Gnome More War June War Plans

Hey everyone!

Not a day goes by that I don't think about what more I can do to make this game more fun for me, and hopefully for you. After launching a somewhat paltry May update, I think now I have enough ideas for a more content-filled one, which I plan to release in July. This gives me the month of June to work on this-- so I must make the best of all the free time I can get this month!

Anyway, here's a snapshot of my post-it notes. Come take a look:

The game is really young, and no one has even played the 3rd map yet. Most players just played the first map, and judging by the leaderboard scores only a few has made it to the second map. I want to improve the experience for beginning players, and hopefully get them to stay. In order to achieve this, I've thought about introducing a number of things: improved rewards, more enemy types, and boss battles.

I think the game should be rewarding players as they progress through the first map. This could also work as an introduction to the game's customization features (i.e. power-ups, upgrade decks, and cart skins). Furthermore, players should be awarded with cart skins when they beat the map for the first time. For these new features I will be adding 4 new cart skins! I will be revealing the designs on my future articles.

Aside from an improved rewards system, I had always planned on slowly adding more and more enemy types post-launch. I was thinking of adding an enemy that would glide across the screen and would occasionally spit out bullets at the player. This should force the player to move around and try to dodge the incoming bullets. I would call this one the Squirrel Gnome. It's still in the early concept stage. I'll let you guys know more about it on future blog posts!

And finally I think I'm gonna start to push through with my original plan of adding bosses in the game. In case you're not aware, I had launched a crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo in order to raise funds for the game's further development. While that didn't go as well as I had hoped, it's no reason to just stop updating the game. I already have a few concept artworks done for the bosses, but for the next month I think it's more reasonable to target just one; the others can come in the future.

I will talk more about the upcoming boss, the Gnome Chieftain, on future blog posts, so stay tuned and bookmark this page!

You can check out Gnome More War on Google Play right now!: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hobbigames.gnomemorewar

-- LJ

To contact the author, just send your e-mail to hobbigames@gmail.com

STM: December Status Update

Despite the long December holidays, we're still hard at work on Super Tiny Monkey. I really don't know myself how, but we managed to put in quite a number of new features in time for our target release date. I'm personally excited to tell you all about these latest additions to the game.

Here's the video that shows all the new features of the game:

In case you couldn't watch the above video, don't worry. Just read on and don't hesitate to drop a few comments afterwards.

Acts and Storytelling

If you've been following the game development from the start, you'll recall my previous article about the game's plot. We want to put this backstory in the game itself, and we've decided that the most feasible way is to present it using comic strips.

The comic strips come in full color. While they don't have speech bubbles, we try to make each panel come alive by adding sound effects and contextual animations. These strips tell the story for every Act in the game, and acts as the prologue for their respective maps. We believe that by adding these fluff pieces gives the game more depth and personality.

Unlocking Boss Maps

I mentioned in a previous video that the Razor Wings map will be available to players at level 15. Some people felt that it will make the game a little too grindy. After some reevaluation, we decided to lower this requirement to level 11. We adjusted the player's progression and by level 10, you would have learned all the abilities at their basic level. All that will be left for your character's improvement will be upgrading these abilities.

Future boss maps will have the option of purchasing them to be unlocked. For Act one however, it is not possible to unlock the Razor Wings map by purchasing it, as we don't want the players to bypass the crucial learning levels.

Spitoon Super Power

The third and final super power our hero can learn is the Spitoon. It's basically a bullet fired by the player that travels in a straight horizontal direction. This gives the player a long range offensive option, and while it's much cheaper than power dash, it's also weaker.

Just like the power dash, it can bring down enemies (eagles, and boss, at the moment) but not poacher Rico, or the poacher hanging by the trees. Future maps will feature more of these enemies that can be brought down using offensive powers.

New Side Quests

As with the Forest Edge map, the boss map will also have its own set of quests. They're also entirely optional, although I'm sure players will inevitably complete them as they play.

Game Assistant

One thing we observed from the players during a public demo is that when they die twice or thrice too early into the game, they give up, stop playing, and move on. While it is our goal to make the game challenging, we don't want to discourage new players. Instead, we want them to feel welcome into the game. This is how we came up with the game assistant.

The game assistant is basically a tutorial system, only we didn't make a separate tutorial map. The assistant will appear from time to time, usually at the beginning of a run, in order to teach the player the basic controls, and of any new abilities that have been unlocked.

Your assistant is more that just a tutorial. He's an actual game character with a personality of his own. His name is Paru, the rainbow butterfly. Aside from teaching you how to play the game he also give his accounts of the events and experiences of our hero. We want to design a cute, lovable, yet witty side character in Paru.

We're almost ready for release with Act One; we're just polishing some stuff here and there, so hopefully all will be ready for release this month. To keep yourself updated of any news and announcements, all you have to do is subscribe. As usual, you can follow us from the links below:

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-- LJ

To contact the author, just send your e-mail to hobbigames@gmail.com