12/25/2017
Happy holidays, all!
It’s been a few months since you’ve last heard from us, and we figured you all deserve a gift this holly-jolly season, from us. So here’s the latest Perihelion Productions update—and this one’s a doozy!
Before we begin I just want to make clear again for everyone (for the 5th time or so): We aren’t doing another demo. We are working on the full game. We don’t know when it will be ready, but we will let you know when it is out!
This update marks the end of 2017--another year of development for the Perihelion Productions team, and one that, quite frankly, was tumultuous. Pokémon Sun and Moon came out late last year and in playing through it, not only did we find an unfortunate overlap with those games and what we were planning for Ethereal Gates in both story and Pokémon design, we also were inspired by a lot of what Game Freak did in the official games.
So over the past year, we did a LOT of revamping. Some of it, you’ve already seen, like the April redesign we posted on August 20th. But what is really exciting is that most of the changes we’ve made will be entirely new for players.
Deciding on new directions took input from all team members, and as so often happens, different ideas did not mesh with each other easily. It took a lot of back and forth and passionate (but loving) arguing, but we’re thrilled to say that we’ve finally (hopefully) landed on a new direction to take this project moving forward, and production has once again commenced in force!
All this is not to say that we haven’t been working on the core aspects of the game though. Throughout it all, we’ve still been creating our huge dex of over 200 brand new Pokémon, writing new songs, mapping beautiful landscapes, and of course, taking the time to make sure that every piece of content in the game is up to the standard we’ve set for ourselves, and what you’ve come to expect from us.
Speaking of the development process, here’s a fun fact and a new tactic we’ve picked up over the past year: In order to make sure all development happens at the same time, we’re making the game piece by piece without having full graphics. That is, we’re creating a Graphics-light version of the game to play around in, as making our own custom graphics takes a very long time. Take a peek--this is what one such portion of the graphics lite game will eventually become:
[we’re using COMBOY’s GS essentials for this portion of development, for those curious. screenshots not final.]
Because we now don’t have to wait on our incredibly talented tile-maker and art director Mark to make tiles in order to progress anymore, we’ll be able to playtest the game at a much faster rate, and we can drop in new art, music, dialogue, and encounters whenever they’re finished.
Besides the little bit of transparency into what the last year was like for development, it wouldn’t be an update from us if we didn’t we have some fun new things to show you all! Let’s start with with some new Pokémon!
Meet Womburo, the Ground/Dark Wombat Pokémon! Its sense of sight isn’t great, but its sense of smell and touch more than make up for it. Womburo have been known to dig more than 20 feet into hard soil! When a Womburo is digging, its tail appears as a fake head, to prevent predators from pouncing on it when it is facing away.
Next up is Shroomancer, the Poison/Ghost type Necromancer Pokémon! It’s said to have been able to raise the dead, though in reality it’s just its own spores taking over a host body!
Finally, we have Dorsail. Dorsail is a Water/Flying Pokémon! They love to swim between the Northern and Southern Islands of the region, and are generally very friendly! Sometimes they even let trainers ride (while standing) on their backs!
And finally, a music update: Here’s Astrapia City, a town located high in the northern mountainous reaches. It’s very cold and windy here, so bundle up with some smooth “saxy” tunes!
That’s all we have for this check in, and we’re looking forward to a very fun and productive 2018!
-Perihelion Productions Staff
PS: Our friends who run the fan-made wikia also created a discord server [https://discord.gg/4MRMh9R], if you want to connect with other fans of Ethereal Gates. We’ll also occasionally answer some questions and tease a thing or two for our most passionate fans.
