2016/10/22

Testing and improving world 4

I've spend almost the entire afternoon working on the game. Sadly, most of these things you'll never see because I decided to reverse those changes. My first idea was to make levels prettier for screenshots by adding fake platforms in front of the main ground mass. It did look nice, but as I feared, it was very much confusing and distracting for players. After checking out some NES and Genesis classics on Youtube, I've decided to keep the "less pretty" but more practical layout.


Afterwards, I started drawing tiles and a background for world 5 and even made 70% of an initial level... but decided to scrap that too because the idea I had didn't really play well with mechanics and rules I set for the game. Don't worry, I do have another idea, but for another day.

Then I decided to add even more support for x-input gamepads, by adding the option to set your own preferred threshold for the analogue joystick. So far I've been using 50%, which means you had to press it with your thumb half-way to the side in order for command to be registered. Now you can set it in 5 steps from 40% to 80% with default value set to 50% as before.

I've also started preparing space for Legend, the new feature that will be an encyclopedia of sorts for the game world, creatures, recipes... Achievements will also fit here nicely, so I moved them from the main menu.

What else? I've created announcement sounds for the 4th world and implemented them, added an additional coin to the same world so there's total of 100 gold coins inside and around the village, and... I've started testing a new font.

I think that's it for today.

2016/10/19

Goblins and Coins has been Greenlit!

Goblins and Coins has been Greenlit yesterday. This means that the game will appear on Steam once it's finished and ready. Of course, if you have already supported it via Itch.io you'll get your steam activation key once this happens.

2016/10/17

Introducing: Legend

It might be the time to unveil another feature that is not yet implemented, but will be before the release, and that's Legend.

It's a scroll of sorts containing information about the creatures you meet in the world, but also stories and important facts about the world itself, dangers you might encounter and so on.

These will be unlocked as you encounter them, so no reading ahead and cheating.

I've also decided on bonus items you can pick up besides the coins and it's recipes. Real cooking recipes that will actually enable you to follow them and make a tasty meal in your own home, outside of the game.

My idea is to have a piece of paper in each world that Goblin can find and pick up, and that will unlock a recipe in the Legend. Bean soup will be available from the start, but I want to include some traditional meals from Balkan region which aren't that much known across the world.

2016/10/11

Now on Greenlight

Wanna see Goblins and Coins on Steam soon? Visit the Greenlight page and vote for it right now, then tell your friends about it and have them vote too.

World 4 is almost done, I believe I'll finish it during this week. That leaves world 5 and some testing afterwards, improving the graphics where possible and... launch.

Thank you for all the support!

2016/09/27

Working on the 4th world

I've started working on the world 4 the other day. It's gonna be called Sleepy Village (not so sleepy, as you'll be able to see) and it will be split into three zones; there will be transition from swamp to forest surrounding the village, then meadows and fields and gardens, and only in the end, the village itself. After having all those hard jumps in world 3, we're going back to "action" sequences with lightweight environment puzzles, as can be seen in this video showing off the brand new level 4-1:


I've already finished level 4-2 (available in the build 0.1.2.0) and it offers the player to solve some problems in order to continue further along the path, but it's still pretty much linear and action-oriented. Now, after the forest, goblin will enter the fields and that will introduce even more traps and enemies... That I have to make first. Here's what farmers will look like (from draft on paper to working enemy in game):

Farmer - from draft to working enemy

Anyway, world 4 is planned to have the most variety in appearance of its levels, and so far it looks I'm gonna achieve that.

2016/09/22

Alpha!

I've declared the latest build alpha. This comes after a year of development and 36 pre-alpha releases. The game is definitely stable enough, there's 60% of planned content already and all the reported bugs have been fixed. Next - improvements, more content (2 worlds left), testing, more improvements, more testing...