Aetherdale Dev Blog

Progress Update Hello and happy New Year! I did not get as much done as I wanted in November, and thus missed that development update. I got mostly back on track in December - the stuff I've been working on has breathed new life into my motivation. We're still pretty far out from a release, but I grow more certain of what that release will look like each day. November's Directional Crisis I briefly mentioned in the Discord channel that I had to re-assess my plans during November. I didn't get a lot of time, and in the time I did get, I wasn't able to push myself to get the things I wanted to do done. And as it turns out, that's because I didn't want to do them. This is, in hindsight, an easy conclusion to come to, but at the time it felt like I was making a sacrifice.     Essentially, I was too intent on sticking to a roadmap I laid out many months ago, and getting the second planned area, The Mines, done. I ultimately didn't like most of my ideas for th...

Progress Update Hello, and Happy Halloween! My strategy for writing these updates has changed, and is reflected by the heftiness of this development update. For October, I wrote this development update as I was completing the respective work. This month we have various updates to the enjoyability of the game - and they're all live in the demo version on Steam ! Portal Objectives While ruminating about the state of the game I couldn't help but feel as though the core gameplay loop, in an Aetherdale run, was not engaging. It basically boiled down to: enter area, kill around 20 enemies, leave area, repeat until boss. Killing a fixed amount of enemies is not logically connected to the Wraith's goal (to be revealed in greater detail later, but essentially to reach the final area and defeat the boss there), nor is it engaging. It felt like running Runescape slayer tasks - grindy.     Introducing portal objectives - a mechanic stolen from  inspired by the teleporter system ...

The Secluded Grove, the new base of operations for the player and their allies Status Report At long last, Aetherdale is ready for early playtesting. In the last few months I wrapped up what I'm calling "Part 1" of development - which will serve as a demo moving forward. Part 1 includes: 2 Idol forms - Shade and Overgrowth 3 forest areas to fight through A basic shop area before bosses A new hub area that you start in, and return to upon death A few weapon options (biggest differences are cosmetic and statistical, some weapon variety had to be dropped for the time being) 2 boss fights - the Rogue Wraith Guardian and the Runewasp Possibly-working online co-op through Steam This demo is available by messaging me on Discord for a Steam key - but it will also be publicly available as a demo version on the Steam page soon, so stay tuned on Discord. Now onto the latest development updates.

  Status Report Apologies for the delay - May was a busy month for me so this development update will serve as the development update for both May and June.     The focus of the last couple months has been consistency and polish. Aetherdale was rife with inconsistent bugs and crashes as a byproduct of programming without frequent multiplayer testing. The vast majority of these have been eliminated, and the rest of the time was spent making things look and feel nicer.

Status Report April's development progress has been steady. Part of the month has gone into developing the second Idol form that will be available in the playtest - a nature-element Idol named Overgrowth. Alongside a new upgrade system, and visual improvements to the levels, Aetherdale is closer than ever to feeling like a fully fledged game. In this update: Overgrowth Idol Form Forest Areas Trait System Other Improvements Timeline Overview

Status Report March has been a light month - I've been working under the hood of the game systems and evaluating new approaches to artwork. In light of this, I don't have too many things to report, but the things I do have are looking better than ever. In this update: Shade Idol Tangleroot Valley Timeline Overview

Aetherdale February Update

January Update On Design Philosophy 2024 has already been an interesting, if not tumultuous, year for Aetherdale's development. I began the year working on a "To-Do list" - a checklist of features which, if implemented, would put Aetherdale in a state where I could release a rough demo version and start getting feedback.          It dawned on me, at some point, that the gameplay pattern I was trying to create was simply not efficient. I've been developing Aetherdale as something like an MMORPG - a wide open world with long questlines that ultimately culminate in a prestigious endgame. But a large open world is no trivial task, and in Aetherdale's case, trying to achieve it is simply a waste of time. If the game were ever to go live, I would not be able to create new content at the rate it would be consumed.     The solution to this problem is to change the gameplay loop. Instead of one long, epic quest line, Aetherdale will focus more on repeatable con...