Whim Independent Studios - Development Log #56

Hi everyone! Here is the March update for what's going on at whimindie. Note that some of this information will be cross-posted to our Spellbearers project page on Kickstarter for our backers.

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Spellbearers

In last month's development log, we showed off some footage of Level 2, and before I talk about some of the assets that are currently being developed, I want to talk a bit about the release date we promised on Kickstarter for the game. 

Originally when we planned the Kickstarter, we estimated for a March release date. As you all know, game development is really difficult. It's hard to manage a lot of moving parts between art, music and game production in general. Not to mention the ongoing issues with the COVID-19 pandemic and the delay of some of our art coming in due to one of our illustrators being based out of Texas. That being said, we are going to need a few more months to complete Spellbearers. 

Though I won't list a new release date right here and now, I will stress that we continue to make solid progress on Spellbearers despite these issues, and it's important to us that we also don't want to rush and release an incomplete game. When we have an updated release window, you all will be the first to know through these updates. 

While we showed some new gameplay last month, today I'd like to revisit some of the UI and UX that Jessica has been working on. I know as a player, seeing me talk about user interface and windows is not exactly glamourous, but it's also important to note that a good user interface makes for a good game. 

New UI/UX mockups - showing the new keybinds and settings.

These are some of the mockups for how some of the customization will work. If you play through the current demo, you see a rough implementation of the key-binds and controller settings, and we have plans to redesign it based off these mockups. Once we finish the level design, our goal will be to update the UI to match these mockups.

As for the game design development, a lot of artwork is currently being implemented into the levels after Pagosia, and in the next update, I hope to show you some of the fruits of that work.

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Selatria

As we are nearing the end of Selatria development, we are looking for players of all skills and backgrounds to participate in alpha testing for the full version of the game. 

The alpha test will be aimed at gathering various points of feedback: Such as difficulty/pacing/audio or visual issues or other miscellaneous bugs or that we can address for future rounds of testing to have a smooth gameplay experience. We aim to start this process in April of 2021 starting with Chapter 4.

Due to complications with COVID-19, instead of conducting closed testing sessions at our studio location, alpha testing will be done from user's home and user's computers via special alpha testing keys compatible with digital services such as Steam or itch.io.

If you're interested, please fill out our alpha testing application and we may reach out to you. Do note that alpha test save data will not be compatible with the release version of the game.

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That's all for this development log.

Thanks for your support, and be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, and join our Discord! Until next time! Wishlist Selatria - Full Version on Steam Wishlist Spellbearers on Steam