AoA Weekly #20 - The Demo begins!

The time has come - and we are prepared. Work has started quickly on the playable demo of Ancients of Arkar, and we've made good progress already.

This demo will be a completely unique experience, and acts almost as a loose prequel to the events of the main game. It'll be a bite sized RPG with about 3 hours of story content (More if you look around ;) )

It'll be packed with all the features present in the main game to be sampled and tested, so this is very exciting for us. We know playing an RPG demo can be kind of frustrating, because on release day, you have to play the same content to catch up, or load a save file from the demo you played 2 years ago. In that case, you probably would just start again.

But our demo, again, is a completely unique experience. The whole demo will be hidden in the main game, too, in case the demo is ever taken down (for preservation)

So this week, we started on the levels, wrote the gameplay script and planned the whole demo. Then we made the coolest title screen and connected it to the demo's levels/progression. Work is speeding along. :)

A lot of what we did was 'under the hood', so it's hard to get excited about it, but it's a foundation. Next week will be level crafting, sprite creation, music, etc. The more exciting things.

Back to work. We can't wait to let you guys try out the demo when it's done.

Zulzin's astral pulse ability. Weaker than Xiaxen's but it can knock some items down.

Zulzin's astral projection ability. Walk around as a spirit and talk to other spirits!

Zulzin's talk to Vialianso ability. You can ask her about the current story, or ask for her strength!

On to what we did this week:

• Added 'Early Arkar' storymode

  • The demo will take place in a time years before the main game. Bridge the gap of information between the demo and main game to discover the hidden secrets.

• Main characters: Zulzin and Vialianso sprites

  • Both main characters are fully ready to be unleashed in the cutscenes to come!

• Implemented all of Zulzin's abilities

  • Zulzin's Astral Pulse, Astral Projection and 'Talk to Vialianso' have been fully implemented. This one was huge to get done in a week!

• Began the Demo world map

  • Experience Arkar before Arkar and connect the hidden truths between the main game's world map and the Demo's. Found a hidden cave in the demo? I wonder if it still exists in the main game's world map...

• Finished Demo titlescreen

  • The animated, fully 3D title screen has been finished! Before you 'press start' to play, you can move the camera around and observe.

Steam post image"The demo titlescreen in all of its glory."

Steam post image"Zulzin and Vialianso waiting in the hidden 'training' level. It's basically a debug room."

"A temporary world map made in a day to showcase the collision, but too cool not to show."

• CorrenBros