Kandria

Miscellaneous developments

This week was a mishmash of taking care of marketing stuff, design, bugfixing, and concept work.

Level Design

Currently the primary target for the game is to block out the tutorial area that connects the beginning of the game to the start of the vertical slice. Figuring out how to teach the various controls to the player in an intuitive and uninvasive way is quite difficult!

I've now got a basic blocking down for this extra area, though it'll need some more revisions and some extra engine features before it's completed. I'll try to take care of that next week.

Level Editing

A while back we were playing with the idea of organising a level design contest or event of sorts. We aren't quite ready for that yet, but in preparation for it I've asked around for feedback about what tools and capabilities would be useful to have for the editor. Luckily, the current editor can do most things people asked for already, so I decided to record a video that explains how to use the editor in a bit of detail:

YouTubePlay overlay

The editor is already part of the demo you got through the mailing list, so you can use it right away. If you decide to check out the editor and build something with it, let us know! It would be really exciting to see what you come up with!

Development Streams

Last week I asked you to fill out a Doodle to find a suitable time to do development streams at. I've now closed that Doodle and settled on the following time:

Sundays, 18:00-20:00 CEST

The streams will be simultaneously streamed to Twitch and YouTube. You can follow me on either to get notifications about the streams. For live chatting, please use the official stream page or Twitch, if you prefer.

If you can't catch a stream live, they'll also be archived on Twitch for a while, and permanently on YouTube!

The first stream will happen tomorrow, 13th of June. I hope to see you there!

Posting on Imgur

In an attempt to get more people to see stuff about Kandria, I've started posting on Imgur. It's been going surprisingly well so far, so I'm going to continue posting on there a bit more regularly in the coming weeks.

If you browse imgur, keep an eye open for Kandria!

Music update

Mikel is nearing completion for a first underground track. I'm super excited about that and can't wait to show it to you! If all goes well we should have something ready for you next week!

Concept work

Meanwhile I've been sending Fred off to do some concept art for the faction bases:

https://courier.tymoon.eu/api/courier/file/view?id=3aBpQxQfXfQggHPIqPhVHw%3D%3D
https://courier.tymoon.eu/api/courier/file/view?id=mtc0Z%2F%2B09nsu%2BBUhl8TPPQ%3D%3D
https://courier.tymoon.eu/api/courier/file/view?id=zcPRKsBKQdF0e4uLyJ3Ing%3D%3D

The insides of the faction areas won't be playable, but I thought it would be useful to get a grasp of what they'd look like anyway, to get a better feeling of what life in one of those factions would look like.

He's also been working on the animations for the next enemy type, an unaffiliated rogue:

https://courier.tymoon.eu/api/courier/file/view?id=MHiX4ivYZFI90YqFdWmbBQ%3D%3D

As well as a few others that I don't want to talk about quite yet!

Next

Next we're going to... well, continue with the same stuff! Mikel and Fred both got their work cut out for them with writing music and animating the new characters. Tim and I need to finish the tutorial and work more on the marketing material.

The next big event for us is GDC Online in June. If you're at GDC yourself, I hope you'll hop by our booth! I'll share more details about all that once we have more info ourselves.

In the meantime, I hope you'll join me on the development streams and check in on the discussions on the Discord!