Fountain in the Rain

 

Since all the basic mechanics are done I'm likely going to spend the next few months just doing level design. How many levels it'll have I won't say, the game will probably not take very long to beat, but I'm aiming to make it open ended enough that the player has reasons to revisit areas multiple times.

Nocturne Update #3

 

So I'm aware I haven't said a word about Moon Rhapsody in a very long time now, which I'm sure many people who are reading this would come here to see but I spent the last few months mostly working on Nocturne because MR is unfortunately going to still take a long time to develop before I can show anymore progress, and Nocturne I can work on faster at the moment since the gameplay and engine is a little simpler.
Which though it's making decent progress and is fully playable. Still isn't at a point where I want to show any gameplay of it yet. This is because some elements I think still need to decide on how they're going to work exactly.
Like for example I initially had designed the stages in a loop fashion where the player would go to a certain point, defeat an enemy collect an item and return to the entrance, and the stages would change in certain ways while going back. But this idea I decided to scrap because I felt it raised complications with replaying some areas, and I wanted to keep the sense of always moving forward towards a goal. Also I wanted every stage to have a boss enemy that needed to be defeated, but it would have probably meant either multiple reskins or less stages, and I feel like this game is better off down playing the combat anyway.
So what I can say about the gameplay is the design will feel similar to anyone who's played a Metroid game, there are different weapons that break different kinds of blocks, you run very quickly and can wall jump and grab ledges, and you occasionally need to backtrack to find an ability to open a path. But the game is broken into stages and the player's weapons are lost if they die or fail and may need to be recovered to make progress. Though the main character always has default weapons they can use to attack with, and there's no durability or stamina system if anyone wants to know about that. 

The ghost girl I shown in one screen is not the protagonist or an NPC, just a strong enemy. Most of the enemies don't pose a large threat besides being obstacles to avoid running into, but a few encountered throughout stages guard valuables and needed items. Also lastly, as the name implies, the game mostly is set in night environments as ghosts are the primary enemy and certain ones need to be hunted to clear the areas completely. The player can use regular weapons to defeat ghosts, but like in MR it's better to use magic and lightning based attacks especially to defeat them quickly.
That's it for now, I will try to post more updates soon but probably not gifs or videos until October or so, though my goal is to get the game to at least close to a half way finished state before putting out any demos.

v3.1.2 Update

 

Version 3.1 for the demo is now available for everyone to play. I'm sorry if there have been people waiting a long time to see this update, this version contains the option for Japanese and I wanted to be extra thorough making sure every line of text was accounted for, with that said a few things in the JP version are not translated yet and some things may definitely still need editing, but it's mostly stuff nonessential. There are also of course several fixes from 3.0 to this version:

Changes from 3.0.3:

• Nyx's mode has a new dungeon that can be accessed after the first one.
  
• The Sky Garden Temple has been redesigned.
  
• Nyx's portion of the overworld is bigger and rearranged in some spots.
  
• Sasha's dungeons have changes to certain rooms.
  
• Grab system is different, instead of mashing to escape you only have to hold down the jump key. However there is a variable time limit to how long you have to escape. You have the option to attack enemies for a large amount of SP to immediately escape, but it can fail under some conditions. Many enemies also can't continuously grab the player as easily as older versions. Some new items added.
  
• A couple new enemies added.
  
• Game should run better and not be as likely to crash when closing.
  
• Special art is displayed depending on the results when finishing the demo.

Nagi preview + other info

 

It's been almost a month since I posted a devlog again so I better give an update. Some things might be already known but I'll list them here anyway. I know promised another demo update but the next version is still probably a few weeks off unfortunately.

Additions:

-The dungeon/town posted before in the last devlog is about half way finished.

-1 new enemy finished, another is almost done and took a while to fully animate, screenshot related.

Changes:

-Grabbing via enemies is different, and no longer requires the player to mash buttons/keys to escape. Enemies will also no longer take SP when grabbing, but there is a trade off that I'll let players see in the next version.

-Seaside Ruins area and north eastern part of the map in Nyx's mode has been modified and expanded. 

-Working on the Sky Garden Temple some more because I feel like 

it's poorly laid out in it's current form.

-Found and fixed a memory leak causing multiple cave areas to lag, should also allow the game to close easier now.

I've also gone back and did some more work on Nocturne, which I've tried to limit for a while so I wouldn't get behind on MR, but I had to figure out the visual style I was going to go with as well as how I was going to handle the multiple clothing layers on the protagonist. Since I decided not to go with a similar pixel art style that MR and my older projects have and instead use higher resolution sprites. Ultimately I finally settled on something good I think, and the basic movement/jumping sprites along with the clothing layers are animated. But the game is still far from being presentable, and if I do show it, it will likely be after Moon Rhapsody is finished. Or not it depends, but I felt it should still be mentioned.

Regarding the changes to Game Jolt's policies.

So if you aren't aware Game Jolt has recently out of nowhere decided that all games containing explicit sexual or violent content such as heavy gore are not allowed as they apparently aim to be a more kid/teen friendly site so to speak. I have no idea what the reasoning is behind this decision is, I suspect it's a similar case to what happened to tumblr years back, but of course that means Moon Rhapsody may not be able to stay up on GJ much longer. I won't be taking further action unless I am forced to, but the game is still available at Itch https://kosmic91.itch.io/moon-rhapsody-demo-v2 and my patreon https://www.patreon.com/Kosmic91 eventually other sites hopefully.