Hey folks!

I am not deceased, and the project is alive and well.

But, in between now and the last demo release date, lots of stuff happened.

I got laid off from my job, and as an immigrant in the US, that’s a pretty bad situation to be in!

But, things are looking up, and I’ve had plenty of time to work on the game, so I’m happy to report some of the big changes for the next demo:

• The path now has lanes which the player switches between: In the vibe of Audiosurf and Sayonara Wildhearts, this was because a common piece of feedback from the first demo was that people felt like their left/right movement didn’t feel very responsive, hopefully this remedies that!

• The loot/pickups are now tied to the audio data from the song: Using the Unreal Synesthesia audio analysis API, I have figured out how to tie specific things like level generation and loot placement to notes in the song, which unlocks a whole realm of possibilities!

• The obstacle systems have been reworked completely: Also tying to the point above, I now spawn obstacles ahead of time, and the whole level is generated at once based on the audio data, and deterministic in such a way that a player can actually learn the level over multiple attempts, as opposed to being completely random like the obstacles were before

• Slide obstacles are introduced: Pretty self-explanatory, but due to the extensive reworking of the obstacle systems I really only had time to introduce one new obstacle type, and opted for the slide obstacles as they aren’t much more complex than jump obstacles, wallrunning and parkour-ing/mantling will definitely come in v0.3 though!

• Special moves are a thing now: Also pretty straightforward, but loot now fuels the players ability to use specials, which grant temporary invulnerability to damage and also magnetically attract nearby loot! The specials system is something that I look to expand on in the future, and right now it just helps add some medium term gameplay loops and complexity

A pretty picture to feast your eyeballs on:

And last but not least, to answer the question the title poses, I’m almost done with v0.2/the next demo!!

Hopefully will release it by the middle of August, got some interviews I’m doing this week and then should be free and clear to finish the remaining bits, bugfix, and test the build before uploading. Fingers crossed!

With love

Sai