Oh right, it’s Friday, I’m supposed to write a devlog! It’s been a weird week, busy with lots of non-Eldritch 2 things and dealing with my AC dying Wednesday night. (The AC is fixed now!)
I’m making progress on the unlock/progression system and its associated UI screen, which is almost definitely going to be the heaviest UI screen in the game. I should be able to finish that up over the weekend or early next week, and then maybe get back to doing some more art so I can polish up a pitch deck.
Eldritch 2 is coming to Steam! Please wishlist it here.
A lot of this week has been consumed by my job search and some side stuff, but I’ve continued to build out the library hub and I’m happy with how it’s coming along! It’s starting to feel like the desired cross between the warm, cozy space of the original Eldritch and the dark, looming space of Dark Souls’ “The Duke’s Archives” location, which was one of the original inspirations for Eldritch.
I’ve also been giving some more thought to the Anxiety system. I want there to be some of the hallucinatory side effects that players might expect from a Lovecraftian sanity system; but that’s potentially a lot of scope, and I wasn’t convinced that was enough to justify the existence of the system. This morning, I realized there might be an interesting way I can use the player’s anxiety level as part of the “true ending” main quest, which could introduce some interesting mechanical tradeoffs in endgame runs.
Eldritch 2 is coming to Steam! Please wishlist it here.
This week has mostly been ongoing work on the library hub. It’s gone through several iterations as I’ve been trying to figure out what layout will work best and how to light it. This version of my engine has the capacity to make the library the vast, cavernous space that I envisioned for the original Eldritch; but I’m sort of not sure anymore why it would need to be that big, because there’s really nothing to do or find in there past the entry rooms. Maybe I’ll bury some secret achievement really deep in the archives.
Eldritch 2 is coming to Steam! Please wishlist it here.
I’ve finally started building out the library hub, with the main friendly NPC, as the first step toward getting the progression / meta loop into the game. Spoilers: the friendly NPC’s name is Dev, and he records your findings in his journal, and this devlog’s title has been a long running joke to me because “Dev’s Journal” has been a planned feature from the start.
Meanwhile, I’m having a bit of a bad brain day / week / month due to job search stuff and (gestures around) everything else in the world, and progress has been slower than I’d hoped. I wish I had a meaty update to post here every weekend. But at least my house is cleaner than it’s been in years!
Eldritch 2 is coming to Steam! Please wishlist it here.
I got a first pass of a pitch deck for Eldritch 2 done over the weekend, and I received a lot of very helpful feedback on it from friends. Based on the response, I think it is too early for me to start pitching the game to publishing/funding partners. I need more art and environments, and I need to be able to demonstrate some parts of the meta/progression loop which aren’t there yet. That’s in line with what I was already planning to do next, so that’s good.