Devlog Oct 9th - New ability for Kara and displaying Credits

 Welcome to the first devlog of October!

We have continued to work on new abilities, this time for Kara and Alexia.

Kara received an ability called Mirror Image.

The button on the right that says "Mirror Image" will display more details about the effect

This is an effect that increases her dodge, causing fewer attacks to hit her. However, every time she is attacked, the effect is lessened until it finally dissipates.

The blue text is a link to the popup explaining how defenses work.

The intention with this ability is two-fold: First we want reinforce Kara's archetype as a fragile, but hard to hit character. We want to show her magic that confuses the senses with illusions.
Secondly, gameplay-wise we don't want Kara to be so fragile that she will die too easily from a stray arrow. But she also can't be too defensive, because it's the intention that Alexia and Marius should be the hardiest character in the player's party. 

I think this ability works well, because it protects Kara from the occasional attack, but if the player moves her into melee with a bunch of enemies, the illusions will quickly be used up.

We decided that Alexia, who already starts with 4 different abilities, will not receice any as she levels up. Instead, she will receive som stat increases.
We also went through all of Karas and Alexias abilities and added sound effects.

Next, we started working on the credits scene. We always knew we wanted a credits scene to display the various music and sound effects we've been using in the game. Some of them are licensed in a way that requires attribution, but even if it's not strictly required I think it's nice to give credits.

At first the plan was to set up a simple background with some text on the screen fading in and out with the names. But then we thought we might be able to use the already existing cutscene system.

We already have walking animations for a good number of characters, so we can make a cutscene with a bunch of characters walking past, holding signs with all the names and links.

I think this came out really nicely and we can quite easily add more characters and animations to make the scene more interesting.

Other than that, we also fixed a number of bugs. Some bugs were related to trying to save or continue game when there's no ongoing game (such as when the player starts the game for the first time).
We also changed how we handle music and sounds in the menu. Previously, when the player opens the game initially, the menu music would play. But once the game starts and the player opens the menu from there, the game music and sound effects would keep playing while the menu was open. Now, the menu music will play while the menu is open and all music and sound effects will be paused, and they will be resumed once the player closes the menu.

Thanks for reading! We'll be back with another update on the 23rd. Talk to you then!