Hello Last Time fans!
I have a little treat for you; for the first time since the Kickstarter campaign, I have a new gameplay screenshot to share with you! Up until recently, my desire to keep spoilers to a minimum and my focus on writing and coding have left me bereft of any screenshots that I felt were appropriate to share. However, now that I’m delving into the artwork phase, I’ve finally got a new screenshot that I feel I can share without giving too much away:
I’ll leave the picture devoid of explanation because – you know, spoilers. But I’ll leave it to your imagination, and you’ll find out when the game’s released 🙂
So, what of progress? I finished the very rough draft of the game that I referred to in my last update, and for the past two or three weeks I’ve been focusing on replacing all my placeholder art and animation with final draft content. I’m pleased to say that, thanks to some useful online tutorials, I’ve been able to improve my pixel art skills. Hopefully this will be apparent from the above screenshot; I’ve learned more about texturing, and have become better at adding other small details that can make a big difference. This means that I’ll be able to go back to the art that I’d already completed and make some improvements – i.e., some of the art that you’ve seen in the demo and trailer will be upgraded. I’m not worried about this adding too long to the development cycle; I’m using my existing artwork as a base, and it’s just a case of adding more texture / details, which I don’t expect to take longer than a few days.
Tom Byrne, my sound designer, has been doing some marvellous things with the game’s music. It’s still very much work-in-progress, but I expect to have a sound clip to share with you by my next update. He’s got an excellent understanding of how the gameplay and music intertwine; often, sound and music will be triggered by in-game events, rather than just be looping in the background of a given scene. This is much more than I initially expected from the music, so I’m very grateful to Tom for his dedication.
Another contribution that Tom’s made has been – wait for it – to be the very first person other than myself to play the draft of the game from beginning to end. The only person, in fact. Not only was it very useful to see his reactions and get his feedback, but it’s also been a massive relief to finally have the game exist in someone’s head other than my own. This is a little hard to explain, but basically it comes down to the fact that, aside from the excellent input I’ve had from my associate producers, I’ve been working on the game on my own for months, and it got to a point where I was so intimately familiar with it that I was unable to view it objectively. Now that I’ve had Tom play it and got his feedback, I can confirm that it’s actually shaping up to be an awesome story, and I haven’t just been imagining it!
That’s all for now, folks. I hope that you’re well – and, as always, my sincerest thanks go out to you for following me on this journey. Please do hit me up via Facebook or Twitter if you have comments or questions that you’d like to share 🙂
Until next time!
Daniel