The Fool's Path | devlog 9

Work continues. 

I am about finished with level 10, the last level. It's an arena level with a bunch of doors that let in enemies one group at a time. I had to scale back my original plan a bit, because this stuff can get really complicated fast. Basically you need to open 4 different doors to unlock an inner door that leads to a boss fight. This level is a bit longer than the others and I think is a good last level. I still need to find a model for a boss wizard. I may just take the existing wizard model and scale it times 2 and give it a bunch of hit points and abilities and that will be my placeholder. 

With level 10 being finished that means all the levels are made. Now I can start refining what I have. Some one from reddit play tested the game a bunch and found a ton of bugs. So right now I'm going through and fixing each thing. He found it was possible to duplicate potions by having units cross the same tile at the same time. I almost wanted to keep it in the game but it was easy to fix so I did. I got some good feedback on how long the game took him to finish and how many times he died and stuff. I was worried the game was going to be too easy, but it sounds like it's just about perfect, judging by one person. It's good to know I'm on the right track with the difficulty. I'm still planning on adding at least 2 more enemies, so that could make the game harder. I might just replace current enemy encounters with the new enemy types. 

I want to have an enemy version of each of the player units. I already have an evil wizard. I just need an evil archer and evil knight. I started on the archer already, but haven't put them in the game and tested them yet. The archer just acts like the skeleton archer but has more hit points. Maybe I could give him like a poison arrow or something. The enemy knight could use the shield ability some how. I want these characters to be bosses of some levels. I wish I had a bandit character like the previous game. He had a gun and a dagger and it was fun blowing things away with the gun. In 3d it would be even cooler, but I can't find a good model. 

I redid the UI for the 3rd time. The old UI was a dirty brown color and I hated it. So I generated some more UI elements using DALL-E this time. The shape and movement of the UI is the same it's just reskinned with new art that looks like it's made out of stone. I use the same style for the controls page. I redid the big unfurled scroll backdrop for the escape menu as well. All around I think it looks a lot cleaner than before. I still need to figure out a title card and starting screen. I also need a custom icon for the game and I remember that being a hassle. 

I'm always on the look out for models. I really want to replace the knight model because the animations are beyond saving, and it looks dumb. I've looked and looked and am willing to pay like 100 dollars for something good but I can't find a good low poly knight model anywhere. I feel like it would be a real upgrade to the game, so the search continues. 

I've been thinking about how I would do a new game plus feature. The game already wraps around to level 1 once you finish it. I could just go through and add spawners so all the levels would have like twice the amount of enemies, or you could be limited on how many units you can have. It wouldn't be that much work and it would basically double the length of the game. It would be cool to have an option of what characters you take. It would have to be 2 characters at the minimum because I don't think it's possible to beat the game with just one character.

I need to do another pass on the sound. There are a lot of missing sounds and sound effects in the wrong places and such. I use the same stab sound effect for like every enemy in the game right now. Sound effects can add a whole lot to the game, and I want to try my best to make it cool. 

After fixing the floor tile swap system and solving some long standing movement bugs the game is in a pretty good state. It's fun to play and takes about an hour to beat. I think I made the scope of the game just right this time. Anything bigger and I would have lost the plot. 

https://x.com/J_Hyde_

jhyde927@gmail.com