Hey.

It's been a while, huh?

I have quite a bit to talk about today, and not just about the game.

So lets me get this straight about what's been happening first.

What's happened? Why did you go quiet for about three months now?

So, in case you forgot, last time I talked about my sick cat. Unfortunately, it passed away in early January. This kinda hit me hard as I was close to it. I needed a bit of time to let the dust settle and get myself in a semi-stable state. But that wasn't the only thing that happened.

I was in desperate need of money and needed to think about what to do next. After a while, I decided to do something about it and now I can safely say that money isn't a problem anymore. It took a bit of time to do it, especially with everything that has been going on at the same time...

There's also quite a bit of familial dispute. To put it simply, my mother decided to stop talking to my sister. This hits pretty hard and also put a big dent in my already weak relationship with my mother. I managed to keep myself occupied with video games for a while but it was pretty hard.

And to that, you could add a bit of depression too. I decided to take a break to think about what to do next. Initially, I only planned to take January off and get back to work as early as February, but as things started to pile up I simply didn't have any energy left. Dealing whit the death of my only cat and fighting my mother daily drained any of my energy.

Meanwhile, I also decided to search for a good Game Design program I could get into. After a bit of searching, I found something that, at the time, I thought was perfect for me. After a quick interview, my interviewer kinda said to me that I had potential and would be happy if I'd join their school. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a multitasker and to join, I needed to work part-time just to pay the schooling fees. It would have been nice should the school had been part-time too but it wasn't. It was a deal-breaker and I decided to continue looking around.

However, that interview gave me quite the self-esteem boost. It validated my choices up to that point. It gave me the motivation I needed to keep on making games in general. So what if the school wasn't what I needed? It just proved to me that I ain't a phony. That I belong in the industry. But above all, it proved to me that I can make games!

So with all that, I finally decided to push and get right back in action!

With that being said, let's get into the update, shall we?

New challenges!

With me slowly getting right back at my previous velocity, I decided that I should first start by implementing new challenges! There are about three new jungle challenges!

Jungle Challenge #6

This challenge is a platforming one. It puts you up in the trees where you have to jump from branches to branches. Once you get mid-point, you now have to jump across rotating platforms and press all of the buttons laying around the trees.

Each button makes an additional platform appear, making you closer and closer to the loot.

In normal difficulty, there's a big safety net keeping you from falling. But on hard, the net is gone. There are also fewer platforms laying around, too.

Jungle Challenge #7

This challenge takes place in a jungle temple. The idea is quite simple: you need to jump across a big gap using brick platforms. However, some of these platforms are quite unstable and will crumble away should one step on them. To clear the challenge, you also need to step on every correct platform, so don't cheese it!

In normal the platforms are arranged in a triangle shape and there's also a safety net. In hard, though, there are many more of them and are arranged in a grid shape. The safety net is also gone.

The trick here is to simply watch your steps and be observant.

Jungle Challenge #8

This challenge is quite a puzzle indeed. It takes place in a jungle. The idea here is to open the gate at the end of the path. To do so you need to find a special gold flower and bring it in the checking zone. Once that's done, the gate will open, giving you access to the loot.

The problem here is that there are many lookalikes scattered all around the challenge. You just need to take your time and find the correct flower.

On hard difficulty, there's another catch. Now, about 50% of the lookalikes have been changed to another type of lookalike flower. These are, however, also gold. They are also poisonous, so you need to take a deep look and pick the true golden flower.

Minor Updates

There are quite a bit of minor updates. I first want to say that I now have a new set of development tools, such as a better IDE and new exciting Unity programming assets. I'm still in the process of refactoring almost everything and migrating form what I used to have to the new stuff, so yeah...

• General optimization. The game runs about +10 frames better
• Big refactoring. The code is squeakily clean now
• Fixed a bunch of AIs. The bosses are now finally able to attack the player the way I intended to.
• Changed jungle challenge #5 to add a wavy sail and a bunch of obstacles. I also added a few breakable boxes too!

• Upgraded many Unity assets. For example, I've switched from a really code-based behaviour tree to a more visual one, hence the huge AI bug fixes.
• With the new IDE, I was able to safely remove unused scripts, making the game a little bit more lightweight.

Next Week

I'm planning to continue migrating and refactoring the code here and there. I also have planned to add another jungle challenge too. In all, there's about one other jungle challenge left. I'm not sure if I'm ready to release a playable demo, but we'll see about that. Even if AIs have been kinda fixed, I want to expand their behaviour a bit too. But that's later on though. After all this, there are your usual suspects.

So anyway, I hope this little break of mine didn't make you sad in anyways... I'm very sorry if it did, but sometimes life can be hard. But remember that life gets better, and it's trough hardships that you can find happiness.

With that said, keep tuned for next week! And thank you for believing in me after all of this!