Hi,

We made a lot of progress this week on all the animations from our main character. We just finished the Death animation ! We would love to have some feedback on what you think about this animation, let us know ! :)

Ratgibnak

Thanks !

I am glad you liked the design death animation :)

Many changes to the animations since last time :)

In Dolus you will be able to slide on walls ! How cool is that ?

For this week's update we finally have a monster to show you :) The Reaper himself !

Ratgibnak

My jump animation is done ! With some smoke particles on the ground :) And the light shining on the character depending on the necklace position !

Ratgibnak

Try again, back to life !

In Dolus, you can actually die. But until you go through all the stages of your own grief, you will come back to face it ! This is your destiny, your only way out. Going through every daemon, every emotion.

What do you think of the respawn animation ? I still have to fix a few light issues but it's already looking pretty good :)

Ratgibnak

Saturday news !

We finalized our attack animation, added some particles emitting light coming out of the necklace and some hits particles for the monster !

Thank you for the kind comment Schimauscha ! Yes you are correct about the normal map. We discovered that we could make a "3d" effect on our sprites just by adding a normal map so we jumped on it. The result is really good !

And as a bonus, here is the dash animation !

Death Animation for the One Eye Monster !
This is what happen when the demons of your unconscious dare resisting your progress !

What do you think of the dissolve effect at the end with the flying particles ?

Ratgibnak

Good Idea Vladimir, we will try to change the direction of the noise so it looks more like a wind !

We had some fun articulating these chains and animating the whole thing. Can you guess what this odd mechanism will do to our sad little fellow ??

We will improve on this trap all week long !

Thank you Noir Phantom ! We won't give up, we are very motivated and happy to see the feedback from all of you !

This week I spent my time updating the animation from our trap and added some lights. But most important of all, we now have a dangerous mystical shiny ball coming out of it ! Make sure to avoid it ! 

Ratgibnak

Animation update ! 

The eye is now rolling and you can interact with the remains from the demons of your unconscious before it dissolves.

Ratgibnak

This is how our little fellow defeated this monstruous trap that stood between him and his redemption. But beware the several others, they may be not that easy to take down !

Ratgibnak

New platforms are in place ! And for the first time we are proud to show you the wall jump with the wall slide ! 

Have you noticed the moving stars in the background ? 

We will soon share more on this !

Ratgibnak

Strong emotions should not be repressed. Understand them, feel them fully and make them your shield ! 

Today we have a new ability to show you ! The player will be able to spawn an energy shield to prevent damages. What do you think of the shield's design ?

Thanks FiveBros for your comment !

Hi Vladimir !

Thank you for you analysis ! At the beginning we were thinking about making the shield follow the necklace but it's moving too much for that.

We may move the center of the shield to number 1 in your drawing. I changed the size of the shield since the last gif (you will see on friday :p) so it should fit perfectly. 

Next improvement would be to try to add some particles from the necklace to the circle of the shield so we can understand the power is coming out of the necklace.

Thanks again for the feedback !

Ratgibnak

Now that you know how to put boundaries that protect your emotions and soul, you can use it on demand.

As you can see we have some particles bursting out of the shield when it's impacted by an attack. We are thinking about adding some visual effect to the creature attack to notify the player that this specific attack was blocked. Do you think it's too much ? We already have the particles showing that a block happened. Should the player's character have an animation ? 

Ratgibnak

Concentrated Power Attack ! 

This is what you will be able to cast in Dolus once you gather enough energy through time and defeating your demons.

How could we improve this ? Does it look good to you ?

We also made some progress on a new monster that will be part of the Denial level.

Creepy right ? ^^

Next step is to work on the animations to kill that monster ! You will have to hit it several times to be able to get rid of it !

The ripples of your suffering can bend the reality around you !

We added a new effect when the player takes damages ! :) I am creating this shock wave effect via a shader. It took me a bit of time but it was worth it ! We will add more shaders like this in the future.

Should I make it a bit faster or go further ?

Hi Peter, 

Other people told me to make it a bit faster to indicate that it has a negative impact on the player, I'll maybe try to increase the speed but just a bit.

What do you mean by the "bubble" ? Do you mean the blink from the player or the shock wave ? The shock wave doesn't have any specific color, if it's white I think it's because the player is white.

Thanks for the feedback :)

This other-worldly monster won't miss any of your movement !

His gaze will follow you everywhere  ! Next time we will show you what it looks like when you hurt it ! 

Thanks Peter for the comments ! Our goal is to write a deep and emotional story about the topic of grief, maybe we will make a demo of the first level. We haven't really figured out our release plan yet ^^ Still a lot of things to create ahah

Run for your Life ! Life is a precious thing. Once lost, it can have a tremendous impact on your loved ones. 

This giant jellyfish has some bloom on the tentacles and the electric sparks.

Do you think it's a good idea to change the color of the tentacles to red when you hit it ? Should I also change the color of the sparks on some specific actions made by the jellyfish or the player ?

We had some big news in the last two weeks !
First of all we joined a French indieGame contest  We really hope we will win ! Here is some short clips from the video presentation that we sent to LaGameCup contest :

We also revealed the composer that will work with us on Dolus.

You can check out the demo sound he made for the Denial level :
https://twitter.com/DolusTheGame/status/1405910676917215238

This is an early concept but we are quite happy with the overall mood of the music !

We listened to your feedbacks about the effect from the trap hitting the ground and improved it ! It's now shattering in pieces :)

You can also have a glimpse of a new column that will be part of the Denial level ;)

We are back from holidays ! Fresh and ready to work hard on the boss from the Denial level ! 💪

Do you recognize it from the artwork that we posted a while ago ? 🔎All the patterns from the different attacks are now ready. We will show you in the coming weeks all the animations that we have for this boss.

The Knight of Denial Idle Animation !

After facing the dark walls of the fortress of Denial, will you be able to defeat your biggest fear ? What is that fear ? 

Your Own Emotions !

The first boss of Dolus ! This knight will prevent you from leaving the Denial level. You will have to break all the armor parts to unleash the emotions from your loss !

You can here have a glimpse of what raw emotions look like. We now need to add lighting and an emission to the Knight for some blur effect ✨

First Parallax test ! We will add more layers later on and tweak the speed a bit :)

Can you guess who made the placeholders ? Is it Thomas the artist or Antoine the MSPaint master ? ^^

Camera following the player !

The goal is to be able to see above/below when you are on high grounds so you can anticipate traps and monsters.

And to keep the cam low when you are on the ground in order to not waste space with the bottom of the scene.

What do you think ? Is the cam moving too fast ? How do you do it in your own games ?

Even in death your enemies can still hurt you !

Once killed the medusa will burst into pieces. If one of the tentacles is touched, it will inflict terrible pain, forcing the player to start everything again !

What do you think about the new animation ?

New heavy attack animation from the boss of the first stage of Grief ! 

Do you think you will be able to dodge it ? 

Thomas is currently drawing all the animations from the boss. Next time we will try to show you how it looks ingame !

Thank you Peter ! 

Backward is the only way to not be hurt by him. The player has the ability to use a dash that should help him ^^

The Denial Knight will make your world crumble away ! Nothing will be left but the Truth.

What do you think about the animation finally added in the game ? With all the lights and the particles it is coming to life !

This is only one of the three attacks the Denial Knight will throw at the player. As you go on, the fight will become more and more difficult.

Thanks Umplix :)

From idea to concept art to artwork to ingame character !

We started this game a long time ago and we are very proud of our progression.

You can see that the character design that we had in mind at the beginning is very close to what we currently have. Don't you want to hug that little fellow ? 🥺

We are proud of showing you the second attack from the Denial Knight !

Do you like the blackhole effect of the projectile ? It will go way faster and I'll add particles when it will hit the ground ✨