Hello again everyone! Welcome back! I’ve got another week of updates that I’m pretty excited for. I set a few tasks out for myself this week and I accomplished them, for the most part, though I’m not totally satisfied with my progress on one of them.

Cursed Crown

• Design a Cheat System
  • I put together a design for a cheat system in the game. The intention is a system whereby testers can activate useful functionality to make their jobs easier. It’s tough to test how the level’s geometry works and flows if enemies keep getting in the way. So, turn on invulnerability! I don’t know what final cheats will make it into the system, but invulnerability is a pretty basic and easy-to-implement one.
  • This task was simply to design the system, so I have a document that I will work from to implement the system; there is no system currently functional in the build.
• Update the Main Menu: Credits Dialog
  • One of the things that was lost in the big update fiasco at the end of 2024 was the set of updates I made to the main menu. In particular, I lost the very basic credits dialog that I had put in. I restored that set of credits. Again, it’s very basic, but it will expand as more info is required to be added to it.
• Add Fast Travel to the Overworld
• Add Save Points to the Overworld
  • These are the updates that I’m most excited for. I’ve added a series of “camps” around the overworld. There are currently seven of them. Each camp consists of a save point, a fast travel destination, and an NPC you can talk to and warp to another site.
  • Further updates are slated for these points:
    • Remove the requirement for an NPC to initiate fast travel. I’m not sure how I want to set up the final system yet, but I’m thinking about a system where you can fast travel to and from certain points but also possess a consumable similar to the homeward bones from the Dark Souls series. If you’re unfamiliar, this is a single-use item that allows you to travel back to the most recent camp/bonfire you were at. This would likely necessitate a change to the travel destinations to make them valid for fast travel vs a “checkpoint” that you would travel to with a consumable. More work is required here.
    • Update the art assets. The save point is currently a large rock that isn’t very well differentiated from the surrounding architecture.
• Begin Tutorial Dungeon Implementation
  • This is the update that I’m least happy with. I spent time trying to build the dungeon that looms over you when you first spawn on the beach. I wasn’t able to really get anything that I was happy with, so I ended up with only the most basic of structures and an overwhelming feeling of disappointment. I’ve obviously got a lot more work to do on this one over the coming weeks.
  • This task was solely to start the building. It was never going to be finalized in this build anyway, so I’m not really behind in development or anything. Not that I can ever really be behind schedule when I’m the one writing the schedule, but you know what I mean.

This coming week, I’ve tentatively scheduled the following:

• Door Prototype Enhancements
  • I want to update some of the prototype doors that I created for the tech demo so they’re more useful.
• Continue Tutorial Dungeon Development
  • While I don’t have as much done today as I was hoping to, I’ll continue trying to build a technique that will let me build dungeons more efficiently.

I know it’s not as much as I often do, but I expect that building the dungeon is going to take most of my time, so I want to make sure I don’t try to stretch myself too thin. I would probably have just scheduled only the dungeon building, but for what I want to do, the door updates will be useful.

You can probably imagine that with the updates to the overworld to allow easier exploration, a new build is due. And you’d be correct! Head over to the downloads section to grab it if you’re a member of the dev or test team. If you’re visiting from Patreon, you can find the Patreon download password in the announcement post over there! I hope you have a great time exploring the island. I know it’s pretty barren right now, but that will change as we progress through the beta phase and push toward a full release.

Thanks for sticking with me, everyone! I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and coming week! Until next time, keep on gaming!