Roadmap

• What’s done:
  • Map structure 
  • Storyline design 
  • Enemy design and implementation (aside from tweaks/bugs)
    • Including boss design and implementation
• Critical needs:
  • Finish populating levels/scenes with existing assets and prefabs
• More Assets!
  • A lot of scenes are barren and need more detail in background and foreground
• Improved Assets!
  • Some assets are quite rudimentary from the early prototype days. Here’s an example of Huts and Tents that I’ve replaced to look a bit more spiffy: (insert)
• Improved Performance
  • Improve Memory
• Improved Map!
  • At the moment the map of any given area is divided into large segments, which make the map really easy to complete. It also makes the map pickup somewhat useless, as by the time you find it.
  • Therefore, I want to improve it in the following ways;
    • Make segments smaller (more akin to a single square in Super Metroid)
    • Make Finding the map more meaningful
    • Introduce an item near the end of the game to find items not picked up yet.
• Improved Music!
  • Currently there are two music file types in the game:
    • 1. Placeholder borrowed music from well-known libraries
    • 2. Music I’ve created myself.
  • I want to gut the first type completely
  • For the second, I need to:
    • Add more songs 
    • Improve existing songs in several ways:
      • Make more balanced songs that don’t get annoying on multiple repetitions (more musical sections and variations on themes. More themes, bridges, modulations, etc.)
      • Improve mixing and mastering
• Improved Sound Design
  • Lots of borrowed sounds and some sound muffled.
  • I also want each character to have a sound snippet when they speak (sometimes called bark text)
• More Characters and more lively characters
  • The more the merrier right?
  • Also, many of them are wooden
• Accessibility
  • While “accessibility first” should have been the motto, unfortunately, it was not. I still want to ensure the following:
    • Colour schemes are not difficult for those with colour blindness
    • Rebindable controls
    • …
• Translations!
  • I want the game to be accessible to players who speak other languages.
  • This is going to be a challenge due to my custom dialogue system, which I will have to gut and fix.
• Testing and Bug Fixes
  • As a solo dev, this one is difficult. That’s where you come in!
  • I will be uploading a demo (or have already by the time some read this) to itch.io
• New game+ (Stretch Goal)
  • Ideas are welcome!
• Rebalance Game Mechanics
  • Elementals are a big part of the game, but most enemies have not been configured properly with strengths and weaknesses
  • Doors are a little confusing. I want them to be more straightforward. For instance, I use the same image asset for doors that can be broken with a charge shot when they are on a wall, but only broken with a melee uppercut or downward drive if they are on the floor or ceiling. That’s confusing for the player.
• Difficulty settings (Stretch Goal)
  • This game is intended to be on the easier side (a goal was to stray away from the trend of punishing souls-like games). In my philosophy, a difficult section should prevent you from progressing until completing it. Sounds obvious right? Then why do games punish you making you go back several scenes and have to repeat sections with lower health, and fewer skills, and lose all currency. It’s overly punishing.
  • That being said, some players WANT that challenge, so I will add a difficulty setting for that.
  • No health sponges (though health may increase)
    • Boring use of difficulty setting
  • Faster projectiles
  • More projectiles