Hi friends, fans & family!
Sorry for the looong radio silence. I have been… busy. Without going into too much details I made a lot of big realisations last summer which caused me to take a long break from the development of the game. I’m in the middle of an ADHD investigation that started because there’s always been some suspicious symptoms but lately with two small kids, a full-time and committing to my hobbies everything simply became too much. All is good and I’ve gone through most of it now and I’ve been working on the game for quite some time but made no posts so this one is going to be BIG! With that said… Let’s get to it!
Oh and please be patient with the loading of the embedded twitter posts. There are a LOT of gifs here 😀
Upping the resolution of the title screen
I started working on the new title screen and it’s still not done but I’m almost there, just have to clean up the background a bit.This new one will look much better in all resolutions. Let’s compare them!
Houses can now be visited
I loved the feature in Fire Emblem where you can visit the houses on the map and get items, learn more about the world or get surprises. I’ve added a skeleton for house visits that you can see in action here:
Mission types and side objectives
I’ve also managed to get some side objectives and mission types other than “kill everyone” set up. Right now there are missions where you need to defend something for x turns, rescuing units before they get killed or escorting them to a safe location. There’s also varying rewards in place like money, items, experience or increased morale…
Status effects and environmental combos
I LOVE the combat in Divinity Original Sin 2 and needed to work even more on the environmental stuff that I already have going so I created a basic framework for craziness! If you cast fire on oil you create an explosion. If you cast fire on ice it melts and units become “wet”. If a unit is wet it will take more damage from lightning etc. Cast fire on water and the tile starts “smoking”… This system needs lots more love but we’ll get there.
No more telegraphed attacks…
In the end I have opted to remove the telegraphed attack feature all together. It never became what I wanted it to be so this game is now a “traditional” turn based game with timing mechanics. Still… The AI is predictable and the game will be very clear on how “it thinks” so players can use and exploit that to their advantage. Gladly, lots of the code I wrote did come in handy and the game shows you which enemies are in range and how much damage you might receive before you move to a certain tile. You can see that here (note that those exclamation mark look much nicer now but this is the “clearest” gif I have of how it works):
Portals that spit out reinforcements
I needed to find a way to add additional enemies to levels and couldn’t find anything better than the classic portals although they do come with a twist… If you “kill” the portal (it’s a normal enemy) you stop it from spitting out reinforcements but if you leave it alone you will soon be overwhelmed…
Uploaded first build to Steam and tested the game on my Steamdeck…
This gave me so much joy and motivation! The game works like a charm on the Steamdeck and being able to download, install and see it run for the first time was magical!
When is the demo coming out?
Soon XD. No more promises. I’m working on it! If you want to try the very first version (before I release it publicly on itch.io) signing up for the newsletter is the way to go: http://tinyletter.com/sinistersiamese
With that I say goodbye for this time! Hope you like the updates and don’t hesitate to tell me what you think :D. Big thanks for taking an interest in my work ❤
// Luis
Sinister Siamese Studios 