New animations and experimenting with co-op multiplayer
Hello! I spent these last couple of weeks finishing up all of the visual improvements to my game and starting to experiment with co-op multiplayer.
New animations
I love Tess, my game's main character. She's a bunny girl who loves nothing more than to smash things up with her giant hammer, including but not limited to the wind-up robots that are running amok in the game.
Unfortunately, she doesn't really express any of this during gameplay. Her hammer swinging animation was the main offender; it’s functional but it’s a bit on the dull side:
I tried sketching a more dynamic swinging pose, but that didn’t solve it. She still had the same neutral facial expression that she has when she's just standing around doing nothing, which was sucking all of the life out of the pose:
I tried a few different ways of spicing this up and ended up settling on an “XD” expression. She’s supposed to be having fun, after all! After animating some new attacks with this face, I’m much happier with how she looks:
The new version is exactly how I imagined Tess to be! I hope it’s easier to get a feeling for her personality now.
As a bonus, I hooked up her “XD” expression to the HUD too. It even bounces whenever she hits an enemy:
Boss KO effect
There's now a big dramatic fullscreen freeze effect when you deliver the finishing blow to a boss:
You can see it in action in the video below, along with the new attack animations.
With these last changes out of the way, I'm now completely satisfied with how the game looks and I'm finally ready to start working on the other features.
Experimenting with co-op
I started making co-op multiplayer! It’s still in the very early stages of development but I have the basic gameplay up and running for 2-4 players:
Players can move around, enemies know how to fight against multiple players at once, and you can move between rooms and play through the full game.
That said, it’s still very early in development. All players have the same color palette, and there are lots of gameplay questions that haven’t been answered yet. Should you be able to walk through other players? What should happen if you hit an enemy into another player? Is the co-op multiplayer fun enough that it's worth including it in the final game, or is it a mess that pales in comparison to the single player modes?
Hopefully all of these questions and more will be answered when get a chance to playtest co-op mode with some friends soon, so I can build an intuitive understanding of what feels good and what doesn't. I generally rely on playtesting my own games as much as possible while designing them, which can be a lot trickier to organize for multiplayer games. We’ll see how it goes!
Anything else?
It’s the Steam Spring Sale! You can save 50% on my games Chessplosion and Ducky’s Delivery Service, so check them out if you’re interested.
My friend Chunderfins announced his next game Phasgana. It's a horizontal shmup with gorgeous pixel art and co-op multiplayer, where you play as a group of software pirates piloting jailbroken spaceships. His last game Hazelnut Hex (also 50% off in the Steam sale) was great so I have no doubt that this one will be too. He also announced a Patreon, so check it out if you're interested in his games.
That’s all I’ve been up to recently. I hope you have a wonderful couple of weeks and I’ll see you next time!