Yikes remember when I said the final demo update would be in June?
Unfortunately that didn't happen because of school, my internship being extended and VARIOUS other things that happened. The rest of this devlog will be what's in the Kickstarter update since it covers practically all the topics I wanted to touch upon.

 Today I actually ended up winning three awards from the Games For Change Student Challenge for two different games I worked on at my after school game design program(that I officially work for now!!) I'm still in awe and exhausted from the awards ceremony today, however I really wanted to put out some type of update out for you all today so here we go! ( This is gonna be pretty long!!) First off I want to note that I've changed the colors for the PsycheGirls!

 Why? Well the colors previously were too similar to Maggie's team and it could confuse people about who's on who's team. I know the green Maggie's wearing isn't the same as Elodie's green, but you get what I mean.

As you may have noticed Elodie's sprite isn't complete yet and that's because of mainly focusing on fixing the actual game mechanic as well as organizing the game itself to reduce the amount of bugs that I'll have to deal with in the future. I also got a nicer text system that hopefully won't skip dialogue lines and now players can know WHO's talking!

A lot of people had trouble figuring out the purpose behind the optional beats and had trouble figuring out what caused players to get certain endings. That led me to go back to the drawing board and think ' How can I make these ideas I want to express in the game a lot clearer?' This isn't your average rhythm game and yet I keep making it seem like it is. So to try and fix these various issues I decided to do three things: 1. Add stats to the game so the player's affect on the game can be more obvious.  2. Add choice options that are unlocked based on what stats you have 3. Focus more on the roller derby simulation.

The derby simulation is what I'm focusing on first. It consists of having all the actual players there in the same scene together. Here it is up close without final sprites and without the animations going since I was only testing things out

And here it is from far away. ( And no, the characters won't be going that fast lol. That's just for testing purposes!!)

So to dodge blockers you'll need to do moves to get past them. But it's up to you what you do! That's what I really want to get across with this game. The player needs to express themself during each jam which affects the story. Each move matches with one of the three stats which I like to call the ABCs of Roller Derby! Aggressive, Bold ( but I may rename it to Brisk) and Cool. The normal push move that's been in the game since the beginning will count as Aggressive and will most likely count as 1 spacebar press to the beat enabling you to get past a blocker as seen in that simulation above. Harder moves will be more specific, but overall this will make more sense when this is playable. 

I'm going to be at the Game Devs of Color Expo this year to show off the new demo, which will also be available next month. When it's out, I'll make an update about it. Be forewarned that there will be placeholder animations because finishing 5+ animations for all of these characters does take a lot of time and effort that can't be done in 3 weeks when I need to perfect the gameplay too. Along with announcing the new demo though, I'll have a new timeline for the game. So you all follow along with its development.
Thank you again for your patience and support and Happy Pride month!!

- Gensuta