Hey everybody,
With everything that has been going on at Crankshaft Games, it was difficult to find time to write a status update. However, here we are, ready to go! Let’s get cracking.
Second Major Milestone
This is Party of Sin’s second major milestone. The first one was about 6 months ago for the IGF submission, which went very well. Our virtual team stuck together to make it happen by sticking around on Skype for hours on end churning out code, art and levels to make it happen. This happened again and is now coming up in May. Since the vertical slice was finished a while ago, this milestone was all about finishing the entire first world of Hell. This included 5 levels including a tutorial level and a boss level.
We were working on really getting the entire feeling of the game right. We wanted to make sure the game played smoothly, the purpose was clear, bugs limited and the overall fun level at insane levels. We are unsure what we will be doing with this world but if enough people convince, we may just release it to get some feedback. Just saying.
Changes to the HUD
We also made some serious design changes to the HUD and it looks awesome. This isn’t saying much as anything would look awesome compared to our temporary HUD. Tobias made some awesome painterly style art to make it a lot more vibrant and cartoonie. The art style has gone through many changes throughout the development of the game so far. It has been settled on a comic book/cartoonie/painterly style. Here are some screenshots of the HUD and some other elements that are in the game that support our artistic vision.
Changes to the Weapons Shop
The weapons shop has gone from a burden on our programmers shoulders to a really fun way to customize your offensive arsenal in Party of Sin. This also ties into the individualistic goals players will have. For example, collecting points and kills in Party of Sin will give you the opportunity to spend them at the end of each level on upgrading your weapons for the next level. This can be increasing the firing rate, the ammo capacity, the damage of the shot, etc. This then caters to the different playing styles of players. If you would rather be light and fast or slow and powerful? Fill the screen with bullets or snipe them out with precision? Here are some screenshots of the shop in action.
Some End-of-Level Candy
Just for the IndieDB community 
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Plan Moving Forward
I touched on this quickly at the beginning of this post but overall we will continue pushing forward in the development of the game. Our next milestone will probably be the end of the summer where we plan to get anywhere from 60% to 75% complete. This means we will have another two world complete if everything stays on track. We have a knack of adding features to the game because we think they are cool, even though they will delay the game. We touched on this issue a lot during the development of Party of Sin.
Cheers!
The Party of Sin Team
That's great that it's 30% complete
Wow those changes to the HUD and the Weapons Shop are quite good, and that level looks awesome, as well as the "candy", really, that girl model is awesome.
nice stuff, I like the idea with the weapon shop a lot, it's also good that you settled with a style, the comic style should work well with your more or less parodistical theme