WHAT THE DUCK- BOOM


Has it been three weeks already? Well, fear not, as I have come bearing you good tidings and a new update on Feast for the Senses.

I have added a new category of sub-weapons to Réiltín’s arsenal. I felt that the game needed more close-range combat options and more ways to engage with multiple enemies at the same time besides using the grenade launcher.

The first of these new sub-weapons is the landmine. (Click on any of the images below to see an animated version.)

When set on the ground, it takes a few moments for it to arm itself. When it does, it beeps and becomes fully invisible, leaving behind only a pulsing ring that indicates it’s activation range.

When an enemy wanders into the ring, the mine reveals itself, flashing and beeping. After a short while, it explodes with a blast strength and radius greater than that of a grenade. Réiltín cannot set off her own mines by moving near it, but she can set them off by using the explosion of a grenade or another mine.

The second sub-weapon is the decoy. Not knowing how to depict the decoy, I just Google Image searched for “decoy”. The topmost results I got were all duck decoys used for duck hunting. I just said to myself, “Why not?” Fairies do have a reputation of being weird and inscrutable.

When set down, the decoy will jump around, quack a song, and be all-around conspicuous and annoying, attracting the attention of nearby enemies. Since the enemy monsters are in-universe rely on their individual senses to track the player down, I thought the decoy should be some sort of an annoying and obvious sensory experience. Also, I just wanted an excuse to put the Flea Waltz in a game.

The decoy has more drawing power than Réiltín herself, meaning she can drop one while being pursued and sneak away unnoticed, or get up close and attack without fear of retaliation.

Obligatory video showing how the graphics and sound tie together:

A Gift of GIFs

I was planning on putting out a demo of Feast for the Senses last week, seeing how it was Hallowe’en and all, but there was a lot more to be done than I previously thought. Now I’m not sure when the demo will come out. In the meantime, here are some GIFs of some new stuff.

When you move behind a wall or certain obstacles, an outlined sprite of your character now appears over it.

This solves a lot of the visibility issues in cramped and narrow spaces that made me favour putting a lot of open areas in my levels. The method used is basically a hybrid between the techniques of drawing silhouettes behind walls and drawing outlined text, combined with my lighting engine.

I added gate sprites for the marble + glass tileset (which was missing when I showed it last time) and also refined their opening animations:

I think I’m getting addicted to using sinusoidal interpolation over linear.

As I’ve been playtesting, I’ve noticed that placing powerful ammo (i.e. shotgun, grenades) behind locked doors wasn’t a big enough incentive for my playtesters or even myself to waste spend valuable time finding the keys to unlock them in Arena mode. That’s went I realized that I need to up the reward. Up the ante.

So I began to place these behind the locked doors. What’s inside the box?

If you’re more of a dog person, don’t worry, you won’t be left out. 😉

As mentioned earlier, draw the player’s outline when they are behind walls now makes navigating small spaces less frustrating. Because of that, I had been holding back showing one of my levels until now. It is made entirely out of narrow, twisty passages. I found this level to be more action-packed than the more wide-open levels since its labyrinthine quality makes most of the enemy encounters up close and personal.