I realised it's been quite a few months since my last dev blog. So I thought I better give a quick update on the progress . After all, I assume every while other developer is terrified when they finally release their game no one will care? So don't forget me! etc.

While the dev updates have been slow the progress hasn't. At this point, 95% of the development is being spent on content outside of the demo (which is the first planet). I'm still showing off bits and pieces on social media, but avoiding any actual story spoilers. I probably won't be putting out a new demo for some time now since a current build would more than likely have some newly introduced bugs.

Anyway here are some updates on –

• Load slots
• Planetary hubs/towns
• Music/Soundtrack
  
• Next steps/focus and final game ROM size

If you don't want any spoilers on what some of the locations you'll visit even look like, then you'll probably want to avoid this blog.

Load slots!

You can now see details pulled from your load slots, where you are in the star system, total amounts of credits found (rather than remaining), collectible disks found and the the final stat is something very much related to the overall story.

Planetary hubs/towns

For what started out initially as a Metroidvanian with RPG elements has very much grown into an RPG with Metroidvanian elements, although the final ratio of RPG to platformer is still to be decided, I'm really enjoying the world building, dialogue and quest side of things. I think I perhaps don't show off quite how 'RPGy' this game is. There's a Karma system, quests that can be completed in multiple ways. There are decisions that have knock on effects not just to the games ending, but also to how characters interact with you in your game play through.

The ocean planet of Los!

I had a lot of fun with the scanline fx plugin here, even if it was quite tricky implementing and then working around the issues it caused but I felt it was particularly important to get in there, in the absence of just making things blue. I've also enjoyed using sprites to give a sense of depth and remaining static in front of moving wavy backgrounds. Along with (lots of) bubbles and different physics on platforming sections. I hope players will feel like they're really under the oceans when they visit Los. Also, the Beatscribe track for this world is 'chefs kiss'.

The forest world of Urthona!

I love the woods, trees, moss, all of it. Growing up walking in the woods with family, reading Narnia books, Lord of the Rings, it was the number one biome I wanted to get into the game, even if it's not as essential to the story as the machine world is.

I've spent a lot of time on the village on Urthona and it's probably got my favourite quest in it. I'm particularly interested to find out which decision players will make here.

Downtown Terra Mächina

Terra Mächina, the machine world is a key location for restoring your memory and finding out, why did you fall from space? Expect cut scenes and answers to questions! That's all done now as are the main locations in the shopping district of Upper Tharmas as well as a sketchy robot bar with even sketchier characters. There's a very dangerous game that can be played here.

Music/Soundtrack

Fall from Space was my first experience of collaborating on a game and the Soundtrack from Beatscribe has far outweighed my expectations. I mean, just listen to the title theme –

I really need to get some of the other tracks up on YouTube. The boss battle and Junkton are bangers! Recently added tracks include Urthona, Los and Terra Machina themes. We've discussed it and the soundtrack does such an important task of keeping my quite often silly dialogue grounded and really helps evoke the feelings I was aiming for in this game.

The soundtrack is about 90% complete at this point, we're looking at around 15 new pieces of music and I can't wait to share the full thing at some point.

File size

My current focus is on level design for the action levels, I recently hit 2.63 MiB after adding a particular large cave which made me panic a bit, the realisation hit that I have a finite number of large levels I can fit in.

This is going to be a 4MB game and I'm going to hit a limit, but that's a good thing, I'd never finish the game if I had 8MB to play with.

My next steps are finishing the essentials and implementing the written story through to completion. I have tons of secrets and 'nice to haves' on my list and this game really is about exploration, so once the main game can be played through to completion, I aim to fill the game out with as much as I can fit in.

Final words

I can't thank people enough who have been commenting on the Itch, dropping me an email for tips on getting through the demo, messaging me with feedback, social shares and other support. I've no experience of working on game over this long of a period, so it goes a huge way to keeping me motivated and battling through to completion.

The support from my other projects is a massive help too. I don't think any devs in the Game Boy indie space expect to ever be paid proportionately for the amount of time that needs to be put into building a game, especially a multi year one, we just want to make a cool game people enjoy, so it's really helped with paying for project expenses. Thank you so much to everyone who picked up a copy of the DX version of my first game Tales of Monsterland!

Anyway, looking forward to giving more updates soon and if you'd like to you can follow me on various social media's where I'm (a bit) more active, mostly on BlueSky these days, a little on Instagram –
 https://linktr.ee/joeljgames