3. We are thinking maybe there is a guard break ability or the player simply has to use some other tool to defeat these enemies.

Sounds like you could just complete the circle if you also put in a parry system.  And then you can scare everyone by putting in a sword called the Monestary scimitar.  I dare ya.

Haha. Well you can currently slash bullets back at enemies which is fun. It doesn't really look very satisfying yet else I would post a gif about it. I sorta want something like parrying in the game except most of the enemies have attacks that aren't melee based. We would have to design at least 60% of the enemies with parry in mind, and that kills a lot of the crazy cool we want to do. We hope bad ass player abilities will make up for not having parry =X

We still might add parry, we'll have to see how the game evolves.

The animations look incredible!

Thanks! And we are still in the process of improving our art too. I can't wait to post some of the new stuff =D.

Been following you guys for a while. Just commenting here to say I love your game =D. I've been craving for a metroid + darksouls game for a long time.

I have a lot of fighting game experience so it may not be relevant, but I'll use that as my guide:

1. Generally yes. Sometimes leave you further away though.
2. It depends.  Some attacks are high risk high reward, some are low risk low reward.  The former should stagger.
3. Uh, typo?  I'm going to assume you meant player with enemies.  It should bounce off or break the enemy guard, depending on the situation.  The former puts your character at a disadvantage.
4. Generally, ranged attacks take more time to setup and/or to reach the enemy.  They may stagger less so be unsafe to use up close.  If you look at Soul Calibur 2's Ivy, she's got good keep out attacks, but isn't that great up close.  I'm not sure if that applies to your game.
5. In fighting game terms, I don't think there's an analogy to this.

1. It seems we are going with what you mentioned. Thing is, enemies in our game do not collide with the player. We'll the shielded enemies do. But most others don't. If the player moves a lot while he attacks he just goes through the enemy and it gets really annoying. We've opted for making attacks stop translating the character once it reaches an enemy. It currently feels the best, but this could change.

2. So far we've opted with your same solution here as well. Enemies will stagger when melee hit. I hope it doesn't break the balance of the game. It's also going to be hard art-wise making stagger look satisfying.

3. We are thinking maybe there is a guard break ability or the player simply has to use some other tool to defeat these enemies.

4. So far it looks like we are going to make melee have the advantage in terms of damage output and more stagger opportunities. It does put you in very dangerous situations. So in that sense, it's high-risk/high-reward vs ranged weapons.

somn, your melee thingy gif isn't working any more. At least on my side. Bandwidth issues?

Hmm I wonder whats causing that. It's working on my end =(

Not a big update, we have been working on melee attacks.



This is a three part slash combo that were testing out for our blade melee weapons. We currently trying to answer the following questions with out prototype.

• Should melee attacks push the character forward?
• Should enemies "stagger" or be "mini-stunned" when they take a melee hit?
• How does a character with only a sword deal with shielded enemies? Does it even matter?
• What makes the melee weapons better than the ranged weapons?
• Should melee attacks affect the endurance meter?

Also I decided to combine all the notes for Death's Gambit. It all ended up being 61 pages. The "boss ideas" doc alone is 17 pages! Most of the docs are just messy and are entirely comprised of bullet points with random ideas for bosses/story/systems.

What do you mean when you say "Changing forums"?  

Oh Woops! We aren't moving away from tigsource hahaha. I meant to say that our website has a small lefora forum which some people complained about so I wanted to mention that we care moving over to something different.

[UPDATE - COMBAT AND ART EVOLUTION]

UPDATE - COMBAT AND ART EVOLUTION

NPC Reveal for Death’s Gambit! Here is a timelapse video!


Ability prototype!(character animation and effects are temp)

We have been working on combat!
In the initial design of the game, the player only had guns and that was the extent of it. After finishing our vertical slice in June, we realized that to make the combat satisfying and complex, we needed to add more interesting ways to fight. We prototyped all kinds of stuff from shields to hookshots. Not everything worked but the stuff that did work made the combat much better. We are working on melee weapons, abilities, and items. After adding a few prototype abilities/items, we realized that this quickly made the combat 20x more awesome. Every second of combat became a decision-making point.

• You currently can hold 2 weapons, 3 abilities, and 1 item.
• Some abilities can only be used with certain weapons.
• Abilities will have a set amount of “uses,” and once they are depleted, they can only be regained at a save point.
• Many equipment items have effects that make you play the game differently.

We have also been working on the art style!
Our art style is still being iterated upon. Most of the Obsidian Valley needs to be revamped, and the character animations we implemented for the Indiecade build need to be reworked. We have been experimenting with lighting and restyling our assets to make it look modern rather than retro. It’s getting there! We’ll make a post dedicated to how our art style has evolved soon.

P.S. Our website has a lefore forum which people have complained about so we will be moving to something better soon =D We’ll make a post about it when we do.

FAQ request: Were you inspired by Shadow of the Colossus?

As Christian posted. Initially no, but this specific encounter with the giant is very inspired by SotC and Attack on Titan. Were making the climbing sequences a bit more important than they were in the initial idea for the game.

[UPDATE - KOTAKU ARTICLE POSTMORTEM]

UPDATE - KOTAKU ARTICLE POSTMORTEM

“...from her ashes, we will be reborn.”

This week we ended up on Kotaku

Notes

• We have no idea how we landed the article. We did not even get contacted haha.
• We have spent most our time looking for a new artist and dealing with the emails
• The article garnered 40k+ views, our website got about 6k views in 2 days
• Alex has been arting up scenes for the kickstarter trailer
• Jean has been preparing for the push to improve the demo we have. Added some cool new items.

Prototyped two new items

Abyssal Ghost - (Rare Consumable) When used to create a controllable ghost that can scout the areas ahead of you. Lasts 15 seconds.
Intent: Our levels are very dangerous with traps and monsters that lurk in corners. This rare item can allow players to see what is ahead.

Ravager Ring - (Accessory slot, purchasable) Increases all stats by 10. If killed while equipped this item will be destroyed.
Intent: We want the items that increase stakes and make death carry weight. This is an early-game item that is very powerful. To be used in dire situations. A useful item during speed-runs as well.

There's no random level generation then I'm assuming?

Nope! There might be some very specific things that are randomly generated but we don't plan on making the levels generate randomly.

[UPDATE - SHIELDED ENEMIES]

UPDATE - SHIELDED ENEMIES

So shielded enemies are a success. Our combat system... not quite there yet. I've been working on improving the combat system. Specifically melee weapons and abilities.

After finishing our indiecade demo we felt the combat system was not up to par with out standards, the player only had two weapon slots and an item button.  The character movement also felt clunky, so we're taking steps to improve this. Our current combat “toolkit” will include two weapon equipment slots, 3 ability buttons, 1 item button, and 1 heal button. Each weapon will also have weird side-abilities as well.

Here's a couple of gifs using two different ranged weapons.

Ranged weapon – Energy Lance - Rapid fire. Can be charged for a poweful blast.



Ranged Weapon – Graviton - Bullets come back towards you. Charge up for a powerful blast.




Were pretty happy with how the shaman enemy turned out, he's got three attacks that are easy to dodge but the idea is that he will fight you along-side other enemies.

NEW FAQ's
Will there be melee weapons?
Yes, we are currently prototyping melee weapons.
How do you explore the world?
The game is non-linear. Most new areas are accessed via defeating bosses. There are always many routes to take. If you are having trouble with a specific area then you can always do something else.

[UPDATE - REVEAL POSTMORTEM]

UPDATE - REVEAL POSTMORTEM

Hey guys first update! Thanks everyone, the support has been incredible to say the least. We received so many emails we lost count. We've been incredibly busy but we still have found some time to get some work in.



Highlights the last couple of days:

• 
  
  
• Sent about 40-50 emails
• Worked on protyping melee combat
• Officially made the company "White Rabbit"
• Worked on two kickstarter trailer shots
• 
  
  
• Cried tears of joy and did not sleep

REVEAL POST MORTEM
We did not expect this big of a reaction. We did well in the fact that we had all social media sites covered, press kit, contact info ect. Being active on twitter has also been extremely beneficial for us! I could not reccomend it more to people trying to spread the word out. Now to the mistakes. We didn't post the facebook page due to not thinking the game was ready yet, so that was a big mistake. We did make another mistake on the livestream part. I expected to be able to stream all week but so turns out the reaction was so big we ended up being too busy to stream! I guess that's a good problem to have.

What's the next update?
Next post we'll be showing off this enemy in action and two ranged weapons.



NEW FAQ's
How long have you been developing this game?
Both of us started full time May. The prototype for the game was made in a couple of weeks in December 2012 but nothing came of it back then. We both slowly worked on this since February 2014.
Is Death the main character? Who is the protagonist?
The main character becomes the agent of death during the game's story. Death is the most important secondary character but he is not the protagonist.

Thanks for the compliments! We are really shocked by the positive response and will keep the updates coming as we develop the game. This is a game the we love working on so much it's hard to even sleep to stop developing it XD. I think a lot of your questions will be answered as we show off more of the game in the coming weeks.

Also thanks for the criticism on the art, we are taking notes. We were initially worried about showing it off, we agree the art has ways to go. It will definitely be improving.

[Become the agent of death, and rid this world of immortals.]

Become the agent of death, and rid this world of immortals.

WEBSITE|LIVESTREAM|DEVLOG|TWITTER|FACEBOOK

Hey just posting another reply since we just announced our release date. Deaths's Gambit releases August 14th on PS4 and Steam!

WEBSITE|LIVESTREAM|DEVLOG|TWITTER|FACEBOOK

Hey Folks! This is Jean Canellas and I am one of the people working on Death's Gambit. I am a programmer and designer on the project. The team is very excited to start showing off progress as this is a game we wish existed but didn't exist. This is a game that had been in our minds for years ever since we first played the original Demon Souls. There are so many awesome unique features I want to talk about but it's hard to explain them all at once. I'll post about them soon!

DEV LOG UPDATES

[UPDATE #1] GAME REVEAL POSTMORTEM

[UPDATE #2] SHIELDED ENEMIES

[UPDATE #3] KOTAKU ARTICLE POSTMORTEM

[UPDATE #4] COMBAT AND ART EVOLUTION

[UPDATE #5] PHOENYX DRAGON + ART EVOLUTION

[UPDATE #6] NPC's

[UPDATE #7] NEW SHADOWS

[UPDATE #8] The BULWARK OF ALDWYNN

[UPDATE #9] FRUSTRATIONS

[UPDATE #10] MONSTER RELICS

[UPDATE #11] BLIGHTLANDS

[UPDATE #11] ENDURANCE

[UPDATE #12] HEALING + HOLIDAYS

[UPDATE #13] NEW UI

VIDEOS

[VIDEO #3] VAYE TIMELAPSE

FAQ'S
Q:How long have you been developing this game?
A:Both of us started full time May. The prototype for the game was made in a couple of weeks in December 2012 but nothing came of it back then. We both slowly worked on this since February 2014.
Q:Is Death the main character? Who is the protagonist?
A:The main character becomes the agent of death during the game's story. Death is the most important secondary character but he is not the protagonist.
Q:How do you explore the world?
A:The game is non-linear. Most new areas are accessed via defeating bosses. There are always many routes to take. If you are having trouble with a specific area then you can always do something else.
Q:Will there be randomly generated levels?
A:Nope. There might be some very specific things that are randomly generated but we don't plan on making the levels generate randomly.

Want to become a tester? Check out how on our forum post!

http://deathsgambit.lefora.com/

Art style looks great and very smooth! Spell effects look so satisfying. May I ask, how do you make your awesome gifs any specific software?