Spirit Huntress

Hello again, my dear readers! My last post was back on novemeber (when I announced I had quitted my job so I could work full-time on this project), and since the Kickstarter campaign is around the corner, I'd like to post here one last time before that happens. I have some important announcements to make, so here we go!



1st.- The Kickstarter campaign status.

After five months of working really hard on this game from morning to night, and making the legal preparations, I'm really close to have enough material to show on a Kickstarter campaign. I had the chance to learn that, if you're trying to raise funds for your game using a crowdfunding method, and you haven't previous experience in the video-game industry, the only way to gain your backer's trust is showing a project in an advanced stage, with impressive visuals and engaging music.

My aim is even highger: I'll try to provide a demo with around 20 minutes of close-to-definitive gameplay.

And I can finally say that I'm really close to get to that milestone! Instead of going with the main game, I focused on this introductory game-play section during these past months.

So, without a dubt, the next post here will officially announce the launch date of the Kickstarter campaign. Maybe within a month. Or two. But always before summer comes, that's for sure. Stay tunned!



2nd.- Important changes.

Putting the Kickstarter issue aside , there are some important changes I'd like to point out.-


A) The game's native resolution has changed from 1280x800 pixels (quite a weird resolution) to a Full HD standard, 1920x1080 pixels. I decided this so the game would look even better on full HD screens. To this day, I'm pretty sure this is the most common screen resolution, and working with native 1080p is allowing me to make more impressive backgrounds and assets. Also, given that the character's sprite is pretty big, having a wider and taller screen allows the player to see more of the room/level he's in.

The downside of it is obvious: what will happen to those using smaller resolutions?

Since I can't waste time making low-quality sprites and assets, I'll have to resize the screen to the selected resolution. I know that's a waste of memory, and of course the overall image quality will suffer.

Once I've completed the level-development stage, I'll try to find a quick way to replace the original sprites with low-resolution copies. I'll tell you more about this in the upcoming months.

Fortunately, the full HD standard resolution is quite popular, and is nowhere close to the higher resolution that PC gamers usually have.

And honestly, the game looks way better like  this:

This one is from a cutscene where Hibari and friends go to "claim" their reward for hunting some monster...

B) I successfully ported the game to Game Maker: Studio, after adquiring the pro license. Not much else to say about this, but thanks to GM:S the game's performance will improve, the game will arrive to IOS, GNU/Linux and Android devices, and, last but not least....






C) Playstation 4! Even if it wasn't officially announced until this very week that Sony is working alongside YoYo Games to create a solution to port GM:S games to Playstation, it was pretty obvious that Sony wouldn't let go such a huge portion of independent developers.

So, if nothing goes wrong, Spirit Huntress will make its way to Play Station 4 systems! And man, couldn't I be happier about it.


3rd.- Show us something!

I would love to show you guys everything I'm working on right now. Every sprite, every level design, every background picture, all of it! But I just can't,  I have to save something for the Kickstarter campaign (let alone the final game).

But I can't just leave without showing at least something. However, those of you who follow me on twitter might have already seen these images (that's what they get for following me! mwahaha!)

These two screens are from the very beginning of the introduction cutscene. Yeah, corpses being eaten by crows. Classy.

 And this one is -again- from another cutscene that would trigger later You can expect it to be fully animated.

And finally, I've noticed it's been a long since I uploaded some original music here... so, let me introduce you a WIP version of another theme from the O.S.T. This one is not for a cutscene, but for some playable segments, usually after defeating a mini-boss and obtaining a new item/weapon/skill. When that happens, the player is usually  fond of his progression, and looking forward to learn some new gameplay mechanics! It's then when he likes to hear an optimistic, yet alive theme, that encourages him to keep playing, and makes him wonder what will come next (hence the name, "Your Path Is Open Now").

Maybe that's too much of an ambitious goal for a composer of my level, but you can't say I didn't try.

Enjoy it, and please, notice it's still a work in progress. However, I'd really appreciate your opinions!




And that's pretty much it.

I'll keep working on this really hard. Just wait a few weeks, and hopefully I'll be posting here the link to the Kickstarte campaign, probably including a playable demo!

Stay tunned, and if you want additional information and early screenshots, you can follow me on twitter at @itoaragon.

Thanks for reading me and for supporting Spirit Huntress.

See you soon!