Hi everyone! I'm Will from unTied Games, and I'm happy to announce that this year I'll be making a sequel to Demon's Hymn, which earned 5th place in LOWREZJAM 2017.

This year I'm hoping to do what I couldn't do last year with the game: More levels, more environments, more enemies, and more moves! It's going to be a fun challenge, and also a bit of a time crunch. I'll be exhibiting my main project, Atmocopter, at 2D Con from August 3-5, so that'll cut into my development time a bit. Between that, my regular pixel art work, and real life, we'll see if I make the game happen in time!

Check back often for updates... I love to write 'em!

DAY 1 (August 1)

I'm a bit rushed to fix bugs in Atmocopter before the convention, but I started work on Demon's Hymn 2 today. I got the project set up and running, and made some palette updates to the main character. Because I'm planning a few different environments for this game, I decided I'd use the Dawnbringer 32 palette to try and give all the game's art a cohesive look.

Here's a mockup of how a level in Demon's Hymn 2 might look, using the DB32 palette. I'll be leveraging some of the art assets I've already made to speed up development and make the game the best I can. The tileset pictured is Retro Pixel Cave. I was a little concerned about whether or not the character would stand out enough from the background, but I think it'll be alright in motion.

Aw, what the heck. Let's just animate it quick and find out!

Should be fine. He might get lost a little in the bluer areas of the background, but the motion should be enough to make it clearly visible where you are on the screen.

Finally, here's the title screen.

Tune in soon for more! ୧(๑ﾟ⌔ﾟ๑)୨

Days 2 - 5

Like I said in the opening post, I knew I had a convention coming up that would cut into my dev time. Day 2 was taken up by getting Atmocopter ready to demo at 2D Con: Lots of bugs were fixed, and I added a whole new intro cutscene! I think I do some of my best work before conventions... It didn't crash once!

Days 3 and 4 were convention + sleeping. I woke up super early on day 3 and worked on Atmocopter like crazy before the convention. Day 4 was much of the same. The convention was a lot of fun!

On day 5 (yesterday) I had a little more free time, and I put together the beginnings of a level in Demon's Hymn 2.

(Direct link: https://gfycat.com/gifs/detail/CandidAssuredEyelashpitviper)

It features parallax scrolling backgrounds, something I wasn't able to do in Demon's Hymn 1. Getting them to not look too jittery is a challenge at the 64x64 resolution. They also didn't want to play nice, and kept scaling the pixels slightly wrong, so I'm using a new rendering system where I render everything to a 64x64 buffer and then scale it up when I draw to the screen.

There are a few camera issues. You can see when I climb up the wall, the camera jerks around a bit. This was a bug from Demon's Hymn 1, and also a bug currently in Atmocopter, as they use the same engine and camera system. I'm gonna see if I can finally fix that today, and maybe add a few enemies! Now that I'm all done with 2D Con, I can finally get to work on this for real.

Days 6-9 (Now with 3x the pictures!)

Hi again! I've made a lot of progress since last time.

• Added sound effects for player attack
• Added sound effect for player hit enemy
• Fixed camera bug. Should be a lot smoother!
• Added new enemy: Slime. It has 4 HP, which means the player can kill it in one combo attack. Be careful though... It does have an attack, and when it dies you might want to step back!
  
  
  https://gfycat.com/ifr/WeeklySelfassuredBorderterrier
  
  
• Added new enemy: Stinger. It has 1 HP, but is pretty fast and can attack from above. Maybe the player will get some kind of move to deal with these in the future...?
• Expanded the cave level. I'd say it's about half done right now. And it's definitely a hard level! In the final game, this will probably be level 2.
  You might notice holes in the terrain. I do only what the player can collide with first, and that way I can change it easily if I have to.
  
  
  https://gfycat.com/ifr/SarcasticObviousAxolotl
  
  
• Finished quick and dirty tileset for the forest level. The terrain filling in this mockup image  is a little messy because it's using the Retro Pixel Cave tileset layout.
  In the final game, this environment will appear in the first level!
  
  

That's all for now... See you next time!

Days 10-13

Holy crap. Lots of new stuff!

• TONS of new music added by my good friend and amazing musician, Charlie McCarron!
  To say it's "epic" is an understatement... You'll have to wait 'til release to hear it!
• Added a skippable intro cutscene before the title drops.
  
• Level 1 is 100% done! There's also a new HP meter, which you can see here. Max HP has changed from 3 to 5.
  
• All player and enemy graphics have been updated to contrast better with the backgrounds.
• A shader now keeps all the colors locked to the DB32 palette.
• Blue Slimes have arrived! They're just like Green Slimes, but don't do anything special when they die.
   
• Wolves have returned from Demon's Hymn 1! They're basically the same, but now their eyes turn red when they're about to jump.
  
• Level 1 changes from bright and sunny to dark and rainy midway through the stage. The rain collides with the terrain and it's a really cool effect! Here's a GIF of an earlier version of the game that shows off the rain.
  
• Another enemy has arrived in level 1, but I'm not going to spoil it!
• The level 1 boss has arrived, but I'm not going to spoil it! There's a little cutscene before the fight.
  

That's all for now! It's going to be a challenge to finish on time, but I'm prepared to do whatever it takes. Half of level 2 is done. Level 3 will repurpose level 1's tileset, and level 4's tileset is almost done. In the event that I don't finish on time for the jam, I still intend to finish the game!