Hey there!

After getting some feedback about the next version of the build, it's time for me to draw a conclusion for the current game format. I'd like to thank warmly the people who accepted to play the "pre-build" and shared their feelings/ideas about the game, it has been very, very instructive for me and the game will fully benefit from it.

First of all, I must announce that the game as you know it will end. It doesn't mean that I'm cancelling the project at all, it's quite the opposite actually. But I'm going to make a fresh start of the project and take what is good in the current build and remove the questionnably bad things from it. The basic gameplay will not change a lot, you'll still be controlling a badass hottie that needs to get through sidescrolling stages ( and who gets her clothes torn off when running out of health ), but all will be better. I learnt a lot from the game as it is today, it was a nice playground to try things, but I also made a lot of mistakes that need to be corrected in order to have a nice, fun and sexy game to play. So, what can you expect?

• First, there will be only one playable character, at least for the gamedev time. Making multiple playable characters with different strength, weaknesses and abilities is very fun, but it's also too much work for a guy like me. It's too time-consuming and the game itself doesn't benefit from it. All the time spent drawing characters sprites is time that doesn't go into actual gamedev/level design and stuff, and I end up with too fast drawn sprites and unconvincing animations dynamics. The aim is to have one nice character with fluid and good looking animations.
• Then, there will be a slight graphical twist. It won't be big, but I'm aiming to get a coherent graphical identity for the game. I'm globally satisfied with the visual aspect of the game right now so I'm going to take some stuff from the current build with me.
• Then, the gameplay will also have more coherences. Right now, I find the boss at the end of the demo fairly bad. It's not easy to understand its patterns and not intuitive to understand where to strike it. Or, for example, you can actually destroy some projectiles by attacking them, but not all of them. I want this to change, or at least make it understandable that you have the ability to do so in some situations or not.
• Following our previous point, enemies will also get a small redesign. Currently, I find that there are too many small enemies ( that require to crouch to attack them ). Also, they're all 1-hp enemies, and I want to include some hard-to-kill guys in there. I also plan to add some mini bosses and diversify a bit the enemies with more humanoids.
• The last thing to mention here is something that will not change: our main character will still be Aria, and even though I plan to make her look slightly different from the current version, she will not change her voice!

That's it for today! Of course, I have a little GIF to share with you about a little perspective study I made today. The character design here may be a serious candidate to replace the current visual aspect of Aria. What do you think?

Thank you for reading these lines!