Відео

Hey! Thank you for the compliment, and the feedback I greatly appreciate it. Regarding the block, haha yeah I am getting closer to just dropping it, it will really depend how December goes, but I am def starting to see it similarly to how you have described it. Initially, the plan behind this defense tax was to make the block a defensive posture with its own move set, and that is still currently the plan, but it has been tricky to fully realize. Regarding the score vs radiance stuff. At one point, the two were one thing but that just didn't seem fair because you(the player) can spend the radiance to use ultimate attacks, and getting a worse score because you used the coolest looking moves seemed really counter intuitive. However, now that special attacks return radiance when executed well, it might be interesting to revisit the merging of score and radiance into one system(it would def simplify some of the complexity for the players). Def something for me to think on, thanks for raising the point! Hope this answers your questions, thanks again for the comment. Always happy to get these kind of comments.

@gatorsoup hell yeah, I can't wait to see what you'll be cooking next, you're awesome! 😎👍 I'm going to start making an action game as well pretty soon with a friend of mine, we're both more on the artistic side but I've been learning design and code slowly and steadily. Your dev log made me realize that we would need a scoring system too so I realized that we could tie the score with gameplay changes and decided to comment!

@@DanteReaver haha ty! you are awesome. Have fun with the project, I wish you both luck. If you are interested, you can join the discord, we have a few devs in there working on action projects(myself included)

Hello! yes I did end up watching people play through some of the games, very camp very fun. I thought the animations in the first game were super satisfying. Regarding consoles and physical copies: If I were able to get on console, that would be an awesome milestone! However, idk if I would get to do a physical run, that would depend on the nature of how I got on to consoles, and what the agreement would be with a hypothetical publishing partner. Maybe something like a limited run would be possible but we will have to see, thats still rather far out. Regarding Soulstice: I have started to hear about this game as I started work on this project but I have not yet played it. However, I freaking loved Claymore as a kid so you have peaked my interest. I have not yet seen Berserk but its been on the list of things I want to check out. Regarding Interesting Character Designs: I think I replied to your previous message as our talking points ring a bell, however if I did not, I apologize. I do remember talking about stellar blade. Though i have not played stellar blade, I broadly agree with the idea that the back of the character model should be interesting. I think my favorite examples of keeping the players back interesting are Dead Space which made great use of that space to provide the player with valuable information about their health, and Batman Arkham Asylum which used the cape to convey batman's emotional state. Especially in the case of Batman, you are in theory losing a lot of visually interesting elements by having a character in cape, but the devs did a great job of keeping it interesting by having the cape move and sway while also getting more and more damaged as the adventure went on. Rest assured I have been thinking about this a lot and while I have not landed on a final design for the the protagonist, they will not just be a knight in classical grey full plate armor in no small part because it would not be visually interesting from behind. I hope I have answered your questions, and if you have more feel free to send them my way. I will check out soulstice, claymore and berserk. Thank you for the comment!

Hey, thanks for the awesome comment. I keep hearing that I really need to give Ninja Gaiden a play. I def will because it sounds like a really good game and it has come up multiple times. It sounds like its def an oversight on my part to not have had any time with it. Block turtling is such an interesting problem with so many possible solutions. I love the idea of creating attacks that cant be blocked. I have seen that in a number of games and I was wondering if that would be a cool addition, but I hadn't done any of the legwork for it yet. I will check out the steam version of Ninja Gaiden!

Yeah its a genre with a lot of hidden work to be sure. I am very much still in the digging for gold and finding the basics side rn. That is awesome that you've put so much work into one already, I will have to take a look. Ty for the kind words!

Haha ty. Yes happy to put out another one! Hopefully going to have more to show real soon!

This just made my day. I am so happy that the radiance tier idea resonated with you. I have really high hopes for it and I am super excited to keep working on and expanding it. I am planning to have the player collect additional radiance tiers throughout their adventure and I have been coming up with all sorts of buffs for the player to customize their tiers with. I think its gonna be really fun.

Thank you for the compliment! Yes for sure, we will get into the mixture with horror down the road but I am happy to talk a bit about it rn. The way I see it, when we talk about horror in video games we often refer to either outright horror or survival horror, but there is also action horror. Now all three forms of horror rely on atmosphere(aka vibes) and some amount of interplay between empowerment and disempowerment to convey said horror, however the degree to which they each apply that interplay is what defines them. Fundamentally, as much as horror needs disempowerment, it also needs moments of relief in the form of empowerment to provide catharsis. In the case of Occultation, I am leaning far more into the action horror sides of things. Because I believe that character action is fundamentally a power fantasy genre, I think it will work really well when the player spends significant chunks of time feeling powerful and competent only to then be exposed to bouts if disempowerment. Essentially, doing the inverse of classic horror or survival horror. A good example of this that I use a lot is Batman Arkham Asylum. In Asylum, the player feels really powerful most of the time because they are in control of most of the situations but routinely throughout the game, the strength and power that the player has is stripped away from them leaving them in situations where their combat prowess are not enough to crush the enemy, but are enough to only barely survive. The Scarecrow and Croc sections are really great examples of this occurring. In occultation, it will be very similar, the player will be essentially powerful and at certain points that power will not be enough, and in a genre that prizes itself on player mastery and power, what could be scarier than suddenly having that mastery and power mean nothing. The rest of the horror elements will be conveyed through the environment, atmosphere, side stories, and visuals. I am planning to lean heavily into a mixture of cosmic horror and body horror. TLDR: there will be sections where the player cant get catharsis or relief from combat and where they are disempowered. These sections of disempowerment will occur largely outside of traditional combat and will culminate in cathartic battles that return power to the player. Hope this answers your question, thanks for the comment and the compliments.

@gatorsoup that's a great explanation, I'm sure you'll execute that well!

Ty!

Yay! ty, happy to hear that.

Yay, happy you think so!

@@gatorsoup yeah I don't have the time to make a hack and shlash bc Im trash at animation so Im making a horror game rn so I support everyone who has more time and patience to make larger games

@@SourPickleGames yeaaaaah its a lot of animation work. Thankfully I like animation but learning blender has been quite wild.

@@gatorsoup respect I'm scared of blender

Aw thank you so much. I am happy you enjoy them!

Thank you :D

Oh darn, I thought it was set to never expire. No matter, I have updated it. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Hahaha it kinda does doesnt it. What can I say, we both have excellent tastes in books and games. Awesome that you made a hack n slash! I have your video in another tab and cant wait to see what you made!

Thank you very much!

Yeaaah def a big oversight on my part haha. Gonna go back in play them.

Howdy! Yeah I have also been thinking a lot about state management and worry about ending up with too many states. I have started thinking about what kind of preemptive solutions I have at my disposal and I was leaning towards a system of Nested State Machines, but that also runs some risks. I will totally check out State Charts, thanks for the tip, and thank you for the comment!

@@gatorsoup Hope you will find a solution that is not to complex to manage !

Hey sorry for the delay in my reply. I have been hella busy. That is really nice of you, I will totally keep that in mind. If you want, you can join the discord, that is where cultural analysis discussions will likely occur down the road!

oh 100%! It is such an integral part and I've been learning as much as I can. I have been reading books and practicing 3D animation. Thank you for the comment, it is always appreciated!

@@gatorsoup Np, and good luck with your project, I always thought it would be interesting to mix genres, im one of the few that somehow loves both stylish action and a game like bloodborne lmfao, and that shit is basically a horror action RPG, so your idea could totally work, hell id say DMC1 being based off of a RE prototype already warrants some creepy vibes to it, that and some parts of the castle and enemies.

@@mlt_sk Ty! Indeed, I am always pointing to DMC1, Bloodborne, and Arkham Asylum. I have been replaying DMC1 again (initially for the video but I got hooked haha) and you can really see the RE influence in certain sections.

@@gatorsoup np! oh yeah i forgot about Arkham Asylum, that game has amazing atmosphere and creepy vibes, definitely a rare thing in games to mix some sort of action combat and horror that i would love to see more.

Howdy! Sorry for the delay, I have been very busy. I appreciate the honesty, and I do not necessarily disagree, and I am taking your feedback to heart. I do want to make clear, this is not a release date though, it is just a deadline for having the content done or close to done. It is a very tight deadline but I think it is a deadline that I need right now for scope purposes. Far to often with passion projects, devs can get stuck in a never ending cycle of adding things and never finishing the project. My hope is by having this deadline, I will force myself to avoid bloat and unnecessary content. Now ultimately there is a decent chance that I will push it back into 2026, but if that happens I promise it wont be a thing you learn about in December 2025, and it will be something I am very public about in these devlogs over the course of development. I really appreciate your comment and your feedback.

aw ty. I really appreciate that. Yeah this was one of my early games and it was very inspired by those flash games.

Love fear, I will checkout Ninja Gaiden! There will be elements of body horror for sure. Thank you for the comment!

Hey! Ty for the questions, I will do my best to answer them. (Please note I am still early in development so some of this info may change as development continues.) Q: Does your game have similarities to the 2010`s HnS game splatterhouse? A: I only just heard about Splatterhouse and though it was a retro game series from the NES/SNES Era. I will have to checkout the 2010 splatterhouse and get back to you. Q: Will it be on consoles? A: As of now, it is just planned for PC, but if i were to secure funding or a publishing deal it would be really cool to bring the game to consoles. Q: How long do you want the game to be? A: Right now I have only a vague objective for time and that is at a minimum 6 hours. Q: Will you consider the ability to change the character`s outfit? A: It is 100% being considered and is on the feature wishlist. Q: Will your game have one-off action sequences? (air diving, driving, using a torrent, chase sequences) A: I honestly am still debating this. Q: Will you consider to be able to replay the story chapters from the main menu? A: Yes, as of right now the plan is to let you replay chapters. Q: Will the game have platforming? A: Yes, some light platforming is expected. Q: Will you consider adding button config? A: 100% Thank you for the questions, I think I answered all of them.

@@gatorsoup Thanks for answering my questions, I hope you are able to make it available for consoles. Just to give you some tips/ideas: One of the things I think that is important is that the character has to look sick, just like what the developer of Stellar Blade said, he think it`s important for the back of the character looks better than the front since that`s what you will see the most. Me personally if I don`t like the way the character looks that will put me off the game no matter how good the game is (and there are other ppl that think that way too). Also make the weapons you use look sick too. When it comes to bosses, I think they should be different on how you deal with them, from hacking and slashing, dodging and parry to using the environment/ enemy's attacks against the enemy. While having high graphics is good and all I think having an art style to a game is better than having amazing graphics (Soulstice being an example). I think it would be cool if you add things in the extra section like enemy logs, viewing cutscens, selecting music to listen to, this could be collectables in the game you have to find. Pacing is important, if you can change the gameplay up sometimes that would give the gameplay more ways to play, example switching camera perspectives, using guns, playing a different character, driving a car etc. Since you are making a horror HnS game Splatterhouse would be a good source of inspiration, for monster designs you can look up an anime called Claymore. I know you said that you want the game to be complete before the end of 2025, If I had to make an educated guess I'd say your game would come out in 2029 due to how long games take to make.

Yay, thank you for the sub, I am very excited about working on the game as well. Thank you!

Howdy, thank you for the kind words! The best way to communicate with me is probs the public discord. The link is in the description.

@@gatorsoup I have tried it and it says that invitation is invalid

@@mimadm4832 oooops my bad. Fixed it. sorry about that

​@@gatorsoup thank you man

Ty kindly! I love this lil gator avatar as well.

Howdy, thank you for the comment, I really enjoyed reading it, and it is greatly appreciated! (honest, Reading it made me really happy, and I love a lot of the points you made) I answered a similar comment a few days ago so please forgive me if I reuse some of my examples. You hit it the nail on the head with "since because you're a badass, the horror doesn't mainly come from the monsters and the jumpscares (though they can still be factors of it), but from the situation itself, where threats and dangers are always present whether physical or not. There might be other ways to make horror hack'n'slash game, but this is the one I know and liked the most." At a fundamental level, much of horror relies on disempowerment and hack n slash relies on providing you with the opportunity to exercise power/skill, and while these two thing seem diametrically opposed it is not necessarily so. My thinking for the game right now is that there will be sections where the player is a great capable warrior i.e. where they have room to exercise their skill and power, and this will make the sections where they become disempowered that much scarier. Because, never having power and facing monsters is scary, having power and it not mattering anymore is is terrifying. A great example of this in another game is Batman Arkham Asylum(mild spoilers), where the combat sections make you feel awesome because you are Batman, but then the Scarecrow sections and Killer Croc sections are genuinely scary because it does not matter that you are Batman anymore. Furthermore, what makes horror bearable/great is eventually the hero wins and we get this wave of catharsis and empowerment which in my game will be exemplified by the hack n slash elements. I love that you used Resident Evil 4 as an example because I think about that game a lot haha (also a fav of mine) It's basically like you said with Leon, he has to keep being a badass to survive, he is capable, and quips to make sense of his situation, and if he were to falter it would be over, so what would happen if it became clear that his being a badass didn't matter anymore, and that what he faces in that moment does not care? This balancing act/ tug of war between being capable, and it not mattering is exactly what I am going for with my game. The world will be full of tension always and the player will have to keep being a badass to make it through but there are going to be moments where it feels like being a badass is not enough. Ultimately it this still very early on in development and a lot of this is theoretical and may change, but right now I have loads of scary ideas for the game and I am excited to make them a reality. Thank you for the comment, I really enjoyed reading it, and love how it made me think about my project. p.s. sorry for any typos, I just woke up.

@@gatorsoup Thanks a lot ! From what you said, it'd seem the game will be very promisng. Though I expect it'd be no easy task, since all of the stuffs I mentioned sound good on paper, yet they've been practiced many times throughout video games history and only very few have hit the mark. Nonetheless, I'll be looking forward to the game, good luck.

Hey that is a great question. So right now, I have not really planned that far ahead, however at a passing thought level, I would probably upgrade my player state machine to be a Hierarchal state machine where I could use sub states that would also be state machines with the new weapon moves. By having sub-state machines I would hopefully avoid state clutter while also keeping each weapon move set nicely centralized. This is just a guess though, because I am not that far yet, for all I know this could be a terrible solution. I hope this answers your question for now!

Yay!

yay ty!

Haha that's pretty cool! Ty, and good luck with your project as well! I look forward to seeing your game down the road!

@@gatorsoup I hope you take a look at the more recent comments, I think I've rant too much but horror hack'n'slash is a very intersing idea that I'd like to go in-depth about, hope the game development'll go well.

I have heard the name but I don't think I have ever played them. I will take a look!

aw ty. I am glad you found him engaging and that you enjoyed the video.

@@gatorsoup yeah im interested in game dev so I eat content like this up

@@tysorex same! I love game dev channels.

Thank you very much!

God Hand, I will check it out! Thank you for the kind words!

Yeah it is admittedly an ambitious game with an ambitious deadline, but it is the deadline I need psychologically so that I am not still adding new features in 2027. (I hope that makes sense.) I tend to work a lot better on games when I have a finite deadline, it forces me to focus on what's really important. Thank you so much for the comment, it is greatly appreciated.

thank you!

ooh okay I will look into it. I think I played a bit of one of the 360 ones back in the day but I know next to nothing about them.

Hey ty for the suggestion, that is a good idea! I may look into that sort of solution for some specific segments of the game(no spoilers rn tho haha)

yay, thank you I am glad you like it so far!

Yay for another character action game dev! Thank you for the kind words, I am going to be making my own animations so ty for the tip. I will take a look at Cascadeur when I get closer to that part of the process.

Thank you for the comment and the question! I am happy to answer. The game will have a horror inspired aesthetic with a cosmic-ish/body horror elements depending on the chapter of the game. The world is inherently twisted and warped and there will be segments where the player is disempowered in non combat sections because you are correct doing sick combos and beating up baddies is not exactly the disempowerment you find in survival horror. However, combat is always about the catharsis of doing sick combos and feeling empowered. A good example of what I am going for game-feel wise would be Batman: Arkham Asylum(mild spoilers), where combat sections feel great and powerful, but when scarecrow is messing with your mind it is very creepy and unsettling. Another example would be Alice: Madness Returns I hope this clears things up. There is going to be a dedicated video about this in the nearish future.

@@gatorsoup You are right! Those games were awesome at both action and horror. You really know your stuff. I'll be watching your videos for sure!

What do you mean? 🤔 This is not even his first game

Than howdy am I making the game for you hahaha. Ty for the comment it made me smile