Spawn effects are in! This is to give you a brief warning period of where an enemy may be spawning. There are a few mechanical changes I need to make with this, but graphically it's in.

Also new since I last posted is our Discord, for anyone interested in checking out our community! Link in my signature.

Dang! Looking through this it seems there is a lot that I have yet to be shown!

Today on stream I spent some time polishing up the "boss experience" of the games first boss, Eyelor.



I spent some time adding substance to the pre-boss room. The door has two flaming eyes, represnting your "lives" when fighting the boss. Since the game is a roguelike and death means starting over, you will be given 3 shots at the boss. If you die, one of the fires will fly into you, reviving you at the door. Then once again. If you die after that, it means starting over.

Your health / equipment will be saved once reaching the room, so if you only have 1 hit left going into the boss, you will have to take all 3 attempts with the same number of HP.


For context, here is an earlier, pre-polish version of the boss room.

Hey everyone! I'm back! 

Long hiatus due to work, and have managed to work past many personal issues and as of late been managing to dive back into this project so should have lots to share over the next little bit. :D

The cool thing about having fresh eyes on my project is it's granted some clarity on things that I was unsure of before. One thing I had debated over was a downstrike aerial manuever (like Zelda 2, Shovel Knight, Duck Tales). Well, after some consideration I added it in!



It's not 100% I still have work to make it feel satisfying to use, but I'm really happy with it. :D

Anyways, starting small with my first post back here, and will definitely be back soon.

Really cool stuff, love the look of everything. What made you decide to have the 3d elements in a 2d platformer, and how has your time been in Gamemaker implementing it?

P.S. thank your tutorials

Getting closer to a demo! Put out a pre-demo-demo for a small group of people to get some feedback. Goals for the demo will be:

- Intro stage to learn controls / mechanics
- Easier zone 1 levels to create a proper difficulty curve
- Bindable controls
- Music and sound pass

So definitely close! For now, will leave you guys with this.

Whoops, accidentally quoted a post I was editing. May as well use this as an excuse to show a WIP animation of an enemy I'm working on!

This has piqued my interest. Interested in seeing where else it goes. o:

I appreciate it! Hopefully will start adding more cool stuff once I've finished with this system.

Been following this on twitter, totally looks like my kind of thing :D

Thank you very much! I 'm glad it resonates with people.

Don't burn out! This looks amazing, I particularly love the skeletons.

Eh, a little too late, but I'm coming out the otherside. :D

Decided to do some edits and cleanup on the title screen. Guess I should upate the main post!

Ugh! Reworking systems is always a chore. My projectile system is nearly done, and I'll be very thankful. It's burned me out a little bit. Right now making it connect to my item system. Now the player is able to get modified items:

This is looking very good Following!

Thank you!

So I've been doing some much needed overhauling of the projectile system in my game, will make it easier to mod and adjust projectiles and create some fun combos. Still adding features to it and making it just right but just some simple things I can do with it:

Fire bones


Bomb arrows


Anddd the player using enemy bombs.



Thing such as flaming or bomb projectiles will be used for random modifiers to increase difficulty in a run.

Hoping to be able to do a lot of cool things with this system and it will make it easier for me to add new enemies and player items.

Created a proper death effect for the enemies, and have been cleaning up random half implemented things/bugs.

I think to be demo ready I need to:
1. Create the intro levels.
2. Add a boss intro / polish a few things around the boss setup
3. Fix and add a few items.
4. Do another sound pass, giving proper sound effects to everything.
5. Whatever bits of polish/bug fixing.

All in all not looking to bad!

Been following this on Twitter! I think I've said it many times, jesus christ this pixel art is great. :D

Did some graphical updates to the shop, quite happy with it so far! Been working on random misc stuff, bug fixes and polish, for a hopefully soon demo, we'll see!

Been working on less exciting stuff, such as menus and saving / loading. Really happy now that that's in! The system for menus I made should make it really easy for me to add stuff to it. I'm actually surprisingly happy with it! Also testing out a CRT shader. Enjoy all of the above + some platforming :D

Yeah the goal is for everything to feel smooth and responsive! Lot's of quality of life/hacky things holding the core gameplay together and making it feel good. :D



Worked on a death state, the old one was just a placeholder. Still somethings to work on but I'm happy overall with it.

And almost forgot... started working on another boss. Just a heads up, it is very obviously inspired by the eye boss in Rogue Legacy in terms of visual design (but then again, 2 circle sprites, is there another way to do an eye? :p) The fight is already entirely different (and still incomplete) but I think it's looking good!




And one last fun gif to demonstrate some more of the movement. Added a few QOL things for the wall cling.

So today less focus on gifs and an update on the overall game!

I recently reworked the level selector to something I can work with better. I've "blocked out" the entire game so far, 5 zones, 8 levels each + a shop and a boss room. As you progress I palette swap the environment, but as I go on each zone will have a variation in theme, enemies, traps, props, and rewards. Right now it reuses levels and bosses but now I'm able to test things in an actual long form play sessions.

My short term goal is to finish and polish zone 1 as a proof of concept of the game / a zone. Mid term goal would be to create just enough content that  I don't have to reuse any rooms in one run. That would be 4x8 rooms assuming I keep the current system, and 4 additional bosses.

From that point on the game could technically be deemed "complete" and from that point it's all about adding additional rooms, room types, enemies, and random variation to all of it.

All in all for a project thats just over 3 months old I'm feeling very happy and confident!

Here I leave you with a gif of a attack/flash reset glitch I've discovered. Tempting to leave it in as hidden "tech" but that remains to be seen if it's too broken. Possible upgrade options though!

oh my this looks nice! 

Thank you

Been a while since I've posted! Been working on a boss fight that I can hopefully show soon. Added some tile variation in the backgrounds, as well as a palette shader for colour swaps and level variance later on in the tower (there will be other graphical changes as well, but the palette will change as you progress through the levels).



This gif showcases some of that new stuff I mentioned, as well as some of the mobility available to you in Fiendtower! OH! And the new UI.




Anddd a new enemy as well!

Glad you got the loot table thing figured out! And I really like the risk/reward idea for the first relic - it's doubly nice that you included a boost to movespeed when you're on fire, so you can get to the next enemy faster. Great idea!

Thanks a lot! I'm hoping to make a lot of interesting items, we'll see how it goes!

Appreciate it guys.

New shop and item system with loot tables in place, making it really easy to add items and give them value and weight in shops. Each table will have it's own selection of items.




Added the first relic (items that grant passive effects) to the game, Burning Rage, grants double damage, but if you don't engage in enemies fast enough you'll catch fire and gain movespeed.

This game looks fun asf! I can't wait for it to come out!

Appreciate it! Game is going at a great pace. Should have some fun new things in store, but for now, newly added fire effect + some gameplay.

Undecided on dither vs not dither for the sky. Any thoughts? I guess I should look up some dither patterns but I'm pretty new at it.