What Am I Working On Now?

Hey, there! So, like I said, I wanted to post a bit talking about what I've been working on recently. After some thought, I decided to postpone my development of Valchion, and begin something new - something smaller. That new game is called Gearend, and has been in development for a few months now. It's not super huge, but at the same time, it's pretty far along.

Gearend will be a 2D Metroid-vania, where you explore the game world acquiring new parts that allow you to explore further. You play a robot named SO-191 (if I recall correctly), a robot who awakens in an abandoned robotics facility. You're searching for information about the rest of your "family" - other robots of your model. To do this, you happen upon a small robotics "outpost" where friendly robots live, and you're directed to the village Sensor to ask for help. What's a Sensor? Well, that is where your adventure begins...

It's going along pretty great so far! I've been making it in the Blender Game Engine, as usual. I've got quite a few of the mechanics implemented. There are different kinds of weapons currently, including a new one that I implemented recently that you have to charge to actually use. I plan to have the game be a little more "strategic" than most Metroid-like games, as you have an energy gauge that goes down when you use projectile attacks. This means that you have to take care of your positioning and how you approach enemies, since you can't just spam attacks, or else you'll end up with no recourse other than running. Although I also plan to have non-weapon parts, like body parts that give you passive abilities or resistances, or leg parts that afford you better movement possibilities. I also plan for at least a couple of arm parts that doesn't directly attack, but rather are support weapons.

I'm aiming for it to be somewhat long (i.e. a couple of hours to play) and to release for a comparable price when it's finished (i.e. a few bucks). It won't be too long, unlike my plans for Valchion were. I want to just work on making it a fun game to explore and experience, and think less overall about the technical aspects. Already, my code base is far, far better than the base that I worked with for Valchion, which is great. I plan to go back to Valchion at some point in the future, and when I do, I feel like I'll have picked up enough skills and abilities to really be able to make it much more efficiently, both from the perspective of how it runs, as well as the perspective of how easy it is for me to make it. Anyway, that's the plan for this game. Thanks for reading!~

Oh, and I've got a lot of devlog videos over at my YouTube channel about Gearend. Check 'em out!