Dev Diary: Kicking off 2023 with Quests, Enemies & More
Ahoy, readers! We’re happy to be bringing you another monthly Dev Diary from the single-player prologue of Plodding Isles. Be sure to go and check out last month’s dev diary, where we talked about the mysterious village and some of the island’s unusual inhabitants.
If you’re new here, or unfamiliar with what we’re doing, we’re currently developing something exciting; a supernatural pirate adventure on a mysterious island with secrets from another world!
If you haven’t had a chance to check out our last dev diary, we shared some exciting previews of our game assets and a peek at some behind-the-scenes design:
Over December, we worked on the next area that forms part of the island’s adventure: an inhospitable barren wasteland with a dark history. The ancient energy that inhabits this place is creating unexplainable supernatural phenomena. It’s your job to work out what’s going on!
We’ve worked hard this month to wrap up some of the most interesting parts of the island, but we can’t give away too much here without revealing some huge mysteries.
We’re breaking this all down into a brief changelog of just a few of the last month’s updates. There’s a lot of intricate development work going on right now that’s a little harder to easily break down into a concise development update, but you’ll be excited to see what we’re working on!:
Pre-Alpha 0.7
- River environment completed. The player can learn to fish here, and meet some of the island’s most interesting residents.
- Finalized our unique cursor/NPC mechanic, allowing players to explore the game in a new and unique way (more on this soon!)
- Health & Damage mechanics are complete.
- The island’s first batch of mysterious enemies is completed. They’ll put up a fight so be ready!
- Multiple attacks are ready to go. You’ll have to work out the best way to fight off the local baddies.
- Harvesting mechanics are complete; you can mine, harvest, dig and fish.
- Enemy AI 1.0 is complete.
- Dialogue, UI & NPC interactions are ready — there’s an exciting world for you to get stuck into, and a ton of locals to befriend!
- Shop & purchasing interactions are finalized.
- The player’s trusty dog companion now is now ready to fight alongside you.
- Fishing spawning and mechanics are complete.
- Quest functionality is finalized. We’re excited to show you just how much there is to do!
- Economy and rewards infrastructure is ready to go.
We’re excited to show you more about this in next month’s dev diary, and a first hand look at some more of our in-game systems.
Launch Date
This is the question everyone’s asking! We’re happy to say that we’re soon starting official closed alpha testing. Some readers may already be taking part in our invite-only pre-alpha gameplay tests and we really appreciate your feedback!
There’ll be a lot more on this over the next month, and we’re looking forward to sharing a date with you soon.
Upcoming News
We’re looking forward to sharing our 2023 whitepaper with you soon, in addition to an exciting lore deck, which we teased last month (with all the top-secret storyline stuff kept out — we won’t ruin anything for you!)
This year has a lot in store for us, and it gets more exciting as every month goes by. There’s so much of the Plodding Isles universe to enjoy and we’ve only shared the tip of the iceberg so far.
You’re in for a real treat!
