We continue the string of fanart with an image someone commissioned on Discord, a dramatic rendition of Hilstara's last stand. I don't have full info on the artist, which I'll add if the commissioner or anyone else knows. It's nice to see so many different scenes getting interest.
New build of Omnipocalypse out, this time for $5 patrons. Some new people have been enjoying it, but I have pretty mixed feelings overall.
Oversights can be funny things. I spent so much time testing Omnipocalypse before this release, but I was thinking, "Does the new feature work? Do all the event variations clash? How is the balance?" This is all necessary work, but it's unconnected with some elements of the actual player experience.
Specifically, I never tested what the game is like if you get game overs and loop. I'm not a natural player, as I've done it too many times and I know all the secrets. That effectively means that some players were spending all their time in an experience I didn't spend much time with, not touching the content I worked so hard on.
The biggest issue is that originally the game wasn't going to let you loop until you finished the first major run. When I changed this, I thought I changed all relevant unlocks, but I missed several. Your character was supposed to be getting access to the skill tree early on, but instead it's locked away until you finish a major section. Irrelevant the way I was testing, potentially frustrating if players are struggling with the early game.
Another issue is that several events only evolve and change with overall progress, not looping deaths. This means that the game doesn't seem at all reactive if you're experiencing early loops, nothing like what I wanted the first impression to be. This is very frustrating, but I have no one to blame but myself.
Anyway, the long and short of it is that I've put out a 0.2.4 build in the previous post. Didn't send a notification about the update so that people wouldn't get double-emailed. It only covers the issues mentioned plus other minor bugs reported so far.
I dunno, that's all the essay I have in me today. Rough weekend.
Another thing I worked on this week is getting more and more assets finished for Slave Rehabilitator. Here's the title screen, for example:
There's lots of stuff that's not very exciting, but takes time. Like the other miscellaneous screens:
Increasing percentages of these are done, so I hope the first build will look okay, visually. I guess it's sort of the opposite of Omnipocalypse: that has lots of gameplay with zero final art, while Slave Rehabilitator will have production values in the first build, but will be relatively short to play.
That's all for this week. Work continues.