Long overdue progress report

While work with the game ARW has been intense, the progress reports have been lacking. It seems the last report was posted back in October 2023! ARW has not been dead, after doing a another game in a game jam in October, updated Hive P v. S in November, ARW was again the main focus in December 2023 and beyond.

Change of direction

Originally ARW was more of a puzzle game, with emphasize on solving and being fast. Each level ending with a summary of how many objects collected and the time it took. ARW has changed to be more of an adventure platformer, a game where you explore and meet friends and foes. Each level remains a puzzle to solve, but the idea is to create puzzles that are something to tinker with and not so much being difficult to solve.

Some parts will perhaps be a bit scary, some will be nice and cozy. There are characters to meet, notes and terminals to use for interaction and story drops.

Code progress

In January last year the engine was feature complete for this game. All progress since has been writing code for actual game, characters and levels. There has been bugs to fix and some smaller additions needed to the engine, but so far it keeps running as well as I could have hoped.

At times there is an urge to redo engine stuff, to improve and make use of all things learned. Trying really hard to remember "if it works... it works".

Heres a snippet that binds the input from the player to trigger interactions. In this case to make the player character think of potential clues to solve a problem.

Level editing

To create levels I use the open source map editor called Tiled. Very robust, configurable and for each release gets more and more scripting functionality to add own behaviours and functionality. Tiled is a must to use if doing a game on an engine that does not come with a dedicated editor.

Here's a screenshot with all the good stuff in a level visible. Thankfully you can hide and show layers as you work to not make it so cluttered. If interested in how it looks ingame, this is the third level in the game, try it out!

Future

The plan is to have this game finished some time next year. About 1/4 done so far and if nothing strange occurs, this should be doable. Next major event will be in October when ARW participates in the Steam Next Fest. This includes releasing a demo of the game, of course you can already now try the web development version here.

Let's end with a look at some levels. First up, the starting level. Tidy up and get ready for work!

Nice and cosy at home

It seems like a lovely day as you go to work... But is it?

Heading for work at the factory