To all our readers welcome back to what is now our second week of production for Son of a Gecko. Each discipline this week was focused on finalizing the primary mechanics, UI, and scripts to be implemented to a have functioning alpha. With each discipline having finished the necessary primary focuses, the game now has a functioning build for base Alpha testing.

Welcome back everyone, as always, I am Hayden McCormack one of the Game Designers for Son of a Gecko and the person primarily running the Itch.Io page. This week the team focused on getting a functional Alpha build to be play tested externally to begin getting feedback for weeks 3/4 where we should a fully functioning mechanical complete game. If you like what you see, please fill out the feedback forms found in the download post. As always, I hope you look forward to our full release in December 8th.

Art - Recap

This week the artists were able to continue on the massive progress they'd made last week. With finishing off the weapon block outs, as well as some UI assets and a full model for one of our two enemies (and the beginnings of the third). They also finalized our water shaders, made some more environmental assets and have continued progress to finish on schedule.

This week our artist Joaquin worked on finishing the Bird Model and started the Hippo model. Found and added some Mixamo animations to Unity, the interactable page for narrative, and made some UI assets for the programmers.

Our artist Sol has also continued on his assets and has also began texturing many of them including the weapons, some set dressing items (Tankards, lanterns crates.), a broken rowboat and the barrels.

Our environmental artist Joshua has also begun retopology for our main character.

Our artist William has begun texturing many of our different assets including the bullet and some set dressing items.

Artists: Joaquin Gundry, Sol Blackshaw, Christopher Matthews, William Saunders, Joshua Mcalister

Design - Recap

This week the designers were focused on ensuring the base mechanics of the game functioned and worked, as well as beginning playtesting both Internally and Externally.

David has conducted barrel placement and testing to ensure the balance for movement worked out. He also then placed enemies and adjusted stats and the amount to ensure we follow the difficulty we wanted to set. After these initial placing he also placed the textures for the level and as also began set dressing the level out.

Our designer Astro has continued finding and developing sounds for the game and has fleshed out his base library for the overall sounds of the game. Astro also assisted in our playtesting in the base game to ensure all the programs, scripts, and mechanics worked.

Alex our primary narrative designer has finished fleshing out all the environmental narrative design documentation and has started assisting Astro with created our Sound Base. Alex also assisted in our playtesting in the base game to ensure all the programs, scripts, and mechanics worked.

Stephen has begun running external playtesting to ensure we get as much feedback as possible and has assisted the team in preparing for more full-on play testing/bug testing in the weeks to come.

I have been assisting with placement, as well as testing and ensuring the bullet mechanic properly works and is balanced. I also constructed an invisible wall around the map to ensure the player cannot accidently break out of the game.

Designers: Hayden McCormack, Alex Dabkowski, Stephen Blake, David Caruso, Astro Alessi

Programming - Recap 

Our Programmers have been busy creating and implementing many of the core features and mechanics of the game, including the Dynamite secondary, our Barrel Explosion mechanic, AI Pathfinding, Main Menus and more.

Ryan has continued working on the gameplay systems and has Mixamo animation being inputted, Dynamite Explosion and pickups, Barrel Explosion for movement, AI pathfinding for enemies, enemy health and them dying, and health pickups.

Dan has been continuing to work on our UI and Menu systems by fleshing out the UI, adding a Compass system, and the Manager Objects system. Also fleshed out the Main Menu and has the Start systems functioning.

Programmers:  Ryan Horwood, Daniel Woodhouse

I hope you enjoy what you see and come back again next week for the Week 3 Devlog to see  our hopefully full Alpha version for Son of a Gecko. This has been Hayden McCormack of the Borg Studios team, see you all next week!