Tutorial V2 is well underway and closing in on finalisation. The team is happy with the symbols and their implementation and are eager to see what impact this has on our playtesters.

In the course of creating this demo, we have been extremely conscious of, and limited by the scope. As such, we have explored emerging technologies to see if any can assist us and speed up development. One such technology that has been making waves online is generative AI. According to gen-AI’s biggest believers, this technology could replace our writer and 2D artist, and assist with 3D assets creation and programming. However, the reality and popular opinion among game developers is that generative AI is extremely flawed, limiting, produces work which takes more time to fix then to create in the first place, and, in most cases, is illegally and unethically stealing work from other artists and creatives. Due to these issues and the team's moral standing, we will not be using any AI generated content in the production or promotion of Deep Climb.

Gameplay mechanics have been locked in with our basic movement, Forward and Upward Jump, ability 1 ‘J.O.L.T.’ and ability 2 ‘V.A.U.L.T.’. We have made many small changes to these from where they were a few months ago. The design approach we took was for the abilities to have a primary function (such as forward or vertical boost) and a secondary, less obvious function. For ‘J.O.L.T.’, this secondary function is the small double jump which cancels any falling velocity, allowing for more precise boosts when falling. For ‘V.A.U.L.T.’, this is the air control gained while using the ability. This allows players to make micro adjustments to their jump but only for a limited time. These changes combined with bug fixes and value tweaks, have pushed Deep Climb into a space where it is fun to navigate even the most basic environments.

And, on that note, our focus shifts to recreating our first level ‘Oasis’. We have learnt a lot from playtesting and Deep Climb has changed just as much since we started! So we will begin work to create a new level to really show off and teach our core mechanics. But we’ll go over this more in the next dev log, see keep an eye out for when that post drops!