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Hello, everyone! Hepari reporting.

I’ve spent this November in Korea, mostly to meet up with the programmer in person and talk about the development-related things. I actually came back from the long business trip just yesterday, and am still really exhausted from the long flight... but here is the monthly update for November!

1. 99 Shades of weaponry

More and more sprites are getting finalized. You might remember that we have 4 archetypes of weapons - daggers, swords, blunt weapons and spears. Since we don’t just swap out the graphics, they all look and play totally differently from each other. Sometimes I regret it, but I’m pretty sure that the end result will more than make up for the difficulties and delays we’ve been having.

Here are just a couple of mock-ups I’ve put together to make implementing the combos easier for the programmer. As you can see, there are many more ways to deal with the enemy than just mashing the attack button. Sure, you could somehow make it through mashing buttons, but figuring out all the moves and mastering the most devastating combos will feel much more rewarding. 

Smash A -> Retreat Kick

Smash A -> Smash B

2. Total Overhaul for the UI

While testing the builds, I eventually came to realize that the UI we had in place was conceptualized 2 years ago and thus pretty much outdated no matter how good it looked. This epiphany was especially terrifying, because back then I was still naive and playing with the idea of going mobile - you know, full Android and iOS. What it meant is basically that all aspects of the UI, such as the size of the buttons, the position of the HP gauge, the existence of a giant quick belt, were not tailored to an optimal user experience with a keyboard or a controller.

(Do you notice the similarities? The functionality of the UI hasn’t changed at all.)

We have ditched the mobile approach a long time ago, but while every other aspect was evolving, the underlying basic functionality of the UI stayed the same despite the many redesigns. I couldn’t believe that I was oblivious to this.

So I’ve spent most of this month to redesign the UI from the ground up, and this time using pixel art, to enhance the player’s immersion by putting the interface and the main game assets (characters, tilesets) on the same resolution and in the same art style.

Here is the new UI. While rebuilding it, I’ve changed and removed some gameplay elements too, such as a dedicated MP meter gauge. We now have a totally new system that should be much more fun to play with than the traditional mp meter gauge.

(The new Main action HUD.)

(Some blank spaces, but it’s mostly finished.)

Now we have a bigger inventory with more slots, and a dedicated window for the equipment. No matter if you play on a keyboard or on a controller, this new UI will be very easy to handle.

As I’ve mentioned, this UI overhaul has brought a number of major changes to the game system. For example, you can now wear different armor pieces, such as helmets, gloves, boots and so on, instead of just 5 total armors like before. There is a lot to talk about, but I’ll save them up for later!

(I drew these at the airport at 4:00 in the morning, waiting for the next flight. Sorry for the quality XD)

Hello, everyone! I hope you’ve stayed up and healthy unlike me. I’ve been pretty sick in the last week. Man, am I glad that it’s over.

My sore throat and nose aside, there is no bad news. Progress has been good. We have now more than 30 fully animated enemies and 4 boss monsters. The boss monsters aren’t just lazily magnified versions of regular monsters, but have their own unique designs and complex attack patterns.

I’d love to show you each one of the enemies, but that would take some fun out of the game, wouldn’t it? :)

The work on combat and the dungeons is going smoothly, too. We’ve been putting out many new builds to test and fix inconsistencies, and adding new objects that would make the game more tactical and interesting.

For example, there is this hanging rope bridge.  Though we’ve put some effort into making it look good, it is not just a visual gimmick. You can also destroy it in a number of ways, sending your enemies into the abyss without making your hands dirty. 

We will animate the destruction later on, but it works flawlessly, as you can see.

Kuruna is also receiving the rest of her actions. Shiros, our pixel artist, catched flu and couldn’t finish them all for this monthly update, but the sprites I’ve seen are looking pretty good. :)

I hope you’ve enjoyed the GIFs. There is a huge pile of work waiting for me, so please excuse me! A new build has just been uploaded, and I must play it and think about polishing the controls further. 

Hello, everyone! Hepari here. 

The progress has been relatively slow this month because a few members of the team were caught up with important personal business such as moving to a new place. I hope things will go better this October.

Shortage of Manpower

I was also trying to get new pixel artists on board, sadly with no avail... not because all the good pixel artists on this planet are gone, but because it’s really hard to find someone who can deliver the exact style I’ve got in mind. Finding artists, introducing them to the production pipeline and and doing a test run requires a lot of effort and time on my part. So, after many failed attempts and hours wasted, I had to go back to producing the environment assets mostly by myself. Luckily, I seem to have gotten better at pixel art over the recent months without noticing, and the necessary assets are getting finished at a pretty steady pace. :)

Continuing Combat Improvement

Other than that, we’ve been rebalancing the combat, making many iterations and fixing bugs just about every day. You’d be glad to hear that fighting enemies feels more fluid and intuitive every time we put out a new build. The important changes also include the addition of a ‘chasing camera’ that accelerates and decelerates nicely. (Perhaps it should be a little bit faster? What do you think?)

Aside from that, we are testing around with particles to produce magic effects and explosions. By using particles, we can more easily produce randomized results by tweaking numbers, and we can also apply physics to them. So you see, It’s not just a quick trick to save on development time! (What you are seeing below is just a placeholder.)

Improved Sector Map

Here are the new sector map objects. These new pixel-art objects are superior to their old, painted counterparts because 1. these can be animated more easily, and 2. they now actually feel and look like something the player can interact with.

I think this is it for today. You might be annoyed by the fact that we are running later than promised during the campaign, but I promise that we won’t keep you waiting for too long. 

I know that words mean nothing without a tangible result, and I’ll do my best to bring you an incredible alpha demo with such contents which easily surpass many pay-to-play games quality- and quantity-wise, giving you many hours full of fun and adventure.

Hello everybody. Hepari reporting!

I hope you had / are having a wonderful Summer, or at least managed to stay safe! We had another productive month full of happy progression.

I have spent some time to come up with a new promo art. I had planned to keep it a secret until the demo is ready, but decided that there is no need to. Feel free to download it here and use it as your desktop wallpaper, it’s made for 1080p monitors!

1. Comic-Style Dialogues

We have implemented a new way of displaying texts - the comic-style dialogue system!

This dialogue type will be used mainly when there are other actors in the scene. We found that this feels much more natural than the old visual-novel type dialogue system because you don’t have to focus on two things at the same time, having to take off your eyes off your character to read what someone says.

This was also a necessary step because we had planned for all the combatants - both enemies and allies - drop some lines during the fight depending on the situation. Now we can identify and track each character on the screen, and make them say what we want.

2. Blunt Weapons

The blunt weapons’ fighting capacity has been expanded, with the addition of Quick Attacks and an Aerial Attack.

Heavy attacks can either hit multiple enemies in an arc, or send the target flying. But if you try to open your combo with a heavy attack, especially if the enemy knows one thing or two about sword-fighting, they will counter with a quick attack of their own.

3. Throwing Items

Now you can throw any item to the desired spot! For example, you can throw a potion of Flame to set your enemies on fire, or throw something on a panel to activate a trap. I’m planning to expand on this feature further so that the player can get really creative here.

So that you can utilize your arsenal any way you want during a fight without any stress, the time will stop when you open your inventory. You can also cancel the aiming mode if you decide otherwise! :)

There is still much that we haven’t shown you, such as numerous new enemies and pixel art assets, but I have decided to save them so that I don’t spoil the game for you! :) With the addition of many features we had planned for so long, the game is looking more and more like I’ve wanted it to be. Thank you for your patience, I hope we will have more exciting news for you soon!

KICKSTARTER PAGE

Hello, everyone!

We are back with more important updates. First of all, please let me start with the most important thing:

Future Roadmap

Thanks to your efforts and generous backing, we have been making steady progress. And according to my calculations, we still have enough funds to cover our expenses until early 2018. Don’t be alarmed, we have been very economical, and all the expenses covered the most necessary positions only.

However, I think that we will have to postpone the promised release dates a little bit, and I want to apologize sincerely for that.

There was never any setback, but I’ve noticed that we need to accelerate the development even further by hiring additional pixel artists. Animating characters, especially giant bosses, in traditional pixel art style is a time-consuming process, and we don’t want to make you wait too long.

To meet that adjustment in our plan, we want to open a post-Kickstarter funding page on the same day we release the public demo. (The demo will span the prologue part of the final game, and as such, provide plenty of gameplay.)

With the help of the demo, hopefully we can secure additional funds with which we can boost the development of the game until we hit Early Access.

I understand if you are frustrated to hear of delay in schedule, but I assure you that we are giving our 100%, and that the demo will be worth the waiting. If you have any concern about this news (I’m sure you will), please voice them.

Combat ver 2.0

Now, to some merrier news: We have finalized the mechanics of the new combat system which now consists of many intricate mechanics that make each encounter more challenging thought-provoking.

I won’t go into details too much, but you can expect it to be like a fighting game or rock–paper–scissors where you have different means of defeating different adversaries.

This extensive overhaul also brought some visual improvements. Now, each hit feels so heavy that you can really feel its impact. Furthermore, we have nuanced the delays between hits so that you have enough time to plan out the next chain of attacks, and removed the health bars above enemies because they broke the immersion and didn’t really convey much information.

Stealth Mechanics

We have added a stealth mechanic to the game. It’s pretty simple, but seems to be working very well. Basically, the closer you stand to your enemy, the higher is the chance of you getting detected; you can also break the line of sight to avoid detection altogether.

(The numbers are for the internal testing purposes)

This is an important feature because it opens up even more tactical and strategic options to the player when it comes to exploring dungeons. Now, just being in the same room with your enemies doesn’t trigger a battle - and you can choose to engage or not after assessing the situation. The added realism and strategic layer will make your experience even deeper and more rewarding.

More Enemies

During the last few months, we have added a myriad of new enemies - including ghosts, skeletons, slimes, rolling bugs, walking mushrooms and new bosses. We have enough enemies to make your average action game, but as we’ve already mentioned during the Kickstarter campaign, these are just a small part of what’s still to come - We are building a world to explore and discover, and a few dozens of enemy characters would never be enough to fill this world.

That’s all for today. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned for future updates! Comments are always much appreciated.

Hello, everyone! Hepari reporting. I’m sorry that this update is coming right at the end of the month, but it’s hard to find time to sit down and start writing a long post when there is so much work to be done. I frequently make casual tweets with new pictures from the game development, so if you are interested, please feel free to follow my Twitter account, instead of having to wonder if we are doing our job properly. :)

We are making good progress on the development of Pixel Princess Blitz. Aside from doing the usual character sprite work, we’ve used the second half of May and the first half of June to finalize the loot generation system on paper because the one we had until now was not only incomplete, but also outdated. 

BETTER ITEM GRAPHICS

I also had to redraw all the item thumbnail graphics because the old ones just didn’t look good enough. This is me polishing the visuals - it’s usually not the sort of thing to do before hitting the beta phase. But being an artist, I just can’t turn a blind eye to bad visuals. Admittedly, my artistic obsession impedes us from moving forward at times, but it means that you won’t have to deal with them even at the demo stage.

Take this inventory screen below as an example. The refurbished item display looks much better than the old one now, doesn’t it? I would have hated to release the game with that ugly interface. :)

Each time an item is generated, the game determines its properties at random. Every item can have both good traits (blue) and bad traits (red) at the same time. It also can be upgraded / degraded, unidentified, cursed, enchanted, or all of those at once. Finding loot and selecting your own set of equipment is an important part of every good RPG, and you can be sure that we will do our best to make it as fun as possible.

Dropping Items

Since the loot generation was nearly finished, it was now finally time to implement items dropping from defeated enemies. In the dungeon, each combat encounter has a chance to generate item drops. This chance is reduced each time an item was dropped at the end of a combat encounter. It’s designed this way so that the tedious item farming in the dungeon is not an efficient way of improving your odds.

Character Graphics

Surely you can understand that all the work above has taken most of my time, but I’m also designing new characters and drawing in-game graphics.

This is a character you haven’t seen yet. (You can follow the designing process step-by-step on my Twitter account.) Her name is Sophia, and I describe her as an unintentionally suicidal wunderkind mage. She would gladly put her own life in danger just to satisfy her academic curiosity, and you might wanna prevent it from killing Sophia to benefit from her intellect.

Now I’m about to go back and work on more character stand graphics because there is a pressing issue I have to start fixing. The problem is that the characters are drawn under the assumption that they are looking at the player, because of our initial concept where there weren’t gonna be dialogue scenes with two characters on it at the same time. Like this.

And now I have to redraw what we have so that the characters are actually looking at each other, and not at the player. This is gonna take up some time, but I’m sure that you can understand why I have to do this. :)

Hello, everyone! Hepari here. I apologize for the silence around the project. But don't worry, the team is going strong as always. We just don't wanna reveal every monster or artwork we've finished - because that would take away the surprise factor, right?

Here is a little concept art to make up for it, though.

It shows Kuruna with a 'buddy' that sticks around during the combat. While I wouldn't call floating sidekicks in an action game not really groundbreaking, I believe that these buddies can provide some degree of visual customization which could be a little bit inadequate, due to the rigid nature of traditional pixel arts.

And on top of that, these buddies come with all kinds of unique abilities that other types of equipment can't provide, and free up more room for getting creative with the character build, which I think is a very important aspect of an RPG. Like the rest of the game, building your own Kuruna should be a matter of choice and circumstances...

For example, the buddy in the picture is able to protect you from incoming attacks and projectiles, which means that your trusty shield isn't the only kind of active defense. So yes, I think buddies are a great tool to help with that.

This is it for today, but I have a feeling that the next update will be more meaningful. :) If you have any thought on the buddies, please let me know! See you, everyone!

Hello, everyone! Here is a quick update on the progress. There is nothing too new to report about; we are just working as hard as ever. We have added over a hundred new sprites to our library, and more keep pouring in every week.

(An attack motion of the giant frog.)

Well, there is one news worth mentioning, though - we have welcomed one additional pixel artist onto the team. His name is Yaa; he is very skilled and experienced in his arts, and is capable of high-frame animations of the best quality. The frog you’re seeing up there is his handywork.

(by Yaa) 

Like this, the financial help you’ve granted us makes our work a lot less painful. I hope that the final product will be everything you’ve hoped for and much more.

Lastly, here is something I’ve been working on for the last 2 days: An event illustration. This one will be in the prologue, and shows Kuruna giving the kids a history class.

See you next time!

Hello, everyone! Hepari here. This is the first update since our Kickstarter campaign ended with a success... From now on, I will use this tumblr as our main blog for new updates and events. Following this page might be a good idea :)

I’ve been spending a lot of time with budgeting and project management in the recent month, but there has also been some significant progress in a number of areas. Don’t worry about us slowing down now!

Most importantly, we are fixing the way the combat works, expanding on the combat system even further - and making it feel like a beat’em up fused with mechanics of fighting games and free movement of zelda-like action RPGs.

Sketches for new motions (sword)

Woosh!

Launching the enemy into the air.

The input command for these moves will come pre-defined, but we’d like you to come up with suggestions after testing out the game yourself later on. are you excited? Well, I know I am :D

Hello, world! I’m Hepari, the lead creator of Pixel Princess Blitz.

I’ve reorganized this Tumblr into a blog, and I am going to upload new updates about our progress on the game. I’ve also added a Disqus comment section so everybody can share their thought. But let’s keep it civil :)

If you are interested, please follow this tumblr, and stay tuned for future updates!