v0.0.3 Roadmap

The next 3 weeks I’ll be working on:

• Parries/Timed Blocks

  • The obvious direction to take this in is to deflect attacks back at the enemy, while I do be doing that 100%, I also think it’s a really interesting concept to experiment with bubbles of time dilation on parry as well. These would slow all projectiles and enemy attack sequences inside the bubble, giving a perfect opportunity for a counterattack (and it would look rad as hell)

• Procedural Level Generation

  • The final game involves exploring a procedurally generated heavenscape of floating islands and ruined cathedrals hunting down Archangels (bosses). While there will still be PLENTY of good ol’ fashioned hand crafted content, the experiences of exploring the overworld, tracking down archangels, and an evolving narrative+wandering NPCs demands some level of variety in order to not get stale in a rogue-like permadeath approach. (And not to worry, not perma-permadeath, Im not crazy, think Hades by Supergiant, each run is different but progression continues seamlessly)

• Melee Enemy Redesign

  • The concept for this enemy is neat, but the reception is clear; this enemy is mid as hell. (Tbh all of the test enemies are, but this is guy in particular) I’ll be reworking this enemies movesets and also experimenting with different approaches to how a melee enemy can deal damage in the game.

• Heavenscape Environment (Water, Better Ruins, etc)

  • I’ve literally been wanting to add pools/fountains/ponds and waterfalls to the levels since Day 1 but it kept getting de-prioritized. I made such great progress with the foliage assets I feel comfortable walking away from them for a bit to focus on my water shader. I also had successful experiments with combining PBR and Pixel Art last dev cycle (although just 1 tileset wasn’t enough to fully implement) so I’ll be working on making more tilesets and assets for the ruins and the rest of the environment.

• New Attack Type

  • The development of all the attack types so far has gone slick as butter, so I want to add one more to my toolbox before I start making proper enemies and bosses that incorporate multiple attack types into their movesets. I have in mind a radial ground attack (think a 2D shockwave expanding from a center point, the player must jump over it) if you have any ideas though please feel free to leave them in the feedback channel of the discord

• First True Enemy w/AI 

• • While not every attack type is fully implement, enough are that I can get to work on some of the simpler enemies. First up is this Cherub: a simple flying enemy who mainly attacks with projectiles and is one the most common denizens of the Empyrean. (Im a super slow illustrator, this 1 sketch took longer than I’d like to admit, so that’s all the concept art I have to show rn sry!)
  

This is a roadmap of what I’ll be spending my time making this dev cycle. NOT a list of promises of what will be in the next patch, although everything listed here will make into the game eventually. Plus, this is far from everything I’m planning to work on. There’s lots of small stuff that wouldn’t make sense in a list like this and some cool stuff I’m gonna keep secret so I can surprise you later ;)

v0.0.3 is slated for upload in three weeks! (6/10)