The First Glimpse 

The first look of the first half of our level in progress is now in the game and giving a hint in a visual sense. Before the tower we made a demo-ish level area of the future larger level we are planning to produce. We are fairly happy with our artstyle now with the added tower that features the basic yet main puzzle elements, from Longroots to manipulating birds that would levitate us to higher grounds. 

We also enhanced the sound system of the game, providing the waterfall sounds and some awareness sounds of the creatures around. This was a good step on upgrading our game feel. The sound of the nature and the wind was also implemented into the game. Some ingame soundtrack was implemented as well however they need tweaking on volume and trigger levels for them to work properly.

The outer view of the tower and the initial glance of the nature and the water supported with the wind effect and the shader.

The inside view of the tower featuring the waterfall effect and the gold trim that has a slight effect on or color palette. The continuation of the tower includes the puzzle levels and many Manipulative creatures and elements that features a levitating level on the vertical basis.

What is new?

There are some several new puzzle elements including a bird that would levitate us throughout the level with a stamina limit. Of course, there is also a supporting puzzle element which is the stamina tower for the bird. When the bird is used it's stamina is drained however, the bird abandons the player and returns to it's place. Obviously, the bird is controllable by the player so some of the vertical puzzle elements can be solved utilizing our puffy looking bird.

We aimed for a more fluffy looking and cute style of art on the bird model itself, where it would match the rest of the artstyle of the game. The sounds of the bird are also designed for an impression like that.

An image of Azy utilizing the bird and the stamina tower of the bird in order to continue flying, as the blue bar being the stamina amount of the bird.

We improved our AI with the implementation of our Yeti models and their much needed animations. They are still works in progress, however looking better already than just cubes or any kind of other placeholder. 

The Evil Yeti that we encounter on the open, nature sides of the map that has a tendency of being aggressive to the player when it sees Azy.

Contrary to the Evil Yeti, this regular Yeti is sensitive to footsteps and will tend to run away from Azy in the case of any footstep noise.

However, some of these features will be reworked or will be scraped / improved since we took the decision of the game being faster and less repetitive. So, the existing level of the tower will be chnaged completely. The level design and the puzzles were only to showcase the most playable demo version of that state of the game. Now the tests and the core mechanics has been combined with the puzzles, this episode of the devlog series will feature the future plans and improvements.

Future Plans

1) Faster Pace & Flow

First of all we recognized that the game is very repetitive, especially inside of the tower as the puzzle elements are used a lot. The gameplay required the player to go back and forth in order to solve the puzzle too much. Second, we figured the normal pace of the game was real slow and it was a bad influence on the flow of the game. So we developed a new Longroot mechanic that would allow the player to slide on it so the pacing of the game would improve.

Now the player will be able to slide on the roots for a faster feel of the game in order to advance through cliffs and heights.

2) New Forrest Level

The new forrest level is meant to be the prologue of the game that has a purpose of teaching the game to the player via the new UX system we designed an the new UI elements that shows the player the controls as Azy progresses through this mystical forrest, that also is utilized as an intro the the backlore.

An early sneak peak of the two different sides of the new forrest environment.

3) New Creatures

Like we mentioned before, we will feature a boss fight and planning on adding another simple creature that would require the player to use the dodging and combating skills along the way. 

The creature designed to be featured in our boss fight segment.

The new Tar creature that is designed to be spawned beneath the ground, sliding above the ground and attacking us without giving up until it is dead.

4) UX and UI

Our biggest and most useful changes are probably the improvements on UI and UX. We wanted to create a better environment for the player to understand the soul manipulation. We used color coding for the soul storage the player can have rather than doing maths under faster paces. Now the player will have 0 (none), 1 (yellow), 2 (orange) or 3 (red) souls stored / necessary, that will show in the corresponding colors with a new mode that we implemented. However, we havent implemented teh part where this mode shows us, how many does Azy has in their soul storage. We are planning to showcase that on the scythe itself in the future.

Azy sending a wave to see the Soul resources around which also acts as an aid to the player for a better sight of the manipulatives.

Conclusion

We still have many things to add into the game, however we could call this the very first playable build of our game. Some of the new features are already implemented into the game hgowever some crucial parts are still there to be added. We are happy with our progress so far but we still have plans on improving the game feel with some additional combat and pacing mechanics.