First off, Happy Mother's day to all mothers out there!
Next, I'm happy to report that, after some more work and reflecting on the art style, I'm planning on keeping the current art style. I have reworked the current design of the player character, in preparation to have Lotus sitting on his shoulder, and made a few design changes; specifically, I made his head slightly smaller, which will apply to the other main human characters that are scene and interacted with throughout the game's world. Here is a comparison of the old and new designs:
I like how Lotus now looks fully on the shoulder and in front, rather than just kind of sitting half off and looking lazily pasted on. I'm a tad disappointed about the less detail given to Lotus' sprite, but I'll take it as a fair trade for his more integrated design and consistent style.
Now, I want to work a bit on the flashiness of the game, specifically the combat. I've enjoyed having the lightning effect on the rune drawing, it makes the act of drawing the rune feel more powerful. However, the shaky text to announce a successful spell just isn't enough; there needs to be more! Something should happen to the game to give some sort of visual feedback when a spell succeeds. I'm thinking of having something happen to the rune itself when it's released, but I haven't quite settled on what exactly that effect should be. So, for just the next few days, I am completely opening it up to a vote! I've put some options to vote for as well as the option to just vote for “other” and write your idea. I'll use whichever option appears to be the most popular, so make your opinion heard! Here is the link: https://twitter.com/EoL_team/status/1126312799225950210
Lastly, as a side note, I've been working on save and loading support. I've decided to use a single save system, with just a single save file and the options to either start a new game or load your previous save each time the game is opened. Saving will only be able to be done in the world while walking around, so no mid-fight saves. I have the functionality for the save system, as well as the accompanying encryption/decryption system, pretty much all done, but just have to integrate it into the opening menu. It should be in the next version.
Well, that's all for this fortnight. Thank you for your continued support!
I look forward to showing off the next version of the demo soon!