Ascension - Stage 7

Stage 7 has shaped up nicely, and I am very excited to show it off. This is more of a domestic stage, like Pandaemonium - albeit with more chances to slip up - that demonstrates how some of the damned like to pass their time in Hell. Up next will be another adventure stage, and then there are only two more after that, so development is proceeding at a brisk pace!

I've made a couple small but significant changes to the rest of the game in this release. First, I've modified the gameplay slightly in the last stage - Chaos. Now, instead of the black wards acting as "base", so that the bats will ignore you only so long as you stand on them, I've changed it so that standing on them actually gives you temporary invincibility (or invisibility from the bats, at least), that wears off in a few seconds, even if you step off the ward. I think it makes gameplay just a little bit easier on what was proving to be a pretty challenging stage.

The other change I made is purely cosmetic, but I hope that it will improve clarity. You may have noticed that, although you don't technically have a "party" (RPG word for "team") in this game, extra characters are displayed in your save game file, depending on the stage your game is saved at. I did this to help the player remember where in the game they had left off when choosing to load a saved game. Up until now, I had used characters from the previous stage (since the game only saves between stages), but I thought it made more conceptual sense if the game file featured characters from the stage you're about to play, since you only really see them when you're loading the game. I hope that it's more logical now.

Apart from that, I'm in the process of working out some kinks on the way this game displays dialogue choices. From the start, I had installed a script to allow dynamic choice options, which you may remember from your first encounter with the Angel of Judgment in Limbo. That was actually inspired by the dialogue style in Realms of the Haunting (one of the best horror games ever released for PC, now available on Steam for five bucks!). I was planning to implement it more in later conversations, but I ended up deciding not to go in that direction, after all, and so I just got rid of it completely. But when I nixed the script, I had to change the way I was displaying choices, and now a couple choices that aren't attached to text boxes awkwardly appear on the side of the screen, instead of the center. I haven't decided what I'm going to do about that yet.

But otherwise, everything seems to be running smoothly. So, no more waiting - try out the latest stage!

14/07/15 Ascension - Stage 7 (4.15 MB) [edit: new release available, check sidebar for info]