CRYPT CREATURE CATCHER – Devlog 3: Sword charging, Ogre Ghosts, pre-rendered sprites & tutorial polish! (w/c 19th May 2025)

Hey everyone! 👋

We’re back with our third devlog for Crypt Creature Catcher! You might’ve noticed we skipped last week’s update—don’t worry, that was on purpose! We’ve decided to move to a bi-weekly devlog schedule. This way, we’ll have more meaningful updates to share and hopefully make each devlog a bit more exciting to read.

We’ve also started a business course to help us prepare for the eventual launch and beyond. It’s been a great way to get us thinking about the bigger picture (marketing, planning, sustainability, etc.), but naturally, it’s taken up a bit of our time. However… we’re still making solid progress!

We've been continuing work on finishing up the tutorial as well as polishing some key features, so let’s dive in!

🛠️ What’s Been Added This Week?

🧱 Major Additions:

• ⚔️ Sword Charging Mechanic: We’ve added a new combat mechanic that allows you to charge up your sword for a more powerful strike.

We wanted to bring more variation to combat and introduce a mechanic that lets you break traps — inspired by games like Bloodborne. Simply swinging at a trap repeatedly didn’t feel satisfying, so charging your weapon felt like a better approach.

At the moment, the core functionality is in, but it still needs visual polish to help clearly communicate what’s happening and make it feel nicer to use.

• 👻 Ogre Ghost: A new type of trap haunts the crypt! Ogre Ghosts spawn as a punishment for failure of a puzzle, flying towards you and damaging you unavoidably.

         We would love to add a nice ghost trail particle effect or something to this as well, just for that final bit of visual flair!

• 🖼️ Change to pre-rendered sprites for objects: We've made the change to pre-rendered sprites for intricate/important objects in the environment, such as statues, collectables, key items, etc. The idea behind this change is to reinforce the retro aesthetic of the game and to make key items/interactable objects stand out more. This change also aids with stylistic consistency as we previously had little distinction to what environmental objects were pre-rendered and which ones weren't.

🔧 Minor Additions:

• 📋 Main Menu: We’re aiming for a more interactive main menu — so instead of a static screen, we’re using a section of the level with subtle background elements. For example, Enemies may appear and can be clicked to deal damage. We’re also working on adding small touches like letting players spin the logo by dragging with the mouse.

• 🎮 Tutorial Prompts Finished: In devlog 2 we mentioned we had added on-screen prompts that tell players what items are needed for specific objects (e.g. "Requires Ogre Key"). This was to reduce confusion and make progression as clear as possible. We’ve now extended this system into the tutorial itself. As players explore, context-sensitive prompts will appear on-screen to indicate the correct controls for each mechanic. Once a player performs the required action, the prompt disappears.

We’d also like to make these prompts more dynamic — currently they always display a keyboard input, but in the future we want them to update depending on whether the player is using a controller or mouse & keyboard.

🔍 Dev Thoughts

• 👨‍💻 Cameron: I’m happy with the progress we’ve made over the past two weeks. It might not have been quite as fast as we’d hoped, but getting things like the ghost enemy AI and sword charge mechanic in has really added some much-needed variety to the gameplay.

A lot of what’s been done these last two weeks are things we’ve had on our to-do list for ages, so it feels good to finally tick them off. Right now, my focus is on getting the core features working, and then going back to refine and polish. I think this will be a much quicker and more productive way to move forward.

• 🎨 Jamie: I've been away this week so I don't have much to show myself, but last week I modelled and animated the Ogre Ghost and I'm super proud of how it turned out! They were a lot of fun to visualise, and I think their addition really helps to cement the unique flavour of crypt creature catcher.

Alongside this I made the switch to pre-rendered sprites for environmental objects, and I will say, I do much prefer the look of this. Important objects now don't get lost with low-res texturing, flat shading or the pixelation filter of the game as their silhouette is now more consistent from all viewing angles. This change will also save a lot of time as I no longer need to retopologise my sculpts before incorporating them in game.

I look forward to a future where more visuals like this are in and the game's visual identity really starts to form. Exciting times are ahead for sure.

That’s everything we’ve done the past two weeks! As usual, we would love to hear what you think so far, and if you’re interested, make sure to give us a follow here and over on Instagram as well.

Many thanks, and stay tuned for more updates! 🙏 

- Evernight Studios