Planning out a level inside the bones of a giant skeleton!
Take a look at this drawing. I drew this over a year and a half ago:
I'm mentioning this because even then I drew it with the idea of using it as a base for a level in this game. Take a look at the original post of this drawing in my portfolio, if you want to see how I drew it: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/4Nonv1
The game was in very early stages back then, so naturally a lot has changed now that I finally worked my way up to starting on this level for real. Here is a work in progress of it now. I expanded accessible places, added paths in the surrounding ground/flesh and so on:
The gray background is very much still not done, so don't pay too much attention to that. This whole area is in a different style from the rest of the game so far, so there are quite a few things I still need to work out about integrating this linework style on top of painted background. All the dark blue and dark red areas are walkable, everything else will count as walls. Over the last few days I also added more linework to raise the detail level. This thing is quite a massive drawing , it needs to look good at full zoom. This is the chest area now at the actual size you will play at and I think the linework detail level will work quite nice and is close to being finished:
And this is the same area before:
Like in the first level, Abandoned Archives, I will be adding little areas/ rooms that have a chance to appear, making each play through a bit different. This time these will mostly take form or various organs and missing bones. Here's a sketch of some I came up with so far:
I think all this should be fun and gory to explore.
Lastly, here's how this whole level is placed in the game. It connects to the previous area and a passage will be opeanable permanently from the side of this new level.
I will be adding a secret way to access this level from the very start, which should be fairly hard to find naturally. A little extra for anyone with specific knowledge of a hint I placed where these two levels connect:
The brown rock pattern on the top right contains a three letter code. I'm not going to say exactly how it's hidden, but I would be interested in hearing if anyone who stumbles on this devlog knows the method.