hi! its austin. this week i was productive!

i worked on reed's mechanics. he is an alchemist, and so of course he's gotta have a workbench and some potions. they all have interesting effects on the board when they "accidentally" spill.

reed is maybe a little incautious at times, which might cause his experiments to blow up in his face. 

ive been fleshing out the observatory and have put in some elements to navigate the larger area quickly. this elevator uses magic to take you between rooms. of course it uses magic. everything uses magic! god damn wizards

im also experimenting with a new effect which will be either manny or kepler's main mechanic. piece that are "bound" are stuck together with pieces of their own color. this means they move (and capture) in tandem. i expect it to be really strong! hopefully this makes up for not having pieces that take up more than one tile.

i redesigned the trapped tile based on watching some gameplay. many players i saw were hesitant to move past trapped tiles, or were maybe even unaware it was possible. i felt this hesitance could be cleared up with some aesthetic improvements.

checkmage should have a consistent design language that communicates new information to the player as seamlessly as possible. here is the intended design language of the tiles and the pieces.  

tiles should be relatively devoid of black or defined outlines. i think the confusion with the trapped tile was that it looked like it was a piece.

here's the new trapped tile sprite.

usually my first attempts at making pixel art are good enough. but with certain complicated elements, a lot of iteration is necessary for me to feel happy with the end result. heres a small timelapse of re-drawing the mini 12x12 inspector sprite for the trapped tile.

ive also been working on some ui elements for the shop. i think having the piece sprites and piece cards visible in the shop menu is important. with both sprites shown to the player before they purchase, an association is built between the piece and the card, despite their vastly different visual designs.

i really like the font i use for checkmage. i drew it myself, inspired by quinque five and the blocky font used in risk of rain.

i think the font conveys a level of seriousness and harshness that might alienate some people, and to others, it might be hard to read. i do have an alternative font option for legibility, but i felt like it would be good to provide a third option as a compromise between the pixel aesthetic and legibility.

this is the "gentle" font i drew for checkmage using bitfontmaker. i personally like it a lot, but it does make the game feel astonishingly more indie. i think i'll leave the blocky capital letters as the default, and let players select this if they explore the options menu.

Checkmage! is still in active development. If you want to support me, please consider sharing with friends. The game will be released on Steam and Itch for sale when I'm done making it.

Checkmage! on Steam  - play the demo now!

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