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[Benjamming]

Some exciting news!

We'll be part of the Indie Megabooth at PAX East!

It'll be a little minibooth, but we're excited about meeting international press - something we don't get to do much in South Africa.

[CorgiCommander]

The art direction and environment manipulation caught my attention. Definitely caught my attention. Wish I could make it to PAX East to try it out

[Benjamming]

Thanks @CorgiCommander! <3

Maybe some other event some day!

Here's how Deforming platforms interact with reset beams and the character:

[Benjamming]

Our big American trip recap! Two of us have been in the US for 3 weeks doing cool stuff.

We both did Train jam.

Cukia worked on a game about sexting:



I (ben) made a sorta 2D-Proteus-in-space game:



Then we went to GDC.

We had a bunch of emails and Cukia talked about the tech in the game at Tech Toolbox.



Then we went to show the game at PAX East!



Players loved the game, and hopefully we'll get some nice press coverage out of it! Will update here when that happens!

Now we're stuck in Boston because of a blizzard rolling in

[Benjamming]

Glixel, from the creators of Rolling Stone, featured us as 'One of the coolest games at PAX East'!

That's pretty crazy when you realise the list is only 10 games and includes Tumbleseed, Pyre, Nidhogg 2, Strafe and Divinity: Original Sin 2 - we're pretty dazzled by our inclusion!

"it's a satisfying concept with the ssame addictive potential for iterative you find in other puzzlers like Portal or World of Goo" -- high praise!

[Benjamming]

We're slowing getting back into it!

Gamasutra wrote about the game at PAX East, saying " I can safely describe its mature form as an impressively thoughtful aesthetic delight"

Attack of the Fanboy enjoyed it too: "Semblance has a lot of promise as a 2D puzzle-platformer"

All this press from PAX East has been so great! Been really motivating, and feels like we might be able to ship and sell more than 100 copies now

Also, we're playing around with a new laser element - it's fun!

[nu_muso]

I think it's safe to say that you were always going to sell more than a hundred copies guys This is quality stuff you're doing, so the response is appropriate. Congratulations.

[Benjamming]

@nu_muso haha thanks for your vote of confidence! With so many games coming out, it's hard to hope for much! We'll just try our best to get the game out there

[Benjamming]

Hey all!

Here's some more cool laser / wall jumping interactions we've been working on!



Plus, we're figuring out the visual direction of the lasers:



Also been iterating through some new feedback/particles for the dash effect:



Final thing is we've been thinking of contextualising the dash itself as something a little friend helps you do (because a level element stops you dashing). So here are some concepts for the little friend outside of the character, usually they will be combined with Squish, the character.

[Tuba]

Nice concept, game looks very cool. Following this!

[Koicrow]

I'm in love with the art style for this game. You guys are doing an incredible job so far. I can't wait to play and experience this game for myself!

[Benjamming]

@Tuba Thanks so much!

@Panzram Glad you love the art style - we've iterated through soooo many different styles to get to this one

[Benjamming]

We're in the process of learning shader magic, so we're excited. Shaders are very much blood magic until you start learning them .

Here's a little shader the programmer, Cukia, has been working on to transition from texture to texture. Mostly to give the feeling of the world going from 'hard' back to 'soft', which is part of the narrative motivation of the game. We'll add other stuff to emphasize this effect, but this first pass effect is cool, and Cukia will be writing a blog up on it soon.

Here's a close up of the effect:

[ashtonmorris]

I really like your style, sorry I missed you at GDC. ^__^

It has good sound as well! I didn't see a press page on your site, who is doing the audio?

[Benjamming]

@ashtonmorris Thanks Ashton! ^_^ Sorry we missed you too!

Yeah we need to update our press page, but you can get to it from the website - just look for the press link!

Our friends doing the audio are Pressure Cooker Studios

[Benjamming]

Update 12

We had another little trip - this time to Europe for Nordic Game Jam and A MAZE. / Berlin. We (Ben) spoke at both events about South African and African games!



We also showed the game at the Open Screens there! (We couldn't submit to the festival because of conflicts of interest, unfortunately!) During the playtest, we got both Florian Vlietmann and Adriaan de Jongh to play the game - was great to hear their feedback and what they enjoyed. Here's an awkward photo of Florian playing:



We also finished a first pass on puzzles of world 1 - the game is coming together slowly it feels! . There's a nice video of a dressed puzzle here.

[nu_muso]

That puzzle was freakin' awesome! Happy to see you guys continually adding to this already awesome game

[Benjamming]

Even though the two original team members live in the same city (Johannesburg), we work remotely. Which can be slow! For this reason, and many others, we're happy to announce that we've been selected to be stuck in a room in the Swedish woods for 2 months.

We're going to Stugan, yay!

[Benjamming]

Update 13

Hey everyone! Been a while since we actually spoke about development! We kinda started using this devlog just for posting random marketing shit, so we kinda stopped posting here for a while, because it was gross. We want to be better, and use it as a proper devlog, though! We're doing a lot of work at Stugan, and here's where we are right now in the game, and what we still want to do.

Art Direction
We decided on color palettes and settings for each of our worlds. They break up the gameplay a bit, introducing a different setting, and also more mechanics. Here is the concept pieces for each world (we have first pass dressing on all of the first 3 worlds:

World 1



World 2



World 3



Mechanics

We've been making great progress on the mechanics of the game! We figured out a while back how we want to break down the mechanics by world, and right now we've got a pretty good build of the first world we're playtesting. Here's some of the mechanics in there:

Basic deforming


Wall jumping


"Lasers"


Non-dash areas



Narrative
We've worked a little on the narrative too. The intro is pretty much nailed down, just need to make it! Started working on the feedback on progression through each world, based on the collection of each collectble in the world. The feedback will also feed into the narrative of 'healing the world':




Next week
Things we'll work on:
- Getting world 2 play testable
- Implementing the world progression feedback fully in world 1 (?)
- Finalising the narrative conclusion and body
- Prototype/test an alternative way to reset platforms

Thanks friends, hope to be better with this! <3

PS: As a nice aside, we were at E3 and got some cool press from IGN, Gamespot, Pixels, Engadget, and Game Informer. Who knows what that actually means - maybe they'll review it at launch, and people will maybe buy it then? Maybe.

[Benjamming]

Update 13

Mostly worked this week on making world 2 playable! It's looking pretty good visually! The core mechanic of this world probably needs a bit more tweaking to not be so annoying though.



We're also getting feedback about doing some sort of color grading in the game to make the contrast higher. But uhhhh... we may have gotten distracted

On Twitter you can see some of the effects we've been working on to polish up the game for a new trailer we're working towards. Plus, some of the new music for the game!