[В разработке] Scourge of the Reptiles (страница 1)

I'm super thrilled to say that Level 20 was just completed mere minutes ago, and thats a wrap on level designs! I started Act 2 in July so its less than 5 months to build the last 10 of 20 levels - not bad. It felt great to knock off the last trap, the last tile-set draw, the last creature render, the last dialogue, and the last combat setup. I think the climactic scenes of Act 3 are suitably epic and will look and feel really cool. The magic items in the last act are mega-powerful! So the next goal is to make the game polished enough that a good portion of players will want to see the ending!

The main jobs left to do on Scourge revolve around tidy-up and testing. So the playable public demo is on track for a February release, by which time I think the lions share of this polish will be done. But just to be sure, private testers will hammer away at all three Acts until June 2026-ish, along with updates based on player feedback of the demo. The demo will also serve a marketing function, being shown to as many potential showcases and streamers as I can find.

I'm quite proud of a particular dialogue system in Scourge. During the course of the game you will see dialogue choices that portray a certain personality (Duty bound, Greedy, Anger issues, etc). Each time you select one of these nodes you get 5 xp (enough a for a skill) as you will usually get a negative result in the encounter, costing potential gains, damage, or worse. And the game keeps tracks of your choices - with the final result being a slightly different ending for each favoured personality type. I won't spoil that ending, but I just love how you can play evil, good, or selfish, in 9 different ways, and just guide your main PC to be who they are, with a unique finale.

Over the last month, local players have been testing the Demo and giving me loads of feedback that I am furiously implementing as fast as it comes in. At the same time, Act 1 levels (1-10) are being re-tested, and polished to a playable standard. It won't be long I think before 50% of the game is fully playable - thats about 15-20 hours worth.

Some feedback led to some deep changes to help new players encompass all the systems and UI, which I was told needed a lot more hand-holding and first time help. So the Quests in the Demo were simplified, enhanced to provide familiarity with important systems, and made more obvious on the main screen. Combat Tips were added that instruct early players how to use the many options to win a fight - and Tooltips came in to replace my "retro but not really appreciated" right-click help system. Overall the experience should now be infinitely more simple to onboard yourself on a first time play.

You will be happy to know that I upgraded Scourge to Unity 6. Not interested? Ok how about reducing its RAM footprint to 2.5 GB? Still not that excited? I added a LOST CAT to the Demo!!! Now we're havin' fun!!