Blogs - Green_Mercury

Hey all,

Just a quick update to let you guys know what's been going on. We apologize for being silent for a while, so we'll try to cover everything we can. First off, our animator and level designer's computer crashed, and he lost a lot of work. About a week after that, our programmer broke his collarbone while snowboarding. These two things have set us back quite a lot, but we're still working hard to bring you guys the gameplay trailer, though it's definitely taking longer than we expected due to these setbacks. On the bright side, we now have a fully functional UI, we've nearly finished the level that we're going to be showing for the gameplay trailer, we've fixed many bugs, and we've replaced some of the placeholder sprites with better placeholder sprites.

Thanks for your time,
The Green Mercury Dev Team

Hey all,

Just a quick update to let y'all know that the music for the trailer is now applied and we are currently in the process of debugging it. Expect the gameplay trailer sometime this week or the next! As always, we are always looking for constructive criticism, about really any aspect of the game development.

Thanks for your time,
The Green Mercury Dev Team

And..... Bug fixed! Our square now jumps like we want it to! After a long, hard night of reprogramming the entire square move script, our programmer has finally fixed the jump bug! Check that off the list! Now we can devote our time to new levels for the gameplay trailer. We are hoping to have a video out sometime next week or the week after if all goes well.

Thanks for your time,
The Green Mercury Dev Team

Hey all, just a quick weekly update to let you guys know what we've been doing.

1. We have the music for the gameplay trailer finished
2. We're very close to fixing a bug that has been there since the beginning
3. We've continued to work on making the components for the level that will be used in the trailer as well as brainstorming ideas for it

Our personal lives have kept us very busy as well, so things are moving slowly, but surely.

Thanks for your time,
The Green Mercury Dev Team

Hey all,

Just a quick blog to let you all know that we have just recently begun working on a gameplay video/trailer of sorts. It will basically show someone solving a fairly complicated and challenging puzzle, just to give you guys an idea of how the game will work, how challenging it can be, and how the overall gameplay will be like. Please remember that we are still in a very early stage of pre-alpha, so things such as sprites (the textures of an object/how the object looks, for those of you who don't know) will NOT be final and will be improved upon later down the line to make the game look more appealing. Our main focus for this trailer is solely to bring you guys an example of the gameplay, making the game look "pretty" comes afterwards. We will continually post blogs about our progress with the video and the game as a whole, so stay tuned.

Thank you for your time,
The Green Mercury Dev Team

Hey all,

A quick little introduction to explain to you what exactly we mean by "a simplistic sidescrolling puzzle game". For this introductory post, we simply want to talk about gameplay and the puzzle elements to give you an understanding. Basically, you're a shape. That's it. Pretty simple stuff, huh? But that's not all. There are four shapes, each with their own unique abilities designed to help it (or you) get through the puzzle. For example, a square can jump across large gaps, but fails to get very far vertically, whereas a rectangle will be able to jump rediculously high vertically, but can only get across the smallest of pits.

Switching between these shapes is not as easy as you may think, though. Rather than being able to change all willy nilly whenever you need (that'd be far too easy we thought) there are "shape changers" (an official name for these will come into play later down the line) that are scattered thoughout the level. These are activated by default and will transform you into the shape indicated by some form of hologram above each shape changer. These changers can be placed in the most convenient of places, or unfarily hard to reach. They could never need to be used, but rather be used as an obstacle, changing you into something you don't want and forcing you to find another way around. Or they could simply be a decoy, drawing a player towards it and then not actually being useful in any way. The possibilities are pretty extensive. There will also be certain objects or tools or whatnot in the game that can only be utilized in the game, such as pullies and buttons. Levers may activate moving walls, which will block your path to the exit. Better find a detour then! You could come across a deactivated shape changer that you need to continue, causing you to go back and find a different path simply to activate it so you can carry on throughout the level.

Hopefully you can see the limitless potential for unfairly challenging puzzles, and we hope you decide to support us through all the bugs, glitches, and whatever else may occur throughout this game's development.

Thanks for your time,
The Green Mercury Dev Team