This is for a game called Human Upgrade Labs which consists of of various minigames and puzzles connected into a somewhat coherent story.

So I wood carved an enemy for a new level from a couple pieces of birch I appropriated from my grandmothers firewood pile. Because why keep things easy I guess. This will be available in the upcoming update and I am thinking of publishing it as a separate small game since it can work perfectly well as a standalone thing to be played in browser.

Story wise and gameplay wise there are and will be some things in this game that are supposed to come from another dimension that works entirely differently from the regular one and I love this idea of making those things literally 3d, in real life and using photos of them in game. What else could fit that role better, huh? Don't answer that, I just wanted to make some physical artwork, ok.

In this minigame you have to prevent as many of the small interdimentional jellyfish from leaving the area as you can and you do that by lasering them down as efficiently as possible. The laser has a base mode where it shoots a beam on every mouse click as quickly as you are able to click it and a rapid fire mode where is continuously fires at a high rate while using up amo. Amo recharges by itself but you can also gain more amo than you loose by shooting down enemies, so you can extend the rapid fire mode for quite a long time if you are accurate with your shots. The main jelly will keep spawning more and more smaller enemies as the time goes on and you can get more health points/mistakes allowed by getting better at a previous minigame that is already in the game. 

It might not be visible in the gif, but the thing on the top left says mistakes 0/10 +5. 10 is the base given and the extra 5 were from my score in that previous level and can easily be much higher.

I don't have a dedicated space to make this stuff so a corner in my kitchen was covered in assorted chisels and wood shavings for a while. I actually carved this some months ago, but it took a while to put it into the game.

I made upgrades to this whole woodcarved level since the last time I mentioned it. I carved two new enemies with slightly different mechanics.

This guy flies around and keeps spawning basic enemies until it is shot down. However, when it dies it still spawns multiple enemies you need to take care of it and even has a small chance to spawn a copy of itself.

And this one keeps changing direction each time it's shot, while getting slightly smaller and faster until the last life point of this matrioshka style thing is lost.


If you took time to look closely at the gif in the first post, you might notice that this one was in the game already. I decided to change it, and now the two original wood enemies look like this:
I think these new additions make this shooting level a fair bit more strategic and fun.
Also I just uploaded an update where this level is fully playable so ti would be really cool to hear some feedback if you try it out: Human Upgrade Labs

And now I would like to briefly talk about a completely different part of the game - character customization.

For each completed level you are rewarded with at least a few customization options for the Science Guy( he is actually not the protagonist, but the one who is leading you through the levels, because you can only see the back of the head of the protagonist). The game takes place in far future where extreme body modification is an almost casual thing so that let's me get away with a lot of insane designs. In game justification for this customization is that the Science Guy is really into fashion and he likes to spend a good chunk of the money he gets for guiding you in this process for "clothing".

Above are a few options for hair I have now, some fairly normal, and some fairly wacky. There are 49 options for hair alone and the face, eyes, beard, body, coat and a category called "extra" also have a fair amount of options each.

It's a comparatively quick thing for me to make after I somehow managed not to mess up the code for it, so besides art all I need to add is a single line for each addition to make sure it's unlocked at appropriate times. I think it works fairly well as a motivator to complete new levels and I've even seen a youtuber try out this part of the game and have a lot of fun with it so maybe some people would agree with me on that.

Anyway, do you like these hair options?

I've been experimenting, designing and painting some monsters for an addition for my game Human Upgrade Labs, or maybe a different project entirely. This is still on the idea level, but I definitely want to work on more monsters in either case.

Here are some designs I came up with. Do these seem creepy to you, any other sort of monsters that you think would be cool to see designed?

I can't believe I almost forgot these lovely slimy boys. I painted these before the geometric horrors above actually. I will be expanding on these as well. I want some monsters to have evolutions so I'm working on that for the light blue slime with the face.

Even more monster designs. I've been having a lot of fun with these recently. I tried to come up with some more unusual tentacle monster designs, besides the classic octopus thing with too many teeth.

The last slime wants a hug. A deadly acidic hug.

I want some of those monsters to have evolutions and this is my first attempt at designing that. I based these of a design I came up earlier, the third one from the left.

Human Upgrade Labs is coming to Steam and also here is the gameplay trailer

It's the same game but now with Steam achievements and cloud saves. Everything from the build to the Steam store is fully done and tested and the game will be available very soon. Current plan is to release it on the 30th of this month.

Human Upgrade Labs will cost 4.99USD and will be discounted further 20% on the first week of release as well!

Don't worry if you prefer Itch though, I am lowering the price slightly here as well to match it.

Also a small thing to note: the saves between Itch and Steam versions won't be transferable. That is because I had to change the method the game uses to create the saves in order to enable cloud saves for Steam version. 

That is all. Check out the gameplay trailer and my "world class" video editing skills.

I'm also developing a further game idea based in the same setting as Human Upgrade Labs, but with a different, more focused playstyle.

Here are some potions I designed/painted for that. These are not meant to be consumed like some mana or hp potion, but are meant to serve as ingredients in crafting/upgrading.

I know it's not the smartest thing to make final versions of visual assets while anything in the game can change in super early stages, but hey, I wanted to paint these. I will end up using them for something else if things change along the way.