Riftsletter 3 - A layer of wax

Since I've just realized these can appear to anyone without much context or anything lemme add this at the start...

Hi! I'm Vikku, or Mahou Boshi if you prefer to be official. If you stumbled onto this randomly, first, thank god the algorithms are working for me for once, and secondly, welcome! What you're currently seeing is a Devlog/Newsletter for Riftaway, a 3D platformer focused on narrative and exploration of spaces in space, and my love letter to, like, a good half of all 3D Mario games. Learn more about it here!

Now let's get to business!

Heya! It's been shorter-than-usual-but-still-kind-of-a-long-time-relatively-speaking! We're here once more to report our progress with world 1 as well as some decisions I've made.

Defo Moving the Movement Demo

I've been thinking about it and the more I add to the game I go like "Damn, that 'Movement Demo' (Also known as the Itch.io Demo) is gonna be short as heck", yeah even with the clarifications, you never know when someone is watching... I've been doing progress at a surprising speed while the final pieces of the tutorial get finished, so why not just add it all together to have a more complete and satisfying first impression?

So I'm glad to inform that we're rebranding the Movement Demo, now it's just a plain old Demo! I don't know if I'll still make a shorter demo on Itch.io or go all in for June's Next Fest, but in either case you will be able to experience more than just the tutorial!

Dessert Island... Yummy

On the design aspect of things everything is going rather smoothly! That learning/experimentation phase of making the first island is helping the second's production speed and quality immensely. Waxing Moon Island, or just Waxing Island, takes the name quite literally being an island whose main landmark is a massive candle forming hot liquid wax lakes and falls, and from which emerge other smaller candles.

Steam post imageWork in progress. Also, the candles are not edible.

I've also done some reworking of the main village where you start on the planet, but I don't wanna be showing absolutely everything or there will be no surprises! And it's not like it's close to being in it's final iteration yet I may go and change it again... Anyhow, I'm still not thinking a terrible lot about the narrative of this place, I have the broad strokes, but I want to focus on the gameplay fun first, no one wants one of those games where someone has to go "Yeah trust me bro it sucks but the story is worth it!!1!" ...Thinking about it that'd be a first probably, someone saying that about a platformer of all things.

That's about it for this time! Not very exciting news I know, other than "I'm still working on it", hopefully next month's newsletter has something more interesting, non? I'll be working my butts off so it is that way! Cya next time, wax off!

• Vikku (Mahou Boshi)