Hey people!

The long awaited LD55 is finally here! It's our 6th attempt at gamejamming, and this time we created a simple top-down shooter with the visual-novel style dialogue 'The Unlikely Messenger'. We also invited a pixel artist @yanato to our team, so for the first time our game will feature properly animated characters.

We tried to learn from the mistakes of previous jams and limited our scope from the start. We don't have gamedev experience outside of jams, but ambition to create something unique is always present. We learned the hard way and this time instead of overdesigning we tried to replicate a simple proven formula.

Basically, not everything was done as originally planned but it's already expected on game jam. However, we succeeded at making an MVP this time and got a lot of experience in the process.

Also, just days before LD55, www.suno.com went online and we used it to experiment with AI music. Just the right tool for proof of concepts and MVPs.

Thanks everyone and have fun!

PS: Sorry, for some reason this blog post got under LD51 category. Below is the link to our LD55 entry!

The Unlikely Messenger

Hello LD!

Three crazy days and we made it.

"Auxiliary" - 7th entry to the jam for our team. By far our biggest gamedev endeavour, we even invited an artist this time. It was so fun to work on that game! A bit of stress, sure, but hey, it's part of the jam!

Still, a lot of work needs to be done in terms of fixes, polish and UI/UX, of course. But we are happy how this game turned out.

Check it out, tell us your thoughts!

That took a while! We thought that we will be done in a day or two, but during the process we found more than 50 bugs, bunch of typos and it took almost two weeks to fix all this stuff.

Right now we are planning to continue working on this small project to deliver a post-jam update. We have a few more ideas that we would like to implement to properly wrap it up. So the "roadmap" include: - Leveldesign overhaul (better layout, more varied tiles) - Chained mini-quests - Mini-puzzles - Further visual novel improvements - Trading terminal UI and gameplay - Overall UI improvement - And whatever may come up to our minds in the process!

PS: Thanks for the warm reception and all the comments, we greatly appreciate your feedback and hope that we delivered you at least a few sensible chuckles.

>>> Morally GrayStone Corp <<<

Less sleep more action!

All we needed was just a few more hours to fix most glaring issues and now we are having a bare bones, but fully playable game. So here's the changelog for the lightning fast ninja-hotfix of our game jam Ludum Dare 58 project Ionfall:

Changelog (0.6.1, hotfix):

1. Fixed fail state not triggering at 0 Sanity.
2. Fixed fail state not triggering when energy drops below the required level.
3. Fixed auto-pause not activating during random expedition events.
4. Fixed a rare issue where the ending dialogue would fail to start.
5. Fixed expedition titles and background images not updating correctly by location.
6. Fixed music tracks not switching where they should.

Known issues: A lot of things remain to fix and polish:

• Update Sol’s sprite from the placeholder AI to the artist’s final version
• Add sound effects
• Improve animation of character on the map
• Refine ambient dialogue UI
• Expedition log doesn’t auto-scroll to latest entry
• Sanity can go over maximum capacity after events in expeditions
• Starting conditions doesn’t match the opening dialogue
• Missing proper Shelter UI
• General UI and polish improvements …and many smaller fixes to come

Thanks to anyone who'd play our game!

PS: technically, we made hotfix yesterday and newer version already available, but I forgot to post it here, sorry!

Our second patch! The game is much closer to the intended vision, but we still lack a lot of polish and proper tutorial/onboarding.

Changelog 0.7.2:

1. Fixed missing character sprite for Sol. Thank you @deo-art!

2. Fixed missing sound effects on some actions

3. Refined ambient dialogue UI with character avatars

4. Fixed expedition log doesn't auto-scroll to latest entry

5. Fixed stats not resetting after death

6. Minor spelling fixes

7. Fixed one of the music tracks not starting at right moment

8. Fixed ambient dialogue stacking

9. Minor animations adjustments during turbine repair and upgrade

10. Fixed absent visual cue on low sanity

Future plans!

• Add remaining sound effects

• Further improvement of character animations

• Further refinement of ambient dialogue UI

• Sanity can go over maximum capacity after events in expeditions

• Starting conditions doesn't match the opening dialogue (make proper tutorial/onboarding)

• Missing proper Shelter UI

• Multiple issues with expedition screen UI

• General UI and polish improvements

• …and many smaller fixes to come