Pent and its distant future

Summer's done searing,
Smell of mushrooms, coloured leaves,
Autumn's way too short.

Anyway, time to look back at my most recent game, what I've been up to recently and what I'll finally be working on again for quite a while.

Pent

In a way, Pent's Wacky, Zany Road Trip to Adulthood was another attempt to break away from the status quo, in the same vein as Generic Fishing Game (which achieved unprecedented levels of relaxation), Trial of Temptation, and to a lesser extent Lost in Lampyrid Fog (if you know, you know). The secondary premise of Pent would be that the game would give off an air of just not caring: hastily drawn, MS Paint quality graphics, a shoddy car that forces you to clumsily stumble through the world and very improvised, all around blunt dialogues. Note that this is all just a façade, as this did not ease or shorten development at all. Yes, the visuals can theoretically be drawn quickly, but not as swiftly as you might think, as I was constantly making adjustments to ironically make them appear as if the hypothetical artist did not care. Besides, to still make the game look appealing enough, and keep the style consistent, I needed more visuals than usual. Also, even though the dialogues were indeed written very quickly from whatever came to mind, this is a quantity of text I'm not used to in my games and everything still has to be meticuously checked for errors.

To summarise: I made a crass, ironic, absurdist game that on the surface gives off an indifferent energy because I thought it'd be interesting.

But was it interesting? I very much expected a more mixed response than usual, but I'll admit it was slightly more mixed than expected. It ranged from very positive to extremely negative, which was fun to watch. At the very least I got the wackiness out of my system, and reclaimed my motivation to work on more 'normal' games. In any case, I personally am contend with how Pent turned out, and there were enough people who seem to appreciate the tone of the game. But not enough to continue Pent without change. Which conveniently brings us to the next topic.

Pent 2

It's not unusual to entertain the idea of a sequel when working on something new. I have a list of absurd titles for possible Pent games. In this case, it seemed extremely likely that I'd want to continue Pent's silly antics in some form. How exactly would depend mostly on the response of the Road Trip.

The first game's received a great amount of very valuable feedback after release. Another big, corpulent thanks to everyone leaving any feedback, either positive or negative. For a possible sequel I've decided to turn things around: instead of making something that looks and plays shoddily and make a fun game out of that, actually START with something as fun as possible, THEN drizzle it in absurd nonsense. I've made a prototype (for >= $3 patrons) where the gameplay and visual style have been completely overhauled. Check the obligatory, unecessary side by side comparison below:

Changes so far in Pent 2:
- Car gameplay completely different:
   - New, smaller, cooler car with completely reasonable hitbox
   - Plays way more responsive and faster
   - Visuals for a whopping 16 instead of 8 directions
- Player can sprint and jump
- Visuals:
   - Way more liberal use of colours
   - Outlines to make things stand out (and make the usage of colours easier)
   - Significantly more complex tile sets, including shadows to make the terrain pop out more, among other things
- Better checkpoints:
   - R now always restarts, even during death animations
   - Checkpoints actually fully save now (and look better doing it..!)
   - Even more auto saving, although you might not be aware
- O to zoom out (while standing still)
- Many new features, most of which are not in the prototype
- An actual story with twists and all, but still zany of course. Not included in prototype
- Things I'm forgetting because I'm smart

So yes, I've made a start with Pent 2 and tried to process as much feedback as possible and cram the majority of new ideas in there. That way it'll be easy to continue working on it in the future. For now, I've made a prototype that showcases the base gameplay. For the time being it's only available for >= $3 tier patrons right here:

--> Pent 2 SMALL prototype link <--

Indeed, Quecto tier patrons can play this one as well, as I've yet again neglected to make more Quectos. Feedback is very welcome and also let me know if the link does not work or something. To reiterate: the prototype focuses on the new gameplay of the player and the car, while showcasing the new visuals. Many features that have already been implemented will be kept for the full game, I just want to know if the gameplay's really fun now. Note that when the time eventually comes to continue Pent 2, this prototype will likely be available for everyone.

Next up: The City that went downwards

That's all for Pent for now, into the funny freezer with realistic legs he goes. I'm not working on anything big until Cursed Travels: Sunken City is finally done from now on for realsies I promise pinky swear. Again, with the exception of a fifth Cursed Travels web game in between and maybe some actual small things, Sunken City will have my full attention. It has been too long, but motivation's pretty high so let's hope that stays that way. There will be the famed, promised dev logs of yonder along the way. I assume this is what you want me to work on anyway, especially since I will not finish Project Amidst before this game's done.

okbye