We got really damned distracted. We put the game out there, we started obsessing about getting feedback, to hear from someone the game is good, knowing full damned well it's only a fraction as good as it will be soon once we start building up items, enemies, levels and such. We're on the brink!

Did a little MSC optimizations to UI and level loading. Tomorrow it's going to be build up the game damn it!

IT'S TIME!

Random level generator system: DONE!

Enemy AI systems: DONE!

Ability systems for player and NPC: DONE!

Senses for AI: DONE!

Item systems: DONE!

Bonus systems: DONE!

Shops: DONE!

Story: DONE!

Combo systems: DONE!

Charged attack systems: DONE!

Revolutionary movement systems: DONE!

Portability to mouse, keyboard, phone, and touch devices: DONE!

Level setups: DONE!

Spawn systems: DONE!

Art, animations, shaders, materials, sound, and on and on... DONE!

All the long days and nights are starting to pay off, it's culminating together. All that's left to do now is make the darned game! We see the potenential, we know the game is going to become more and more fun as we figure out the optimal enemy layouts, when we get the right level flow, the right seacrits in the right places, figure out difficulty scaling and all that shyt! Only a matter of time now!

Thank fucking god for Manowar, and all the adrenaline pumping jams that have fueled the fire at midnight.

If this ends up a failure, it's going to be a spectacular one!

Short day of work today. I need to collect my thoughts, going to take a nice long bath and just think. What's first on the docket? How do we bring this m*ther fucker home?

No more stressing about discoverability, about worrying if anyone will ever lay the darned game, if it will ever make a sale, or if we'll ever get any support making the darned thing.

Time to get back to what we do, keeping the fire strong so we can mold the toughening iron.

Chin up, THERE'S A KICK ARSE GAME THAT NEEDS MAKIN'!

Health is back, this week we whoop the LAMA'S ASS!

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POST WORK EDIT: Great success! I tested the web build on my phone which usually experiences pretty bad performance issues, and it's running like butter! There is the long standing bug we are waiting on Unity to fix regarding button inputs, but aside from that, the game is running better than ever! I am noticing that having tons of physics objects tied to several spawn locations is causing it to chug though. I'll make a note to reduce those to maybe 4 for most spawns and save the many fragments for the big bosses.

Most importantly... I really just had a fun time playing the game. It felt like a darned game! And i started to have revelations about how to build it out to be even more fun! All these years to FINALLY be at this phase, after long thinking I would be able to come up with solid plans to make a game fun, I AM FINALLY AT THAT PHASE AFTER ALL THIS DAMNED TIME. I finally get to make far reaching decisions and build out the game and make it awesome. I've decided specific enemies are going to drop certain upgrades. Baby sharks will drop small health bonuses for example and on rare occasions maybe regen. Dash fish will drop other upgrades.

Each fish type will have a certain "feeling" of the upgrades they drop, sharks will make the player tankier, shadow fish will give camo upgrades, etc. Players will find them in different areas, so depending on what upgrades they want to farm, they will want to explore different places and change their farming strategies accordingly. Mini Boss fish will likewise drop Unique bonuses.

Should I make branching paths? I might need to come up with a means for non linear play so the player can farm in different areas and make a "choice". I want there to be bottlenecks to play that certain areas demand. Some areas should be really dangerous, you want to simply survive and not fight there. Other areas should have fish that are VERY tanky, or maybe they regenerate, so you need to pump a lot of damage into them fast to defeat them, requiring lots of damage builds. Other areas should be FILLED with incoming damage, and the only way to survive is to build up your defensive abilities. Other areas should be platformy, and require the player to be able to navigate the area well with speed and guile to get really neat upgrades and items.

Items will be less bonus driven and be more of a "flavor" as I find it just doesn't fit the game flow to stop, look over item stats. I'll make some rare items though that have really nice bonuses, but overall I think the game is better separating bonuses from items. That's not to say items won't have a big impact on the game! Rings will be very bonus driven, and certain rare items will also have very powerful bonuses, like shields greatly reducing damage from the front. Weapons will be VERY fun in how each type behaves differently with their ability and combo loadouts as well as visual differences, haven't even really started getting them in yet!

Very exciting times. Just the other day was super bummed stressing no one will ever play the game, we'll never be successful. But I know we're right around the corner from things really starting to come together!

THE REPOSITORY CALLS MY NAME, IN THE SOUND OF THE CRUNCH IN THE NIGHT, MY KEYBOARD WILL DRINK BLOOD, AND I WILL DEV, YES I WILL DEV IN THE DAWN OF BATTLE