Week 31 was pretty calm!
Last week I said I would clean up the visuals of the king game and then I would work on in-game progression. I did both of these things!
First, here are the Pico-8 doodles of the week!
Let’s start with the king game’s visuals because that’s what I did first!
First off, the king – the character controlled by the player – is no longer a plain white humanoid but now a palanquin held up by two characters!
Second, I replaced the red wizards with green wizards. The red wizards were a problem because the enemies were also all red and it was confusing. The first green reskin I did was too bright and didn’t look good with the rest of the game so I did second one and it was much better!
The progression system is quite simple. On each level, enemies – and soon chests – will drop money. To end the level you have to destroy the antenna that’s placed somewhere on the level. Then you are presented with a three-choices menu where you have to choose a hiring pack. One of these pack for exemple could be “-120$ +5 Warriors” or “-60$ -4 Wizards +4 Laser Guys”. So each pack has a cost that can be just money or money and troops and in exchange, you get some cool new troops. You have to choose one to get to the next level. Then you have to deal with your own decisions.
That’s the gist of it. Maybe troop upgrades will be added later on. Special units such as ninjas and other folk people will be added later on, with a higher cost but a lot of power.
Next week I’m also gonna change the money system and make it work with bags o’ money, so you have to fill bags o’ money while in the levels and then you can only pay for things with full bags o’ money.
In other news!
I’m now on Mastodon if you wanna follow me there, I’m sure that at some point I’ll figure out what I should post there. Mastodon is a GNU Twitter-like thing that’s not controlled by any big company and that’s a pretty good thing I think. I’m right there on there!
The king game – which desperately needs a name – could have a first version with play value within two weeks maybe. I’m super unsure about what I’ll make of it. I’ve been thinking about doing an early access kind of thing with this game and it feels like it would be a good idea. But I’m torn between letting that first version being the first version of the early access or setting as a free demo for the next versions of the game.
About that early access thing, one update a week seems like a good rhythm to keep it alive. Then maybe a free version will always be available but it’s always two-three updates old. I really want people to be able to try the game before buying it because I think that’s the ultimate incentive. Obviously I would also spend quite some time pushing the game towards gaming sites and people generally. This all need some further consideration.
We hit 1.5k followers on Twitter!! It took only 10 weeks to get from 1k to 1.5k. The account was created almost two years ago and although it did get a lot more active over time, it took 20 months to get to 1k.
Week 31 was pretty good!
Next week, a title for the king game needs to be found. I’ll be working more on in-game progression, polishing it all up, and then I will be working on content, namely troops, enemies, and different level zones and maybe I’ll start on audio too. There will be more Pico-8 doodles as well.
Have a good week!
Take care!
TRASEVOL_DOG
* TRASEVOL_DOG * 
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