I've still been working on this sporadically, just haven't really felt like devlogging
here's a quick report, though:
- crows, mummies, sandsharks, and armadillos are fully in (including AI and spawn patterns, I mean). I'm really happy with how the sandsharks turned out, though they're really hard to kill. I also added a desert version of the basic outlaws because The Dunes needed a weaker enemy type.

v that's an armadillo rolling by.

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- started adding skins so 4 people can play as the same character more easily. There will be at least 4 for each character and maybe more if I feel like it (possible unlocks for various feats). Here are a few of them:
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- added a couple of sounds to stuff in The Cracks
I'm pretty bad at it, though, so I might see if JMickle wants to make some, or something
I've been thinking about relatively easy (not because I'm lazy so much as because I want this game
finished before September) ways to add bigger arcs to the overall design. Right now it's just kind of shallow, there's little or no sense of progression anywhere.
As such, I've decided that I definitely want to do the after-death enemy possession thing because that way, you can unlock enemies you've killed enough of or possessed frequently enougg for use in Duel mode. Although pretty much all of them would be useless against a sheriff, it could be fun pitting them against each other.
I'm also considering replacing the current level-select with a sort of map exploration metaphor. There would still be the three main levels, but each of them would have a few different sections. You would start at the edges of the level, where you only fight the weakest of the level's enemies. Doing well on this would unlock the next section further in, where there are more enemies, and harder ones. Finally you would get to the deepest part of the level, where you could fight any kind of enemy that level has, including the level's boss(es). This way I could also add cool, specific things like camps where you only fight large numbers of a specific type of enemy, or a place where there are obnoxious numbers of cacti, or a boss rush dungeon. Each of them could have its own high scores and keep track of kills and such. I'll post some screens of the map later.
I have been working on this for too long