Sin Spire – Dev Log 21 (Patreon)

Hello everyone! I hope you’ve all had a great week. This week, I revisited a previously showcased enemy, worked on animations for Savina and started development on the third dungeon, now called the Trap Dungeon.

Savina’s Animations

I kicked off the week by animating Savina’s reactions to player actions. For instance, if the player attacks her, she now expresses her frustration by yelling and stomping her foot. I also added several new animations to enhance her dialogue – simple nods and head shakes as well as gestures.

While I’d love for dialogue to be more fluid, similar to the animation test I posted a while back, it simply isn’t feasible. Instead, my goal for regular dialogue is to have enough animations to add additional flavor to the interactions without creating an unsustainable workload. Fully animated sequences with dialogue will happen but only at key moments, of which I want to save my energy for.

The Banshee

Some of you will remember an enemy I showcased a few dev logs ago; the Banshee. After finishing the animation updates to Savina, I revisited the enemy to finish her implementation. While I had already completed her design, I had yet to work on her AI and animations.

The Banshee is a fast, powerful enemy designed to be a challenge late-game. She has a large health pool and uses a mix of ranged and close-combat attacks. At a distance, she throws projectiles and then quickly closes the gap. Her up-close attacks are designed to keep up with player movement so players will need to parry her to reliably incapacitate her. Even then, she recovers quickly.

I want encounters with the Banshee to feel both fun and challenging, but we’ll see what happens once players get to experience the fight for themselves.

The Trap Dungeon

Lastly, I started work on the Trap Dungeon. As the name suggests, this dungeon’s main gimmick is its abundance of traps. The Stalker here also incorporates traps into her mechanics, changing the general approach to the dungeon’s design. Unlike previous dungeons, which use the roaming timer system, the intention for this dungeon’s Stalker is to only start actively stalking once the player triggers a specific type of trap (you’ll figure out which one fairly quick).

While I did have a visual design in mind for the dungeon, various factors have led to heavy revisions. This was a bit of a blocker for me as I was very fond of the original idea. Regardless, I can’t really procrastinate the whole dungeon for much longer so I’ve decided to, for the first time, greybox the entire dungeon instead of creating art assets first.

For the first two dungeons ( and potentially the last two), I designed the general art assets first, before creating tiles for procedural generation. While this approach has worked, it also forces me to focus heavily on visuals early on, which can be a distraction. Moving forward, I’ll use greyboxing to prioritize mechanics and leave the art for later. If I don’t finish everything this month, you might see some greyboxed assets in the next release, similar to other placeholders already in the game.

After this, I’m considering stepping away from adding any new gimmicks or layouts for each dungeon. It’s been surprisingly stressful from a time-management perspective. The dungeon after the Trap Dungeon will be similar to the first two, and the final dungeon will likely combine elements from all the previous ones. I also don’t plan to spend too much time on visual design for future dungeons, as I want to focus more on new enemies, animations, and so on.

Next Up

My next goals are to continue work on the Trap Dungeon and begin implementing the second main boss fight. Most of the assets and dialogue for this boss are ready, so I’ll be focusing on animations and logic.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading, and see you next time!