Wow, it's been over a year since this project went live, and we're nearing 2 years since this game started development. I have been very quiet about it on itch.io (as in, dead silent) as this is not the place I usually give updates on things, however I felt at this point it's probably a good idea to give everyone here on itch an update as to how things are looking (for the 2 of you who still remember this project, anyways)

If you're looking for more regular updates, I'll be posting those on my BlueSky, as well as hopefully making some video devlogs semi-regularly in the coming years (those, too, have not appeared for over a year.)

A lot of the progress on RUBIE lately has been things that I either a) don't want to showcase out of fear of spoiling too much, or b) don't want to showcase because I think most people will find them uninteresting. In terms of things I am willing to talk about though, there's a few things I'd be happy to show off.

None of these are in the demo on this page at the moment, but I'm hoping to fix that within the next couple months. Also none of what you see is final I should probably say that part.

1) More of a Story

Something that was a bit lacking in the previous demo was the story element.  There were hints of lore in secret notes, but  they didn't reveal much at all, and most people wouldn't have run into them. I recently finished writing the plot for the game (probably) and it's in a state I'm happy with, so, hurrah! Progress!

On top of writing stories, I've also been writing code. A lot of it. I've never had to make cutscenes in a game before, but I didn't wanna just do a video render or anything like that. I wanted the transition between cutscene and gameplay to be seamless. So, I did the only thing I felt was appropriate and made a custom node-based cutscene system. This system lets me have cutscenes take place in the middle of the game world,  without needing to load in a new scene or anything.

2) A nicer-to-control player

It's a bit hard to show this one in a screenshot, but I've made the player nicer to control in a few different ways. For one, the script was COMPLETELY re-written, because of some cool mechanics I wanted to add that I'm keeping top secret for a future devlog!

A lot of what's been added is small tweaks that make the player feel more in-control of their actions, as well as removing some of the annoying occurrences. Gone are the days of getting stuck on a 1-tile step up, or not knowing where exactly to put your mouse for a max-power throw. There's also a bit more feedback for certain actions (such as particles when you jump) and the player just overall feels better to control. Game design is fun :3

Also I just recently played an older version of RUBIE (as in 5 minutes before writing this) and apparently there was no controller support. That's being fixed too.

Speaking of controllers and controls, the pause menu and all it's submenus have been overhauled, most notably the settings menu, which has gotten a lot more features than just 'go fullscreen' and 'mute sound effects' or 'music' or whatever it was i forgot one of them didnt even work

It's still a work-in-progress, but there's all sorts of things here, from volume sliders to keybind remapping to even forcing colour schemes onto the game! yes i know i've use both color and colour in one screenshot please just ignore that

there is a LOT more that's been happening behind the scenes, including redoing sprites, more new mechanics and puzzles, and even third thing I intentionally saved to write as the third thing but ive now forgotten it because it's midnight and i should really go to bed before somebody mercs me for being up so late but god damn it my passion for game dev randomly re-ignited tonight let me live a little!!

Thanks for reading, and I hope to see you soon! Stay safe!

- Skit :3