To all our readers welcome back to our third week of production for Son of a Gecko. This week we were able to take our basic Alpha to the CanDev monthly Pizza and Pixels event. We were able to get a ton of feedback there and we thank everyone who tried out our game. With this feedback and the implementation of most of our mechanics we have moved into fine-tuning and adjusting our systems to meet player expectations.

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 implementing all the mechanics you will find in the full game and have moved into full playtesting and finetuning these mechanics for our finished Alpha. As always, our builds are available on the main page and 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 on December 8th.

Art - Recap

This week the artists were able to continue on the massive progress they'd made last week. Finishing off the last of the character models sculpts, the artists have moved into the retopology of our models in order to make them more optimized and prep them for rigging. The artists have also started on the VFX for the game and are finishing off the last of the environmental assets.

This week our artist Joaquin finished off the Hippo model and has started working on the retopology for it. Joaquin also was a part of our team's coordination at the Pizza and Pixels event.

Our artist Sol has begun assisting with many of the environmental assets and texturing, such as the grass, sand, and pathways to be used as well as some set dressing items like lanterns.

This week Joshua sculpted the town wall and gate, as well as retopologizing and unwrapping the Gecko playable character

Our artist William has begun working on the VFX for the game, as well as fixing the post-processing for our water systems.

Our artist Chris has worked on texturing many of our different environmental assets (such as the Palm Trees) and so forth.

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

Design - Recap

This week the designers were focused on ensuring the mechanics and layout of the game are fine tuned to the feedback we have received from both our playtesting sessions and the Pizza and Pixels event.

David has shrunk the level and fine-tuned the aiming systems. As well as increased the dynamite bundle model size so it's easier to understand. Has also finished placed and adding some more of the set-dressing and animal placements. Also working with our programmer Ryan has added our Wave system into the project.

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 the narrative and started discussing and working on how to implement our narrative ideas in-engine.

Stephen has continued running our external playtesting and has ensured we follow the feedback provided.

I assisted this week with the Pizza and Pixels event and following up on the feedback provided. I also balance checked the projectiles and speed for the enemy weapons and balanced the Hippo detection/firing system programmed by Ryan.

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

Programming - Recap 

Our Programmers have been finalizing the base code for all our mechanics and have now started optimizing and ensuring they work, while also making the changes necessary to follow up on feedback provided.

Ryan has worked on the creation of our Wave System, as well as implementing the Mixamo animations in engine. He also coded the Hippo detection and firing systems as well as adding the VFX Will has finished working on.

Dan has continued working on the UI systems and their implementation in the main game, including the health systems and ammo tracking.

Programmers:  Ryan Horwood, Daniel Woodhouse

I hope you enjoy what you see and come back again next week for the Week 4 Devlog to see our changes based on community feedback that we have started to receive. This has been Hayden McCormack of the Borg Studios team, see you all next week!