October 2023 Devblog
Hello everyone, and welcome to the October 2023 update blog for Advent of the Reaper! And coincidentally — Happy Halloween! Spooky!
Shows! Shows! Shows!
I wanted to start with the biggest and most exciting update — we had our first public show with the demo over the weekend at the HashtagCon Indie Series! Learn more about how it went in The Indie Series: First Steps with Hashtagcon.
Next up, more show updates. Unfortunately, we did not make it into Super MAGfest 2024 - but we’re taking that in stride! We heard that they had a ton of entries, so we’ll keep up the good work and try again next year! On the flip side, we did get into another show happening in just a couple weeks — the M+DEV conference! Hopefully we’ll have some pictures to share from that in November’s blog!
We’ll be on the lookout for more shows to have Advent demoed at in the months to come - if you know of an East Coast or Midwest conference/event that Advent could have a place in, please get in touch!
GAME CONTENT UPDATES
You might remember this graphic that I posted last month along with our gameplay submission videos…
…Unfortunately, we fell well short of these goals. Silver lining of not making it into MAGfest is that we now have a little more breathing room as we move forward. Some of these objectives were achieved, but most were only partially met if at all. I’m hopeful that we can finish up most of the October goals in November, but as we move into the holiday season, we’ll just have to accept that sometimes life happens. To run down the list:
Opening scene - We finished the necessary character designs, some of the sprites, and the dialogue file for the scene, but we didn’t finish the requisite map tiles or get it into the game build at all.
New playable Reaper chapter - we completed virtually all of the assets required to get this chapter put into the game, but there just wasn’t enough time to implement it in the build.
Updated VN Portraits with multiple expressions - this was a total success and was featured during the live demo event!
Fully wired combat math - completed! No more magic numbers!
Combat Skills / SP System - Unfortunately, we didn’t even start this.
Ascend System - The Ascend System is partially implemented, and receiving the active attention of our programmer! I fully expect this to be considered complete next month.
Game Over Screen - Nope, not in yet.
Music - No real updates here. We do have an additional track for the game’s VN scenes (give it a listen), but it wasn’t put into the build yet.
SFX - We put in a couple awesome new SFX for the Player/Enemy turn announcements, but combat in particular needs a lot of attention in the future.
ART UPDATE HIGHLIGHT - CHARACTER DESIGNS
We have quite a few things to share on this front! We had a number of new character designs completed this past month - first up is the Archreaper character, Cyrus. Cyrus will be introduced in the game’s opening Visual Novel cutscene. He is a dark elf, the brooding lord of the Obsidian Sanctum. Behold:
Next up, and also from the opening scene, we have Elira’s Summon Outfit. This is the ceremonial garb she is wearing when she is first summoned to the world as a Reaper! Take a peek:
Finally for character designs, we have a pair of human characters. On the left we have Natalia, a mysterious knight that serves as the boss for the upcoming Reaper Chapter. On the right we have Old Man Rudy! Actually, that’s just what I call him. Technically, his birth name is NPC Old Man Villager 1. Not quite as catchy, I know. Check them out!
A huge shout out to our character designer, SleepyStar! You can check out her other work here!
We have quite a bit of fresh pixel art to share as well, but we post a lot of that on our social media as our weekly updates, so be sure to check out the game there as well!
That’s going to wrap up things for this blog post. Please look forward to the next one!