Hello everyone! If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, we hope you’re enjoying the warmer weather!

Battle Classes

Continuing on the battle upgrades, this past month we began work on adding visuals for the different battle classes! There are a total of four different battle classes depending on the type of weapon the party members use, and each class has it’s own strengths and weaknesses.

Surprises?

We have a (very very) small surprise this month that we’ve been really working hard on. Keep an eye on the twitter to see just what it is~!

What’s Next

We’ll be continuing to work on the TTBattle system, and hoping to start on some new areas. In the meantime, we hope everyone enjoys the warm weather and remembers to stay safe!

Hello everyone! It’s March again.

Battle Upgrades

Last month we spent time working on adding new Battle Animations, but we also made a few changes to the battle system to help support that! The first one was adding group-wide skills and items! The second was adding a respawn timer for enemies on the overworld.

Our original design for the overworld had enemies respawning every time a new level was loaded. The idea was that the levels were large enough that there wouldn’t be too many enemies, so having an instant respawn when re-entering a level was fine. We got some feedback that we hadn’t accounted for: if you’re changing between two different levels fairly often (ex. Wiska Forest) then it would actually feel like there were too many! So we’ve added a five minute respawn timer to all of the enemies in hopes this will help alleviate some of the problems.

What’s Next?

We’ll be continuing to focus on Battle Animations and the TTBattle system in the near future. We’ll be looking to show off new enemies, skills and areas over the next few months! In the meantime, we would like to thank everyone who takes the time to fill out our bug report form! We’ve started to address some of the issues, and are looking to address more this month. Take care!

Hello everyone! We hope you all had a good start to the year. Here’s what we were up to for the month of January!

Beta Update

In case you missed it, the Beta Update went out a couple weeks ago! We added a lot of story, new debates, new skits, updated all of the existing SFX and much, much more!

Backer Rewards

We’ve started work on some of the in-game backer rewards. Below are some of the custom NPCs made by Owen!

Font Options

One of the things we’re planning to tackle this coming month is font options. We’ve been slowly adding accessibility settings to the game on an as-needed basis, and this is an option that has been requested a couple of times before. There’s a lot of work that needs to go into this, but here’s a sneak peek!

Battle Animations

Another thing we’re looking to add in this month is a bunch of new battle animations made by Owen and Louis! Look forward to seeing more gifs of these in the future!

Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a safe and relaxing holiday season. Here’s what we were up to during December and what our plans are for the new year!

December 2020

During December we primarily focused on developing the next beta update. We wanted to get it finished for the end of December before New Years, but between holiday breaks and spending time with immediate family it didn’t end up getting finished and tested. We have about one thing left for the release before testing, so look forward to seeing it later this month.

2020 Review

Before going into our plans for 2021, we want to give a brief roundup on and celebrate what we’ve gotten done in the past year.

• Released 2 Beta Updates, 1 Demo Update
• Upgraded to Gamemaker 2.3.x+
• Revamped all of the SFX and added a few more
• Completed the graphical update – all of the battle animations and all of the characters for the game have had their sprites updated
• Added in a quarter of Gataela’s world
• Restructured the skit and cutscene systems
• Added some extra polish to the UI
• Improved the TTBattles by adding criticals, dodge, escape and updating visual effects among other bug fixes
• Added our first pass of fullscreen mode
• Started work on adding new overworld tiles and new animations
• Plus a ton of bug fixes and misc improvements

2021 Plans

Last year was a big year for structural changes and preparation for Gataela as we worked to put in more content for beta testers. We tried to do quarterly beta updates and they were more-or-less successful. We can’t say that the pandemic has not impacted our ability to complete them. As we expect more of the same as last year, here’s some of the big changes and things we’ll be attempting to get done:

• No quarterly beta updates, they’ll be released when ready
• Finishing all of the debate portraits & adding a few more
• Adding more SFX and making new SFX
• Creating new overworld tiles for new areas & to add more visual interest
• Adding in more music and expanding the soundtrack
• Creating new enemies, more battle animations, more VFX, and more creatures to make the world feel alive
• Backer In-Game Reward Fulfillment
• Adding more cutscenes & content

Most items are to be expected, but to briefly note on the quarterly beta updates, we’re largely making this change due to COVID and the on-going pandemic.

In 2019 while we were preparing for the updated demo we had internal milestones each month where we had a dedicated tester run through the content and note issues for us to fix. Our thought was that for 2020 we would be able to keep this up, and releasing quarterly would be absolutely possible. However the pandemic has greatly affected how we work, and when we work. In order to release quarterly the team needs to work in a very structured linear way, which isn’t possible anymore. So for those reasons we can’t guarantee when future updates will be. Thanks for everyone’s understanding, and we’ll be sure to let everyone know when they become available or when we feel one will be coming!

In the meantime, look forward to January’s update and have a good new year!