Hello all,
I thought I'd stop by to let you know I've just published a more sizable update for Beetle Ninja which introduces several new changes, all of them more "under-the-hood", but which add up to make the game a bit more fun:
>Small reworks to some skills to make combat less boring. The main takeaway is that Beetle Might will now cost 0 MP, and some temporary debuffs are now permanent. In some ways, these will make an already fairly easy game a bit easier, but I'm hoping this encourages some mixups when it comes to your strategy.
It was always my intention to punish players for not playing the game smartly, but it's been a fairly common complaint I thought deserved at least some sort of recognition.
>Some general bugfixing that I overlooked previously, particularly with the secret shop.
>You can now sell things at any time after day 4, rather than just on a few days. Hopefully this encourages more spending by players, particularly on party members, as I'm seeing a lot of people only using a few characters and not mixing up their party choices too much.

This might end up a little on the lengthy side of things, but please bear with me if you will, there's a lot to discuss.

Firstly, I am extremely happy to see Beetle Ninja's stellar Misao results, winning 4 awards and securing runner-up for game of the year and best gameplay. To be honest, this year's been really rough for me for a lot of reasons, most of which are probably of no interest to a casual observer who follows my game development and artwork independent of my character (as I tend to prefer it, lest I become some sort of Chris Chan-esque social media auteur), and I've been extremely close to giving up game development and art permanently at least twice, so it's very nice to see that my work truly is recognized and appreciated to such a degree that it's received such accolades.
I remember distinctly watching an interview with Edmund McMillen wherein he lamented feeling extremely stuck creatively following the success of his 2004 physics-based platformer Gish, claiming he felt it would be the peak of his career, and that he would be incapable of achieving similar levels of success with his future works.
I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a similar feeling instilled in me after the Misaos, but I'm working on something completely different now: both tonally and in means of gameplay with T.O.F.U (working title) in attempts to sort of alleviate this. Then again, when I released Beetle Ninja initially, I sort of had a similar feeling when it came to Karrion Killer and it's (comparatively lesser) success, so who knows, maybe T.O.F.U will blow everything I've made out of the water yet again, maybe it won't. It'll be exciting to see how people react to it, especially considering it's much more "edgy" thematically than my previous work...

With Beetle Ninja attaining far more Misao awards than I'd suspected, Beetle Ninja 2 continues it's development. Presently, it's years from being complete as we want to take our time with it, and since I don't consider Beetle Ninja 2 much of a priority project.
In means of gameplay, Beetle Ninja 2 stars Uropygi Ninja "The Whip Scorpion" living in the small city of Opstroykh, Russia in pursuit of an unknown target he must eliminate within two weeks. There is no combat this time, rather the game focuses primarily on overworld actions, expanding navigation and speech options. The hub world is much larger, and there are many new characters present alongside a couple of returning ones from the original Beetle Ninja. In short, it aims to be more of what was good about the original, without the more tedious or annoying aspects people didn't like (ie the more overly-serious plot elements and mundane combat), while employing a similar, yet different direction with the primary gameplay loop.
PostElvis has three other projects to attend to in the wake of Beetle Ninja's accolades, I'm presently working on other games, the guy who did most of the combat balancing and overbearing backstory elements wasn't asked to work on Beetle Ninja 2 due to internal conflicts with regards to the direction of the original game, and another contributor who deliberately asked me not to be mentioned again has erased her web presence altogether and therefore is unable to be further contacted to work on the sequel, so it's a much slower-paced development cycle. Consequently, a new team had to be forged and thus the direction might be a little different to what is expected, but I kind of prefer it this way.





"It'll be out when it's out" is something I'm extremely quick to call out as an excuse for lazy and overly-prolonged game development cycles, so for Beetle Ninja 2, I suppose I'd say that the game will be complete, or minimally close to it, by 2025, though this is merely an estimation, and as I said previously, the game isn't a priority for me right now as I work on other projects.
I might even make some more short and sweet comedy games while we work on Beetle Ninja 2 in a similar vein as Where the Moon Goes At Night. I have some ideas, and I've got a short, halfway assembled Christmas-themed game that I might want to polish up and release sometime in 2021, but it might not happen (we'll see).

As far as plans going forward after Beetle Ninja 2 go (or even before depending on if I get burned out on working on it), I have a few seeds of ideas that I might want to explore... I'm still attached to the idea of making a game about a group of characters I designed called the "Bombing Squadron" because I still think the designs are pretty cool (even if Mine Ninja already kind of uses one of their designs already), and I still have the basic foundation of a quick, fairly edgy game I was making for Christmas about self-detonation and giant sand worms that will hopefully see the light of day.
Of course, I'm presently working on T.O.F.U as well, an I Wanna Be The Guy-esque puzzle platformer about killing yourself to make bridges out of your square, tofu corpses while avoiding birdlime, scalding water, bullets and an assortment of other treacherous and often unexpected traps. I'd like to release it by the end of February, but it might take a short while longer depending on how ambitious I get and how much free time I, the programmer, and the musician are able to dedicate to it. I have faith it'll be finished though.

In closing, I must give a tremendous thanks to Edvinas Kandrotas, for assisting me early on in my "career" as a pixel artist to improve my craft tenfold. To Deegeemin, for inviting me into the wild and amazing world of inner-circle Newgrounds and for creating the memorable and humorous full screen illustrations for Beetle Ninja. And to ToonyRab for pushing me to keep making games when I was at my lowest point.
Their assistance means a lot to me and I doubtlessly would not be writing this post had they failed to assist me.

Thank you again for a tremendous turnout at the Misao awards this year, and I hope you'll stick around for my future work.

The Misao awards approach once more!
I've honestly been mulling over a lot in regards to Beetle Ninja... was it good? Was it awful? I honestly can't say: it's not my place to.
But, the Misaos present a wonderful opportunity for me... Should Beetle Ninja receive anything: a runner-up, a staff choice, or a win I shalln't discriminate, I will begin developing a sequel.
To tell the truth, I've honestly sort of wanted to do this since cancelling the Steam port of the original game, but it wasn't up until now that the opportunity really presented itself.
I'll be working with a new team, creating new characters, and exploring new settings. It's something I'm really excited about, and something that may take a little while to get just right, but I assure you that, should it be realized, I think it will be just as wonderful (if not more so) than some believe Beetle Ninja to be!
So be sure to nominate Beetle Ninja for any of the Misao Awards you believe it deserves! :D