Hey all,

nothing fun to show this week, I've fixed a ton of bugs, implemented delta timing, adjusted the difficulty on the first level of the demo and put the first tutorial in. Things are moving forward steadily, but life's been getting in the way a little bit recently. I plan to add in some new "End Wave" artwork soon among other things.

-James

****UPDATE****

A couple of "final" goblins are in! I say it with quotation marks as they're still likely to change. There are still a few bugs in the animation so I'll be showing them off when they're fixed. A lot more general bug fixes and some small changes for example: it now automatically fades to night time at the end of a wave. This gets rid of the "dead" time after you finish the waves and are told to head to the campfire to continue. A few other little things. We haven't recorded any goblin vocals yet. Something I'm still looking forward to.

I know it's been a while since I posted anything but you can hopefully expect to hear a lot more soon. I'll be making an Instagram account and a FB page to keep you posted.

For now though follow our twitter @MantraTeam and thanks so much for checking out what we're doing!

- James

Hi all!

We've been putting a few more assets into the game recently including a new house. Goblins were getting hidden behind the top of the mushroom so it had to go, nice as it was.

I'm also currently working on the new sheep. I'm still painting him and he'll be in there soon.

Got some short gameplay gifs too. A couple of final goblin designs are in. Still a little buggy but we're working on sorting it.

We're also on instagram now. Check us out and follow and like and all that if you're cool.

https://twitter.com/MantraTeam
https://www.instagram.com/mantrateam_games/

Thanks for checking us out! More coming soon!

- James

The new house is in. It could do with a little bit of polishing up I reckon but the main thing is that the goblins aren't getting hidden by it any more.

Same for the sheep. Looking pretty.

Some other little things have been changed, the spiked wall trap now gets added to the goblin grid so they no longer run on top of it.

The rain is fixed now. It wasn't working for a while as I accidentally deleted the emitter a couple of lines after creating it. Pro stuff here people.

I need to make the night-time version of the house which is in shadow, polish up the existing house and get an outline on it.

We've also got some celebration trumpets now when you complete a level, although they could do with some better placement.

Thanks for reading. We're working on all this stuff so check back next week for some more updates.

all the best,
- James

So we've been general bug fixing lately. Everything is feeling a bit more solid and together.Pretty soon we'll be re-making a lot of the assets including the player animations and the goblin animations and artwork, mainly giving each goblin type their own distinct physical traits. We'll also be adding our first boss. Below are a couple of preliminary designs but you can expect those to change. I'm pushing towards a playable demo which is about a month and a half away, hopefully having about 4 enemy types and a boss across around 4 levels. More on that as it happens.



What we want to do is have a small, self-contained story within the demo, primarily told through 2.5d cut-scenes at the start and the end. I'll be painting the images to look like this one:



This should really start to flesh out the world that the player exists in, and give a bit of much needed context to everything so far.

Progress is slow but it is being made. Should should ramp up soon.

all the best, check back soon!

- James

Working on our fist boss fight. Still in PG art but it's on it's way. Been designing the state system for attacks today. A lot of fun. The skeleton of the demo is there, we just need to add meat to it in the form of art assets and animations, the usual. We've also fleshed out a bit more of the story which we'll post about soon enough.

I may have mentioned before that we're going to push ahead with it all soon, and commit a solid month of work on it to get this demo made to a decent standard, which will begin at the start of next week.

All the best. thanks for reading. Check back soon!

- James

I know I've been terrible with updating this but it's because all my time has been spent making stuff. So what's new?

The player animations have been totally remade in spine, including 2 new run directions and a dodge roll. Attacking is a lot clearer now, and there are a couple of combos in there.

The goblins have been completely remade, also in spine. They now have the capacity to be randomly generated. There's only a few variations but the system is built and it works. All we need to do on that front is add more goblin assets. There are also a couple of new enemy types including a "feral" goblin, who is a runt that has been outcast and become feral. They inflict bleeding damage over a small period of time.

Player collision has been tightened up even more, as have the goblins' collision.

There are tons of new particle effects and polish in the game, along with loads more sound effects. On that note we had good fun a few days ago recording about 3 hours of goblin sound effects which are in, and sound great. Considering releasing them as a pack or something later.

There's also a ton of new UI stuff.

Squashed about 30 pages worth of general bugs, particularly to do with the UI.

I'm currently working on the progression of the demo, when to introduce new enemy types, bits of the HUD and game mechanics. After that I'll be making the boss level, then tightening everything up, polishing and play testing, then the demo should be done.

It sounds like a lot to do but it shouldn't take too long.

No images or anything today as I'll be re-making the title page when this is all finished. That'ss also probably be the next post in a week or two.

Thanks for checking us out. Check back soon!

- James

I realise it's been over a month since I said the demo would be ready. We took a little break from it for a week or so to de-stress and unwind, but we're back to work on it now and it's coming along. All the content that we wanted to add has been added, we're now in the process of testing, bug fixing and adjusting the difficulty. When this is done, we'll get a website up and make the demo available for download for one month.
Sorry it's taking so long but I have a standard which I want to meet, plus I'm sure we all know what game development is like: everything takes twice as long as you think it will.

Thanks for checking out what we're doing. You'll be able to play Goblin Pest Control soon I promise!

-James

So the demo is here! Finally! We're so excited to show what we have so far. It's taken a lot longer than I thought it would but the demo and all the basic framework is done, and now you can play it! We have a website now which we'll be updating the blog on, as well as on here: https://www.mantrateamgames.com/

We also have our first trailer. I've been hesitant to show off any actual game-play until now, as I'm not a fan of showing too much work in progress, but I'm really happy with how it's turned out. The identity of the game-play has started to shine through in the combat loop, and it's as fun as I hoped it would be.

Check out the trailer, and give it a play for yourself!

https://www.mantrateamgames.com/download

All the best,

- James