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[Alain]

The updated maps look great! Nice job implementing suggestions, its crazy how sometimes small adjustments can go so far with how polished a feature is. I love the fact that you're still getting feedback from playtesters and looking to improve the experience and gently nudge them towards exploration with the flasks.

Thank you oldblood! In deed, feedback from people who play for the first time is invaluable. I can highly recommend the quite new Steam playtest feature to do so.

[Alain]

Epic MegaGrant for BattleJuice Alchemist

Hey everyone!

as those of you following the development of BattleJuice Alchemist might know, I am a big fan of Unreal Engine. It is so accessible, especially its blueprint system gives developers like me who do not consider themselves a programmer first the opportunity to tackle big projects. Beside providing this great tool, Epic Games financially supports game developers and other creators using it.

About half a year ago I applied for an Epic MegaGrant and two days ago I received a congratulatory mail of acceptance from Epic Games. I am incredibly thankful and excited to be counted among the recipients.

At the end of 2021 I commited to developing BattleJuice Alchemist full-time and expanded Alchemical Works into a small team. Unexpectedly, there were financial changes on the side of a partner company shortly after, so the MegaGrant comes just at the right point in time for us. I almost can't believe it.

I am so happy and also want to thank you people here at the forum. This is a great community where I have encountered nothing but encouragement when development has been tough.

Have a wonderful weekend everybody and if you use UE, consider applying for a MegaGrant. I wasn't sure if there was a chance of being chosen as a small-time dev with his first title, but evidently it is. I think I will make a video soon explaining what I put into the application and assume led to the awarding.

[Ramos]

    Congratulations Alain! 

This is an amazing achievement, I am very happy for you! 

[JobLeonard]

Congrats, you earned it!

[oahda]

Woah!! Congrats to you and welcome back team??!

[oldblood]

This is huge! Congratulations to you and the whole team. I definitely hope you make a video about it. I'm sure other Unreal devs out there would love to hear about your experience and how you pitched BJA to them.

[vivaladav]

I am very happy for you Alain, especially after reading this:

At the end of 2021 I commited to developing BattleJuice Alchemist full-time and expanded Alchemical Works into a small team. Unexpectedly, there were financial changes on the side of a partner company shortly after, so the MegaGrant comes just at the right point in time for us. I almost can't believe it.

You never stopped believing in your project and your commitment is finally paying you off.

Now I hope we'll see more and bigger updates from you and your team.

[Alain]

  Congratulations Alain! 

This is an amazing achievement, I am very happy for you! 

Congrats, you earned it!

Thank you fellas for the continuous encouragement!

Woah!! Congrats to you and welcome back team??!

Thanks Prinsessa! Indeed, my teammates can now stay involved and continue their work on a freelance basis. The MegaGrant does not cover the full budged we had worked out in 2021. But we are working on this front and now have a bit more room to breathe.

This is huge! Congratulations to you and the whole team. I definitely hope you make a video about it. I'm sure other Unreal devs out there would love to hear about your experience and how you pitched BJA to them.

Thank you oldblood! I am not sure how many Unreal devs there are here on the forum, but I know of a few. I gathered all the info I could get on MegaGrants when applying and would have liked to see more devs talk about it, so I guess I'll have to make a video

You never stopped believing in your project and your commitment is finally paying you off.

Now I hope we'll see more and bigger updates from you and your team.

Thank you vivaladav. It is as you say, it is wonderful that things start to show results. But I know that this is just one step taken on a presumably bumpy road ahead of us. I am pumped but also very cautious at this point in time. I will not slow down and continue putting everything I have into this project.

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Boss Fights and Haunted Places

Hey everyone!

We are currently knee-deep in the visual overhaul of the whole game. Patrick is doing a great job working on textures for 3d assets and I am grinding away on the UI. But that is something for another devlog when the results are presentable. Today I'd like to talk about our haunted place system a bit more.

I made an an introductory video to haunted places before, but I'll briefly explain them again. Ritual places and possession are predominant themes in the story of BattleJuice Alchemist and now they become even more relevant mechanics-wise. In the picture above you see our very first haunted place, the Chopping Block. You solve a small riddle to activate it and then fight the possessed site itself. It is able to do a multitude of attacks like spawning minions, AOE damage, debuffs and so on.

To make buildings more fun to explore, I decided to add two more haunted places that do not spawn in the wilderness but inside structures. The Begging Bowl spawns in churches and the Creepy Container in abandoned farm houses.

You can repeatedly activate a haunted place and defeating it gets more difficult each time you do so. In the end you get to choose a reward for your efforts. I found this to be a bit underwhelming and wanted to flesh out these events. So I decided that after "leveling up" a haunted place, you can activate it a last time, which spawns a unique enemy that is the warden of the place. Here is a little impression of the Biting Barrel that appears at the "Creepy Container":

So that's it for today. Please note that these changes are on our internal testing branch only and not yet on the public playtest version on Steam. I will update the Steam version not too far in the future, but want to wait for the big visual overhaul to do so.

That is it for today, thank you for reading and have a nice weekend!

Alain

[oahda]

Interesting but icky places! Cool to get some more lore too! I haven't seen so many zoomed in views of the game before, it looks really nice and it's cool to see all the scribbly lines up close, looks great.

[Alain]

Interesting but icky places! Cool to get some more lore too! I haven't seen so many zoomed in views of the game before, it looks really nice and it's cool to see all the scribbly lines up close, looks great.

Thanks, I'm glad you like the close ups! Since you mentioned the scribbly lines: I like them a lot as well, which is why I am worried that I am making the right decisions regarding the visual overhaul I am currently working on. The jittery lines are a nice part of the style but also the biggest problem regarding readability. It would be great if you could give me some feedback once I post screenshots here.

[vivaladav]

I made an an introductory video to haunted places before, but I'll briefly explain them again. Ritual places and possession are predominant themes in the story of BattleJuice Alchemist and now they become even more relevant mechanics-wise. In the picture above you see our very first haunted place, the Chopping Block. You solve a small riddle to activate it and then fight the possessed site itself. It is able to do a multitude of attacks like spawning minions, AOE damage, debuffs and so on.

Interesting concept Alain!

If I got it right "haunted places" are like a single-room dungeon, right?
Have you thought about expanding them to have proper dungeons in game? For example a whole cave that can be activated once you're in and you can only get out after defeating all the enemies inside.

[Ramos]

If I understood the haunted-place design correctly, this is a very solid core pilar for gameplay. You should use it in your promotional materials.

Great job on the update.

How far would you estimate you are with the entire game progress so far?

[vdapps]

Nice idea with haunting places. I like also your approach of not leveling haunting places infinitely but placing "final mini-boss" there. That's good for us, completionists.

[Alain]

If I got it right "haunted places" are like a single-room dungeon, right?
Have you thought about expanding them to have proper dungeons in game? For example a whole cave that can be activated once you're in and you can only get out after defeating all the enemies inside.

The haunted places spawn inside buildings which are part of the regular world. I love your idea of caves and dungeons. I want to add procedural dungeons that can be accessed from buildings through trapdoors etc. But this is not on the roadmap yet and for a lot later.

If I understood the haunted-place design correctly, this is a very solid core pilar for gameplay. You should use it in your promotional materials.

Great job on the update.

How far would you estimate you are with the entire game progress so far?

The haunted places were added a few months ago and are not in trailers etc. Thanks for pointing that out, I have to make sure to promote them right in the future.
As for entire game progress: This is tough to say. If we are talking Early Access wise, we are above the 60% stated here on the forum

Nice idea with haunting places. I like also your approach of not leveling haunting places infinitely but placing "final mini-boss" there. That's good for us, completionists.

Haha, that's right

[cepnox]

I like the idea of haunted places. It reminds me a little bit of red crystals in Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader.
But there, they were much more basic. They were just spawning stronger enemies on each activation.
Your idea with the final boss gives it a better feeling of accomplishment.

[oldblood]

You can repeatedly activate a haunted place and defeating it gets more difficult each time you do so. In the end you get to choose a reward for your efforts. I found this to be a bit underwhelming and wanted to flesh out these events. So I decided that after "leveling up" a haunted place, you can activate it a last time, which spawns a unique enemy that is the warden of the place.

I really like this solution a lot. Keeps the replayability while adding a bit more finality to the haunted places with clear progression for the player.

[Alain]

I like the idea of haunted places. It reminds me a little bit of red crystals in Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader.
But there, they were much more basic. They were just spawning stronger enemies on each activation.
Your idea with the final boss gives it a better feeling of accomplishment.

Thanks cepnox! I had to look up Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader and wow, how did I miss this game? It looks amazing, I will try to find a big box version on eBay :D

You can repeatedly activate a haunted place and defeating it gets more difficult each time you do so. In the end you get to choose a reward for your efforts. I found this to be a bit underwhelming and wanted to flesh out these events. So I decided that after "leveling up" a haunted place, you can activate it a last time, which spawns a unique enemy that is the warden of the place.

I really like this solution a lot. Keeps the replayability while adding a bit more finality to the haunted places with clear progression for the player.

It's funny, I just posted about replayability in your devlog In deed, replayability is a core aspect of the idea. It will also be easy to design and add haunted places in patches later on thanks to the procedural generation of the world. Regarding finality, currently I am leaning towards players being able to activate and clear haunted places again when starting a new play session, like act bosses or ubers in Diablo 2.

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Player Activated Bullet Time

Hey everyone,

one important thing we took away from recent player feedback was that strategic decision making should be more pronounced in the game from the beginning on. We tackled the problem by visually overhauling environments to make them easier to read, which is an ongoing process. But we also added some mechanics:

1. Players can instantly draw a new hand of flasks (which I explained in an earlier devlog).
2. Players can enter bullet time at a small resource cost.
3. Players can push enemies with explosions and pull them towards a black hole to control the battlefield in top down view. This is my new favorite thing.

In this devlog I want to talk about the second mechanic: bullet time.

As you can see in the gif above, the player (in other words: me) enters bullet time to make precise movement decisions. In bullet time, players have the advantage that their flask drawing speed is not slowed down. This means that although they move more slowly, they can still use and throw flasks at normal speed for that epic Neo-From-The-Matrix-Feeling (TM).

Watching the gif I realized that I racked up a 4x combo like the sick pro gamer I am in my own game. Yes, combos are a thing now, too

If you are interested, you can watch the full 1 minute combat sequence in this fancy vertical Youtube short:

I'm pushing the latest version to our internal testing branch today and if our diligent QA bee Jan does not find any terrible bugs, it will also go live on the public playtest version on Steam next week. There is a crapload of new and changed things in this new version that I will present in the following devlogs. Next up for me is to make a new tutorial level to include all the new fancy stuff.

That is it for today, thank you for reading and have a nice weekend!

Alain

[Ramos]

Very good solidification of the user experience, always good to have it as friendly as possible.

As for bullet-time, I don't know why it always makes me think of Max Payne, and it seems to perfectly fit with your gameplay target, TBH I don't think I ever saw this mechanic been used in an RPG so it might be a rare overall element for the gameplay, gj Alain!