Programming

We’ve officially entered the polish phase, and that means tightening up everything from combat feedback to death and respawn flow. The river is no longer just a scenic hazard—it’s fully lethal to players and enemies now. To keep things fair, you’ll be sent safely to shore to allow your fellow player to revive you without going for a swim.

Combat got a nice punch-up with the addition of camera shake, giving attacks and impacts a more satisfying feel. We also fixed some long-standing camera quirks—especially the awkward behavior when one player is down, which should now feel a lot smoother and less like the camera is giving up on life.

On the systems side, we’ve started preloading some key textures to avoid any pop-in surprises when new elements spawn. Reviving has been sped up for better pacing, and you’ll now come back with 20% of your max HP instead of a lonely sliver of health. It’s all part of making the game feel tighter, faster, and more fun to play.

Art - UI

We have spent the majority of our time this week polishing UI elements to make it fit better in the game. Primarily the health bars and controls-screen.  The controller screen was hard to pull off because the moment we added images of the characters or more fluff the page it all felt very messy. So we went for something simple and clear instead, though it may not be as flashy.

By changing the healthbars to be golden we were also able to make them read better agaisnt the green grass. 

Environment – Butterflies, Boulders, and Beautiful Chaos

Environment – Butterflies, Boulders, and Beautiful Chaos This week in the environment department, we’ve entered full polish mode—which means finally setting up gameplay cameras for the second half of the level. Yes, that part of the world you weren’t supposed to see yet? It now has angles. Glorious, cinematic angles. 

The world itself also got some love. Forests are now adequately foresty, and ruins are sufficiently ruined. We added butterflies, because of course we did, and scattered a few extra particles around to make the world feel more alive (and slightly more sparkly). 

Loot and healing items have been distributed throughout the level, so goblin adventurers in need of a mid-combat snack will no longer be left empty-handed. We also added interactable objects—so now the legs can do what they were born to do: kick rocks into people’s faces. And speaking of damage, explosive objects are officially in, ready to deliver the kind of chaotic energy this game thrives on. 

Finally, the VFX got another pass to help make all that chaos readable. Explosions, hits, and general mayhem should now be clearer, punchier, and way more fun to watch.

Sound

For sound, there wasn’t that much of a progress this week. Our sound designer placed all the ambient sounds in the right spots in our world, added audio to the small lake at the back and adjusted the river spline a bit. Next to that, they started working on the mix since the mix is very out of balance right now. A few other small things were tweaked as well, like adding the healing sound to the Torso and adjusting its slap buildup to have it correctly timed. 

Last week during the supervisor meeting, we noticed that the level music stops abruptly. Our sound designer has looked into what/how/why it happens and couldn’t really diagnose the issue. The “stopmusic” event for the level music gets randomly called in the level, it’s difficult to see the trigger for this without going into code. We need to look into the dev side of things to see why and where this event gets called and what goes wrong.