Final Changes to the  Level

Eventually we decided that we shall change the level for an even better flow, expanding the size of the area before the tower and adding a very simple puzzle where in order to open the door to the tower, player has to travel through different places of the map and unlock the chains that holds up the door. 

Two of the unlocking stones that is atttached to the tower with chains. Player has to travel to these 4 stones using the Sliding Roots to unlock the tower door.

We also varied the introduction puzzle of the game, with UI introductions so there is a new phase where player will get familiar with the controls. The games offers the information of the controls to the player when the mechanic is needed throughout the tutorial level.

Showing controls to the player with 3D spaced UI.

One Last Mechanic

We also added a new mechanic, making the players mobility much easier on occasional situations such as combo required phases and needing a fast pace in order to tackle future. If the player charges up an attack and kills a soul with this charged up last hit, he / she will gain a speed boost most likely to used as a momentum boost to pass through obstacles such as cliffs and elevations. 

For the purpose of UX, we inform the player with a new VFX that actually has a lifetime as the required charge time, so the player will know if the boost is ready or not, seeing the concluding popping VFX at the end of the animation.

Azy is charging the Scythe for a speed boost, shall the attack will be successful to kill a soul with this hit.

Finalized Creatures

We finally finished off our creatures with their functionalities and their polished textures within the game. The finalized boss, called Dirah, is now deciding on his attack style depending on the situation that the AI is in, deciding based on the time he hasn't been able to attack the player and the range he is at.

Our new boss, Dirah, performing both melee and ranged attacks on Azy depending on the AI's decision.

Tar Creature has also been complete with the new texture. It has a sensitive body form depending on the surface it is walking, so it can deform on the edges and elevations.

Tar Creature with finished VFX and textures, also with deforming body visual effects.

Conclusion

With this final episode of this blog series, we wanted to deliver the updates and our development progress we had along the way. This was our graduation project and we are mostly happy with the final product we delivered. We obviously still have problems such as some bugs, missing design elements and some other variants of missing assetes however this can be now counted as the most viable product of the game Elpis and can act as a complete demo for the first level.  We had some wrong and right decisions throughout the development phase however we believe we took action in a problem solving fashion. We must say that we are very proud wtih the art department and the visual job we produced within Elpis. Thank you for following our progress of developing Elpis for approximately 1 year!