Othermind Update: Area completion

Hello there!
Despite the fact that I haven't posted about this game in a while, it does not mean that progress is stagnant, rather the contrary!

Preface

A lot of progress has been going on in Othermind/Pipe dreamer II, such as a lot of the game being complete, a lot of work going on in the art department and not to mention a lot of bug-swatting.

Area completion

The maps in Othermind are all in the game now, more or less looking like final designs, although a lot of the placeholder tiles are still present in these worlds. Sadly, I did have to scrap 2 worlds due to the workload of having to make their mini-games, which means more bugs, and polish the area's design to make it not only look as interesting as possible but to also remove any potential exploits that the player could preform to make them stuck on a certain area. Despite the removals of 2 worlds, this game still has more worlds than the original so that's good, but only 3 of them have mini-games.

The worlds

If you want to explore what the game has for yourself, you are free to skip this section. Otherwise I'll talk about what the game has in store

Blue meadow - A lush environment full of blue trees, walking radishes (from the first game originally called "Leems") and ledges where only the leems can walk up.

The City with no name - Based on the one from the first game, which was originally going to have a mini-game but I thought it was quite a bit tedious so I decided to make the area a nice walk around town where you have to go out of your way to throw sales pitches to people in exchange for gems.

Peach sea - Similar to "Aqualove" from the first game where Narlwrus maneuver the waters. This area is far less buggier than it was in the first game since I had trouble with where the player could be dropped off at. The name was inspired from the Pink sea from Yume Nikki.

Mushroom world - Might remind you a bit of Super Mario, there is quite a bit of jumping invovled as the creatures you can posses there can jump to some pretty outstanding heights.

Winter world - A vastly cold world full of ice and Yetis who do not like anyone going near them. The water can freeze the player if they get in but Yetis can walk through there due to their warm fur and thick feet.

These are the worlds that appear in the game, I try to keep the details as minimal as possible because I think the most enjoyment you can get out of them is by playing them yourself.

Art progress

My friend Joe is doing a great job at drawing the animations and the tiles. Though it is quite a bit of effort to co-ordinate him to be on the same page as me, mainly with the more technical side i.e. making something into a tile-set, I tend to get around this by making some edits to his work to suit my vision. I'll show you an example of the tree he drew vs my edits to make it a tile-set:

The things on the side of the right tree aren't bushes, they are to smooth out the appearance of the trees as shown in the screenshot below.

Here is both our efforts in action:

The translucent magenta tiles are collisions.

I'll post a few more screenshots here too:

I probably need to get rid of those polka-dot blocks that I used to call "large mushrooms".

A lonely Yeti with a cold heart in a equally cold world.

Recently I started using Trello (I used this for the development of Bounty Hunter II) again to set tasks for my artist to animate other characters and draw the tiles. It's a pretty efficient way for us to communicate with each other since we can put in attachments (including piskel files) allowing for ease of access with resources.

Conclusion

At this point it is crunch time because I plan Othermind game to be released in the 15th December. This month I plan to work on finalizing most of the art and making the areas reflect their finished forms. In November I would like merely to focus on bug-fixes and polishing the game as well as finishing touches (I still haven't completed the main menu).

In other news I'm also working on a blog post that is most likely going to be longer than most of my posts, it is part of my "effective altruism" series and will be about China and why it is important. The post is set to be released in 27th October so to those interested in China, look forward to that.