has a specific Element assigned to them, and using an offensive Cryability of the opposing element causes a notable amount of damage. If you use the same element as the one a mob is attuned to, they can get healed or buffed. Other times, they can trigger transformations.

WHAT ABOUT SUMMONS?

Don't worry, Ez. Undina got yo' back.

Some of the Eilems, the spiritual protectors of Cryamore Energy, will support Esmy with their own attacks and buffs. With that said, they'll have their own AI, working very similarly to the mobs’. The other Eilems will do scripted summon attacks, but for the AI-controlled ones, they'll have a larger "search range" and search for enemies in the whole area and attack them. We’ll shed a bit more info on this as we get the Eilems into 100% working condition.

Some NPCs will have more involved AI than the town-based ones. For example: in certain scenarios, Braxton will tag along with Esmy, but can be hit by enemies as well. So you'll have to protect him.

I was going to talk about the Bosses too, but, I think I’ll just end this general talk about AI here. Maybe in a week or so, we’ll give some more bits on this stuff as we will be moving along briskly. In any case, we may have another update or two before the month ends.

We’ll catch you all on the next one!