Posted June 27, 2025 by gdn001
#alpha update
Hello all! June has been a month for meditation over the KatFS. And judging by the number of this monthly devlog, it's been a year since the Kalia Project went alpha! While it's definitely been long, I can't help but think it felt longer than that. Indie gamedev truly is a marathon as the saying goes, and we're still running it.
So, what is there to show for this month? As I just said, I've been doing some meditation around the project last month, in an attempt to get over several mental blocks I've had regarding it. Thanks to new experiences bringing in fresh perspectives on game design and the help of my dear friends, I've come to better understand the type of game KatFS (and its possible sequels, hopefully) should strive to be. Don't worry, I'm not going to suddenly change everything around and throw out years of work, in fact the game should still feel as familiar as ever to anyone who's been following it! Simply put, I believe I know how it can be its best possible iteration, as far as my means of developing it go.
I'll leave that subject for last though. Let's start with the goodies:
ANCIENT GUARDIANS
So this will be an interesting thing to showcase, as it was implemented right after the last devlog. The ancient guardian that wakes up when Kalia retrieves the Fire Staff and serves as the game's first boss fight and a target for the player to try out the Staff's power immediately. Some neat procedural animations were implemented for this thing, which I definitely would like to show off:
What's the deal with it then? After these basic animations got implemented, I've since then gotten different ideas for how this construct will present itself. Something that should look much cooler while also being somewhat easier to animate with 2D sprites. Rather than being a walking statue, this guardian would instead be a floating core with its blades spinning around it both as a means of attack and defense. This comes from one of the outcomes of the aforementioned meditation - I want the world of KatFS to not be too focused on being "grounded" and allow it to have a higher sense of fantasy, with more exotic manifestations of magical entities.
That's not to say this sprite has to get discarded, however. The new concept would have the head detach from the body as the core, and have the spears float around it as well, with the body remaining in place.
UPGRADES AND TREASURE!
Upgrades, people, upgrades! An important side objective of KatFS will be to upgrade Kalia by searching for the rare and valuable upgrade crystals. Each crystal collected will permanently upgrade Kalia's maximum health or magic capacity for the remainder of a playthrough, allowing her to take more of a beating or use her specials more often. Just look at those status bar grow:
Unlike normal drops, these crystals will only be found at specific locations in the game. Some may be obvious, while others may require exploring off the beaten path to find. They're completely optional, and the game will be beatable without needing to collect them, but doing so will greatly raise your odds! Besides, who wouldn't want to try to finish a playthrough where you collect them all for MAXIMUM POWER?
Besides these crystals, other drops are also getting some attention when it comes to their place in the game's loop. Food drops (which partially restore health on pickup) will still be available from destroying appropriate objects and foes (and other means of collection such as harvesting fruit trees), but potions will be limited to only being attainable from treasure chests and maybe a very limited set of NPC drops. The idea behind this design choice is to better control when and where the player may be able to get more potions, as well as their amount.
By the way, chests can now be opened via interaction:
This will be important as the player may run into higher-tier chests that cannot simply be destroyed to get its contents (that's still an option for the flimsy wooden ones however!). Chests may also have magical locks which prevent it from being opened until a specific requirement has been fulfilled, such as completing a riddle or defeating a group of NPCs guarding it:
Of course, if said chest is destructible, you could always opt to just break it open anyway. But that won't always be an option!
ELEMENTAL POWER
Now we're getting into the meat and potatoes of this month's development. As part of the new burst of inspiration, I've revisited some of the existing concepts for elements other than fire and have designed more intricate effects that can come from their applications and interactions. Currently, KatFS is set to feature 4 core elements:
The basic elemental effects are very standard fare, in fact those that played the demo may recall the ice and water effects being present in the city chapter. Where they shine the most, however, is in how they'll produce special interactions when combined!
Combining electricity and water will cause a short circuit, which damages and stuns the catalyst. Combining electricity and fire is even more powerful, however, as it will OVERLOAD the catalyst and cause a small explosion of fiery shock (which can cause chain reactions!).
Additionally, multiple electrified objects in close proximity will form currents which will damage the health of the entities based on how many currents are formed.
Got the ice and wet effects at the same time? You'll freeze into a solid block of ice!
Water will obviously extinguish fires. Being wet will also provide a resistance from incoming fire damage and speed up heat loss on the wet entity. However, fire damage on a wet entity will also cause the water to vaporize, causing it to dry up sooner. While we're at it, ice will prevent heat buildup altogether, and if an entity is frozen, fire will gradually melt it into water.
Phew. Anything left? Oh yeah, there are also poison and bleeding effects, but these don't have any special interactions and only cause damage over time, with poison being more intense over a shorter period of time while bleeding lasts longer, drains slower but can ultimately drain HP to zero.
These elemental effects and interactions shall enable for a more in-depth combat system, where specific enemies can inflict more effects on the player than just dealing damage. But the player isn't completely at its mercy either - while they obviously have indiscriminate access to fire, there will be special environmental elements that players can exploit to access other elements, such as electrical pylons that zap anyone nearby, or liquid nitrogen canisters that create an icy explosion when destroyed! And who knows, maybe in Kalia's future adventures she will find other staffs... That's sequel talk, though.
TO CRAFT A JOURNEY
So, we have reached the last section of this devlog. In this space, I want to talk about the outcome of my "meditation" on the project that I brought up at the start. When I started working on the chapter 2 of the Alpha, which is where the game will open up entirely with the unlocking of the Fire Staff, I found myself at a great development block when it came to level design. I had an overall idea of what I wanted - linear level but with room for exploring, puzzles, combat encounters, boss fights, collectibles.
Still, when it came time to carve out the path that the player should travel, I wasn't satisfied with what I had been coming up. What I've made so far for C2 had been a linear series of puzzles that seemed to put too much focus on themselves, when the focus should be put in the narrative instead: Kalia is lost in an underground facility, she finds a magical staff, powers the facility back up and begins her journey through the underworld. Yet it felt that too much focus was being put on activating heat converters and moving batteries around. But the game needs puzzles, where else would they be?
Then I got my new inspiration, from playing an open world game where exploring around fantastical locations was a major part of the core loop. I realized where my ideas were wrong, and adapted them. First, the puzzles in KatFS don't all have to be these complex brain teasers like you'd see in a game like Portal. Puzzles are a part of the game, but not the whole ordeal. It was perfectly fine to go for basic puzzles with simple solutions, as long as it provides a break from the "shoot fire at everything" loop of combat.
Second, not all puzzles need to be bottlenecks to progression. In fact, the majority of them should be something that players can choose whether to engage with or not. Rather than designing levels to be trails full of obstacles, I could instead design them as a more or less open path where the interesting stuff is always placed at the wayside. Don't get me wrong, there'll still be major bumps in the road, but in saving the big set-pieces for key moments in the journey, it makes them all the more impactful. Moments such as activating the generators in the facility, or trying to get past the gate to the city. The same applies to encounters, albeit these can and should be used more gratuitously as actual bumps in the road; and the major boss fights should still be key moments in the journey the player can't just walk around.
Okay, but if most of the game's friction is "side content", why should players engage with it to begin with? What's keeping them from just sticking to the main road? Obviously, that's where you have to lure them in with rewards. Remember the upgrade crystals and treasure chests from earlier in this devlog? That's linked to this new design doctrine - important resources such as high-end food drops, potions and upgrades are now linked to this "side content". Sure, the main road is the important path to follow. But the resources are off the beaten path, so the average player needs to go out of their way to engage with it sometimes. Low on potions? Keep an eye to the side of the road, maybe you'll find a riddle that can be solved for some!
TL;DR: Rather than designing Kalia's journey in a way that "forces a sense of adventure", I want to take some cues from good open world design and make the exploration aspect of it more organic, by gating needed resources and rewards to optional side content.
This is it, wow that was a big one! I'm glad however, because it means this month has been a very productive one. I hope I'm able to start putting these new design doctrines in practice, and craft a memorable journey for players of the demon girl game. Until next time!