Hey friends, 

It’s been a few months since we talked last. The team worked really hard to get the trailer out at the end of February, and as is often the case with these sorts of things, you push hard one month and take it easy the next. 

In saying that, we’ve done a lot since we last spoke, let me show you some of they systems work, design updates and sprinkles of flavour we’ve added.

Enjoy some gifs that show off what we’ve been up to.

Systems

For a long time, I’ve had the fear of the dark system designed on paper. Now that we’re in chapter 2, it finally made its way to the top of the to-do list.

Stella is afraid of the dark and will be affected depending on how long she stays in it.

Her heart rate goes up, her vision becomes shaky, and it feels like the world is closing in on her.

Stay in the dark too long, and you will respawn at a checkpoint (Another new system we have).

So be careful to not venture too long out in the darkness. It could be scary out there!

Chapter 2 also forced us to make water work correctly. It is no longer a solid; you can fall in now. And you can push boxes in, you know, for puzzles.

Design

Lots of new design work has been done in the last few months.

In the lab, we finished animating all of the machine parts that let Dr Lumen and others work.

This has made a considerable jump since our last major devlog.

The beams are animated, and we now have some science stuff happening on the table. I wonder what that might be for?

We had a bit of fun designing all the floors of the tower, hidden away in the woods.

And just like chapter 1, SO many of the objects are interactable. We even went back and added new points of interest to the fishing village..

More puzzles and environments continue to be built out in the woods. I would say that these are 80% done now.

Flavour

In milestone 2, I shared the book opening I had made.

It was rough, but the team was proud of it.
 

Well, Modem from the Playdate Squad Discord saw what I had made and asked me if he could redesign it.

It’s a pretty big glow-up if you ask me.

And here are a few odds and ends.

• We now have sound effects for most of the objects, which helps bring the game to life.
• A pivotal scene now has a farting emoji 💨
• We updated our font with some better kerning.
• Every current level in the woods now has all its dark layer tiles
• And we animated this simple little gate

Now, this post doesn’t tell the whole story. We’ve been cooking on some secret stuff in the background. Some we’ll share soon, some that you’ll need to wait a while longer for.

Please wishlist Comet on Catalog!