Mechanics.

This isn't a visually cool post, but it is worth mentioning anyways.
MECHANICS!

Mechanics mechanics mechanics! That's right, basic mechanics have finally filtered their way from paper to progress in the game. Player's can kill enemies and obtain a certain amount of energy or have the choice to attack with less damage but sort of "syphon" energy out with each strike, making for a little bit of risk/reward. You have to be a bit closer to the enemies to be able to hit them with that "syphon-y strike thing" (placeholder name...)

Then we have the pause screen laid out pretty simply again with some placeholder elements. But the inventory will show blank "slots" where different objects can be collected and fill up. It's a bit more like The Last of Us rather than World of Warcraft. There are a finite number of objects to collect in the game and I want players to see silhouettes to pique interest. Plus I think it looks neat, sue me.

THEN we have the stat leveling mechanic, which I am particularly excited for. Think a 2D Dark Souls with basic stats and you have Ouroboros. Use the energy collected (see above ;) ) to boost one of your 3 major stats (strength, defense and wisdom) and that value to pay to level the stats goes up universally after every upgrade. I want the upgrades to feel substantial, but not overpowering. The moment you go from doing 2 damage to 3 with the test enemies in place... It does feel nice.

Next to work on is the crafting mechanic and how equipment will work. This will make or break the game, and hopefully it will make it because I want it so bad.



Anyways, long story short, things are happening. Excitement excitement excitement.

Scenery

So here we have some new areas. The first three pictures are of the hero's hometown of Artoras. They're a simple people. I mean, if the world ended once before and you had to construct a house in the desert, how would you do it?

Down here we have some gray box test of Mount Astus, east of Artoras. I don't know yet if directly one screen east of the town there should be a mountain trail or if one more area of desert filled nonsense should go there. Always thinking.

Animation progress.

This is just a quick overview of some of the new animations put in.
Jumps.
Dust particle when kicking off to jump.
New attack, new mechanic: Syphon, a sort of stab with the soul stone acquired. This will allow the player to gather more energy from enemies.

This forced me to rebalance the test enemy's energy levels when killed. I lowered them a bit to make the player feel the need for that extra pick up by using their new ability.

The Syphon will be a main mechanic in the game to help players get a boost in currency to help with crafting and other various things.

Ultimately, the little blue balls that represent the energy will be far more "pretty", and have a sort of "vaccuum" animation when the player is near, to show the collection as more of a reward than just a... BOOP! Disappeared.

Anyways, always trudging along.

Not shown: Crouching...

For some reason I didn't crouch at all to show the new crouching pose.... Doh.