With Still Leben finally released, it was time for me to focus on Turnament again.

There were two mini-deadlines that I wanted to work towards. The first was a shout-out by Jonas Tyroller, he wanted to play indie games again on his channel, the deadline was April 17th. The other deadline was the Steam Next Fest application, which ended on April 21st. So, I needed to have a playable build for Jonas, and updated screenshots and a gameplay video for the Steam page. This was a good way to get back into the game.

New Crystal Art

As I've hinted at previously, in February I've hired Victoria Timoshenko to redraw all four crystals, I personally think they look a lot better now. I doubt that I will update more sprites, perhaps the shield, but we'll see! The crystals are a vital part of the game, so that was important to me.

Dialogue Window

The dialogue window has been shrunk down a bit, I believe it's better to read this way. I also added buttons for skipping and continuing with the next sentence.

Fixed Sounds and Music

There was still music being used from Catty & Batty, now there is no longer any music when finishing a level or during a dialogue scene (just like it was in the flash version). The original dialogue "click" is also being used now. The transitions are faster between scenes now, which I think is important for player retention. There are going to be new sounds and music tracks, but that's for later.

Splash Screen

I took the old Catty & Batty splash screen scene and turned it into Turnament's splash screen using the art that I already had from the store images. I also added particles and a "ghost fade" for the logo from the AllIn1SpriteShader plugin. There will be a menu here later on with level selection, options, and more. A small intro with the usual A Game by Philipp "muddasheep" Lehner was also added. This small scene allows the application to start instantly without having to load too much of the game at the start.

Trails

Probably the biggest update are the new trails for the seeker and the enemy drones. This is actually a particle system with a trailing effect (not the trail script from Unity).

It looks awesome in motion and adds a lot of dynamic to the scene. For enemies it's red and a bit less pronounced:

The interesting side effect of this is that you can look at a screenshot and get a sense of the previous motions, kind of like a comic panel.

Miscellaneous

I made sure that the cursor and the background were always the same in each scene (using DontDestroyOnLoad). The cursor still needs to be faster for controller, I think, but playing it with a controller is a whole different issue that I still need to tackle. Buttons now have an option to "turn in" when they appear, and the border around the level also fades in the first time you see it. The grid field gets built dynamically when starting the game, which makes for a nice transition between splash screen and cutscene.

I've exported it for Windows and Linux now, Mac is still something that I may look into further down the line. If you want to play this build, send me a message on discord (muddasheep#9492). Otherwise, you can wait for when the public demo is out in the next 2-3 weeks.

Updated Steam Page

As mentioned earlier, I had to update the Turnament Steam Page with new screenshots and a small gameplay video. Let me know what you think. The demo build has been approved by Valve already, but I still need to work on it a little bit before publishing it.

And here's exactly what I need to do:

Demo Build ToDo List

• Update pause and options menu (still has Catty & Batty in there)
• End game after 10 levels, show "thanks for playing the demo" screen
• Add links to discord, social media, and "add to wishlist" on splash screen
• Add in-game feedback form
• Add exit game popup that lets players wishlist it
• Update music and sounds, if there's time

I also have another artist working on a new cover art, but I'm not sure if it is finished in time for the demo. There may or may not be another thing coming to the game, but it depends on whether I can finish the list above in the next few days. As usual, we'll see.

To be continued... 💎