Hu everyone, River here once again! Last time we announced that my wife and I were expecting a child, and I just wanted to follow up that we did have a baby boy in October! He's three months old right now and we think he's a pretty cool guy!

What's been the main focus for you guys lately?

River's Imaginary Fan, via Imagination Land

Recently we've been more or less dedicated to conceptualizing and building the new game world.

Bonicle has blocked out the new starting area which is likely to be 2-3x the size of the entire map from the demo.

This is a room in the new area which already has tiled backgrounds. Enemy- and pickup placement still needs to be done.

For the full game world, we're targeting something 5-15x larger than the demo. Time will tell how crazy we end up being with it.

What can you tell us about the new starting area?

River's Imaginary Fan, via Imagination Land

The starting area is the Bandwidth Analysis Lab, and will be home to the Error Platform ability. In addition to this, it will house multiple ability modifiers in hidden or hard to get to places, encouraging later visits.

The region itself will be broken down into multiple sub regions tentatively including the Surveillance Screen area, the Electric Supply for the City Deck, the Abandoned Lab, and the Modern Lab.

To avoid spoilers and because details are still subject to change, we've obscured most of the map for now.

Yaen has been working on concept art for these sub regions and we plan to add unique background and foreground details like cameras and monitors, wires, laboratory equipment, and all sorts of stuff!

The centre piece of this area where you get the error platform (concept art)

A transitional room between the surveillance rooms and the old lab. (concept art)

Cool beans, but that sounds like a lot of art and design work! What's going on with programming?

River's Imaginary Fan, via Imagination Land

I'm right there in the trenches with Yaen and Bonicle, but instead of designing new rooms and set pieces, I'm working on new mechanics and interactive level pieces!

I've also got some less visual things going on like dreaded refactoring of the code base, and continuing to update tools and core scripts to support new stuff we want to do. One of the next things I'll be working on is level/scene transitions so it doesn't just freeze the frame and chug for a moment while a new scene loads.

For something more visual, I've been working with Yaen on this new enemy spawner/hatch door. Yaen loved making this aperture design and animating it. Ask him about how cool the process was for that. 😹

We developed a way to make enemies move smoothly through these pipes in the background based on generated animation curves

The idea here is that enemies can respawn in the level (sorry if I'm stating the obvious here) in certain cases. Basically, the lights will come on when there's an enemy in the tube and then after it finishes spawning the enemy, it will turn off until that enemy explodes. Then lights come on and a new enemy is coming, so you really can't get away from them forever here.

This opens up opportunities for enemies to not just be a nuisance but also potentially an important part of completing a level; hence the need to respawn them if the player needs a few tries to accomplish something with them. @The HeadQuarters (via Discord) I think this answers your question about the vents. If this isn't what you meant, let us know. 🤗

And here's how it all looks together!

Can you change Glitcheon's appearance?

Inns062 (via itch.io)

Great question! We actually did a video with Jonas Tyroller where we speed ran the game, and we added a feature to change the face on the computer screen for Glitcheon between social avatars for Jonas, Yaen (our artist), Bonicle (our level designer), and I (our programmer).

This feature is still in the demo, but the way to activate it is a guarded secret. You may find someone who could give you some clues in our Discord server.

For the full release, we have discussed the possibility of allowing people to opt in to have their Steam avatar appear on Glitcheon's computer screen.

You can use the Jonas-Avatar in the demo if you hold down f2, type in a special code, release f2 again and press thenumbers 1-3 on your keyboard.

Will this game have a boss? A giant spherical robot?

Inns062 (via itch.io)

I'm not committing to not making the spherical robot enemies gigantic, but if we do a boss it probably won't be that.

We've discussed bosses, boss fights, and related mechanics a lot. There's nothing set in stone yet, but it's unlikely that we'll have a traditional shoot 'em or hack 'n slash type boss fight since Glitcheon doesn't really have any real weapons. 

However, it is likely that some sort of a boss figure may appear and that unique challenges and mechanics may be presented during these encounters.

Will there be any new upgrades and if yes can you give us a hint?

The HeadQuarters (via Discord)

We have already implemented a new "ability modifier" system so that you can unlock new features for your abilities that you can turn on and off depending on what you need to do. We have already made three unlockable modifiers per ability from the demo.

We also plan to add two new abilities (each also with three unlockable modifiers), and one of those is already being worked on.

Here's the menu of our current ability modifiers, (excluding new abilities)

Are we going to get more hilarious ads, if so, can you show us some?

Lunar Snail (via Discord)

There will definitely be more new ads, both as background elements as well as for ad-platforms. Right now we're focusing on more general systemic questions rather than developing more content but there will be a phase where mass-content production will be our focus again and then Yän will no-doubt show off more funny and dystopian ads he's working on.

And there are of course the additions to the current ad-platforms. When you have a certain modifier active and stand on the ads, they'll change everything on screen and play a custom audio ad!

Every ad will have its own unique effects when stepping on it and they can get pretty wild!

Will the game be game of the year when it comes out?

Tipu (via Discord)

I can only say that for us it will be!

Will We got more of the secret lang stuff?

(Rako Games via Discord)

Looks like Bonicle has plans for that though they are very secret...

In the demo, you can find several secret text messages like shown above. Try to decipher them all!

Is the Glitcheopn language canon to the game?

(Rako Games via Discord)

We can definitely say that it's canon to the community - join our discord and check out the glitcheon-translator channel to find out more about this fun community project!

Come and join our fun little discord community. You can also ask more of these questions in the questions channel!

Which of the famous Might of the Living Spaghetti mechanics will make it into Glitcheon?

(putti via Discord)

Yän keeps asking me to implement all the Might of the Living Spaghetti mechanics into Glitcheon but I don't know... I feel like my spaghetti days are in the past and should stay there.

How many stupid questions are needed to be asked before you need to take a break? (this may or may not be used)

(King_Owl via Discord)

That one was the straw that broke the camel's back so let's wrap this up!

If you want to ask us more questions and hang out and see some Glitcheon development live, you should subscribe to Yaen's YouTube channel. He streams Glitcheon dev and other indie dev type schtuff on there, and I can be found in the chat during his streams from time to time as well. Of course you can also keep asking more questions in the comments here for our next devlog!