Oh, I’m back. We’ve just released the Halloween Update for Cave Digger 2 and it turned out to be a lot bigger than originally planned. There’s a crapload of new stuff, which brings substantial changes to the game. I hope everyone is having fun with the new content and the mechanics! I’m proud of how much stuff we could cram in the first major Update.
Releasing EA has been a fun experience so far, but it does have it’s own set of challenges. Your dev is always going on two different rails – the one aiming for the next update and the other aiming for the one following that or even the full release. That is to say, even during the development of the EA content and also the Halloween update, we have been hard at work on a completely new biome – the Geoide biome, also known as B3.
What I’m excited about the most is the two new enemy types we’re creating: the Primal Chameleon and the Thieving Chameleon. One is a very aggressive warrior enemy, which uses its tongue attack to grab things and throw stuff at the player – lots of lovely environment interaction incoming! And the other is a cloaking enemy which has the habit of stealing your hard-earned loot! Imagine suddenly noticing a floating pile of gems sneakily trying to get away from you.
So yes, it’ll include a lot of playing around with the environment and also with the player’s senses.
One other thing is the climbing. In the Grave Digger update we introduced a lot more player physicality with the Hexabody plugin, meaning you can jump, mantle, pull yourself up with tools etc. We’ll be expanding on these in the next Update with climbing forming a core feature of B3 level design. It’s going to be a challenge to do mantling properly (don’t think anyone’s gotten it quite right), but I’m sure we’ll make it work.
Also the levels themselves are going to be larger than before and they already look very majestic after the first level design pass. So yeah, Biome 3 is going to be a real game changer and I’m excited to get to test it with the whole team next week!
Cya next time!
-Kharan (Jaakko Asikainen)
Random development quote: “Leikkaa äitisi luottokortti kahtia! Tuhoa kapitalismi!
Leikkaa äitisi kahtia! Ratkaise ylipopulaatio!“