I just sent off the second balance prototype of Monoceros to that goober, Pyxxis. The game is fun to play and has a very dynamic combat flow.
Urimas is getting me some sprites in between injuring himself in VR due to too many zombies or whatever, Koops finished some art, Chicken is doing something or other, and Hund has taken up mapping.
I am presently working my way through the next part of the balance of Monoceros, making new loot tables and getting stomped by enemies that are 5 levels above where they should be. Urimas is getting me a bunch of new item icons for all the new crafting crap and the backend now has several AI improvements.
Koops has recovered and gots us some arts, while Chicken hasn’t said anything to me NO MATTER HOW MANY WHISKEYS I SEND.
Stinkehund has finished the map for Monoceros and has actually volunteered to make levels for chapter 2. If this works out it’ll be a massive boost since mapping is very draining. Everyone say thank you to her.
Stinkehund is currently working on a map for Monoceros, with the outline being done. Urimas is getting me various ice sculptures and Chicken has moved on to Cave-crawler Sanya. Koops got sick so get well soon, Koops.
I’m currently slogging through the combat balance of Monoceros, having redone it from top to bottom. A few pieces of equipment and most of the skills got carried over, but every enemy has a new set of stats. I’ve also taken the bold move of making level-ups cost money. You don’t get XP from beating up enemies, you get more money and can spend it to level up, or buy skills. This adds a lot of customization and choice which is good because I wanted to make this a smaller game without having all the extra stuff like JP and classes, and this seems to have done that without increasing the dev time much.
Bonus Stuff?
After 10,000 years Rubber Queen Mei’s design is complete! Chicken went overboard on the details like usual, including redoing the crown, but damn if it didn’t turn out spectacular in the end.
This will be getting added in the upcoming chapter 1 update, along with a few other things. It doesn’t have any talk sprites yet but please let us sleep we’re so tired.
All the maps for Monoceros are done. I feel like collapsing. I’m now moving to put in monsters and maybe writing the scenario scripts. Urimas got me some sprites of the ice queen, Hund will be making a cohesive map, and Chicken is ALMOST DONE the rubber Mei thing. I swear.
I translated a game
It’s a Japanese petrification game. You can see it at this twitter thread. It’s a semi-comedic game about an office of girls who fight monsters in the future.
If you like watching people get turned into statues and ice, it’s worth a look.
About half of the optional maps in Monoceros are done. The enemy abilities and such are all in place. I plan to have the remainder of the optional maps done this week, and then I can get to work on gating it all off with minibosses.
TheChicMonster is a bit behind on the half-form images, unable to find a good workflow. Hopefully they will all be done in a week or two and we can get to the UI.
Urimas is making sprites of the ice queen right now, while Chicken has been stringing me along for WEEKS about the upcoming Mei costume. All the artists have been stringing me along!
I’m slogging my way through all the combat for Monoceros. Attaching drop lists, creating weapon entries, setting portrait associations. It’s almost done, but all the values are placeholders so nothing is balanced and slimes have 1300 HP but deal 20 damage.
Urimas is making sprites for Monoceros, the artists are working on art, and YuutaWisp actually delivered some emotes amazingly. We’re all proud of him.
At the current rate, Monoceros probably won’t be done in February. Maybe March. After that, it’s back to RoP.
At long last, the final book adaption for Mei’s adventures has come to Amazon! Book 5, “Petting the Werekitty” can be found at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BW7NF5C6 for US$2.99 or for free through Kindle Unlimited (KU accessibility may take another day to become fully available due to how Amazon works, sorry!). All royalties for book sales and from pages read in Kindle Unlimited goes towards the studio for the continued development of
With all six books out (yes, book 5 is the last, not book 6, because fans wanted to see 6 before 5 so 6 was written and published before 5), this marks the end of Mei’s adventures in story form (at least for now!) We hope you enjoy them!
At last, Urimas got me the final tileset for Monoceros and is now working on the entities. I put in all the game’s monster forms (all of them!) and all of the game’s enemies (all of them!) and have started on the equipment listings.
Chicken is almost done the Rubber Mei Queen costume, Koops is drawing cats, and Mario is waiting for the werecat story to be approved. Everything is chugging along.
Curious Cat
Did you know TL is working on a new game?
Interpol-wanted game developer TL is making a new game and is currently prototyping stuff. Remember Pandemonium Classic: Unity Edition? There’s a new game from the same developer!
The prototype is even free on this wonderful Patreon page hey wouldn’t it be funny if you told your friends? This game is about turning people into maids so it’s pretty great.
Big team meeting today to discuss who we were going to hire for our new emote artist. We need a few more bits but we’re closing in on the candidate. Get psyched.
Meanwhile, I’ve finished most of the Monoceros maps, glued them together, and am 90% done the baseline scripting (encountering bosses and stuff, not topics and sidequests). I’ll be doing enemy placement and crafting balance this week.
Urimas is still making sprites, the bastard. Chicken just finished a concept for the upcoming harpy tower defense, and is actually half done the Rubber Queen Mei costume. Remember that? What we promised years ago? Yeah! That’s happening!
Koops is making some characters for chapter 2, Wispy has shown some damn cool looking sketches for the werebat TF, and MarioneTTe.
Stinkehund has finished the map rework for chapter 1. Chicken is currently assigned to make Cavecrawler Sanya, after which the next assignments are for the chapter 1 updates. Koops has finished some emotes for the next part of chapter 2 and then has to work on some Harpy Tower Defense stuff.
If I told you Urimas has made some sprites and tiles, you wouldn’t believe me but, he has. I was just as shocked as you.
Monoceros Time
So what has been done in the past few months since the last major update? Well, Chic went insane and finished ALL of the monster/boss art. Yeah, it’s all done. Lined, colored, etc. So let’s look at some of it.
I thought it might be fun to show off the fish-person because of the fact that a reverse-mermaid is going to need flippers to swim on their human feet. The poor fellas seem to have gotten the worst of both worlds.
Meanwhile, you can see the finished version of the firefly (the sketch was on the last post). Pretty spiffy and I know our insect fans will enjoy her design.
Meanwhile, here we have the second imp variant, with an increase in stats and attitude to match. I wanted to have some more demonic variety since only two demon types show up in this game (Imp and Succubus) so we got two imp variants, an enemy succubus, and a boss succubus. On the right is the frozen shade, an ice elemental who just wants to cuddle. The ice boss has a unique mechanic to quickly TF your party into frozen shades but I think you’ll be able to figure out how to counter it (tip: one of the four elements of damage in the game is FIRE).
Chic’s next task is to finish sketching all the different player forms, then line and color them. Here’s alraune form, because every game set on Pandemonium is going to have alraunes if I can make it that way. I just like plantgirls okay?
And here we have spooky ghosts! Caelyn can’t help but being cute even when she’s dead.
Chic thinks she can get all the form artwork done in February which is bold to say the least. However, I had not expected her to finish all the enemy art by January so maybe she can pull it off, who knows.
Yeah But What the Salty Doin?
I spent most of December working on Project Carnation and Pandemonium (which you may have seen in the form of a release for Pandemonium and several bugfix patches), but all of January has been allocated to Monoceros.
As such, I’ve completed the maps for about 90% of the main game. As mentioned in the previous post, the game has 11 main areas and 7 optional areas. The last two areas are fairly compact, but I need Urimas to make tiles for me to complete them, so instead I’ve been gluing the maps together, putting in basic scripting, fixing errors, etc. You can almost walk from the start of the game to the end. Obviously no monsters are in yet as that’d make finding bugs harder.
Pyxxis has put together a basic stat line for every enemy in the game. We’ll be working on putting in updated crafting materials and items next. I should have map glue finished up this week and will be working on scripting until Urimas gets me the tilesets I need.
I get that map screenshots are a lot less exciting than monsters and stuff but believe me, I put a lot of work into the visuals here.
Okay So What Now?
I’m going to finish the maps in February, then hopefully get all the scriptwork done. Combat balance will have to wait until maybe March. I also have to work on the Harpy Tower Defense for chapter 2 in March. Chic is going to finish all the player art, and then move on to updating the game’s UI, giving it a title screen, etc.
Our next update post is End-Of-April. Most of the game should be done at that point, though with an incomplete combat balance and probably riddled with bugs. At that point we’ll figure out our release date and plans.
How About Some Fan Art?
Hey it’s Izana looking really tough and definitely prepared for whatever comes.
Oh no! Verand’s curse has turned her into a brainless pooltoy! Whatever will she do? (Hint: Hang out in Verand’s pool, what else?)
This was done by The Doodler who you should go commission hey wait IS THAT AN AMOGUS!?!?! I’m going to kill him.
We also have a blushing Lotta from HadezMuze. I forgot to post it last week so now it’s permanently a part of the Monoceros Milestone 2 update.
Curious Cat
Is broken right now. It takes a long time to load and never shows questions. Presumably it needs some fixing so, for the time being, we’ll have to take drastic measures. I hope you people deserve this.
The scholar ponders (or is maybe sleeping).
“Wow, that’s a pretty good cat”, you think to yourself, “But what if he was a little bit more dangerous?”
Pandemonium Development 