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We are back from our two-weeks holidays and we are already working in the new content that will be available about the fifteen of September, with new levels, a new game mode, the next chapter in the Vince and April's history and some modifications based on the feedback received.

Also, we have been reviewed in some websites and we reached rank 12 in the Top New list in Google Play Spain!!!!

You can read the reviews here:
Developer's Accomplice
Dark Temple
El Androide Libre

 
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We made it!!! We are in Google Play!!! Thanks to everyone who have been following the development and supporting us since the beggining. It's been a long way to have it done but now we achieve our reward.

But, wait, this is not over! It's just starting. You have the first levels of Vince's adventure in his search for April and the truth inside the maze, but there is much more to come!!!

We, at "All the leaves are brown" will assure that your game last for a long time. Pretty soon you will have the next levels of the story mode, where you will leave the safe hedge maze and face the dangers of the catacomb maze. You better don't leave lighted torches behind you, or you can find some unwanted friends in the new mode: "Flee!"

Till then, enjoy this first levels, find all the memories and playing cards and get used to the safety of the treasure hunt mode.

 
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Well... Here we are! The TODO list is not longer than a few lines, and our first duty now is search for bugs and assure everything runs as it is meant to run.

In the meantime, to make the wait shorter, you can take a look and run the first prototype we made to try the raycast system of the lights in the game. It is a small non-optimized Python script, but it was what made us believe it was possible to make it for a mobile environment without overloading the processor. Move with W,A,S,D. Enjoy!

Python prototype of 2D raycast lighting: DOWNLOAD HERE

 
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Who don't like achievements? Everybody loves achievements! And if these achievements unlock new features, much better!

We have the gameplay ready, the music ready, nearly all graphics ready, we lack some sounds here and there... but we are aiming higher. A new game mode that we were going to add later, will ships with the initial release, we are adding a new cinematic scene because the story is gaining importance... so much importance that, depending of your actions inside the maze you can reach different endings. Lastly, we just want to inform you that, as you may guess by the content of this post, we are in schedule and the game will ship on the next weeks.

 
    We are letting the video do the talk... We will be ready soon!!!!!

 
Whoa!!! We didn't thought about how much different are the screens of the differents devices!!!

We were always testing on smartphones so we get surprised when we tested the game on a tablet the last weekend. A minor issues in the position of the texts and a small bands in the sides of the images turned into a unreadable texts and images moving in and out of the screen.

We have been working on the issue and now it is corrected, but we have to learn from this and make tests in more different devices to avoid these frights!!!
 
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We take a break in the development diary to congrat our programmer, Víctor Sánchez, for reaching the front page of "GameCareerGuide.com" with his entry in the Game Developer Challenge they host.

You can see the entry HERE

 
Now we are centered in the art section. Specifically music and animation.

In the music hand, we are chosing tracks, cutting, adjusting, looping... In the animation hand we are drawing animations for the main character talking, walking, getting angry, frightening... a crazy amount of frames that are needed even for a few seconds action, but we think it is worth by looking at the final results.

To implement these animations to the game, we are using a layer system, so the animations are divided in "background", "static parts", "moving parts" and "foreground". This allow us to reuse parts of the animations, using different backgrounds or applying different lights without having to have repeated frames where only one thing changed.
 
We are wrapping things up... It's often said that the last 10% is actually the 90%. Well, that's true. We spent a lot of time last week playing with angles to assure that the characters turn correctly, choosing the shortest path and avoiding start spinning like crazy.

We are adding the first sounds to the game and syncronizing with the visual events... steps, hits, water drops, birds... and some other sounds that we are keeping in secret to not spoil the surprise.

 
There is something more in a game apart of programming, graphics, sounds, music, etc. There are the players... and there is no players if the game pass unnoticed, so we all at "All the leaves are brown"  want to thanks everyone who is reading this, everyone who already have read this and over all to everyone who spreads the word.

We are working hard to make you enjoy this blog and the game when it is ready, and if everything goes well, even more with updates and new content that we already have in mind.

Send us your questions, we'll be more than glad to answer, post your thoughts in this development blog, we want to know what you do you think about this project and tell everyone around you about "The Dark Maze", because a game is nothing without its gamers.