Development Blog June 2026: Early Summer Progress

I am happy to say that since the start of Summer our pace of progress on the project has increased. 

Gameplay: 

This month we have added new prototype electricity weapons, new enemy behaviors, and have also built out more combat locations. We have also taken steps to improve controller support, although some controller specific features/mechanics are still somewhat unpolished. 

Our enemy variety is still lacking IMO, so that will be a major point to work on over the summer.

Dialogue and Quest Systems:

Much of the last month has been spent overhauling and iterating upon our dialogue and quest systems. We have shifted from presenting dialogue in a single, static text box with both labels and camera movement indicating the person speaking, towards a system which uses individual text-bubbles -- allowing for more dynamic transitions between characters in scenes with multiple speakers.

I'll be short in discussing our quest systems, as the majority of our improvements this month have not been 'player-facing' and have more been improvements in QOL which speed up the process of designing and implementing questlines into dialogue and gameplay. These could also eventually be quite useful as modding tools down the line, but this remains uncertain at the moment.

UI: 

We have been consistently refining the design and features of our game's inventory UI and character information menu. Our game's unique blend of arcading top-down shooter gameplay and RPG features have required us to pull from a lot of different games and genres for UI ideas/inspiration, and overall it's been rather involved. That said, we now getting to a point where we are happy with where the UI is at the moment.

The next devlog will discuss our progress in UI design, and some specific design constraints that have proven most challenging for us to work around (such as ensuring a high-quality experience on smaller screens).

World Design:

Additionally, work on the open world has continued. This is something I intend to cover in a devlog at some point as we have made a lot of progress on the main zone for the game demo, and it has gone through numerous iterations and redesigns as we continue to improve 

The demo zone will have four key quest-hubs and many combat oriented locations -- and out goal is to make sure that these areas are able to be differentiated in terms of gameplay and visuals whilst still feeling cohesive. We will need more tilesets and environmental art to achieve the vision we have for these zones. Some zones will also have minor unique gameplay elements and environmental hazards. 

We are implementing the mechanics for traps and secrets scattered throughout the world to make exploration more rewarding and engaging, but this is still far from being ready to show off.

Lore: 

Lore and narrative elements have been something that were core to the start of the project. A lot of work has been done on this front, but its still a little early to reveal many details.

Devlog:

Due to other obligations, and a prioritization on making progress in development, I have been unable to dedicate time to video editing and putting together another devlog, but that is soon to change. The next devlog will discuss the process of designing our new UI and the tradeoffs inherent to UI design. Hopefully this will be a useful watch for other developers trying to put together their own projects (especially small-to-medium scale RPGs).

Promotion: 

There was an intentional pull-back in promotion for our project since early winter of last year, as we needed to square some things up before relaunching promotional efforts. But, now that all that is settled, we are going to be far more consistent and diligent in marketing our project and posting content on social platforms as we have built up a massive backlog of things to show off.

Discord:

We are currently setting up a discord server, which will be launched alongside our next devlog. This is intended as a chill place for other game developers, worldbuilders, or people who are interested in our project to ask questions or share their own work. More on this soon.

Misc Announcements:

in the course of overhauling our UI, we also undertook the challenge of creating a custom font to match our game's setting and art style. This sidequest of sorts took a couple of days, but we have been quite happy with how it looks in engine. We have also posted these fonts on Itch.io (click for link) for a small premium for other developers who might find value in them.

All in all, things are moving along and I am excited to share even more updates on our development going forward.

Cheers,

The Archivist.