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[Skydsgaard]

I'm so excited about this Just an idea, have you seen the intro from Hearthstone?  

really amazing...I want to go there...and kill that bastard!!!

[Whiteclaws]

You'll always be awesome in my heart

[barneycumming]

hey thanks for the encouragement guys as always

wow that hearthstone intro is pretty much the best example of that "animatic" look I've seen- amazing!

makes me think i need a few more layers and animated effects in my scenes to make them feel more alive and 3d- get some smoke/fog at different distances maybe, and put more layers of furniture/junk in the background of the "destroy beasts" shot...

here's the latest gif capture from the twitter stream:



mostly effects animation i've been working on to support our new mechanic for challenging the boss- we're going with giving 3 tries at the boss each game, and if all 3 fail, then the boss wins the match, takes the humanity for himself and is set free- unleashed on the world

i've had to make a lot of assets and effects to try and visualize the 3 tries in some way (so we don't need clumsy tutorial test)  I went with a triangular rune thingy so 1 corner of the rune would get burned out each time you open the boss portal

this capture was from before i put in the hero anim for triggering it- looks a bit flat with him just standing there hehe

[eigenbom]

Definitely one of the coolest looking low-res games ever. That guy has a big quiff.

[barneycumming]

hehe cheers eigenbom, i dunno how he keeps that quiff so immaculately groomed down there...

here's a random gif of snippets from our recent playtesting:


so i guess this is our big countdown to launch- our current build is pretty much at the desired feature set for steam early access, so from here on in it is mostly testing/bugfixing/admin/marketing and a whole lot of little backup tasks i always forget about

so as dave works on bug testing and getting the the mac and linux builds up to scratch, i'll be working on a series of little trailers leading up to launch

i'll do a handful of short "meet the monster" vids highlighting the mechanics of specific monsters in a little greater depth, then maybe building to a vid about all the weapons and gear, and one showcasing the boss maybe

hoping to get this all done in a bit longer than a month, though my time estimates have been pretty bad so far

we don't have any idea how to market this thing other making trailers, so if anybody has advice i'd love to hear it, and anywhere you guys can spread the word to people who like this kind of stuff, that would be wonderful!

[Storsorgen]

Hnnnnnnngh, I can't wait! This has me hotter than a Texas drought!

[knifeySpoonie]

man this is looking better and better every time I see it.. Great work on the boss!

[Bombini]

`This looks awesome!

[Slader16]

I can't wait to play it! 

[BarchKing]

do not think of this as a game, think of this as a world.

you are not marketting you are sharring something thats bueatiful and thus you show the world that it is diamonds then i will treat it as precious

[barneycumming]

hey thanks BarchKing the feeling of the scale and depth in the world is something really important to us!  we can't wait to get the base game done so we can start adding all the variety and secrets to really build the feeling there is a huge existing world behind the little matches you play- stumbling across one or two mysterious details or secrets always makes me start to wonder where the other secrets mighe be, and really grows the scale of the world in my head if done right

Slader16,  Bombini, knifeySpoonie,  Storsorgen- thanks so much for the support

[barneycumming]

a little cutting room floor footage from the new trailer i'm working on

[SafetySnail]

So much style in those animations, I love that bird headed dude. Cannot wait for this!

[James Edward Smith]

a little more art:



this is support for a new mechanic we're toying with for fighting the boss...

currently the game doesn't end until someone defeats the boss, which I don't like for a few reasons

1- the game can really drag on if people keep failing to beat the boss.  The ramping up of monsters and equipment can't continue forever, so the intensity caps out after a point and the game loses it's feeling of progression- quick matches is what the whole thing is designed for

2- if a game can only end once the boss is killed, it means we can't really make the boss very hard or we risk the "dragging on" problem becoming a standard thing in most games- so currently the boss is not nearly as challenging as we would like, just to prevent that problem

3- it should be an achievement to defeat a boss- a big excitement where you don't know if you'll achieve it or not... it should be a special thrill to kill one!  If it is inevitable that someone will kill the boss each game, so much of the excitement and achievement is lost

so we're working on a system where the game can come to an end without anyone defeating the boss, and with the in-game narrative, we'd like to show that instead of killing the boss and escaping the dungeon, the boss kills you and escapes itself to be unleashed on the world...

so for the time being we'll have a shot like this for the end of the game if you fail on the boss- I'd like to cut it up into parallax layers, add a few simple animated elements and show it with just a little movement to give it more life

Heh, reminds me of



Congratulations on getting such a great looking game together. I love seeing really low-rez sprite art manage to have its own unique character and the personality and flawlessness of the animations here, is really something to behold.

Also, it's cool to see a new game with this sort of "hot-potato", "King of the Mountain" style of game play. I think it worked really well in that one Pac-man game they made for the gamecube and I've always wanted to see someone try some more things with it.

[Green Gospod]

Great admiration for the animations.
I appreciate the blog posts regarding the animations and hope to maybe see more in the future.
Great stuff! 

[barneycumming]

cheers guys it has been a big surprise to get so much support for such low res art- definitely helped me have the confidence to keep up development!

a little sneak peek snippet from the launch trailers i'm working on:



he's going to be the absolute top of the skeleton hierarchy- i'd like to make these "ulta" monsters only unlock in a match if you perform a special "achievement" with specific monster/s within that match, so they're a bit more secret and take some skill and knowledge outside the regular stuff

over the last few days i've been putting together all the different banner/store images required in all the different resolutions and aspect ratios- ended up being more work than i anticipated!

this is basically the final set:
http://www.powerhoof.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/capsules5.png

trying to get the pixel art to work and be readable while squeezing in a readable logo in all sorts of specific sizes/aspect ratios has been a bit fiddly, but pretty much done now yay!!

i'll be announcing the launch date and starting to release little "meet the beast" trailers very soon building up to launch

then of course it's all hands on deck pumping out more content- it feels like ages since i've worked on gameplay and adding new content, i can't wait!

PS. @Geothermal - oh man that makes me want to rejig the text and put it in the middle saying "game over kourok is unleashed"... think i might just do that

[GrahamOfLegend]

Hey Barney. I don't remember where exactly I first saw this - not sure if it was random internet searches or if it was featured on a gaming site - but I'm really enjoying how this looks! Keep pushing it! Love the idea too. The animations are especially super sleek.

I can't give much of a critique on the gameplay just from looking at it (not that you asked for one haha), so, for now, this is 100% awesome .

Cheers!

[Sir Fishelsworth]

Great art and animations. If the gameplay is as slick as the animations look, this is going to be great 

[y_nnis]

Hey Barney! Have been following the game's development passionately for quite some time (to the best of my attention that is), and I really can't wait to play the final version.

The capsules look amazing (duh the artwork is staggering), but might I ask why the demon on the large capsule (3rd) is looking outwards?

[barneycumming]

GrahamOfLegend - thanks, hopefully it remains awesome and lives up to your expectations when you get to play if yourself!

paperfish - cheers, really the whole project is just cause i wanted to animate some pixel monsters and it kinda blew out a bit from that hehe

y_nnis - so cool to have your encouragement!  yeah i considered turning that guy inwards- just worked out that way because of the spacing and size of his wings out the back- if i turned him the other way he'd either have his body too close to the logo L or his wings too far off the edge... to be honest i could probably get it to work but now what's done is done and i'm sick of working on them hehe :D