Hi my name is Dylan Levy-Gantt and I'm the lead designer for the game Elementalist. This is the third development blog and I will be covering each department's progress through the game from last blog to now. I'm super proud of the direction the game is going and am excited to share the development and progression. A lot has happened in between then and now and I'm here to share the details and the vision of the game moving forward. 

To begin with, we finalized the character's palettes to reflect the character themes and abilities and to make them easily distinguishable from each other. 

These palettes are set in stone for the future of development and I'm extremely proud of this work. Michael, our 2D artist, and Vanessa, one of the modelers, are fantastic teammates and have truly put a stylized and fun character together for the players. The game is centered around nature and the characters must reflect that . The main character is an electric character so it has blue and yellow as the palette to highlight the intensity of lightning. The blue character is the water character so the palette reflects an ocean tone. The earth character has a boulder palette to reflect the earth. Finally the wind character has a tornado palette and green to symbolize his leaf attack. These palettes allow the player to feel empowered no matter what character they choose. The intention is to have the player be excited to try each character and what they have to offer.

Next lets focus on animations, a huge part of this game that brings it to life. 

This is the character movement animation that has an idle, run, and wall slide. These animations were done by Kakari and Miranda. They are extremely talented and worked super hard on these animations and it really paid off! The run is inspired by none other than Naruto to represent a quick ninja energy. My intention is to give the player control of a mighty player, bursting with energy at every point in time. Having these animations finally go into the game, the player will feel even more like a ninja platformer. 

Next up is the electric characters dash ability. As you can see, I want the player to feel like their character is bursting with energy at every step of the way. As the player keeps moving, the abilities should highlight the quick nature of the player. Super proud of the work being done as it shows that everyone in the process is working hard and passionately.

Next, I want to touch on the state of the level design team and the progress they've made to let the player feel in control and learning new ways to go about the level.

One thing the level designers took upon themselves and that can benefit the future of the game is that there are certain levels that highlight platforming or combat respectively. Later on we can combine the room themes to challenge the player even more but for now the game will continue to be easier and slowly teach mechanics other than assuming the player knows them all already. The room above is a platforming room that is only able to be completed after touching the ball switch at the top of the level. There was a bit of miscommunication involving implementation of the rooms into the game because the rooms I came across were not entirely what I had pictured for the game. This resulted in wasted work which should never happen in the game design world. Billy and I have to work on being better at communicating and checking in with each other about the work that gets implemented and sent through. For the first build of the game, there was no level design levels implemented that were created by the level design team so I created the first world by myself. This problem would be avoided in the future if we were better on top of things. 

Next I would like to touch on is the amazing scenery we have to give our levels extra style and aesthetic.

These simple models for the scenery of the levels will add a lot to player experience as each level is a fun one to explore and jump around in. These columns are for the ancient forest level because I wanted the player to feel like the current state of the forest is old and withered, as if being around for many generations untouched. The trees and flowers are just to add an extra layer of environment feel to the game. I want the player to feel like they are discovering a lost world in that is still inhabited, but not by humans.

Overall the progress on the game is going great and after finally pulling everything into unity, the art styles are matching up and the game looks to be a really cool project. Very excited to see where the production cycle takes us in the upcoming weeks.