Most Important Update Topics
We were not selected to be part of the EGX show. Our personal thought is that our game is still very early in production and we weren't able to show the meat of our gameplay (immersive, fast-paced 16v16 gameplay on beautiful polished levels with fun game modes [like clan v. clan v. rogue]). Our screenshots were a bit early and we squeaked out a 1v1 duel demo, that while it shows off combat well, didn't really do justice to the game.
With that said, we are doing a final round of polish for all of our Kenshi gameplay and our Gifu Crossroads map. We will be filming a video to premiere at PAX Prime and Dragon*Con street indie dev style (If you see us in Hanako shirts at either convention, please feel free to say hi and ask to see the video!) Here is a sneak peak at some of the changes we made on Gifu:
Programming Update
Our coding team is working on a variety of bug fixes that have come up during gameplay the past few weeks. We really want the Kenshi to be air-tight, and play well in preparation for video shooting and getting our development cycle refined for transitioning back into production for the Samurai Archer, who was sidetracked for a bit for PAX/EGX preparation.
Environment/Level Update
This is probably the most substantial update so far. We decided that Gifu needed a more substantial, dramatic appeal since it's our introductory battlefield level and looked fairly even and boring with mid-day lighting/skybox. We spent a week of iteration time trying different times of day and the team pretty much unanimously loved our dawn lighting scheme. I'm personally thrilled with it, and think it finally brought out the feel for the level we've been looking for since starting it last year (we have day jobs, things take a lot of time). We'll continue producing a few more environment sets then we'll be good to go on this map, and on to the next!
Character/Animation Update
Our character team has been working on polish for the Kenshi animations to make sure they record well and show off our combat system appropriately. The ninja character continues production in the high poly sculpting phase and is looking really good. Hopefully we can show something of him in one of the September dev updates.
We'll have another update post-PAX at the beginning of September so please follow us on twitter @HanakoGame and check out our Development Streams on twitch: twitch.tv/hanakogame
Thank you sincerely for your support and taking time to check out our progress, art and dream.
