Usually when I see devs say "big news", it means they found a publisher. I'll ask anyway: do you still have plans for a Kickstarter? I remember you mentioned that was a possibility last year

I like to think we have bigger news than that. Kickstarter may still happen.

[UPDATE - New animations + big news coming soon!]

UPDATE - New animations + big news coming soon!

Very big news coming soon. To prepare we are going to start posting a bit more often! Here are some of the gifs we posted on our devlog this week.

(Hollowed Knight enemy that appears in Aldwynn, these are still WIP)


This is what the first part of our Aldwynn level looked like a while ago. This is essentially a skeleton of the area showing what the player can collide with. Not really related, just thought it'd be neat to show it once in comparison to the real thing when it's revelead.



^^^ Us messing with one of the scenes in our trailer.

[Happy holidays everyone!]

Happy holidays everyone!

Friend of ours drew this up real quick.

http://kaisinel.tumblr.com/ She has been making our poster so I wanted to give her a quick shout out.

UPDATE - HEALING

Last week we posted our healing animation on twitter and felt it was important to post it here.
In Death's Gambit you have a set amount of healing items that are regenerated at save points. You start with a few maximum uses and gain more later on.

This enemy knight looks amazing, I especially love the sword slash anim!

The endurance bar seems nice in your description and screenshot, but isn't the idea of limiting the player capacity to move (dodging/jumping) a bit frustrating in a game where the avatar seems to be able to move so smoothly?

Very true and this design is not final. If we see that testers complain about it feeling restrictive then we will definitely change it/remove it. Dodging and blocking need some restrictions though else the game becomes very simple and mindless. Currently attacking feels the most restrictive and players sometimes forget to look at their endurance bar while attacking which is not good.

[UPDATE - ENDURANCE]

UPDATE - ENDURANCE

In Death's Gambit, management of your green "endurance" meter is key to surviving enemy encounters. Attacking, blocking, and dodging all take up endurance.

We want our combat to feel fair, but also require a lot of moment to moment decision making:

• Dodging takes up the most endurance.
• Blocking takes up endurance equivalent to how much damage the attack would deal.
• While blocking, if an attack consumes more endurance than you have left, you take the remaining damage and are momentarily stunned.
• You can increase the amount of endurance you have via gear and leveling up.
• The endurance meter takes about half a second to regenerate. If you recently dodge-roll, it takes 1.5 seconds.
• If you have more than 1 endurance, you can block/dodge/attack and it will consume endurance back to 0.
• Jumps take a small amount of endurance, but you can still jump even at 0 endurance.

This is all subject to change, but we feel this system allows for very interesting combat. So far it seems that putting the player in situations where he can't escape lead to the most rewarding combat scenarios. Kiting bosses or enemies probably won't be a particularly viable strategy in Death's Gambit.

This is my favourite GM:S project up to date! It's freaking amazing, the art, the gameplay, everything just looks fantastic!

Wow thanks that means a lot! Can't wait to show more! XD

[UPDATE - TRAILER IN PROGRESS]

UPDATE - TRAILER IN PROGRESS

Doing a quick update to show that we are alive. We are not sure if we will be doing a Kickstarter anymore as we might be able to survive without it.
We will post here once we decide.

There is a looooot of new stuff that we have yet to show! It is hard to hold it all in for a big reveal so here is one of the scenes in our trailer.

This game looks amazing!

I hope you'll be able to collect enough funds to continue developing it, as it already feels like a good "dracula-x" like game set in a dark fantasy universe

Thanks! Yeah Castlevania style games are definitely a big influence. We are definitely going for something different with the combat and storytelling though.

[These are all ABILITIES. The player can use these outside of the regular slash attacks. Abilities so far we think will be bought off merchants, drop off enemies, and just found scattered in the world.]

Whoa thanks for the awesome responses. Wait till you guys see the rest XD.

@Atavismus I have never played Turrican though it seems great! Most of our inspirations come from modern games.

Just because the uppercut one was WIP, here is a better version.


These are all ABILITIES. The player can use these outside of the regular slash attacks. Abilities so far we think will be bought off merchants, drop off enemies, and just found scattered in the world.

a small fast crop and move edit that needs more editing. bend the legs before/while impact a bit, so the animation gets more weight.

Thanks I do agree about the legs. I'll try it get back to you on how it looks.

We are slowly making our animations better and better.

Forgot to post this video here:



It is Death's Gambit related XD but I cant say how else that would spoil the meaning later on.

[UPDATE - BREAKING THE SILENCE]

UPDATE - BREAKING THE SILENCE

I know it’s been a while, but we want to make sure we surprise you guys with the release of our Kickstarter trailer. We haven’t mentioned a date yet, but this is due to the nebulous nature of funding and where it comes from. Next month we’ll either announce the date or how we’re proceeding. Enough about that. Lets talk about abilities! As you can see, animations in Death’s Gambit have been getting a lot of love

SHIELD BREAK

After a short charge-up time, you land a powerful uppercut that can disarm shields and stun an enemy for 3 seconds. This gives melee purists a fighting chance against shielded enemies. Timing becomes crucial with the long cast time, but increasing your haste stat during level up will let you cast faster. This ability can only be used with a sword equipped, and is limited to 3 uses before you must recharge at a save point.

ARCANE BLAST

A long cast AOE explosion that deals high damage to everyone around the player. This ability doesn’t have a required weapon but does take up an ability slot.

BLOCK?

Our current block, animation pending change. Other than rolling around to dodge attacks, you will also be able to block. This does not take an equipment slot, so you don’t have to choose between a weapon or a shield. When hit, your endurance will take part of the damage for you. If the damage is too high then your character will be staggered and take damage.

Whats been going on with the streams and the boss challenges?
In order to save our really awesome shots for our final trailer, we want to stop revealing too much of our work on stream. If you catch our streams, it won’t be gameplay, but more art/coding techniques. We hope to go back to streaming much more after the funding process has been worked out. We expect that to be during January. As for the boss tests, we have decided to stop these for the time being =(. Simply put, we can’t show more gameplay until we reveal the trailer. This does not mean they will not return, we personally found this to be a really fun way to interact with our fans and are looking forward to bringing it back.

What is White Rabbit up to these days?
We are working hard on our kickstarter trailer! Next month we should be able to announce the date. Stay tuned!

[These are all ABILITIES. The player can use these outside of the regular slash attacks. Abilities so far we think will be bought off merchants, drop off enemies, and just found scattered in the world.]

It's not really my kind of game but...
So gorgeous art and animations...
I want to play it! :D
Turrican meets Shadow of Colossus?! :O

Whoa thanks for the awesome responses. Wait till you guys see the rest XD.

@Atavismus I have never played Turrican though it seems great! Most of our inspirations come from modern games.

Just because the uppercut one was WIP, here is a better version.


These are all ABILITIES. The player can use these outside of the regular slash attacks. Abilities so far we think will be bought off merchants, drop off enemies, and just found scattered in the world.

New Animations! We've made a lot of progress on animations for monsters ect. in our trailer. Check them out!







And yes I still need to make that cape physics post soon!

I adore the fact that the majority of screens here are moving images.

Haha, Gifs >>>>> pictures.

SPEAKING OF WHICH!
We need feedback on our new animations XD


note: Gif was recorded on a potato computer so it runs slower than usual

Let me know what you guys think. We like the jump but still aren't sure about the run.

Also, I'm in love with the cape physics you have going on in-game.  Would you mind elaborating a little on how you made that?

Thanks! It's taken a lot of weird ideas to pull off. A lot of people have been asking for this haha. I'll make a post soon detailing it.

[UPDATE - BLIGHTLANDS REVEAL]

UPDATE - BLIGHTLANDS REVEAL

The Blightlands is Death's Gambit's Hub Level. From here you can access the early game areas. It will have tons of secrets to find! Where will it lead?

The art style of this game is amazing, but the "feeling" it conveys is even more so. The camera shake in the riding animation provide a real sense of speed, roughness and make the ground beneath feel solid and hard. In fact, all of your animations appear to interact with the environment in a consistent and believable way, which is quite a feat and not easy to get right. It really makes a huge difference in building the mental image of your games world in the players mind.

Thanks for the awesome compliments! Yeah we definitely care about the small details. We have super high expectations for ourselves >_< so it's hard not to be a perfectionist about these things.

Big fan of the art style of this game and the souls flying out of dead creatures is great. Mainly wanted to say how beautiful that book animation is, stunning.

Collectibles have to feel awesome!

I adore the fact that the majority of screens here are moving images.

Haha, Gifs >>>>> pictures.

SPEAKING OF WHICH!
We need feedback on our new animations XD


note: Gif was recorded on a potato computer so it runs slower than usual

Let me know what you guys think. We like the jump but still aren't sure about the run.

[For reference, this is what the ice area used to look like XD]

Woah this is gorgeous. I'm definitely keeping an eye on this.

Thanks! We had never done pixel art so getting it to where it is has definitely been an evolutionary process.

Really?  I'm surprised; this looks absolutely gorgeous!

It took a team effort to research how to get to the current style.

For reference, this is what the ice area used to look like XD


Also here are old character revisions:


Death's Gambit has changed A LOT haha.

Wow I love how this game looks/plays it seems really smooth. I'm a huge metroidvania fan so I'm excited to see how this game develops.

The big armored enemy looks awesome. I'd love to see what you plan on doing for your bosses.

Also I'm interested in seeing how your shield system plays out. For the game I'm currently working on we used to have a shield exactly like that(it could be aimed directional) Ultimately we scrapped the directional shield idea but I think it works well with your game.

Woah this is gorgeous. I'm definitely keeping an eye on this.

Thanks! We had never done pixel art so getting it to where it is has definitely been an evolutionary process.