From Troglobytes:
Before moving on to refactoring Tenebrae: Twilight of The Gods' AI and combat mechanics in anticipation of its demo release later this month, Troglobytes Games unveil a comprehensive enlistment of features that have made it into their ARPG since its Global Top Round appearance in Germany.
The most noteworthy of these, illustrated by means of the above September Update video, are character health-centric; Healing shrines and their health replenishing properties make their first appearance in-game.
While most of Tenebrae's assets go through the process of being designed in 2D concept form before being rendered in 3D, the Shrines were conjured impromptu; 4-5 hours’ worth of sculpting, retopology, texturing and importing the model into the game engine led to a design that draws inspiration from Gothic Art.
And even so, there's much more to their styling than meets the eye; while Shrines are rendered inactive after a single use, each comes fitted with three inconspicuous slots on either side with one big slot at the top.
Players will not only be allowed to harvest the mortal remains of certain enemies they ravage, but will also be able to use them in the side-slots as a sort of offering to the Gods. Doing so 'reactivates' a Shrine after its consumption.
'The big central slot is a whole different story,' the developers elaborate. 'If you collect the skull of a particularly strong enemy (Mini-Boss?), you should be able to sacrifice it on a shrine to generate unique weapons, amulets etc. that are not spawned by treasure chests.'
'Though it won't be an easy task because it will also depend on how one kills the Mini-Boss, their Luck based RPG stat and so forth.This will be the only way to get those kind of weapons/amulets in the game.'
The team also addresses the prayer-like stance that Varg The Barbarian adopts at each of these shrines, stating that while it might seem strange to some - it fully demonstrates the twisted relation between Tenebrae's characters and the Gods of its lore.
In the very context of Health, the video also demonstrates Auto-Regeneration; players will be granted a main HP bar at the top-left corner of the HUD along with a thinner HP Regeneration bar below it. Troglobytes explain – 'Whenever one is hit and their HP goes down, the HP Regeneration bar is triggered to refill the main HP bar one point at a time. The frequency of this refilling will depend on RPG stats, equipped items such as specific amulets and so on.'
'It may sound too easy for the player, but trust us it won't be! Also, there will be some areas where the regeneration won't work and some particular enemies will have the ability to block your regeneration.'
The rest of the Update is populated by less major yet equally crucial additions - Climbing up and down ledges with associated dust/particle FX is now a feature, along with the ability to move the overhead camera while in the process.
Weapon trail FX are further supplemented by color coded damage values that crop up every time an enemy is struck by the blade, however the effect these damage values have has been omitted from the video due to a bug the team is currently addressing.
In the actual game itself, each enemy will arrive with a small bar and an icon resembling its own face - indicating health points and other battle-worthy information that will deplete in accordance with the color-coded damage values.
While color-coded silhouettes now allow for player and NPC tracking through walls that might crop up in the way of the camera, viewers are granted another look at the loot/inventory system that was first unveiled in the game's August Teaser.
Next up on Tenebrae's docket apart from its AI redesign is a complete implementation of its Tutorial level. 'We have all the material ready for the tutorial scene, but we'll leave it as one of the last things to do; we're still designing the kind of behaviors each enemy will have, ' the dev-log reads. 'We have designed a couple of basic enemies but there are a lot of ideas to test and implement!
Tenebrae: Twilight of The Gods' Vertical Slice is scheduled for an as of yet tentative end-of-September release.
This Press Release was brought to you by Higher Eclectic Ground, network for independent game talent to which Tenebrae: Twilight of The Gods and the Troglobytes team is currently affiliated.
About Tenebrae: Twilight of The Gods
Tenebrae – Twilight of the Gods is a story-driven, fast-paced Action/Adventure RPG of the Metroidvania genre, paying homage to 80’s-90’s classics such as Ghost ‘n Goblins and Rastan Saga.
While deriving from the genre’s characteristic feature of encouraging exploration and character investment by consisting of large interconnected worlds to which access lays restricted by character ability, Tenebrae also promises to add fresh twists of its own. Currently in development for a PC and ID@Xbox release.
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