Hail, Loinclothed Heathens!

Let's get some bad news out of the way RIGHT NOW, shall we? It is becoming crushingly apparent that I won't get to a 100% finished Savage powerhouse of a game by the end of this year. BUT, what I've got right now is fantastically close. It's feeling better (mechanically and content-wise) than I could have ever imagined, so we're getting there!

There is indeed a shiny new playable build to talk about, too, so let's dive in!

Leveling the Playing Field

Item number one for me over the last couple of months has been to MAKE. THE MAP. MATTER! I'm churning out stages, levels and areas like crazy, so here's a sneak peak at one of the more complicated areas I've had to tackle:

 Here's a visual guide I've been using to manage this maze-like location known as "Hell's Teeth" (which has some equally menacing lore behind it. Details will be found in item descriptions and NPCs for players to piece together)....

 ... And, upon entering any of those lettered "nodes", or entrances, we wind up in the above grid (this is pretty much my ode to the Death Mountain stage in Zelda 2).

Navigating the catacombs, ruins and caves that comprise this area is no joke, and you can expect some nasty surprises!

Here are a few glimpses into some of the new nightmarish locations:

These new areas also feature a host of new props and background assets:

Shield Slammin' Noctwurmin' Nightmares

With new places comes new faces. And things with which to murder them. Among them is the Nocturm Cult - a clan of Gosenian death worshippers. Specifically, they bow to The Noctwurm, an aspect of the horned serpent, Abhan Yloth. The two have been seperated so long, they have confused each other for separate entities and have therefore become enemies, one attempting to devour the other.

Some of the new pieces of gear:

 It was personally exciting to me to FINALLY get in some heater shield type designs, as well as finally getting in some two-handed axe slaughter time!

Let the Bodies Hit the Other Bodies

One of the hallmarks that I have really tried to get right about the game world I'm trying to create has been interactivity and rules. Rules that all other actors/entities/objects should adhere to (albeit in a whacky 2D barbaric environment). A lot of the feedback I've gotten from viewing folks playing the game has shown some holes in the delivery of this philosophy - one of them being, EVERYBODY tries to pick up corpses!

Well... be disappointed no further!

 Yup - you can now pick up, carry, and throw corpses (this includes all the savagely hilarious situations that spring from this, like picking up a downed undead warrior, tossing him into another, and both of them shattering in a shower of bone fragments). 

On a related note, this following depiction of more fun with corpses is coming in the next update:

 You can see there that corpses will be affected by fire and will stop arrows, making them (corpses) makeshift shields against hazards coming at you from above (including things like falling spikes, acid, etc.)! This also means LIVING enemies, where applicable, will ALSO be affected by things like fire, acid, etc.

Music and Mayhem

Here's a peak at some of the tunes I'm working on that you'll hear in a later game *spoiler*, where *spoiler* summons the *spoiler* causing the player to *spoiler* the *spoiler*:

Mysterious WIP Music

 Though there's work yet to do, all the art, programming, music and mechanics are already blending together to create something that is not just fun, but satisfying to play for you all, and a world full of interesting things and places to discover.

Patch Notes and Update List

That about wraps it up for the highlights of the update. Here's the usual detailed breakdown of what's new in the latest build:

• Fixed making Crogyle hostile and breaking Losech NPC
• Fixed game crashing when pushing, pulling, or carrying a solid outside of screen boundaries
• Fixed player getting "sucked" into an enemy shield when striking enemies with high knockback resist
• Fixed player not bouncing off of larger enemies that use unusually shaped damage masks when downward striking them
• Fixed player not bouncing off of enemy shields when downward striking them
• Fixed downward or upward striking with main weapon causing attacks with sub weapon not being reset to horizontal
• Fixed a bug where lifting an object near a solid sends you into the solid, getting you permanently stuck
• Fixed a series of enemy corpse hit boxes to make them more appropriately sized
• Fixed grabbing onto jump-through ledges sometimes not working. Now about a billion times more reliable (actual math... Actually, not really. But it works way better)
• Fixed carrying object snap-to location calculation
• Fixed walking down slopes while carrying an object resetting the state to look like the animation isn't playing
• Fixed carried block "landing" on a jump-through platform or solids triggering landing FX (like dust clouds) when it shouldn't. This also fixes the player's vertical speed being killed for a frame when doing so
• Fixed if roll dodging, pushing jump while overlapping ladder will descend ladder - THEN, pushing down to climb down, running out of ladder space, Kell will be stuck in the duck state until landing on solid ground and pushing jump
• Fixed moving on platform shifts kell when platform changes direction
• Fixed if vspd < 0 and kell jumps up into platform, kell is stuck in air state, presumably stuck inside platform. he then moves along with platform
• Fixed Kell rubberbanding around moving platforms if you are in the wall cling state (walljump prepare) and the moving platform changes direction
• Fixed one-way moving platforms causing issues if they pass over kell while he is ledge hanging/climbing a different platform or solid
• Fixed Kell not "following" a moving one-way-moving-ledge if ledge hanging off of it
• Changed the method of corpse hit box assignment, making lifting them, tossing them, and generally interacting with them more visually accurate, AND it just feels better
• New NPCs
• A series of new shields
• New "SKS" flavored easter egg weapons and item descriptions
• Tweaked stat requirements across multiple pieces of gear
• Fixed throwing weapons returning "0" amounts of ammo
• Tweaked spawn types on overworld map
• Tweaked healing properties on some recovery items
• Player can now upward/downward strike with weapons equipped to sub slot
• Player can now attack with throwing weapons upward and downward
• Player can now lift, carry, and throw corpses (for some savagely humorous results)
• Added running water FX (shallow water, waterfalls, etc.)
• New pretty (er, I mean, brutal) waterfall backgrounds
• Added Noctwurm cultist enemies (with several randomized elements)
• Completed Hell's Teeth location
• Added new visual props and graphics elements for Noctwurm cultist locations
• Added consistent visuals to the contextual item menu
• Changed the "level up" menu method (now, drinking from Essence Vessels gives you "level up" option. Choosing this takes you directly to the level up menu where you can assign stats)
• Begun work on "Kuchvek's Crossing" area
• Changed frequency of bad weather
• Tweaked "darkness" of bad weather (especially at night)

Streamer Roundup

There has been a whole HOST of very talented and entertaining people taking a crack at the game and introducing it to their audiences. To them, I say THANK YOU for giving the game a shot and spreading the word!

Click on those links and give those fellas a follow, if you'd be so kind!!

(SourKoolaidShow's stream specifically had me in stitches: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/207509016)

And that's a wrap on this update! If you want to follow along with development more closely, come take a look at my Twitch page where I stream live development!

https://www.twitch.tv/toborprime

If you're curious for more insight, I have the HUGE pleasure of hanging out with my friend Tim to bring you a brand spankin' new podcast! We're going to make this a thing every other Wednesday from now on!

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday season! Thank you SO MUCH for all your support, and I will see you next year!!

-Matt

LOOK WHO CAME:

toborprime   

Flanx   36

Dinosir   13

MeeGhoulz   12

Agent9   10