hi everyone !!

this month went by quite fast for me, i mentioned last time that i was considering taking a break and while i didnt exactly do that, i did ease up on how much work i wanted to do this month so i had some time to recover from burnout

i think it worked pretty well!! i got a few things done towards the end of the month that im happy with

for starters:

im officially beginning work on enemy design!!

this is something i put off for a long time, as i wanted to make combat more engaging before moving on to overall game balance, and i think now that ive set up a good amount of character skills this is a good time to at least work on the absolute most basic enemy type in the game, the zombies

once i have the balancing around zombies set in stone, theyll work as a baseline for enemy balancing going forward, so its super helpful to get them out of the way and ill probably continue working on them going into may

ive also done some spritework!!

with the zombies, upon encountering them the game will pull from a pool of hopefully a hundred or so (or more!!) different zombie designs and pairings, meaning you may run into a single zombie or a group of 5, it should make even the standard enemy exciting and a bit scary to run into

it also means i need a lot of designs!! this is partly why i offer higher tier patrons the ability to submit their characters for me to use, as its a bit of a daunting task to come up with so many unique designs

and while im on that subject,

im officially going to be taking design submissions!! ill leave more info towards the end of the newsletter as for how thatll be handled, so stay tuned for that

ive been doing some work on more minor things as well, such as sound effects, new character animations and experimenting with new features, however i dont see much point in showcasing a bunch of things that arent super exciting so ill leave you all with the new game over screen:

moving on from that, ive also done work on something much more exciting!!

have you been wondering this whole time what the deal with any of these characters was because it was sure bothering me that i hadnt properly introduced them after all this time

fortunately, theres now a short bio for each playable character!! gone are the days of choosing favorites based off design alone!!

initially i was hoping to display these on an official website, but seeing as thats not something i can easily crank out over the course of a month i dont see myself committing to that until sometime in the future.. however i did post all of them in a thread on my twitter, which you can check out here!!

lastly, id like to finally announce the official discord!!

for now, the discord will be patron only, and will primarily serve as an easier means of providing feedback, updates, and communicating about the game in general

ill also eventually be able to showcase playable builds of the game!!

as for the higher tier patrons, this:

should also be the place where you submit your character designs to be used in the game, more rules and information regarding these submissions will be pinned in the same channel

upon joining, you will have a role that hides everything as a means of helping secure the server, please dm me your current tier and proof of subscription (ill dm you myself if you miss this part), id like to avoid invites being passed around to whoeverwith all that said, heres the link!! please do not share this with anyone

https://discord.gg/DWpfMjdFxr

please bear with me as id never made a discord before, so i may run into a few hurdles as i learn how to operate one!!

thats about all i have this month, thank you all for reading, and more importantly thank you so much for your continued support!! i look forward to getting to talk to you all more frequently and i hope you look forward to whatever this month has in store!!