Heirlooms, UX improvements & a code focus (Patreon)

Sprint indicator

A key feedback point we received from our playtest was that triggering our sprint for fast backtracking was very unpredictable. In order to resolve this, we have added an extra indicator inside of our direction indicator ring underneath the player, that visualizes how long is left until you start sprinting again.

UI reshuffle

In previous screenshots, we always had our health, shield and sprinting indicators in the top left of the screen. Then you also had to look at the center of the screen for your player itself, and the bottom of the screen for your cooldowns. This meant you constantly had to look around, which detracted from an immersive experience. To resolve this, we have moved our top-left GUI to the bottom center, so it's right next to our cooldowns, so you don't have to dart around as much on the screen anymore.

More Heirlooms

As we were still missing a station to change your UI, we implemented this now as well, along with 2 extra heirlooms (more are on the way as well). The heirlooms will be an item that you can equip before you start a run, that can greatly influence how the run goes. Some sample heirlooms are our Porcelain Bull (deal 3x damage, take 3x damage), or the Pathfinder's Map (more movement speed + unlock the entire minimap from the start of the run).

Progress Grab Bag

Some extra, smaller improvements we added over the past week:

- We updated the sprites for the bestiary, library, heirloom rack, and weapon rack (that lost one currently isn't implemented yet)

- You can now try out items you've previously discovered in the homebase through the treasury

- We started working on our follower system, which doubles as a score system after each run

What's Next

Yesterday we came to a pretty radical insight regarding our development process. One thing we originally wanted to do different for Songs of Everjade compared to Forge Industry was the way we worked as a team, putting more of an emphasis early on in development on visuals, and not just pumping out different mechanics.

This would in turn allow us to create better devlogs, do better marketing, and get more wishlists. The reality is however, that this was very much hampering the progress we were making as a team, as suddenly programmers had to become artists. Whilst making a sprite here and there is fun, we were spending upwards of 2 weeks on our warrior for example, costing us an immense amount of code that could be done, as well as not letting our programmers do what they like doing.

In the end, whilst visual-first development can help with marketing, if the team isn't enjoying what they are doing anymore, it's not sustainable. That's why Thomas and William, our 2 programmers, will be solely focusing on code these next 2 weeks, and I will be spending a lot of time with getting everything in terms of art outsourced (did you check our video about the process btw).

So, whilst the next update most likely won't be as visual, I hope I will be able to showcase some cool new mechanics, such as roomgen 2.0, followers, unlockables/achievements and better game feel.