Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi.

Jolt forward, a sudden stop, sway back to keep your balance. Faces on a conveyor belt, we advance in jarring fits and starts.

It's good to see you again as we slip past each other on our predetermined paths.

In this fleeting intimacy, let me welcome you back to

Leggy! the Miraculous Robotic Arm!

Leggy the miraculous robotic arm
[is / will eventually be / might eventually be]
a game about a robotic arm. It is a puzzle game that's secretly similar to Todd McFarlane's Spawn: The Video Game.

Progress

Leggy Sorting A Bookshelf

Levels are being implemented and Leggy is able to move objects around properly! I've expressed excitement before about Leggy working in-engine but seeing it properly moving objects around like this is gratifying in a way I would never have expected. This process has been one of the most difficult undertakings of my life and, no matter the result, at this point I'm satisfied.

Which isn't to say we're slowing down. We've been hunting and squashing a lot of bugs recently to make Leggy work even better! We've had a lot of progress on the back-end as well.

Level Select & Lore Transition

Our programming team has been making amazing progress on a lot of the game flow and UI elements. In addition, I've been working on creating interfaces for the level designers to set up their puzzles quickly and easily.

Goal Zone Interface

More on that in a bit.

Levels & Assets

Our level designers have been hard at work setting up their levels with assets and lighting as well as testing them.

Garage Workbench

Here's a closer look at the tool chest as well:

Toolbox

I'm particularly excited for the gumball machine level which is proving to be quite exciting!

Gumball Puzzle

The objective of this puzzle is to repair a gumball machine for the child character by replacing the gears inside the device. Alternatively, Leggy can pick up a nearby hammer and smash the glass to free the candy for the child. I'm worried about being able to fully implement this puzzle due to how short time is but I'm optimistic that we'll be able to do so.

We also had a few super cool assets created!

Staple Gun

Simulation Tutorial Room

The staple gun initially had a critical story puzzle based around it but due to cuts it's instead just a super awesome looking background asset now. The grid room above is part of the tutorial which takes place in a simulated environment inside of Leggy as it's being trained before being sold.

Leggy Main Menu

The main menu art has progressed significantly! It looks fantastic but as can be seen is quite dark so it was sent back for a quick revision.

Design

As usual the design work at this stage has primarily been bug testing, playtesting, and providing feedback for assets. As mentioned above it's also required a significant amount of flexibility on my part as we've removed more and more of the game to compensate for the project's time constraints. I'm of course not upset by this; I designed the game to be highly modular in terms of content specifically because I knew there was a high likelihood of being in this exact situation.

As I mentioned above I've also been doing more than a little integration programming work. Specifically I've been unifying systems our programmers have made so that level designers are able to work with them without having to rely on their limited programming knowledge. Saying the work has been to 'make it easy' for the level designers is an oversimplification, however. It's more than that - the work I've been doing in this realm is crucial because the systems would be almost entirely unworkable in practical terms without this intervention.

I can't emphasize enough how limited the remaining time for this project is. I've had to be highly mindful of this when selecting tasks to take on; I feel that the work I've been doing on integrating the back end has been critical to delivering a working program at the end of this project.

Outlook

At this time I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm certain that a few among you feels that I've not been fulfilling my primary obligation as a designer by playtesting so infrequently. I do not agree with this assessment as discussed above. I have placed the need to deliver functional software within the deadline set by our executive producers as paramount. We are on track to deliver on that goal.