As we're nearing our final deadlines before the release of our Alpha version, we have been hard at work adding in the final art pieces for mechanics and really polishing things up. The artists spent some time creating model and texture variants, placing new objects and tweaking the visuals, large and small, to get things looking just right. We have added a ton of assets for different UI and have connected functionality for almost all of it as well. These assets were hand-drawn and completed our Mi-Go/elevator dialogue box, the pause/settings screen and our item encyclopedia and shop. 

Spring was in the air and so we decided to really spruce up the Sothoth Inn. This area got a number of new assets, incuding some encasing geometry of cliffs and grass, some surrounding trees and a pleasent little dock, strengthening hints of our lore and semi-aquatic theme of the Abyss. We also now have a proper tutorial level and it's accessible through a new doorway in your room. We rarranged the furniture and some functions for a better layout and smoother experience with interaction of menu triggers and assets.

I think one of the largest additions to the Inn, is our new Shopkeeper character. They may not serve a great deal of interactive purpose, but they are the final connecting element of having a shop of items for the player. In interacting with the shop, you are speaking to this mysterious, but friendly figure. Our original plans included having a safe room spawn somewhere in the Abyss and this shop would also be available there. The Shopkeeper would have a similar mask on, but one that is frowning instead of grinning.

A small, but very impactful addition to the Abyss is a revamp of one of the older obstacles. We had a beautiful crystal made, but it hadn't served much purpose and was too intriguing to not do something with. So we made it blow up! When the player shoots a piece of this crystal ore, it will explode and disperse shrapnel as a quick AoE.  This could be used a crowd control tool, but beware, it poses an equal hazard to the player if they are also in the vicinity.

In the next few weeks we'll be releasing and heavily testing our Alpha build and we're really excited to share some of these fun new elements with players. We believe there's been big improvements and visual differences now we hope everyone enjoys!