An enemy soldier throws firebombs from a distance. The way to the enemy is blocked by boxes, which makes the enemy harder to reach.

Fighting a Soldier Swordsman is more complicated with a Soldier Spearman performing ranged attacks. Performing a strong attack can work but you have to aim accurately to avoid missing. When I shot this video there were many rooms still in a greybox state.

I fixed a problem with lighting, where in build the lighting was much higher than what I was seeing in editor. I found that it was a problem related to the volumetric clouds, I removed them since they were a bit too heavy for performance anyway. I will be working on the castle again soon, I am in the final stages of the first art pass.

Axemen are a variation of soldiers who fight with an axe and shield. The main difference is that they have more health and do not go into stunlock if you block their attacks. Only parry can make them go into stunlock.

Possession is a useful skill when there are many enemies. You can possess an enemy to use it as bait and gather enemies in one spot and then attack them all at once.

I’m focusing on the wall area, where the player will have to walk to reach the top of the tower. I was thinking of adding a boss battle at the top of the tower. I still have to finish writing the game script, but I already have clear ideas about what needs to happen in this section.

The backdash can be followed by an attack so that a lunge attack can be performed. It can be used to avoid the enemy attack and attack immediately afterward.

This week I am focusing on implementing some VFX, starting with the Bonefire. I’ve been tweaking the fire particles, especially the lighting intensity. A bonfire produces lighting intensity in the value of between 10,000 and 50,000 candelas. I used these values to get a more physically realistic illimination.

This week I am focusing on the UI. I am implementing the main menu. I added some logic such as highlights on mouse-focused UI elements and some transition animations between the main menu and loading screen.

One of the traps in the game are the rolling boulders. Besides hitting the player they can also damage enemies. For now, the rolling boulder is in the prototype stage, it has no textures and collisions still have some problems.

Today I am focusing on the UI Options menu. Among the things implemented are the Tab Selector at the top of the page and a runtime creation of list entries from a DataTable. The page is still placeholder, there are graphic things to adjust (like colors, slider shape etc.)

Blocking, like attacking and running, will consume stamina. Blocking an attack that empties your stamina will break your guard and temporarily stun you.

Fight against 2 spearman soldiers. Their sweeping attack has a wide range but is not very fast. Since there are 2 of them better to use a dodge to avoid being hit.

Prototyping a section with various enemies. The soldiers throwing arrows are protected by the soldiers in front. This makes them difficult to reach unless the soldiers in front are eliminated first.

I'm testing various environments for Chapter 2, right now this is the one I like the most because of the composition and it conforms to the game's story. I am also experimenting with implementing a Perfect Block (like in Stellar Blade) and some tweaks for the enemies.

I have yet to bring the various lighting and VFX tweaks I made to this new map. What do you think so far? Do you like the environment?

I went back to one of my old environments, tweaked the lighting and added a hitstop on the parry.

In my opinion visually it is better than my previous video. What do you think?

I replaced the skeleton enemy with a new character since the pirate theme didn’t quite fit the game’s overall vibe. Visually, I think the new design is on par with the pirate (though I was a bit attached to him, haha).

What do you think? Does this one work better, or did you prefer the pirate?

Lately, I've been focusing on finishing the third scenario. At the same time, I'm refining the first level of the castle by increasing design density: adding more variety in encounters, improving progression, and fine-tuning the level design. I’ve also updated the enemy death animation (now they get launched) and started implementing breakable crates containing items. It still needs some polish, but they will eventually hold energy and currency for players to spend.

This week I added a lot of new things, but they’re not ready to be shown yet. So for now, here’s a clip from Stage 1.

Citizen Pain is officially on Steam!

My dream of releasing my own action game is finally coming true.

I’ve been working hard on the trailer over the past month, I hope you like it!

 Wishlist it now on Steam:
:https://store.steampowered.com/app/3752240/Citizen_Pain/

This week I updated the Axeman enemy by giving him a new character mesh, so he’s visually distinct from the Swordsman. I also changed his lunge attack to strike from above, adding a bit more verticality to the action.

On the technical side, I optimized performance by converting the level to World Partition, and I fixed several bugs, including one where enemies would shift slightly in front of the player with each hit.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of gameplay bug fixing, things like adding the ability to skip cutscenes, fixing broken UI, and dealing with enemies getting stuck, so I don’t have much new content to show. 

Here’s one of my playtests from Stage 4. I still need to tweak the enemy lighting in this stage, but they’re already fairly visible.