To all our readers welcome back to the fifth week of production for Son of a Gecko. We launched our full Alpha build this week and have moved on to Beta. With this we have begun full bug-testing and more and more playtesting to ensure proper player feedback is followed as we move closer to the end date that is rapidly approaching.

Welcome back I'm 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 released the Alpha version of the game and have officially moved on towards Beta! 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 begin finished off the final textures for all major assets as well as placeholder/first passes at many of the VFX found throughout the game. They have also finished rigging up the different models and will now be working towards animation and second pass at VFX as we get closer to release.

This week our artist Joaquin created Hippo texture and a texture for the variant Bird as well as the textures for the Boss Hippo. He also created a first pass at our new logo. He also created some art models for the UI. He also started Rigging the Hippo.

Our artist Sol refined the light baking for the level, as well as created some entirely new terrain materials. She has also created a foliage shader with some new grass/bushes. She has created some clouds and a cloud shader and is now working on Gecko Animations.

This week Joshua textured the health pick-ups (bottles), as well as texturing the town wall/gate as well as retopo'd and unwrapped it ready for implementation.

Our artist William has finished a first pass at all remaining VFX. Will is also currently working on some Dynamite decal and some refinement on the VFX and assisting with Animation.

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

Design - Recap

This week the designers were focused playtesting and preparing the game for Alpha release. We were able to redesign the level layout and style based on feedback, as well as implement all important systems ready for Alpha launch.

David has re-worked the Arena/Boss areas of the map, based on the feedback provided and are now more designed to compel the player to use the Explosive Barrel mechanic. Written out and implemented the tutorial steps. Playtest and balance testing.

Our designer Astro has done some bug-testing/playtesting. Finished their part within the Sound systems. Astro will be working on the trailer/dev-narration videos we will be creating while assisting where possible.

Alex this week has been doing bug-testing/tracking and playtesting in preparation for Beta. Alex has also assisted in finding people outside the team to bug-test the game.

Stephen has completed rounds of bug-testing and updated the QA forms for the next round in preparation for Beta testing.

This week I did some playtesting at Burgmann Anglican school (thank you for the assistance). I also added the sounds the other designers had created into the project for Ryan to implement. Due to feedback about the wall causing issues I also went through and smoothed it out and made it a lot nicer and easier to move along. Cleaned up some Perforce issues as well. I've also begun working on updating the Itch page to make it look more presentable as well as created a youtube channel for the game.

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

Programming - Recap 

Our Programmers have finished finalizing all the mechanic necessities of the game, so we were ready for the Alpha complete. They have now begun moving on optimizing and iterating on the work and have moved onto bug-fixing.

Ryan has implemented a full tutorial system, an audio system and scripts to apply them to the correct assets/objects. He has also created a VFX system and applied them to their respective objects. Improved the animation implementation for player and enemy models. He is now working on finalizing the boss fight systems and the end-game transition. As well as bug-fixing.

Dan is creating the credit system and credits themselves. He has also begun helping with bug-fixing.

Programmers:  Ryan Horwood, Daniel Woodhouse

I hope you enjoyed seeing our progress with the finished Alpha moving into Beta, and I hope you look foward to Week 6 with the finished Beta as we move ever closer to the release date. This was Hayden from Borg Studios, see you then!