I feel like the times are mature to discuss the progress that has been made so far, and the direction going forward.

The original design of my game included several different gameplay options to increase replayability and add variety:

1) a single player story mode,

2) a randomized mode, and

3) an endless arcade mode.

I feel like the randomizer and the arcade mode have finally made some good progress. I still need to solidify some aspects of them (like maybe adding more floors to the randomizer, or forcing people to restart from scratch on dying to give it more of a "roguelike" feel, or make the "arcade waves" be more meaningful, like spawning harder enemies later on etc), but i feel like i'm going in the right direction with them, little by little.

The story mode on the other hand will probably take the biggest effort to flesh out. I plan to rewrite the entire story I was planning at some point, and it's going to be a lot of work to fix stuff like prop placement and enemy placement and which weapons/gadgets are available on each level, and all the cutscenes etc, and that's without counting all the necessary graphical reworks as I learn more about blender and texturing.

I've been working to set up my eventual steam page but i have no plans to release it as early access. It will be released when it's done.

Progress might look slow to an outsider's eyes, but the reality is that as a beginner I have to learn whatever skill I need for any given thing as the game progresses.

Mechanics wise, the game is designed to be an offline, single player tribute to hawken, but with an anime aesthetic for the characters.

This doesn't mean that I'm aiming for a 100% clone though, and I'm taking several liberties in the process (also, anything even barely rivalling hawken's greatness is way beyond my wildest dreams to achieve):

First of all, instead of limiting players to a primary and a secondary weapon and forcing them to go to the "garage" to equip new ones, I wanted to allow people to be able to switch weapons during gameplay. Therefore I created a weapon switching system with 3 primary and 3 secondary weapons (partly inspired by armored core), but I also further added an "inventory screen" so that you can actually choose which weapon is equipped on a given slot. Ideally this will avoid breaking too much the flow of the game, without forcing players to interrupt their current game to experiment with a different loadout. Same goes for the items. I have always been a big fan of games that allow you to carry every single weapon the game has to offer with you at all times (metal gear solid, ratchet & clank 3, half life etc) and I have never been a big fan of games that force you to get rid of a weapon before picking up another (halo, bioshock infinite etc), so that's the reasoning behind those systems.

Working on multiplayer was CONSIDERED, but I reached the conclusion that working on it would be scope creep, and too hard for my current limited skills. After all, it IS my first game ever, my learning project, and I try to fix things as I go to the best of my abilities.

Okay, that's all for now. I hope I was able to give you a glimpse of what my design for this game is and how I intend to progress further.

Learning about gamedev was one of the best choices of my life, and learning about new skills every day and improving with them is very reinvigorating.

I hope you had a great christmas, and I wish you a great new year too!

JUST LIKE MAKE GAME!