Filcher status update

Filcher is now disturbingly close to completion. Last time I posted, I was about to start drawing the comic book cutscenes. It took way longer than expected, but all the art is now finished. I went for a black-and-white pixel art style, heavily influenced by Hellboy‘s Mike Mignola and V for Vendetta‘s David Lloyd. Still needs some polish here and there, but I’m really happy with how it’s come together.

Then there’s the writing, which permeates the game in the form of mission briefings, cutscene captions and speech balloons, in-game dialogue (you can eavesdrop on certain conversations) and the occasional snarky comment from Sporey during missions. I was initially going to have a full comic intro cutscene for each of the game’s ten missions, but that proved slightly over-ambitious. There are now six cutscenes (which cover all the major story moments) plus a text briefing for each mission, complemented with images.

So much for the story stuff, but surely the gameplay is more important? True, so I’ve been going through all the levels, filling previously empty rooms and adding more loot, secrets, readables and overall detail. I’ll await the feedback of my long-suffering playtesters Gurt and Splinter and fix whatever problems they find. Then I’ll invite a few more outside testers for the whole game, and maybe put out a demo version for the public. Still figuring these things out.

It looks like Filcher should be ready for release later this summer. More info soon!