I saw the early screenshots you posted and thought it was a bit too much like Hyper Light Drifter. But, I'm totally wrong - just watched the trailer and you're definitely capturing your own style and mood here.

REALLY excited to see where you go with this!

Glad to see this is back on the block

I don't like the mole boss.

The spider queen and stone giant fit in the game world naturally, the mole's appearance (hat and goggles) is way too comical and ruins the atmosphere, sorry.

You're wrong. He is my 'light relief'

Actually, he looks like that because he's an homage to that mole dude from Little Nemo: The Dream Master on the NES:

But, you're not wrong. He's quite different in tone to a lot of the different characters in the game at the moment. It's not something that I'd really considered to be honest - I'd been getting down with my pixel art (I don't like the way the stone giant looks, I think he looks pretty shoddy), so I was just happy that I think the mole is good pixel work. But, maybe not right for this game? With the head, hat and goggles I can see where you're coming from.

I think I'll maybe keep the hat, because that's already been introduced in the cave levels with the slothmoles etc but it's been tough to get the right balance of character/tone. I think the rest of the head could be less cartoony maybe, but I don't want him to be overtly evil looking (it's not his fault you decided to try and kill him) - maybe more like a star nosed mole or a naked rat mole:

To be honest, I'll not spend too much time on changing him before the alpha - just because I need to get that done and out there! Might have another quick pass at the head.

I like the guy in blue, his concept is very cool.

Cheers Kevin! Was hard to get him working with so few pixels, but he's nearly there.

[Backer Designs]

Ok, wow it's been a long time!

I ended up delaying the alpha, as there was no way I was going to get everything done in time. But I've been very busy with the game since I last posted here. These are some of the highlights!

Backer Designs

Here's a concept that I did for one of the backer designs and here: is the walk cycle.

This was a design provided by Kyron and Carolina, who backed at the enemy design level. It took me a while to translate this across to the style of the game, but I got there eventually:

I also did this backer design concept for a narwhal/piranha:

Bosses

Have got the spider queen fight fully working in the game. It's lacking polish, but that's not a priority pre-alpha (although I'll be adding it in, as and when I find the time). It plays similar to many early boss fights in platformers, in that the boss repeats a variety of patterns, which change depending on how much health is left.

The stone giant isn't quite there yet. It's still missing a couple of attack patterns, and there's one particular bug that I just can't get ironed out (although, granted, I've given it a rest for a week or so because it was just getting depressing).

This is the crappy bug:

This boss fight is a little different, because your sword bounces off stone so you have to let the poor guy destroy just enough of the level to fall off the bottom of the world. Currently it's a little bit easy, but there are some attack patterns missing.

I've just started working on the giant mole boss, which came from a backer design. It's going to play out quite differently from the other boss fights, due to it taking place deep underground. I'll give you an update on it once I've got it working in game.

New Forms

I've changed how and when you can change form:

You may also notice that there's now a mole form available for you:

I think that's plenty to be going on with! Sorry again for the long absence, hope everything is cool with all of you guys and I need to catch up on what's been going on here. Maybe once I've got the mole boss fight finished...

Thanks guys! Aiming for alpha this month :|

Whatever that means these days...

Wow! The mansion is really starting to look amazing!

ooh I've not posted here in a while! Here's a work in progress of the world map tiles:

Making this kinda made me want to make an old Sim City style game...

Hope everything is going good with all of your projects!

Awesome! I'll give it a play over the weekend

Still looking for testers? I've not been on here in a while :|

Just read your latest post on Gamasutra - thanks for writing those, they're super helpful! So glad to see you got signed with Positech, I really like his blog (when I remember to read it) and very much enjoyed Democracy 3.

Looking forward to seeing where you can take this with their support!

Glad to see things are coming along and I love seeing the art process!

The influences update is really cool too

Eklips is awesome! The only downside is that I can't mute the music with the phone mute - which means I can't get away with playing it at work

So awesome to see you guys here! I love the art-style and the animation 

I have purchased Eklips, but only and only because it looks great. Also, it looks like the kind of game suited to a phone.

Hope it's selling ok for you

It actually quite beautiful with that subtle water effect. Really compliments the hand drawn look of it.

How long until the Kickstarter now?

Amazing. Love the way Terry's words tumble!

I can see this scratching that Hotline Miami itch that Hotline Miami 2 somehow didn't scratch.

You can now download the Mable & The Wood demo on Mac!

I'm still trying to work out how to sign it, and there are a number of bugs (not least that it starts with a black screen and you have to tab out of it for an image to appear - there are more). I clearly have no idea what I'm doing on Mac yet...

...or at all.

If you have a PC, there is still reason to download the demo: I've updated the Spider Form!

This is sped up FYI

The main point of negative feedback I got was that the Spider Form is hard to control and feels kind of pointless.

I'd initially intended for it to be a slower, more considered way to travel through the levels - so, now that's just what it is. Press fire to throw the sword into the scenery and then hold fire and press the directions to climb up and down the web and swing from left to right, letting go of fire to return to human form and jump off!

It still needs plenty of tweaking, but it'll get there. I think it took about 3 months to get the fairy form feeling about right, so I don't expect the other forms to be any quicker. I've scheduled for all forms to be in the game for October, so that'll give me time to tweak them all!

Oh damn, I need to back this! Soundtrack tier here I come!

Thanks to everyone who backed and supported the game!


The campaign reached 112% by the end, In The Shadows is now FUNDED!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/6502b/in-the-shadows-1/posts/1580057

Awesome! Congratulations