Alexis just released a new game called "9 Cam", and it's inspired by Halfquake, as you can probably tell! It has evil smilies, black and white textures, and even music by me.

It still needs ratings to not get blammed on Newgrounds, so please check it out and rate it.

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Get all my games for just $6.66 in the itch.io Halloween Sale.

My games weren't spooky enough to get into the Steam Halloween sale. Reminds me that I should make a horror game at some point!

I finally recorded 40 new sounds for Faith in Despair. It was important to me that I used MTG cards for card sounds (picking up, shuffling, etc.). These sounds are subtle, but should add a lot to the atmosphere.

I also recorded specific sounds for lacrima using my ring and other meaningful items. Having a lot of things in the game that are special to me feels like breathing soul into it, it's something that I've always loved doing, especially since halfquake amen.

The next day I sliced up the sounds, made sure they were as short as possible (especially sounds that you hear a lot) and put them into the game. It felt like the game was speaking to me for the first time. :D It took a bit to get used to it, but after a while I really enjoyed it. Some sounds may need some adjustments here and there, but I'm really happy with it overall.

Displayed Mana Costs

Mana costs are now visible on the cards when you have them in your hands. It wasn't clear before how much a card would cost, since it was simply based on the equipped lacrima on a card. But it's crucial information, so now it's visible.

Mana costs also changed to total lacrima slots on a card, no matter if they have lacrima equipped or not. This allows for more experimentation with equipping lacrima that aren't triggered that often. In previous runs I noticed that I kept cards empty because I would try to keep mana costs down, but now that they cost the same every time, it's very freeing.

Options to regain mana will grow as well in the future, with more blessings, shop re-rolls, as well as the new sacrifice event. Suffice to say, even with the new changes, it was still possible to beat the game, although quite challenging, which is good. :D

Darker Cards

The cards needed to be a bit darker to appear less "blocky". This also makes the numbers and the text more readable. I still want to change how the lacrima look, maybe make them darker overall.

The sigil that's on each lane also sticks out more and more and I'll have to replace it soon with a simple outline, I think. We'll see.

(Speaking of sticking out... :P)

Blessings Complete

As mentioned before, one of the items on my list on the road to the demo was having twenty blessings. And since Friday, that is now complete! I've added some very experimental ones that don't simply change stats, but allow for different mechanics and slightly varied playstyle options.

I will add more in the future, but I'm happy that all bosses and blessings for the demo are now done.

What's Next?

I'll keep playing the game and check remaining sounds that need to be added, or if existing sounds need to be adjusted. Other than that, I want to give the player more options when receiving cards, instead of just adding them to the deck.

For example, in the beginning of a run, I want to offer a choice to pick one out of three blessings, instead of just adding one randomly. Same thing when opening a chest and finding a card or lacrima. More choice is always good and it also goes through the available content quicker (to get to the cards you really need right now in the run).

And of course - music! I've made a list of tracks that I'm going to need for the demo, and it's already 8 in total. Some of them won't have to be very long, like 1 minute total, but I'd need to expand them later for the OST release anyway, so we'll see. Thankfully, most tracks for my games were done in 1-2 days, so it shouldn't take too long.

🧙‍♂️ To be continued...

There's a new event called Sacrifice, which lets you sacrifice cards for life/mana/gold. Currently, that's the only option to remove cards from your deck, not sure if there will be more options in the future, as it's usually not that much of a problem to have more cards in this game.

Normally in other games a card is fixed, so you can have bad cards and the need to get rid of them. In Faith in Despair, you can change your cards, so it doesn't really matter.

Charm

Cards can now be charmed, which makes them attack their allies. This adds more importance for clearing debuffs in general. Another new debuff is Parasite, which doubles its growth every turn and deals damage equal to its growth value. I realized there are a lot of debuffs compared to buffs, so I also added Stoneskin.

Stoneskin replaces the spell "Increase Max Health", which originally was a permanent increase. In testing that turned out to be way too powerful though. When I made it temporary (until end of combat), it felt more like a buff, but it wasn't an official status effect, which felt confusing. With Stoneskin, it's a status effect now, it's still stackable, and it's another Final Fantasy reference.

Stoneskin was incredibly important in Final Fantasy 11 (and 14 before they removed it), it was a mandatory buff (alongside Protect and Shell) before entering big fights.

The lacrima "Increase Attack" was removed because it was also temporary and not a status effect. Warcry does the exact same and it's stackable.

Queuing actions

Playing card games (or games in general) should allow the player to play as fast as they want. Slay the Spire does this by allowing spells to be queued while another spell is still being played. Faith in Despair now also allows you to queue ending the turn, creatures and spells. As soon as the current spell chain reaction or the drawing of cards is complete, the queued actions are acted upon. It makes for a much smoother experience.

Bosses & Blessings

New bosses have been added for a total of 10 now. I think my favourite so far is Buné who starts on the board alone, but resurrects six demons once he's at half of his health.

I also added new blessings, resulting in a total of 15. One of them is Blood Pact, which lets you exhume a creature from your graveyard whenever one of your creatures is dealt damage from a friendly source.

Lots of other new lacrima have been added along with the new bosses and blessings, but since we're already talking about Exhume...

Enemy graveyard

Enemies now also have a graveyard, which persists throughout the run. This means that when you encounter a demon that has an Exhume lacrima, they can bring back enemies that you've defeated before. This actually caused some performance issues, because it kept all cards in the graveyard and they piled up pretty quickly.

I fixed those performance issues by turning off cards in the graveyards altogether. In addition to that, I now also turn off the front of all cards when they're facing down, which unlocks even more FPS.

Next Up

This week I'll add a few more blessings, and then I'll make a list of all the sounds I'm going to need. If I'm lucky, I'll even be able to add the first few sounds into the game too.

I also keep playing the game and noticing issues here and there, but overall I'm having fun, and that was the whole point of the project. I still haven't beaten it in its current state, but that means that I get to keep trying.

I'm honestly so excited to work on the game at the moment, it's absolutely clicking with me. I haven't felt this good in quite a while. Hopefully I can keep this up for the next few months because I know it's still going to be a lot of work.

But it can't hurt to be optimistic, right?

🧙‍♂️ To be continued...

Every day I wake up and all I want to do is work on my game. This has been the truth for many years now, in fact, that's pretty much all I can remember. Before Halfquake, I made Counter-Strike maps and experimented with music. I wrote short stories, built maps in a game called Kye, and wrote a text adventure in batchfiles.

There's a video of me as a child, sitting before a Yamaha keyboard (before my parents got divorced). My dad was filming, and my mother was standing next to me. I played a melody that I thought of, I turned to the camera, grinning and checking if dad was "getting this". My mother would then ask me if I wanted to play something from a note sheet book. I declined and just kept jamming my own stuff. Then mother would just put the book in front of me and sort of "suggest" that I play that.

I gracefully wound down my track with an "end" button (which caused the percussion to play a sort of fill-in), and begrudgingly played what mom told me to play. After that was done, I played another melody that I found interesting. Again mom would ask me to play something from the book.

When I accidentally saw that clip recently, I was stunned. I couldn't remember it, but I vaguely recalled the melodies I played from memory, and I sort of still understood why I liked them. And I realized that I'm still that kid.

I absolutely hate being told what to do. That is simply not what I'm here for. My mind is full of ideas, all of which are asking me to be turned into reality. And believe me, they won't shut up, not even in my dreams. Thankfully, I've found a compromise that allows me to live an adult life and still have time for my own projects.

But as time slips away from me, I'm trying to hold it closer. Knowing that my time is running out, I'm longing for even more to call my own. And I know this has been an on-going theme on this website, because I kept mentioning it ten years ago.

I'm using productivity tricks, I use lists, motivation hacks, time audits, but all that does is burn me out, so I have to take it slow and steady. At least one hour per day, that's been my motto for over 15 years now. And that is what I will keep on doing until the day I die.

Will it be enough? Probably not. But realistically, with an infinite amount of ideas, could it ever be? No, but I have to learn to be okay with that.