Hello everyone! Over the past 4 days, I was at EGX with Squillamorph. This was the third event I've taken Squillamorph to and it was fantastic! A big thank you to Andy Bossom, the Games Incubator Studio Director at the University for the Creative Arts, for organising everything once again. If you are interested in studying games development at university, I highly recommend the courses at UCA.

The final few days before EGX were all about testing and bug fixing the demo build. I'm glad I did because I found and fixed more bugs than I expected! The tests also involved trying out the build on my old laptop, which ran better than I thought it would. I also made some last minute adjustments to some visual aids on the control tutorials, and worked on preventing some unwanted scenarios. All in all, I believed I had found and accommodated for all of the game breaking bugs. I knew that I could not find every bug, and would be proven right during the event, but I was happy with the overall stability of the demo. I also added a preview GIF/video for the main menu so players could see the gameplay before trying it. I was now ready for EGX to begin!

I headed up to London on Wednesday for the setup. As I was going to EGX with UCA, I helped setup the university stand after getting the Squillamorph stand sorted. It took the whole afternoon but everything went pretty smoothly, and the demo was working great. I was very excited for the event to begin tomorrow!

Getting to the venue on the first day was a tad challenging. There were bad delays on the underground trains I had to catch. I still managed to get there on time though. Overall, the first day was fantastic. The response from players was incredibly positive, which was so rewarding to hear. To find out that I had been developing the game in the right direction since EGX Rezzed earlier this year was amazing. Honestly, I was a tad overwhelmed and immensely pleased by the end of day one.

Day 2 went much the same way, only it was busier. Things were going really well and I felt so much excitement. The positive feedback continued, and some players even came back to get higher positions on the leaderboard! The event was open for an extra hour today, which meant more time for new players to discover and play the game! The day ended up flying by and was just as good as the first.

Day 3 was another day with longer opening hours. As it was Saturday, it was expected to be the busiest day and I couldn't wait for more people to play Squillamorph. It was the busiest day by far. So many people tried out the game and loved playing it. I couldn't be happier with the player response at this event!

Day 4, the final day. I was still hyped up about more players trying out Squillamorph. Being Sunday, it was expected to be quieter today. Even so, there were still loads of people who played and enjoyed the game! I also found time to look around the event. There were so many good games there! At the end of the day, it was time to pack up the stand. This went relatively quickly and I was astonished by how fast the event had flown by. I left the venue feeling excited about the future of Squillamorph! 

Overall, EGX 2019 was an awesome event. I met so many great people and devs! I've learnt a few more lessons about presenting a game to the public and about what players want in the game. I cannot wait for future events, whether I am there with a stand or not! Thank you to everyone who came by and played the game, and I hope you enjoyed your time at EGX! I know I did!

The next stage of Squillamorph's development is the Early Access launch. I am aiming to launch it in the coming weeks and I am doing everything I can to ensure it is out as soon as possible. Keep an eye out on social media or the Discord server to find out when the Steam page goes live!

That's it for this post! I hope you enjoyed hearing about EGX. Expect more of the usual progress updates in next week's post!

​​​Follow Squillamorph on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to stay updated.
Join the official Squillamorph Discord server here: Discord Server
Don't forget to tell your friends to check out the game too!

Hello everyone! This week I've got a couple of announcements to discuss and some last minute EGX preparations to show!

If you didn't already know, Squillamorph will be at EGX this week! If you're going, drop by the stand and play the latest demo! I'll be there all 4 days, so come and say hi! The latest demo features the Flopsharks, the Flopalodon, the Kobolds, and an early version of the Kragon! Both the Kobolds and Kragon have not featured at any previous events, so this is the first opportunity to try them out!

I've made an official Squillamorph Discord server! It's a place for all discussion about the game with other fans and me! You can also ask me questions about the development of the game there. I won't be active on it at all times, but I'll do my best to respond to everyone! You can join it here: Discord Server

As EGX takes place this week, I've been busy making last minute improvements. The main visual change I've made is to the Kragon boss room, which now features a big reactor-like machine in the background. I've also added some minor visual aspects to the Kragon boss, such as gun charge-up particles. Talking of bosses, I've made some changes to the music for the Flopalodon and created music for the Kragon. The new music feels much more distinct and makes the boss fights slightly more intense! Most other changes are optimisations and bug fixes. However, I have added a place for players to leave their email when they put in their name for the leaderboard entry (This is optional and only for me to let them know when the game is out). I used a notebook to take people's emails at previous events. Lastly, I've updated the main menu to include a few extra assets to add some more visual interest to it.

That's it for this week's post! If you're going to EGX, don't forget to drop by the stand and say hi! One last thing I'll mention is that it shouldn't be too long before I have a date for an Early Access launch. So keep an eye on the Squillamorph social medias!

​Follow Squillamorph on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to stay updated.
Join the official Squillamorph Discord server here: Discord Server
Don't forget to tell your friends to check out the game too!

Hello everyone! Over the past week I've mainly been making improvements to the systems of the game. I have made a bit of progress on the visuals but not as much as I had initially planned. Anyway, lots of exciting things to cover in this post!

I was testing the game early last week when I realised that I had done nothing to highlight the wave based spawning. The only thing that did highlight the current wave was a number on the HUD. So I made an announcement machine asset and an ominous sound effect to indicate the start of a new wave. The symbol on the machine matches that on the HUD so players can associate it with the wave system. I spent some time on the
animation and sound for it, which I am very happy with. While there is only one of these announcement machines in a level the sound can be heard from anywhere within it. I've also made a small animation to highlight the wave number increasing on the HUD. The new changes do a decent job of making the waves noticeable without being too intrusive on the gameplay.

I focused quite heavily on leaderboard improvements this week. Currently, its only a local leaderboard but it needed some improving. I've changed the sorting method to sort entries by how far through the game the player got, in percentages. Then it sorts entries by the player's score. This direction I've taken the leaderboard in gears it towards completion rather than highscores. I've done this mainly for future events I take the game to, which will hopefully encourage players to play more of the game. My goal for the game's leaderboards would be to have an overall leaderboard, which players would be added to on completion of the game. I would also like to have a leaderboard for each individual region, but these are long term goals and would only work as online leaderboards.

I've only managed to do a few updates to this region. I did fix the climbing issues I mentioned about the Kobold last week. I reverted the change I made that applied gravity when both its feet weren't on the ground because this was not a good solution for gameplay. Instead I altered its pathfinding method slightly so that it can't move up as much on open tiles, which solved the leg problems I had last time. I've also put a few more scenery assets into the region. One of them is a new smaller coolant sphere machine, based on the large one I showed in the last post. When making the normal map for this one, I also improved the normal map for the larger version, making it more spherical. Hopefully, I'll be able to improve the background scenery further over the next week.

That's it for this post. I hope you like the progress updates! I expect to be working on general improvements and cosmetics over the next week, which you shall be able to see in the next post!

​​​​Thanks for reading! 
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​Follow Squillamorph on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to stay updated. Don't forget to tell your friends to check out the game too!