Woah what a busy month and a half. Still in Lockdown here in Ireland, though it's been rolled back over the last few weeks. Had a lot of time to finally get this game into a state that could be released as a demo!

So I should say that straight up front. Next Friday, June 26th I'm going to put out a demo. It's a tiny portion of the game, and all the music is placeholder crap from Zelda but people wanna see this in action so see you then.

Now as for what's been done!

This midboss got done. He unlocks the boomerang for you to mess about with in this dungeon. You do chunks of this dungeon without the boomerang out of order if you get the pistol early but you'll still have to grab the boomerang at some point so I'm happy with how I layed it out.

You might know these slimes from Zelda (or Mario 3!). I changed it later but in this gif they still count as enemies when they are stuck to you and as a result actually slow you down by changing their position to block you or free you. Things have a funny kind of way of working like that sometimes. Anyway now they just change your walking speed properly instead

I must have been bored this week because I decided to show off a pretty unremarkable sokobon puzzle. So enjoy this gif?

With most of the dungeon now planned out and built I moved on to setting up some story. Meet King Kobold. He was fun as hell to sprite.

Now there are very dire consequences for stealing from the shop! Pay your way, dudes!


I changed how the sword works. I went for a more Minish Cap/LTTP kind of radius after playing through all of LTTP and Oracle of Seasons and being super frustrated with the sword in the latter. There's also a proper sword spin animation now and it's smooth as eggs.

Here's a small peek at the end of the dungeon's boss fight. There's more to it but I don't want to spoil too much. He's partially inspired by the Moblin King in Link's Awakening, and Balrog from Cave Story.

I once again got super tired at this point, this was uhh the start of June? I hadn't replaced any of my wrist compression either so I was really starting to hurt.. I took some time out to follow the news and also to get an asset pack together for the Bundle for Racial Justice here on itch, chances are you own it already!

The town got expanded out east across the dried up river. I dunno if I've mentioned it but I love drawing tiles. So these little houses and shops have been a lot of fun. You might notice in recent months a lot of the buildings have gotten a load of details added to them, lots of little splashes of colour to break things up

This is from this week. Simple stuff but it's always good to add more features to my NPCs

Ah now for final touches. The game needed an intro. and now it at least has this animation as a placeholder. I wanna do more illustrations for it to show your dog (who you are looking for, they are kind of important!) and to show you getting ambushed. But it sets the scene at least!

Finishing the first dungeon, and you find... something, that was floating above King Kobold's head. What could it be????

And finally for this week..month.. BIG MASSIVE TITLES. You'll DEFO know what area you've just entered now.

I've a small list of things to finalize by next week, I'm hoping to knock them out pretty quickly (which means they will each take hours and ruin my life I'm sure). And then I have to go see about putting my IRL life back together now that the tattoo shop is reopening. Plus we are finally doing proper stuff for our wedding!

It's just as well I'll be busy after this, because I usually get pretty miserable after I release something. It's a big build up to... well silence usually. It can be a little bit of a knock! But no I shouldn't end this on a bad note. Lockdown is over here, it might not stay over but I'm pretty happy with how I spent it on this. Things have come together, things work! I know where the story is going too now which is not something I could have said in March. Hopefully people like what I'm up to ;)