Feast your eyes on this beautiful poster art by Pirate. I immediately took a liking to the previous top-left design, and then that idea was molded over the course of a couple weeks to create the design you see today. Debate was had over which characters were important enough to feature in the poster art, and how many. In the end we decided to err on the side of too crowded vs not crowded enough.
You’ll also see that the Phoenix logo is featured prominently in the design. Initially, I was really impartial to a Ringed Planet logo, but the Phoenix logo ultimately won out because it most effectively communicates the “Phoenix” in Phoenotopia. This should also help clue people in on the proper pronunciation of the title.
The past couple of weeks a lot of people crunched to make the trailer possible. At the last minute, Will was still adding precious seconds of music to the new theme song just so the montage could be longer. Clement made entirely new animations and Pirate touched an unlistable amount of art assets to bring them up to speed for the trailer.
So where is it? I have decided to delay its public debut, in favor of privately pitching it directly to some companies. You only get so many chances to do an unveiling, so I want to leverage it properly. I apologize for the delay. While we figure that out, here’s a video of fishing to tide you guys over. The fishing mini-game was finally implemented this past month. Like with cooking, the desire was there but the design and flow of the game wasn’t settled for a long time.
The trailer finally pushed me to implement it. Coming in, there were a few elements locked in place to help guide the design. I knew that fishing should be tied into the player’s character - it should get easier the more powerful the player became. I also wanted range - sometimes it’s relaxing, and sometimes it’s intense. The difficulty depends on the the fish type. Without further ado, here it is:
Fishing is a game of cat and mouse. Once the fish has bitten on the bait, the player (represented by the arrow), must chase the fish (represented by the smaller circular subsection). The subsection will dart away and try to elude the player. When the player’s arrow is outside the subsection, the player’s stamina depletes. When the arrow is inside the subsection, the fish’s stamina depletes. Whoever runs out of stamina first loses. As the fish get bigger and more difficult to catch, they have more stamina, and their subsection gets smaller and faster, amping up the difficulty.
It’s actually still a work in progress. The plan is to update the HUD further - the fish’s stamina bar will match the player’s style of stamina bar so that it’d be easier to see who’s ahead. And of course, there’ll be additional fish types - some of which will drop special collectibles.
For the robots, I’ve decided to go with the names “metal ghoul” and “wendigo” for the Zombot and Stalker respectively. Thank you to reddit user “thomar” for thinking of it! Thomar approached the names from how a “pre-industrial society in a post-apocalyptic wasteland of monsters would perceive killer robots.” And that’s a great approach since Phoenotopia is a meeting point between technology and fantasy/fairytales. And as some other users have pointed out, there is a precedent in the naming since the game contains Orcs, Harpies, and Kobolds. So we’ll continue that naming trend with these robots.
And a surprise winner has emerged for the Desert Dragon bandits! Recall their naming contest was suspended a couple months ago until I received a suggestion that I really liked. That has happened this past week via a private email submission. The name will be “Ouroboros”. The writer wrote an explanation:
“… The Ouroboros is a symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The dragon bandits are dedicated to protecting sand drakes so being named after a symbol of a dragon that represents the renewal of life would be appropriate for them. And since phoenotopia seems have the theme of rebirth with the phoenix symbol, I thought it would be cool if there was a reference to the Ouroboros symbol to add towards the theme of rebirth.
And also the Ouroboros lizard also known as the Armadillo girdled lizard is a real life lizard that closely resembles the sand drakes. The Ouroboros lizard have similar spiky armored scales to the sand drakes and can even curl up in a ball and bite their own tail to protect their vulnerable underside.”
When I image searched “Ouroboros lizard”, I was immediately sold on the name. Phoenotopia’s sand drakes do look like Ouroboros lizards, especially since they all roll around as a form of attack, which does look like they’re biting their tail.
I’ll be reaching out to both winners to get their preferred naming details.
New Naming Contest - the Boar series!
I’ll close this update with a new naming contest. We want to name the right-most green creature - the one marked with an arrow.
This green creature is found in the deep forbidden forest alongside Harpies and Orcs - the other creatures of yore. This plant-hybrid creature scavenges much like its distant boar cousin, but can additionally derive nutrient from the sun. It can also use its plant-like appendages to attack in new and creative ways (whipping vines and shooting seeds).
In the first game, the creatures were dogs, so I called them “dog” and “plant dog” respectively. This time around, the in-house placeholder name to beat is “plant boar”.
Also up for an optional renaming are the two boars to the left of the “plant boar”. The in-house name to beat for them is … “boar”.
Naming animal-like beasts is a bit trickier since there isn’t a clearly established rule set. On one hand, the game has animals with made-up names. Chickens are named “Perro” and the cow/sheep are named “Puki”. On the other hand, there are also just regular animals without made-up names (birds, dogs, cats, even a camel). Which category will the boars belong?
As usual, submissions are possible on the reddit thread or privately via this email: [email protected]
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