Hello again! Long time no see, sorry about that!
We've been quiet this month getting all ready to show off our fantasy world in all its entirety. This is a long ol' post so strap in!
Way back when development started for Play Pretend, we knew we wanted various imaginary worlds themed after childhood dreams and fantasies. As such, we just had to have a medieval fantasy world featuring dragons, knights, and a princess. We set out to develop it as our first world and so it's been through many iterations to get to where we are now.
EGX:
Those of you who we met last year at EGX may remember our fantasy world as a flat, green landscape. While we were happy with how it was looking then, we knew we could do so much better.
Recolour:
The first thing we knew we wanted to address was the colour scheme. I've mentioned this before in a previous post (here), but as a reminder, here's a peek at how far the fantasy environment has come:
(↑ then) (↓ now)
Retheme:
As part of the recolour, we shifted theming a little too, when we first set out with the fantasy world we were fully set on a very typical fantasy princess look. While fleshing out some of the other worlds, however, we decided to shift this to more of a fantasy/witch mix which really contributed to how we themed our props and final colours. Spooky?
Them's fightin' words
Of course, our worlds would be pointless if they weren't full of a wide range of enemies. We've been working really hard to get a full set of enemies in along with Agatha in all her glory. In celebration of the enemies being completed, here's a rapid rundown of some of the fantasy roster:
Froggie + Toad Bombers - Long-range attackers who will try their best to hit you with their frog spawn bubbles.
Nekomancers - Slippery cats who use their magic to teleport away when targeted.
Empty knights - Hulking suits of armour that chase you down. Careful when you hit their helmet off, it'll only make them quicker
Agatha - The main attraction, Agatha the Dragon. She'll be waiting at the end of the fantasy world under the guidance of Gracie to stop you from going any further, using her fire breath, flight and stomping footsteps to do what she can to drive you back from whence you came!
(Almost) breezing through
All throughout the development of the fantasy world, we've faced an large number of challenges, most of which are less related to the world itself and more about how we build worlds in the first place. These varied from little things like how to mark areas inaccessible to the player, to big things like what should happen in terms of visibility when the player walks behind some of the environment. However, with most of these issues now out of the way, we are finally able to pick up the pace on world development, which means we're getting closer to being able to reveal that all-important release date!
If you want to hear more about how we solved these challenges and what they entailed, drop me a DM on Twitter and I'll do my best to answer any questions! (@dog_possum)
What's next?
As work on the fantasy world draws to a close, we are now gearing up for a public playtest (Steam Next Fest is coming up soon 👀!) If you haven't already, be sure to wishlist Play Pretend so you can get your hands on it as soon as our demo goes live! -> bit.ly/PlayPretendGame
Of course, we are also hard at work on the other worlds, playable characters, and our all-important Ideas that really put the rogue-lite into... well... the rogue-lite!
As always, keep in touch over on Twitter, wishlist the game on Steam, and join our community Discord to help us with early playtesting. We can't wait to see what you all think very soon! - B
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