Over my very long, and very exhausting, Christmas break, I decided I would do a wintry activity that sounds fun. And that was hacking away at the Loonyland 2 code!
If you are familiar with LL2, you'll find a ton of new interesting fun facts from this image. It is however far from finished. Ultimately, this is such major changes that it isn't just "the LL2 rerelease". This is officially
Loonyland 2X: Titan Tunnels (the 2X is not official, not sure how I want to name this exactly, but you get the idea!)! WHAT!
The current plan is to release a normal
Loonyland 2 rerelease on Steam at some point. A minor update much like what we did with Loonyland. The main purpose is just to get it out to more people - it's still free on itch.io, and will probably just have basic Steam features (high scores, achievements, probably workshop support for add-ons?), so you can go either way. In addition to the obvious bug fixes, we'll be sure to ease over some of the roughness as well - like making the achievements less horrific. But no major changes.
Then Titan Tunnels. This game is probably not actually canon. Surprise twist, you don't play as Loony!
It's Woody Woodsman! I worked with some handy tools in Blender (Palette Studio - highly recommended for palettizing and rendering 8-way facing sprites, as well as tutorials on how to do toon shading and cartoon lines) to try to replicate the original LL2 style. Not sure how exact I got, but that is what you get.
Anyway, Loony has [spoilers redacted] at the end of LL2, so now Woody is left behind to find the Ice Titans are still at it. Inspired by Loony's heroics, Woody takes his own axe and descends into a massive sinkhole that has appeared in town to find the rest of the townspeople who are all mysteriously missing. It's a roguelike dungeon, in the traditional sense - like Rogue and Angband more than Vampire Survivors. But with the roguelite element of building up your town (rescuing the villagers) to gain more options and power for future runs. And no permadeath, unless you turn on the Ironman modifier. Probably.
I'm very excited for the new mechanics, skills, and talents in Titan Tunnels. That's my sweet spot for sure. The reason I make games is to create those mechanics, it's a shame I have to make all the content and gameplay surrounding them in order to have them exist. A few highlights (subject to change!): the Rogue skill tree which allows you to dual wield axes and use stealth, the Defense skill tree you see above, new melee and throwing skills, lots of new magic skills (each magic school now has a full page of 10 skills), possibly a new school of Arcane magic (I've only written down skill ideas), and a class system which helps you push into a specific build so skills aren't totally random (or a fixed order like LL2). Also lots of new talents to go with all that, and a complete overhaul to how talents work (already done!) so you have more control over them.
As for
Broken Build Simulator, I've come to terms with the fact that the vast majority of the remaining work on the game, which I have studiously avoided even to the point of adding 8 new weapons to the game because it's more fun to do, is entirely audio-based. Music and speech. There's only a little gameplay content left to make, but months and months of audio. So I am leaning into the Hamumu ethos of
"Artisanal handcrafted games, from our family to yours" (which has always been our tagline, I don't know how you didn't notice), and studying music making. The game may not come out for yet another 5 years, but when it does, it will be artisanal and from our family. It is my most personal game and I figure it should personally be all me. You'll definitely see why when you play it (in case the plot description on Steam didn't make it obvious). I'm really catching that roguelite wave at its peak!
Funny side story about that last sentence: When I was designing the overall arc for the Loonyland series (which I did towards the end of making Loonyland 2,
looong after starting said series), I told somebody about the plan, and I was told that the things I was referencing/parodying in my plot were old news and people won't be interested in those references anymore. Twenty years ago. It's still the plan too, so I am nothing if not consistent in my ability to be current and hip! 6-7!
