The eighth episode of Jelly Brawl's devlog is out now! Feel free to either read the written version below or catch the five minute video version on my YouTube channel right here!
Welcome back to the Jelly Brawl devlog! A tale of murder, lies, and 2x the normal amount of antioxidants. Being stuck inside and having nothing else in my life, I’ve gotten a lot done on Jelly Brawl these past two weeks. So imma just get right into it!
As I'm starting to get cracking on the promotion of the game, I’ve focused a lot on the gameplay loop and how I want to describe the game’s direction. I’ve summed it up as, “The fast paced madness of Wario Ware meets, the wacky physics based gameplay of Gang Beasts and Human fall flat.” With this new vibe, I wanted to expand more on platforming gameplay and just overall variety in physics play as I feel I have dialed in the fast paced nature decently at this point.
So I’ve put a lot of work into restructuring the game management and rules system last week. This way I can more easily implement new game modes and boss rounds into the game. And with this I've gone ahead and added a new boss round mini game called Control! It's a king of the hill style round where one person has to control the point the longest to win.
I’ve also started work on the first two game modes to accompany the main game mode that lean more into this platforming play I've been thinking about. I hope to show you these two modes as well something totally different from these brawler and platforming game play pillars in the coming devlogs to give that final bit of extra spice and variety to the game. That special sauce.
In this attempt to add more variety I also spent some time designing and implementing new stages. Some include these nice tubes as well as more physics based stages that interact with the players. I hope to have at least 50 stages in the game of which currently there are about 20. This 50 number is just a bare minimum goal I hope to meet and am planning to possibly surpass it. Along with these new stages, I am toying with the idea of a level editor for custom stages. This is a very far off idea and may not even launch with the game but rather a future update that I think would add a lot to the game but would love to hear the community's feedback and interest in creating their own stages!
I also got some more work done on the look of the game. As always the look of the game is subject to change and I hope to keep improving it. For example I’m currently not happy with the way the pops/taps/pushes look. I think they add a lot of unnecessary noise and are really only useful when using a mouse to control or in the mobile and Airconsole editions of the game and I’m currently working on designing a better solution to this visual indication of direction you’re moving and the force you are applying.
Speaking of the Airconsole edition, for those who haven't been following the project for the past few months, Jelly Brawl has been part of a submission to the Airconsole gamejam. Which happened to end (4/1/20) yesterday! The final push is done and I can take a moment to breath now that all this content is in the game. I’m planning to release more or less what I submitted to the contest as a public demo very soon. I'm still planning the logistics of that but will hopefully have more to share with you all very soon. That way I can get something in your little dry sanitized hands and get some useful feedback from you in return.
Additional big news! Jelly Brawl is now available to wishlist on Steam! So I’d love it if you could go show that lil' bud some love and send me a wish. I’m gonna be kicking it into overdrive with promotion from here on out and sharing lots more on what I’m getting done on here, my twitter, as well as the steam page.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1278350/Jelly_Brawl/
Thanks so much for all the love you all have been showing the project!
Saying the past months have been hard on everyone would be an understatement.
I hope you are all doing well and staying safe despite the situation being possibly the worst it could be. Stay strong and keep doing your best cause that’s all you can do. I’ll talk to you all again in a couple weeks.
Let me know about the new changes and what else you would like to see.
Thanks for taking the time to read/watch!
- Cole