Working with visuals

Should I hire a visual artist?

Most of the time of the last month I have been working with Aseprite and pixel placement. (aka. drawing).

I have some regrets about taking the game to the space environment; I should have kept up with simple geometric shapes. Is it too late to go back?

I do like drawing, and I think I have found my own "style" with it, but this takes a huge amount of my time in the development process.

This is a solo game development project, so I hire someone to do, let's say, pixel art for me. Is it anymore a solo project?

Let's check some of the new stuff, however!

Here is the player's base as a whole. I'm not 100% satisfied with the outcome, and it looks a bit too repeatable. But here is the version 1.0, at least.

Here is the new gun. I was trying to get a bit of an old, cannon-like look here.

Some new particle effects are taking place too; here is the player's healing effect.

Enemies targeting system

Enemies got an update to their targeting system. Now they focus the base as prior one target. The player can still lure enemies with a decoy power-up or flying close to them. Some enemies, however, might find this a bit anoying.

So I created an aggro system for some enemies. It will be triggered if the player stays too close to the enemy. After aggro is activated, the enemy gets a speed boost and will follow the player until the end of times.

That's all for now

And by the way, I do add updates on a somewhat irregular basis into X too. So if you are interested in hearing about the project more often than once a month, please visit on the X-platform! (You can find the link in this page footer too!).

I'll keep up the work, see ya next time!

Teemu, TheAspen