We hope this year started off on the right foot for you as it has for us!
With Christmas and New Year's celebrations now well behind us, we are back to developing Ale Abbey, our Monastery Brewery tycoon. There's a lot of work to be done and the rest of the year looks busy and attractively challenging!
Although we do have a direction and a set of internal milestones, we might be dabbling in creating a somewhat more easy-to-share development roadmap for your perusal... what would you think about something like that?
Anyway, onward to this week's news!
-- Mountains already shaping up
With our attention consistently invested in making sure nothing bores the eye (replayability!), we challenged our earlier work on the mountains surrounding the Monastery as well.
Since we can't just depend on Watzmann's natural beauty (the mountain that inspired the in-game mountain range), we are developing arrangements, renditions, and added layers to make it look as interesting, intriguing, and mystifying as one worthy of nesting a real Monastery Brewery.
The entire team agrees that Raimo's style blends the outside of the Monastery impeccably with its inside, so we gave him full reign to tone down the more detailed initial take to match Ale Abbey's established style.
-- Latest Monk/Nun types animations
With the new character types making it to the Monastery, Raimo is also working on the extra new animations. Not only having to satisfy general requirements but also character and room-bound animations, you can understand this will be a laborious undertaking worth a few weeks of work.
And - for those with a deep appreciation of pixel artwork - a comment from Raimo: one of the amazing things about pixel art is that he only needs to "slightly imply something and the viewers' mind fills in the rest." A great case in point...
-- Ale Abbey's theme song already in the works
A quick update on the hints flying about in earlier posts, we already have a theme in our hands and are working with our composer to perfect it before giving you something worthy of being played on repeat.
For the time being, please remain patient and follow us on the social medium of your choice (find the links at the end of this post). This way you'll be able to experience it as soon as it drops and - who knows - even help us shape it further with some constructive feedback.
-- Toasting with beer?
A bit on the social/cultural side, but still quite relevant. Especially if you're hoping to meet friends and wish them a belated Happy New Year ;)
So, yes you can, with a few variations depending on where you find yourself... From what we could gather, in the countries/cultures where alcohol is enjoyed, toasting with beer is usually a go, but(!):
- China - Can definitely toast and cheer with beer, especially in professional settings.
- Hungary - NEVER clink glasses with beer. When Hungary's 1848 revolution against the Habsburgs was defeated, the Austrians celebrated in Vienna by toasting and clinking their beer glasses. Hungarians vowed not to cheer with beer for a looong time after.
- Norway - You can cheer and clink glasses with beer, but toasts usually happen with other spirits
- The Netherlands - Anything goes...
Do you know of any other quirky "norms" around beer? Share them below!
That is all for this week! Thank you for your time and enjoy this year's first weekend responsibly ;)
-- Hammer & Ravens
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