Patreon Weekly #12 - August 23rd 2019 (Patreon)

Hello Patrons!

I've got two major bits of info for you this week. The first is a new sewers enemy and the second is more progress on Tengu's new level.

Additional Sewers Changes:

Snakes are a new enemy type which inhabits the sewers, and are meant to help enhance variety in the very early stages of the game. Power-wise they are a mix between marsupial rats and gnoll shamans, but have a single twist: they have extremely high evasion and low HP. Landing a solid blow on a snake is likely to kill it, but doing so without a surprise attack will be difficult. Snakes will help teach new players about positioning and will mean the player is fighting gnolls and rats less often on floors 1-3.

Speaking of fighting gnolls and rats less often, I am also experimenting with the composition of enemies on floor 1. Rather than a straight 10 rats, I am considering throwing a small number of snakes and gnolls into the mix, both to increase variety and reduce congestion. I don't intend to make floor 1 harder though, so any changes there will need to be very measured.

Prison Boss Progress:

I've now implemented all the moving parts of Tengu's new level, and just need to place Tengu himself in it before the boss fight is in a working state. Here's a little GIF showing off one of the new mechanics that's tied to the level itself. There will still be mazes, but they're going to be much smaller and more sinister...

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Given that I've almost finished working on the first two regions of the game (minus visual polish on the new enemies), I may try putting the first two regions to a beta somewhat soon as I start work on the later ones. I may even decide to split 0.7.5 into two updates, rather than taking a long time doing all the game's regions in one big update.

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Lastly, I want to mention that progress might be a bit slow next week, as I am going to be busy defending my Masters Thesis! This thesis has ended eating up a lot of my time this year, and a good part of the last one as well. It's been basically  finished for the last two months or so now, but this one last week will be busy for me as I go through the defense process.