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[DantronLesotho]

Hello!

So it's been a bit since I last posted, but I wanted to make sure that the game had a lot of core components in it before showing it again, even though this is supposed to be all devlogs and we're supposed to show the sausage being made, heh. I mostly didn't want anyone to confuse my terrible programmer art for my artist's actual good art, but I guess my latest build still has both. Most of it's his though.

In this latest build, it is one that I am looking to get submitted into the Boston Festival of Indie Games (BostonFIG or BFIG, if you will) but I missed the showcase deadline (because I am an idiot who doesn't read instructions). I am trying to get it shown in the regular show now, so fingers crossed! The flipside of that is that I and my associates have put in a ton of work into this build and I think it actually stands up pretty well.

Updates:

-Better art! More enemies!
-Music! And Sound Effects! How novel!
-Improved weapon select and instructions screen at the beginning
-A real working title screen!
-In this particular build, there are only two weapons to select but they are the most fleshed out and bugless
-There is a boss! It is ok, and currently is made with my terrible programmer art. But you get the idea!
-There are gates that appear when you pass through them and gates that disappear when you destroy all the enemies around them
-The destructible elements have been removed, but they will make it back in there eventually. Destroying things is fun!
-Dashing now looks smooooooth and obvious! Item collection is still not all that great though in terms of communicating its effectiveness to the player.
-There have been a ton of bugfixes

Anyway, take a gander and let me know what you think! The game only requires that you run the executable, so nothing to install currently.

https://dantronlesotho.itch.io/gravestuck

Here's a video playthrough (in terrible aspect ratio, thanks to OBS/Adobe Premiere/my own inexperience) of the level as well, if you don't want to download the game itself:

Code:

https://youtu.be/Fj3Nu4lMLnA

Edit: so there's no way to not have the intrusive youtube player that doesn't appear to be working, huh?

[io3 creations]

Seems like the video doesn't show up to me (there's empty space space though).

So far this is only thing that I found that doesn't embed the YouTube player:

Code:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj3Nu4lMLnA

[DantronLesotho]

Thanks! I switched it to be that (even though you had it in your post as well). Good to know 

[io3 creations]

As I was replying to another post, I found a few other ways that also work.

youtube.com/watch?v=Fj3Nu4lMLnA    Perhaps making it bold or using different color can help to stand out.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Fj3Nu4lMLnA   Seems like it can be added if you ommit "www." from the url, then the YouTube link isn't formatted to show the player.  But this might be updated. so

[DantronLesotho]

I was able to build the game into fullscreen mode, and it did some weird scaling thing that worked out surprisingly well. The game feels -amazing- now, whereas before it was just fun. I really stumbled my way into something great. You (the reader) should check out the current build.

[DantronLesotho]

I am very pleased to announce that Gravestuck will be shown at the Boston Festival of Indie Games (www.bostonfig.com) in September! This will be its first (and my first) public (not gamedev only) showing, and I couldn't be more excited. If you're in Boston for the fest, make sure to stop on by and say hi! I love to talk shop.

I'll be putting together a trailer for it soon to help get the word out.

[DantronLesotho]

Ah crap, photobucket is being dumb with letting images show up remotely. I'll have to migrate them all to my actual website. What a bummer.

[DantronLesotho]

Update: showed the game at the Boston Festival of Indie Games on Sept 23. It was a great time! I wrote an article of my experience on Gamasutra: https://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DanWilliams/20171003/306862/Takeaways_from_showing_my_game_for_the_first_time_at_a_festival.php

Because of that, an updated version of the demo is now up on the itch.io page for the game: https://activeupgames.itch.io/gravestuck

I also recorded a short video that I used for submission to IGF.



After passing this deadline, I'm going to work to build out all the levels and start tightening up the experience. It's in pretty good shape now!

[DantronLesotho]

Hello!

I haven't updated on this in quite a while, so I'll just mention what's been happening. I'm still working on the game, building out levels and improving bugs and whatnot, but my artist decided to go AWOL and hasn't responded to my emails. I'm guessing he's ashamed because stuff in his life got really busy and he apologized once before we lost communication, but that's okay! I don't hold hard feelings about it. I hope one day we can reconcile the rift. So I am having to go back to the beginning on that, because I don't want the art to be inconsistent. I've been reading a ton of art tutorials and studying about palettes and styles and whatnot, so I am going to just do the art myself. It's going to take some practice, but I am eager to learn this skill that I've always wanted to possess anyway.

On that note, I have decided to take the story in a very different direction than I was previously because after a lot of self-examination, it seemed to me that the story was too colonialist, and I want to get away from that stuff. So I have come up with a new story conceit that actually works out much better for what I want the game to be like. Since none of that stuff has really been exposed in the demo, I'm not worried about people missing a story they never got to experience.

I'm hoping to be able to update more pictures into this thread and provide updates again. And I guess Photobucket re-updated their terms, so my images are showing up again! I know a bunch of people left that site after they put their deeplinking restriction on there and I almost did as well, so hopefully that will stay as it is now. But if the images go away again then I am definitely switching hosts, even if it's a pain in the ass.

But anyway, I hope people are still interested in this game, because every time I play the demo it is a reminder to me that it's still a ton of fun, and I want to finish it!

Will post again soon!