Time for another devlog - the first one of 2026. Still no release date or window but HOPEFULLY itll be this year.
Ive fully switched to making new stuff instead of updating the Demo, although ill probably do some bugfix for that soon as well.
Spoiler warning in general - some of the names are intentionally obscured to not say too much
in no particular order
Will be somewhere towards the end of the game, Its supposed to be more "pristine" / "etheral" - the whole thing isnt textued yet
The whole thing is made in Blender which was fun to do (usually i assemble things in engine)
This is the Area right after the Demo ends. The most obvious addition is the suspicious big tower in the middle but i wont spoil exactly what it is.
Before that there are some new Testing Tracks, introducing the new Launchpad.
My Plan for this Area is for it to switch between inside and outside the Testing Track, making it a bit more interesting (both gameplay and thematically) than just constantly being stuck inside the track.
Going down that shaft, there will be some quite different gameplay. I was inspired by the Minecraft Dropper maps where you have to evade obstacles while falling
To make this feel as good as possible i also stole a system from Manifold Garden where a loud "woosh" plays when passing a large object. Some new gameplay elements in this section are the strong smoke/gas/air (idk yet) vents which gives you a lot of horizontal momentum.
At first i struggled with getting the colors right as everything was drenched in a brown tone.
Before vs after:
With some post processing and adjustments of the materials i added some complementary blue into the mix (walls, pipes, the smoke) and made the whole thing more contrasty which makes it look pretty decent now.
(that small little tower in the middle is where the dropper gameplay is happening)
At the very bottom, where you end up, is this area that ive shown in the previous devlog, but now with a huge hole in the sky. (the roof also got a small update)
Im not sure why I made this or where it´ll fit in the game but i thought this panel from Tower Dungeon looked cool
This one isnt textured either - maybe itll be some sort of secret.
You cant quite see the scale from these pictures properly but its absolutely MASSIVE. Ill leave the purpose of this facility up to your imagination..
You enter this area through one of those tube exits (which are many times the size of the player), after a gameplay section inside one of those big blocks which hopefully leads to a cool "wow this is a big place" reveal.
Originally I wanted the gameplay for this Area to be focused on the Launchpads as well but then I realised - what if I just copy Minecraft.
So now there is a (pretty mid) gliding system in place. Along with that there are some sort of "boost rings" which give you some speed. For the gameplay I want it to feel a bit like the Minecraft Console Edition Eltra Minigames (PEAK)
One of the biggest changes was adapting the Movement system to fit all this new stuff. For example in the Falling section the Player speed values get increased a LOT so that you can actually move around in the air. The Glide system is also hard to tune/get right and is still pretty bad to move around with.
The Launchpad now has some "Aim Assist" dragging you to the target a bit, since you can now move around in the air while getting launched. But most importantly, Plimbos can now be launched with the platforms as well.
The question of how to negate the fall damage from the launch is solved by these Catch Platforms:
I havent decided on a name yet but it´ll probably "mirror" the name thats chosen for the Launchpad (still havent decided on that either)
Similarly to the Launchpad "Music" that plays I also want a short section to play when youre getting caught. (and I also might expand this to some other gameplay elements)
This is just a platform that drops you after you stand on it a bit. I reused the piston from the launch platform for this.
Its a barrel that can explode when thrown very hard.
Im not quite sure where to take this yet, its another one of those "could be cool ideas". Im thinking about combining it with the launchpad and making a "catapult" section where you need to destroy a wall or something.
This is just a small gimmick but I thought it would be funny. Officially its called "Revelo Cognitive Stimulator" but the gameplay is the same as Wordle.
The main difference is that the word-solution list is custom and has some in universe terms- the solution word updates every day and is of course the same for every player.
This is in the Demo already so you can check it out if you want, one of the computers in "Offices?" has the programm on it
Im still working on redoing the entire Soundtrack to be a bit better and more fitting. I might post some snippets once its more complete but I think its already nice.
Thank you for reading
-Stefaaan!!