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game design, code, writing, art and music

New art style

About a week ago I accidentally applied a gradient texture to in-game trees, and liked it.

Inspired, I've decided to retouch my current graphics in a general way. My aim was to keep the feel and aesthetic of the original vision, but enrich it with more detail and subtle visual effects. So far I'm happy with the results.

The new art style looks something like this:

The trees are now more prominent when lit, and gradually fade into darkness.
The trees are now more prominent when lit, and gradually fade into darkness.
The
The "silhouette effect" of the original art style still remains.
Other props around the environment have also been retouched.
Other props around the environment have also been retouched.

In other news: a playable demo of Phantom Path is coming soon!

The demo will include the first few areas of the game, with all their secrets, lore and original soundtrack.

Phantom Path

Phantom Path is an adventure game about exploring overgrown ruins, solving arcane mysteries and uncovering ancient lore.

Unlike my previous games, Phantom Path has a heavy focus on story and exploration. This is why I haven't posted anything substantial over the last few months - don't want to spoil the game before it's even released! However, there has been a lot of progress since my last post, and I'd like to share some of it now.

First of all, the game has a name now!

It took me a while, but here it is.
It took me a while, but here it is.

Phantom Path starts with an unnamed treasure hunter entering an old forest, which is rumored to be the location of a lost ancient city. It is also a place where countless travelers went missing.

The forest is full of forgotten ruins, arcane technology, strange creatures and incredible treasure. But the deeper one goes, the more dangerous it gets...

I am developing Phantom Path by myself, using a custom game engine called YUME. I'm planning to release a playable demo soon, so stay tuned!

Puzzle Game: Lore, Secrets, Inventory

One of my goals for this game is to include plenty of side content in the form or unlockable lore, hidden treasures, secret areas and so on.

Here's a short video showcasing how that might look.

The footage is from the first level of the game. The first secret area was initially a test, but I like how it turned out, so I'll probably leave it as it appears in the video. Leave it to me to leak spoilers of my own game before it's even released.

The video also shows me opening a journal menu, which is used for storing unlockable lore text. Lore is learned by interacting with the world and finding books, inscriptions and such. Kind of like in a real video game.

I think that few people actually read the lore documents in games, which is why I decided to make it a bit more interesting and make the lore a part of the gameplay. The texts will have clues, hints, and even additional hidden puzzles inside of them. That's the plan, anyway.

Finally, there's now a functional inventory grid, which displays large colorful images of all the collectibles and equipment you've picked up. I think there's a potential for new types of puzzles here, so I might experiment with that and add more functionality to this screen in the future.

P.S. I still haven't thought of a name for the game yet, but I'm working on it.