Disclaimer - These devlogs are part of a University assignment that Styx is being developed for, so please forgive any stilted wording or weird inclusions!

STYX Devlog #13

For a reminder of what the game is about, see Devlog #1 here.

What's new for STYX?

Well, it's deadline day, again. Typical to any game's development, a few mechanics have taken to breaking at the last possible minute - as much as I'd like to add a few more important mechanics, fixes takes priority. It feels bittersweet to be so close, yet so far.

One of our artists has come down with a flu in the last 24 hours, too, which means a few plans - like the fancy tutorial - have fallen through slightly, but I'm working hard to get the game into a decent enough state for submission.

Progress

• Fixed swivel guns' rotations (again)
• Fixed enemies' health bars
• Almost got upgrades and obol systems working together
• Got closer to fixing enemies' double damage bug
• Got 2 functional levels into the game
• Got the level select screen ready to accommodate for 5 levels

Thoughts

When compared to the last deadline day, it definitely feels like the team has had better periods for progress and communications. I do admit that I could've been better myself, but with the amount of programming that needed to be done, it's a little disheartening to see things being rushed at the last minute - despite having done a hell of a lot already. We've got another submission for this module that's based around self-evaluation, and I plan on using it as an opportunity to reflect and discuss how the project could've been handled better - watch this space, it'll probably be in the form of a YouTube video.

Looking Back

It's deadline day, so I figured it would be best to look back on how things have progressed in the 118 days since the last one.

• I got a job as a game designer in early January
• I made a platformer and wrote a dissertation
• I became a LimitBreak Mentee to learn about game design
• We all developed as artists, programmers, and designers
• We improved as presenters and self-evaluators
• STYX went from rough prototype to decent prototype

Overall, this is the longest project I've ever worked on. I've learned a lot - again, more detail on that in the next assignment - and despite our submission not quite meeting my standards, I'm proud of the work we've done.

Thank you for reading devlog #13! This marks the end of our games production assignment, but we may return to STYX development at some point in the future. With no deadline, devlogs may get sparse, but I hope you'll follow me to keep up with my other games!