Arena of Suffering News

[p]Next Fest has been a whirlwind, so I’m taking a breather from marketing to share five fresh critters from our dungeon beneath the northern mountains. Cold air, blue-white palette, and lots of teeth.[/p][p][/p][p]The dungeon has caved in on itself in a few spots, so I added wilderness creatures of that area. The Frost Imps are an interesting case. I didn't use any other swarm art (everything else is just a single creature per image). But I wanted to try a trio here.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]And these two are midbosses for that dungeon. I had a LOT of fun making the chimera fight. You can trash the heads to limit the enemy's attacks, or rush the main body and just secure the kill if you think you're overleveled/geared and don't need to sweat the details. The non-headless Dulahan is more of a tank and punish fight. He's tough but fair? But something in his room looks a tad off. I'll leave you to check that out on your own (be very careful). :)[/p][p][/p][p]The final boss is supposed to feel like a real interloper. Everything else is on theme for the area, and then this guy is there. Bright orange, look all swoll. I really wanted him to stand out. His mechanics were WAY too simple early on, so I came back to him and came up with some better ideas. He uses fire damage over time on people, and if it doesn't get cleansed off of them he can heal over time while still damaging the party. Much easier with a balanced group, especially with healers. DPS parties have to push very hard and fast to get out ahead of him.[/p][p]Question for you: should I keep using multi-creature art for true swarms, or stick to single-monster portraits?[/p]

[p]Thanks to everyone who checked out our page and demo — whether you wishlisted or not, I really appreciate your time![/p][p]
The day completely snowballed, and it’s taken a huge weight off my shoulders. As a first-time developer, it’s terrifying to put your game out there and not know if anyone will even see it. (I’m sure second-time devs will tell me the fear never really goes away, lol.)[/p][p]Anyway — this is so cool. I’d love to hear your thoughts or ideas for the future if you have a moment to hop on the discussion board. No word on any bugs yet (yay!), but I’ve cleared my schedule this week just in case we need a new build for anything spooky.[/p][p]Here’s the new vertical capsule we swapped in last night, featuring Soval.
I wanted to make things feel a bit more active. What do you think?[/p]

[p]It's the 13th, which means that Next Fest begins today. I hope people find a ton of new games to check out and look forward to. I'll be around if people need anything for my game, and I'll certainly be looking for wishlists of my own (even if I don't have enough time to play the stuff I already have, lol). :)[/p]

[p]I put a few more of our monsters on the main store page for a bit of fun. I had so much fun making all of them during development that I'm seriously hankering to get back into that. I think that was my favorite part in Arena.[/p][p][/p][p]In between the various Steam setups and emails these days, I've been thinking about what elements should be improved in the future. I'm almost done with a dedicated character generation system. We went with an in-game one for Arena, and it works. It's solid. But, I got a couple of comments that a dedicated system would be better/more fun/etc. So, that's a thing that I decided to do.[/p]

[p]I've been trying to update the shop system (on a totally safe build that never goes live). And you know what--it's incredibly hard. Harder than our graphic overhaul, harder than making a basic particle system, tougher than weather. I just don't know why shops are so hard to do well. It's been kicking my butt royally. Message me if anyone has ideas on how to make this easier. Either way, there's no way it'll make Next Fest and it's probably next GAME material anyway, lol.[/p][p]In more fun news, I wanted to show off one of the bosses from our Demo. This is the first handsome fellow that you'll go up against in a serious fight. He's a brute, but he loves puns and can't be all bad.[/p][p][/p]