It’s day 4 and we’re past half way done!

Content

The bulk of today was spend on adding more content to the game.

More enemies: I added more enemies, including a new type of healer enemy that tries to heal its own teammates if they have lost health. I also added a “tiered” enemy system, with harder variants to appear later in the game.

Enemies

More abilities/powerups: I added a few more usable abilities in addition to the bow. It was fairly smoothing getting these in with the systems I’ve already set up. I also changed the “stat up” powerups to be equipment items that improve your stats, and made a bunch of those. There were also sorted into a “tiered” system so when you start seeing harder enemies you also start to get better gear.

I made it so you now get 2 equipment items and 2 abilities to pick from in each shop. I think this is about right in terms of giving the player meaningful choices and consistent access to the bits they need.

All of this was mixed in with some other odd improvements and bug fixes to the game.

Naming the Game

I’ve been utterly failing to come up with a name, so I threw it open to my friends. Thanks to Alex for suggesting “Knights of the Round” which I tweaked into “Knights in the Round” which I think is striking and fits pretty well.

Exporting and Uploading

I set up my itch page and the process for exporting and uploading builds. It’s always a good idea to get this in early so that you’re not panicking at the last minute. It did take a bit of faffing around to get everything working so really proved the wisdom of sorting it early. One really concrete step closer to being finished.

Itch Page

Time Spent

I worked 9 hours today. Really solid day’s work without much distraction. This will probably be the most work except for possibly Saturday.

Next Steps

Honestly everything’s going really well and if I can maintain this level of focus and effort I think I’ll end up with a really solid project. My rough plan for the second half of the jam is:

  • Thursday - Polish features
  • Friday - Even more content and stretch goals
  • Saturday - Final playtesting, bugfixing and balancing, and get it over the finish line