Dev Update: Queen Kyu, Roguelike Progress and More!

Howdy howdy! Sorry for the delay but July's chonky update is here for everyone. I ran into a minor delay as I was called in late last week to be sworn in as a citizen, which is dope! (I'm finally Americaaaaan after all these years! So let's start things off with the gif above, which is a first run on a new throw concept for Volley by Arthur Munoz.

We sent him this as a mockup, and he delivered the absolutely bonkers throw concept above. Can't stop this guy from always pushing things to 210%. Either way it's in progress and will slot in for Volley's back throw option (Throw type that gets peeps out of the corners).

Roguelite!

Work is underway at full speed on the roguelite prototype, and we are cookinig up ideas and building systems for the initial prototype, which will cover one zone. Our aim is to get about 15-20 min of gameplay in the demo loop, which will have everything under one roof. Between mobs and laying out zone maps we're well into it. The Mark IV Fridgebot above is a concept for a miniboss we're developing.

For Zone 1 the theme will be Badlands, so the mobs will be themed around malfunctioning tech. That's the unifying visual style atm.

I've been painting out the Zone 1 world map, which will take place in the Badlands arena. Mario Party/Slay the Spire style you'll navigate a world map that has various encounters/scenarios in it. We wanted to keep a 2.5D style so it'll be a nice vertical map.

Animation work is ongoing on mobs and existing minibosses atm. The Behemoth Bot above is one of the existing minibosses and we're still working on building out some new assets. Hoping to have something like 4-6 mob variants, 2 mini bosses and a Godbuster Act 1 boss that is a bit more involved. That's our current aim and we're steamrolling towards it.

On the design side we're building up our item database, and our current philosophy which will be put to the test is that every item needs to have a meaningful impact. No +1% damage stuff, every pickup will be noticeable. Whether it's a defensive item, a cursed item or other. I've been keeping tabs on the #shotonebrainstorm board on Discord to keep an eye on user ideas and am registering them in our spreadsheets atm.

So if you got ideas, don't be shy!

Queen Kyu!

So Queen Kyu is our next playable character! After a bunch of discussion we've decided to choose her as a hybrid grappler/zoner style character. She'll utilize minions to support her as she'll be slower and more clunky in her movement style due to her mech.

We are currently working on finalizing her updated model and getting it rigged up (Thanks Rigman) so we can start animating her very shortly. Hope to have her in engine in not too long running about and being a nuisance. I'm still working on her face textures but Rigman is close to wrapping up the rig (Just awaiting a facial rig).

(Her minions are no joke).

Other Stuff

We're considering going to a furry con this December as an experimental thing as we've been getting reports that indie do really well and they're relatively affordable. Current idea is that we might attend Midwest Furfest (Possibly) with another dev we've become relatively chummy with, the Animal Insurgent Mercenaries team (AIM). This is still cooking but this is the general direction so far.

Anyways, that's it for this update! We're all hard at work. Look forward to the next update.