Devlog: forest entrance and treetop village

This week has been absolute torture, but I still managed to get a bunch of modeling done, which gives me hope. If I can get this much done in just a few days while barely having any free time, maybe I can still make it to the ETA. So here's what we have:

Oct 16

I have modeled the first room of level 2, Vecino forest. It's designed to help the player learn some new mechanics that they won't have needed in level 1, such as:

• Climbing onto platforms (not painted yellow)

• Ramming breakable objects to trigger events

• Basic exploration (find what can be climbed or broken)

and, if the player is clumsy enough,

• That Ternera's magic armor canonically negates fall damage

Entrance room of Vecino forest

Oct 18

I extended the entrance room to include the area where the player meets her first NPC companion and learns how the checkpoint system works.

 Extended entrance room

Oct 19

The next area includes a battle at a jackalope treetop village. That includes retractile bridges, falling trees, and demons sabotaging infrastructure, all while the player tries to reach the top of the area.

Fortunately, I can recycle a lot. The falling tree is the same as in the first room, just activated differently - the first one can be rammed, but the second one is out of reach. The falling bridge in room 1, which serves as a death checkpoint tutorial, appears again here - the demons will cut down bridges between platforms to delay the player's progress, while accidentally creating shortcuts as fallen bridges become rope ladders.

 Jackalope treetop village

Coming up next would be two boss areas (one of which will have the player help the boss, rather than fight them) and my favorite part: the non-euclidean grove. The latter is already partially modeled, but I have to give it some thorough though to figure out the most efficient way to connect a randomly looping area with the rest of the level structure.