Hello again, random followers who might be reading this!

Six months ago, I wrote a blog entry about some unfinished projects I had lying around, which you can go back and read here. In it, I mentioned an abandoned game, Super Dark Space, that I wasn't satisfied with and eventually gave up working on... That is, until recently!

After pulling Super Dark Space back into the lab and spending a lot of time iterating upon gameplay concepts and thinking about what would be fun to both make and play, I tore up the foundations of the project and restructured it into what is now Armored Arachnid (or Dark Space 2, if you prefer the subtitle). As I was continuing along my game development journey, I kept noticing that I felt happiest when I was planning out "small" games; by that, I mean games that don't have an overwhelming number of interacting systems or a massive scope. I always held onto this odd belief that the sequel to Dark Space 1 would have to be much bigger and grander, but I never felt satisfied with any of my visions for the game. Following a binge of simple, arcade-style games, I came to a realization... Why didn't I ever think of doing the same for Dark Space 2?

I immediately scrapped all of the dungeon exploration doohickey, transitioning the game into more of an arcade-style shooter, just like the prequel. At its core, the gameplay is quite simplistic; you can move around with keyboard controls and fire at enemies using the cursor. A preset wave of enemies will gradually infiltrate the arena, and defeating all of them will allow you to move on to the next screen, where the enemies become ever-so-slightly stronger. Armored Arachnid is still in an early state of development, and I'm hoping to add some features to expand upon this gameplay loop in the future. With my current experience and knowledge, though, I'm very confident that I will be able to deliver a worthy sequel to Dark Space 1; it might not be the super-deep sequel I originally imagined, but with tighter controls, more refined gameplay, and a vastly improved codebase, it sure does feel like one already!

As a bit of a teaser, here's a clip of one of the minibosses currently in the game. Out of all the rejected ideas I had for Dark Space 2, I'm intending to stick with the gimmick of obtaining unique upgrades from each enemy as a form of permanent progression, but I was having trouble deciding on a fun way for the player to actually get a hold of these upgrades; purely random drops sounded awful, and I wasn't a fan of defeating a set number of enemies to get an upgrade, either. I was leaning towards the idea of a guaranteed upgrade source that would reward skillful gameplay, and then I happened to have the idea of designing boss-like versions of ordinary enemies. They're currently set to spawn in as a final challenge in specific rounds, and once I get around to incorporating upgrades and a system for equipping them, these minibosses will drop their species' upgrade after defeating them for the first time.

As always, I truly appreciate you people who continue to keep up with my work! I've had a long-time itch to return to the Dark Space universe and do it justice with my current abilities, so I'm very excited to have finally found a working formula. If all goes well, I'm hopeful that a demo version of Armored Arachnid will be ready for everyone to try out someday!