It's been a while, April was kinda a hectic month for me! Development of this game has slowed down, but I've been working at finding the right pace again. I've stumbled onto some of the trickier parts of development for Cope Island, and I think I will talk about that a bit in this post.

First things first, progress!



The weird gold color is my progress for polishing after content is made, which is still something I deem important.

I have ventured into all new types of content not seen on the original Cope Island, as that has all been remade now. The way the game is structured makes making new content a bit tricky, especially the way I have been going about it.

The original Cope Island had three main areas and a small boss area. Those areas (vastly different now) are still in and is expanded. Yet after you finish the first run, you will unlock alternate paths of each area. So far I am calling the initial path "The Above" and the alternate path "The Below".

I did not want it to be one or the other, so I have been putting a lot of effort into making sense out of intertwining both paths so you can mix and match how you please. It's complicated because in this game you gain score based off how well you do battles and I don't want it to be a grind fest of taking out enemies on both paths. So if you take out one enemy on the Below, it will have a sibling enemy on the Above that also vanishes. Etc etc. The goal will still be getting the best score with a limited amount of enemies faced.

So the original game was 3 areas and a boss area. Now it has expanded to something much vaster while keeping the original lightning fast pace. So each run will be about 3 areas but can have vastly different results and different areas altogether. Mixed with the hub that records enemies you fought/weapons you found/areas you conquered/high scores, I aim for it be seamless to start a new run and play it a different way each time eventually uncovering all the game's areas/story.

I was hoping to have a trailer by now, but eh I want to do that right so I'll need some more time to nail everything. I've been working at this game much longer than I intended to, but so far it seems like it has all been worth it.