Hello everyone!

Have not posted in Itch for a while. I’m sorry for everyone interested and following the game. Know that the project is still in development and it is taking too long because of how it grew and became a monster (a good one, don’t get me wrong ha ha ha).

I have been working on the game and all the stuff surrounding it (physical editions, soundtrack, the Kickstarter itself, art book among other tasks). If you are a Kickstarter backer most likely you will already know this information, but wanted to share some updates on the development of the game as well as other stuff in here as well.

Gonna share some of the work I made around the game so you can see my process and some of the content created for it. Still some time to finish it ha ha ha, but made some advances already. Hope you enjoy!

Glory Hunters Stream.

Before I start, wanted to make an open invitation to everyone interested in the game to a stream I will be doing on February 25^th. It will start at 6pm (GMT-6, Mexico city time) and will last for about 4 or 5 hours, depending on how many people actually joins and how many questions are being asked.

I will be signing the collector’s edition certificates that will be sent to some backers, but the objective is to have a nice chat about me, the project as a whole and not do that task alone (signing 200 certificates).

We can talk about the development, the kickstarter campaign, retro games, game design, pixel art, game boy, GB Studio or whatever comes to your mind at the moment ha ha ha.

You will be able to join us via Youtube or Twitch (click on the names for the links to the channels). I hope to see you there and to have a good time together!

Also the Steam page is up! If you could add this to your wish list and share the project that would help improve the visibility of the project a lot! Please take some time to do it if you have a steam account. TY :D :D :D

Music.

Want to start with the music so you can open the songs in a different tab to hear them while you read if you want to.

Here is a link to the soundcloud page:

https://soundcloud.com/glory-hunters?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

There you will find some of the tracks used within the game (chiptune or 8 bit versions) as well as some songs played live by Nordés (Celtic Music Band).

For the music we (Rodrigo the music composer and myself) spent a lot of time hearing the same stuff Kōji Kondō used as inspiration for the first Legend of Zelda.

There are a lot of Game Boy games out there with happier or faster tunes that really pop out during gameplay, but we needed something that felt like an epic adventure other than an arcade game or a wholesome game like the Kirby series.

Rodrigo wrote down the songs thinking in how they would actually play using Celtic instruments like bag pipes, flutes and guitars. That is why we really wanted to make a “live performance” of the songs, so that the tunes used in the Game Boy game could be heard as he envisioned them from the start.

Rodrigo has made an exceptional work from my perspective and really nailed the mood I wanted to have with the songs within the game. It was an honor to have him in the project and I will be forever in debt with him for giving his best and pouring all the love to the songs used in Glory Hunters.

I also talked to Controvol (the group that made the music for the previous game I worked on) to have some kind of collaboration within the project and they agreed to make one interpretation of one song for the soundtrack. I could not be happier to have the opportunity to work with them once again.

Hear it Here:

https://on.soundcloud.com/tfnTg

For me music has always been really important for me while I imagine the game. I usually work with the alpha versions of the songs in the background. You can say that the process I had (still having) making this game is building it with the music reference constantly playing. I first give Rodrigo a brief of the zone the music will be playing within the game alongside some references, both sketches and actual sprites.

SPOILERS AHEAD! ENEMIES, BOSSES, ZONES and END GAME AHEAD. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Enemies within the game.

Before I started to script and add enemies to the game I had to make the design surrounding them (health points, hit points the enemy would make to the player, sprites animations).

Going to leave some of the process here as well as the animations and designs that are being used.

NPCs.

As any other RPG, Glory Hunters have a roster of “common” NPCs that the player will be able to find around the world. Just like the enemies within the game I needed a clear picture of how many of them needed to be made before I started adding them to the game. You will see that they are divided between “races” and this was important so that the player had an extra reward by finding their towns and making a difference between the different zones the player could discover.

You will be able these NPCs as duplicates in some zones. The characters that have an important role within the story and lore of the game were made different so that the player could recognize them apart from the most common ones.

Another important thing I wanted to include was "critters" so that the world felt alive and they could provide extra achievements if the player got stuck in the main "flow" of the game.

These critters will appear in different zones around the land (low spawnrate) and within caves in which the player can "grind" a specific type if desired.

Special Characters.

Some of the characters within the game have a specific role within the flow and the lore of the story. Most of them give you a task to be able to go to a dungeon and “complete” the chapters within the game.

Going to leave some sketches and sprites with images that were meant to make a mockup of the art book.

Bosses.

Each dungeon will have its own boss lurking at the end of it. They will provide an extra achievement and you will be able to try different challenges to obtain even more achievements (glory points) such as not getting hit by it.

These bosses can be resurrected by a special NPC so you can try them out again if you failed your first attempt at not getting hit by it or just to duel it once more. For that I created a specific NPC that help you raise them from the dead by offering some materials in return.

Zones and Map.

Creating and balancing the map took a lot of time to get it right (still need to finish some corners of it) and I still need to test out some of the scenes within it. One of the main “attractions” of Glory Hunters if you could say it that way, is that you will be able to travel freely through the map, and it needed to be huge so that the player would get rewarded by exploring it by finding new biomes, mini-games and characters. One of the main goals of the game is for the player to take a different path for every single gameplay experience.

You will see that in every image I added a small sketch of how I imagined the zone and worked from that.

The whole map was created using Tiled once I had the actual tile set for each zone. I start by creating tiles in Aseprite and then arranging them on Tiled using the blueprints, sketches and notes I always make before arranging them.

I always play on my head while I design the world of this game. Having a working engine within GB studio with the demo has helped a lot knowing what I can do and do not on the software. I try to squish the most out of it, but having to hunt achievements in this world has prooved to be a fun experience, I just need to polish and balance the flow and numbers within the game.

One time I was talking to my friends about the development and how creating the map was time consuming. One of them asked if there was any way that I could make it smaller to speed up development. I answered: “I could, but that is one of the features within the game that helps the main mechanic (expending glory points) work”. So there was no turning back on that decision.

Dungeons (MAYOR SPOILERS).

While they are totally optional during gameplay I wanted to add dungeons resembling the first “The Legend of Zelda”, partly because I knew I wouldn’t be able to deal with lots of items or a wide set of mechanics and puzzles for each one of them. This would fit many players desire to dive into dungeons and gather more glory points by defeating different kind of mobs and conquering the last boss.

Very simple but yet fun instances where the player can explore and get keys to open doors to finally reach the final room.

Whenever the player defeats a boss, the last encounter(s) of the game will have their health depleted making it easier for the player to reach an ending. There may be players that skip this mechanic and rather face a buffed up boss at the end. As you can see I want to give a lot of freedom to the player what to do and how they want to play the game. 

While I can’t promise all of this content is final (some are clearly sketches or planning around the game) I hope you can get a glimpse of what this game has become and the content created for it.

I am loving making this game come to life. Sometimes I get burnouts by so many stuff I need to work on (even outside the game like graphic design, content for platforms like this one or Kickstarter etc.) but every day I leave with a smile in my face because of the love and passion I have towards making games.

Creating this world has been a great experience and I really hope you guys will be able to enjoy it in the future, know its story and meet the characters that live within it.

There is so much content I have created for the game but I think I will leave it for another update.

Development on Glory Hunters has been hard (mainly because I am not a programmer and I have to learn a lot around pixel art to get things done), but it is still alive. I'm not great sharing in social media but here you will have enough content to rest assured this game one day will see the glorious light of day!

Be sure to leave a comment and ask whatever you want surrounding the development of the game or whatever comes to mind ha ha ha. Hope to see you on the stream and keep me some company while I sign those bad boys! May your path be blessed with glory always! See you on another update!

-César