The Monsters Look Terrifying. Shame About the Complete Silence.

I've been watching monsters attack, checking animations, and working on a teaser video for Swordoku: Grid & Glory.

Then, while looking for ambience for the video, I remembered something.

Audio.

We have music. We have some basic sound effects. Combat itself is currently silent.

Apparently I've been building a very elaborate mime fight.

Another item for the list

So combat audio joins the to-do list. Along with the status-effect icons and card-pull icons I keep remembering, mentally acknowledging, and then apparently filing somewhere behind everything else.

It's one of those stages of development where the game is coming together well enough that the missing pieces become increasingly obvious.

Sometimes because you're checking a list. Sometimes because a monster does something dramatic and the speakers contribute absolutely nothing.

At least they look dangerous

Most of the monsters got their visual effects tonight. We're still working through their animations, but there's considerably more going on when they use their abilities now.

Originally I was going to add an event to every animation to trigger the effects. That doesn't neatly cover everything, though, particularly buffs, debuffs, and the other things that don't fit a straightforward attack sequence.

So I did what I probably shouldn't have done.

I built an editor.

Because when faced with a long list of work, the obvious response is to create a tool that needs building first.

I've been using it to hand-adjust each monster's effects to approximate timings. It works. Sometimes that's the most satisfying technical explanation available.

More ways for the monsters to be unpleasant

The monsters also became a little stronger tonight. Their growing toolkit includes:

• Summons: monsters can call in minions.
• Sacrifice taxes
• Taunts
• Immunities and resistances

It is partly an RPG, after all. The opposition should have more to contribute than standing around waiting to be hit.

I still need to set up the visual effects for those additions, so the general monster-effects pass isn't the end of that job. There are always a few more things waiting for their turn to glow, explode, or otherwise announce that you're having a worse day.

Eventually, they'll announce it audibly too. Apparently that's a feature.

A light at the end of the dungeon

Despite the recurring discoveries of entire jobs I still need to do, Swordoku is coming along nicely and quickly. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, and that makes me happy.

Getting that sense of an almost-complete game gives you a useful little boost. There is still work ahead, but it feels like the pieces are coming together rather than just accumulating.

This time, I'm also working on promotional video and marketing alongside the game. That's a massive improvement over my last Android release years ago.

Of course, back then it didn't feel like 12,971 games were being released every day.

That is not a researched statistic. That's what opening the internet feels like as a developer.

So the teaser is in progress, the monsters are getting their effects and abilities, and I can see the shape of the finished game.

Now I just need to make sure you can hear it.