The most difficult part about game development, it's that eventually and inevitably, you will find yourself with a semblance of a game in your hands, that you will find fun, for you designed it according to your interests. And fun games are very, very distracting.

The most fun part about game development, however, is that you can nerf the enemy that killed you to the ground. Even then, I never got past level 13 in my own game, but I consider that to be a rather good performance. The journey there pleased me greatly, for sure.

The Games Foxes Play (github | original post)

First, I narrowed down my vision a bit, and dropped the "Edge of Reality" branch for now. I've struggled too much with the level generation, fried my motherboard a few times, and eventually realized a very large labyrinth just didn't work with the kind of game I was making. I got a prototype running, but it simply wasn't fun, and so I'm leaving it behind for now. Instead, I will focus more on the three other branches that are, on the other hand, progressing quite nicely.

Serene Spire now has its own music track, titled "Fly on the Wall", once again crafted by my esteemed online friend. This branch is a place of purity and immaculate zeal, and I really want to push the feeling that the player is not welcome in this holy place, while at the same time creating a sense of awe at how beautiful and synchronized the Harmony headquarters are.

Additionally, every 5 floors cleared in the Spire will now reveal a Fluffian Workshop. The Harmonic Tinker there is willing to give you a Modulator - a permanent upgrade - for free, under the condition that you leave their hallowed place immediately. In fact, the Modulator item is placed on top of a platform looming over a deadly abyss, in case the dialogue didn't get the message across. After grabbing the loot, the only way out is down.

Unless you happen to have the brand new Hyper-Kinetic Collectivist Thrusters I made this week, of course. I doubt the Harmony will be very happy about you using their own tech to steal their precious gadgets.

Roseic Circus has received its first few enemies: the creepy, spider-like Third Emblems of Sin, and the agonizing Ashsoul Screechers. In their presence, player FOV is reduced to only 2 tiles. They occasionally blink around, and so, you will be anxiously circling around in the darkness while dangerous foes may suddenly sneak up on you from behind, then be gone the next second. Screechers even have a knockback attack, which might punch you into a group of arachnids, or into the Glamorous Toxin that plagues the Circus.

Speaking of, the Glamorous Toxin will now gradually replace the music with a creepy drone the more intoxicated you become. It also kills you if you stay in it for 10 turns, and prints out an unsettling death message.

I've started work on the boss awaiting at the end of Faith's End, inspired by this comment from the thread I posted here a while back. It's a big robotic snake. Yes, I'm having too much fun with the thrusters. I've got plans for the actual mechanics, but for now, I've simply worked on getting the multi-segment AI to work. Squiggly!

For future plans, I'll try to ship this boss battle ASAP. It's going to have pushable boxes that shoot lasers. If things go my way. Very often, my design ends up too hard to implement with my shallow programming knowledge, and I end up making something completely different instead, sometimes even cooler than the original idea.