I’m back, and this time I have some good news! I’ve decided that the base engine is in a “good enough” state to start work on real game content, so I’ve begun the development of my vertical slice demo. As a reminder, my goal for this demo is to produce 1 dungeon from the game at a close-to-final level of quality.
I’m still early in the production process, so I think I’ll hold off another month before giving a deeper explanation. But I can show one of the dungeon’s core mechanics: Water levels. Take a look!
By moving water between different basins, you’ll be able to open and close off various paths. I think it’s a pretty neat mechanic, though I’ll have to be careful about giving the player a better sense of depth. This will probably come down to a combination of level design and giving floating objects a drop shadow to indicate their real position.
To make up for the lack of detailed dungeon talk today, here’s one last treat. The first piece of concept art for this dungeon:
That little critter is one of several enemies you’ll find in here. Keeping with the theme of water, most of the monsters in this dungeon are forms of marine life. We’ll be seeing more of them as the demo’s development progresses.