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[oahda]

Wow, so cool! Congratulations!

[vivaladav]

Q: when did you start to work on your game?
indie dev: well, I was doing a Minecraft clone, then it became a racing game, but now it's a puzzle-platformer and I am reusing some assets from a game jam I joined 10 years ago...

Q: what did you do on the 4th of August 2020?
Alain: I spent 3 hrs on coding, 2 hrs on 3D models and 30 minutes sending emails.

A little birthday update: I got a really nice present. BattleJuice Alchemist was awarded Best Game by DDM within the WN Dev contest. DDM is just a great partner and they have supported me intensely over the last couple of months. I am super thankful for that and now the award.

Wow, amazing, well done man!

[Alain]

Thank you all for the nice congratulations

Q: what did you do on the 4th of August 2020?
Alain: I spent 3 hrs on coding, 2 hrs on 3D models and 30 minutes sending emails.

Hahaha, that's exactly me! Btw. on the 4th of August 2020 I worked on the intro/outro Animation for YouTube and the Steam store page, the later of which I am overhauling today

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

An Award, an Item, an NPC

This is my second video in a row that is a traditional devlog. I think I will have quite some more of these over the next months. Although I also have more "general gamedev content" planned, right now there is just a lot happening around BattleJuice Alchemist that I want to talk about.

As I already mentioned a couple of posts ago, BattleJuice Alchemist took part in the WN Dev Contest for Unreal developers and is one of the winners! If you develop in Unreal, I highly encourage you to take part in the next contest or any similar ones. I got in touch with a lot of great people through that even long before the final rounds. In this video I tell you a bit about the contest, but also about a new NPC in BattleJuice Alchemist. She is called Xen and part of the Caribou Creek overhaul.

You also get a sneak peek of a new item effect in the game that supports damage reflecting builds. In case you already have a key: Keep in mind that these changes are not live on Steam yet, but will be part of the update that is coming when the Steam playtest goes public very soon. (I know I keep saying that )

Have a great weekend and don't work too much!

Alain

click GIF to watch on YouTube ↑ (3:33 min)

[Ramos]

Congratulations Alain!

This award is a solid confirmation that you are on the right track.

I find the new NPC background authentic, most people prefer to expose a straightforward approach but you added that love-hate relationship note that makes it stand out. Also, I enjoy the NPC visual design the feathers and the missing hand combo bring more depth to the overall character authenticity.

 

[vivaladav]

Nice update and great video as usual Alain!

I have a question about the NPCs in your game...

What kind of role are they going to have in BJA?
Are they just a trigger to show some dialogues or are they going to have an active role and maybe even support the main character in his quests?

[Alain]

I find the new NPC background authentic, most people prefer to expose a straightforward approach but you added that love-hate relationship note that makes it stand out. Also, I enjoy the NPC visual design the feathers and the missing hand combo bring more depth to the overall character authenticity.

Thank you! Xen really is a fun character to work on an hopefully to interact with ingame.

I have a question about the NPCs in your game...

What kind of role are they going to have in BJA?
Are they just a trigger to show some dialogues or are they going to have an active role and maybe even support the main character in his quests?

Thank you! NPCs in BJA are there mainly to advance the story through their dialogues. But they also support you by teaching you new magic rituals. Some of the NPCs must be fought in single combat. Xen for example must know you can handle yourself in the wilderness so you must fight her in a sparring session before she removes the barricades around Caribou Creek so you can explore. Plato, your animal companion, is another special NPC. After you won his companionship, he follows you around, assists you in combat and comments your actions by looking at you in different ways.

[Alain]

I am currently working on the new trailer for the launch of the public playtest of BattleJuice Alchemist. The announcement trailer was pure gameplay footage. This time I am going to go the classic route of using some text inserts to explain what you do in the game. But I'll try to make it unique by going for some b-movie style effects, hopefully it works out.

Have a great Friday and enjoy your weekend!

[JobLeonard]

Good luck!

(The current angle makes it look like the moustache comes out the side of his nose)

[vivaladav]

Great Alain, I can't wait to see your new trailer!

(The current angle makes it look like the moustache comes out the side of his nose)

Those are some big nose hairs!

[oahda]

Looking forward to the effects. Hope you have a nice weekend too!

[logophil]

But I'll try to make it unique by going for some b-movie style effects, hopefully it works out.

Nice, look forward to seeing those! Interesting to see what you use for your (expert!) video editing, what is that software by the way?

[Ramos]

OOooo I wish you the best of luck!
Looking forward to your new trailer with positive hype

 

[Alain]

Thank you all, I appreciate your encouragement!


@JobLeonard & @vivaladav: Hahaha, you're right about the moustache, never saw it that way :D

Nice, look forward to seeing those! Interesting to see what you use for your (expert!) video editing, what is that software by the way?

I'm using Premiere Pro. I have been using it for many years but over the last month I keep getting crashes, problems with not detecting my GPU and slow performance. At this point I am working around that, but it is a huge annoyance.


I'm doing re-edits over the course of this week and starting the rendering of the overhauled intro cinematic. Hopefully I will be able to finish both in two weeks.

[Alain]

After the story, characters and places in BattleJuice Alchemist have evolved over the last year of development, the cinematic trailer / intro has now been updated. It is nothing totally new, but I am sure those following the project can spot the changes, which I also talked about in previous posts.

The new gamepaly trailer will also drop very soon!





I hope you enjoyed watching and have a great weekend!

[Ramos]

You really know how to make an intriguing presentation. The teaser is AWESOME!

 

[vivaladav]

Another great video Alain!

If you wanted to make it a bit more effective from a marketing point of view, maybe you could add a call to action at the end ("wishlist on Steam") and probably you could get rid of the first 5 seconds to jump straight into the action (that's what Derek Lieu and any other trailer expert says at least).

[Alain]

You really know how to make an intriguing presentation. The teaser is AWESOME!

Thank you

Nice trailer! I will add it to my [link removed from quoted post] collection.

That's cool, thanks! If you want to download it, you can find it here.

Another great video Alain!

If you wanted to make it a bit more effective from a marketing point of view, maybe you could add a call to action at the end ("wishlist on Steam") and probably you could get rid of the first 5 seconds to jump straight into the action (that's what Derek Lieu and any other trailer expert says at least).

Thanks for the feedback! I did not consider the overhauled cinematic as a great marketing opportunity, maybe I should have. But the new gameplay trailer will come this week, there I follow your advice and got rid of the logo at the beginning and a call to action in the end

[JobLeonard]

Great trailer! Looking forward to the gameplay one

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Update 0.15201
Playtest Starts Tomorrow!

It is only a few hours until the launch of the BattleJuice Alchemist alpha playtest on Steam. You will then be able to click the "Request Access" button on the store page. More infos will follow very soon.

Some people from our community (join Discord here) have already been playing for a few weeks. Since then, a lot of things have been changed and added, so here are the most important updates. In case you are wondering: when I say "we" in the following, I am talking about Jan, who does playtesting and QA for BattleJuice Alchemist, and myself.

General Notes
Update 0.15201 includes all changes from 0.14101 and above. After updating, your graphics, keybinding and other settings will be reset. Playing with your older characters should work.

Gameplay
Maybe the biggest change to the gameplay is direct input: You can now move your favorite Alchemist with WASD or any keybinding you like. Classic action RPG movement via mouse clicking stays untouched, you just have the choice to also use keyboard movement, if you like. You may also bind the "movement click" any key and are not restricted to left clicking. Note that the default key bindings have been changed due to the addition of direct input controls.

The second big change is that we now have video quality settings, so you can squeeze more fps out of your computer. Please keep in mind that the inner workings behind these settings themselves still need to be worked on throughout development and are not at all perfect yet.

Items
We recently re-worked the Shell flask, because it was not that popular with the players. The flask is now cheaper to use, the damage reduction was buffed and it now has the ability to prevent one debuff. The thorns damage was buffed and now hurts enemies no matter if they attack with a melee or ranged attack. We also added a new alchemical affix "Of Icicles" which enhances your Shell flask's thorns effect.

The Frog Hop flask also got a bit of love: The base damage and bonus damage from items for it was straight up doubled.

Furthermore we added a new alchemical affix called "Of Fury". I don't want to spoil too much, but it is meant to facilitate close combat oriented builds.

Enemies
Enemies who defeat the player now only turn into demons 50% of the time to prevent a quick downward spiral because of the buffs demons provide to all enemies.

Another change to enemies was that their attack speed in close combat now improves with higher enemy levels, which just seems fair, as it is usually the same for the player.


Visuals
There have been many visual changes that I won't bore you with, you can will see them yourself ingame. Let me just say that the focus was to make the environment easier to read and reduce very dark areas.

TL;DR
For those of you who want to dig really deep and know all about the minor changes, you can find those on the Discord or the bottom of the Steam Announcement. I hope you are as excited as I am for the alpha playtest to start!

Alain