Spooky monsters & dark castles (progress update)

It's spooky season now so I've been working on the first dark subregion that I'll release for Insiders. With that, let's get a new set of progress entries!

Spooky subregion progress

The estimates in each section are guesstimates, and the work may take less or more time. We're currently two weeks in.

🟦 Dress Ghost Lady entity (1 week)

This new entity is inspired by onryō as you can probably tell - she's going to be a bit more lurky than previous entities. I've started working on her sprites and fight logic, but her animation hasn't been started yet.

🟦 Shadow Man entity (1 week)

This entity is going to be primarily darkness themed, as in the absence of light and not just dark colors (but that too) - which means I'll be able to play around with lights a bit more in terms of level design. I've started working on his sprites and fight logic, but his animation is already done! :)

🟦 Looker Eye entity (1-2 week)

This is a third entity and one that I want to make into a boss. It's unique in that it shows up early but doesn't engage with the player fully until you reach its boss arena. I've only done some sprite and animation work here, its fight logic hasn't been started yet and since I want this to be a bigger boss fight I expect to spend more time than usual on the fight logic and arena design.

🟦 Level design (1 week)

This subregion will mostly take place inside a stone castle like environment. I want a diverse set of castle rooms and areas, so things like an altar hall, a clock tower, a basement, a 'sewer'/indoor canal system, small gardens, is hopefully what to expect. I've already started working on art assets for this as well as experimenting with new interactables like levers, rooms, and swinging chandeliers.

🟦 Spooky trade hub (2-3 days)

In order to make respawning less tedious there'll be another central spawn trade hub with the trade, skill, and quest NPCs. I've started working on this already and I don't expect to spend too much time on it but we'll see if I make some custom environmental art or NPC outfits for it.

⬜ Wave arena (2-3 days)

This hasn't started yet. I might also skip this and move it to the next subregion so there are wave arenas every second subregion instead, we'll see

⬜ New spell (3-5 days)

This hasn't started yet - I have some ideas, but we'll see what it turns into :)

⬜ Testing/bugfixing (1-2 weeks)

This work won't start until all the others are done.

Otherwise

I've been working on a Steam page for the base game but I want to make a small trailer before I consider it ready, which also means smoothing over some sprite art and visuals, ensuring that things look good for said trailer. I'm hoping to release the Steam page alongside the demo and first Spooky Insider build, but we'll see.

And that's it for now! I should be back around mid-October with another progress update.