March 2020 Update

Dear Backers,

This month is going to be a slightly smaller update more focused on the work in progress. I did a lot of screenshots and gameplay last month, and I don't want to keep spoiling new content for Chapter 1.

Backer Reward Update

Before I jump in, I wanted to share that we have reached out to the "Build the Adventure" and "Become the Adventure" backers to start coordinating their rewards which involve the most lead time and team involvement such as designing an NPC or Weapon. Once we're comfortable with the progress, we will start working our way down farther.

Unfortunately the response rate has been only about 30%. So if you're one of those backers, please check your email or spam folders for messages from the Little Orbit team.

General Update on Progress

With the goal of shipping Chapter 1, there was a lot of progress all over the game in February.

• 4 Missions and 1 Cutscene location are now at the "final polish" stage. We also finished the first pass on the Player Hub area and another central Cutscene location.
• We have finished a first complete pass of all the narrative elements and dialog for a couple missions in Chapter 1. Late last month we started implementing those elements in Mission 1. I got to play through some initial work on Friday before I left.
• All of the leads took the time to make our 4th story pass through the rest of the game to adjust bits that needed to move around. We also need to identify all the potential spots for backer NPCs to fit in. These are always very dense 3+ hour meetings for each chapter. In this latest pass we were able to streamline a number of bulky storylines that were bogging down the narrative and not serving the gameplay. We got through Chapters 2-5. Chapter 6 will be on Tuesday this week.
• Wireframing continues to come along nicely. All the User Interface screens that are unlocked during Chapter 1 are laid out. Our art team will be working with the developers to start implementing them on Monday.
• The Human Male and 3 different job outfits are complete, so we can finally start rigging and initial animations. This is the one area that I feel we're the most behind on, but this effort has now been moved to the forefront, and I'm looking forward to having the real units in the game instead of our placeholders.
• Our Art Director started working on more of the key visual effects for the game, so we can get the complete sense of how final combat will look.
• The development team implemented the save system, game flow for starting a new game and getting into each mission, while laying all the ground work for upcoming user interface functionality.

New Game Play Changes

Last month we showed off a video from a mission in Chapter 1 that has a series of hazards for the player to navigate around while trying to escape. In March, we re-worked the movement indicator to be more clear to players, so I thought I would show off the new tile selection UI in that mission.

Additionally, this month the dev team added limits to the camera movement within specific bounds of the level and at specific distances. However, once we started playing the game, we immediately got frustrated by the walls of interior missions covering up game play elements. So the devs built a way that designers can flag various walls to hide and show as the camera pans around.

You can see that in this second shot, which is 180 degrees opposite the first.

I'll be back next month for another update.

Sincerely,
Matthew Scott