Here's some of the recent progress that has been done on Armillo.
Firstly, the in-game store is mostly done. The visuals and transitions needs polish, but this is sort of what I'm aiming for in terms of character progression, which provides Armillo with upgrades that he can look forward to in order to buff up his abilities. Some items in fact will help to unlock previously unreachable areas, providing replayability. The store is based on a floating island so that it is accessible no matter where you are in the map.
Next up, saving of critters have been changed. Previously, it was tied to the orbs where every 5 orbs you collect spawns one critter. This becomes forgettable after a while and you don't feel like you're actually saving any critters while collecting orbs. Now you have to actually save them by breaking them out of cages. They will also exist in the parallel universe, where it'll be even more challenging as there's a survival time limit.
And lastly, I've been working on revamping the intro sequence of the game. The old version just re-uses in-game 3D assets and each panel is purely static in terms of positioning. Now I'm working on making the sequences more cartoon-styled with some hand-drawn images. It's still a work-in-progress and the timing and visuals needs a lot of tuning, but here's what I've got so far:
