New Level: Escalade



One level we (the dev) personally really enjoy is All That Glisters. So our new level, Escalade takes the mezzanine structures, with ramps to a whole new level. This level ascends rapidly via a winding route, passing through a zone patrolled by a THOR baddy, and well... just load up the game and give it a whirl



Minor Feature: Slimy Wet Rocks!
Updated the tufa and rock shaders with a new World based mapping. This makes the rocks and tufa look like it has algae, and is wet where it enters the water.

THOR, yes, he's such a bad a*rs* that his name is in BOLD, yes BOLD!. THOR is a new Bad guy to pit yourself against. The level All That Glisters featres one of these new bad chaps, so load up, and roll at it...

New Feature: THOR (baddie)
THOR is something more of a slow and deadly type. He rolls around, exuding menace and when he gets close, well....

New Feature: New Attack Method
Load the game, pop over to Thor on All That Glisters and say hi...

New Feature: Baddie Speed
Baddies now have a speed/acceleration profile per type. This means we can balance a baddies attack method vs its speed. After all, a super fast, super deadly baddie might be a little unfair...

New Feature: Baddie Color Theming
Baddies now have a colour theme per type, that is used for glow effects and attack FX.

New Feature: Persuit Glow
Now all baddies glow in some way when they have spotted you. This should hopefully give you more of a clue that trouble is afoot (or base of sphere maybe...)

New Feature: Charge Glow
Baddies now Glow brightly in a way that is specific to its attack method, as they charge up to attack.

Intended to be a smallish release, one thing lead to another, and suddenly here we are with a couple of NEW features, and some pretty decent enhancements to existing elements. The new Energy Pickups, tweaks to the energy system and the Brake ehancments nudge things in the right direction we hope.

So, let's take a look.

New Feature: Pickups
The Joypad Y button or SPACE on the keyboard will now use any Pickups you have ready to go. Pickups are shown via a small icon in the upper right of the viewport. This is a set of features that we intend to expand on over time, but for now, we'll kick things off with a new Energy Pickup!

New Feature: Energy Pickups
Your Marble (Odie) has an Energy Pool that is used to power its 3 powers, Jump, Brake and Turbo. The Energy pickup (of which there are 3 varieties) refill your main Energy pool and each power to a smaller degree. Just pick them up and press Joypad Y or Keyboard SPACE to use.

Tweak: Energy Pool refill slowdown
OK, this is a BIG tweak. Until now your Energy Pool refilled pretty quickly, this meant it was pretty hard to deplete your powers and overall pool. Now it refills more slowly, so bashing away on your powers will drain the pool and it is now pretty slow to refill. Luckily, we now have Energy Pickups to the rescue!

Tweak: Min Charge Required for Powers
Until now Powers could be used with VERY low (yes, zero) charge. Now each power has a marker on its gauge, to indicate the base energy required before use. When low on charge its fluid will glow to indicate it has reached the required min charge.

Tweak: Enhanced Braking
The Brake power until now has been either at zero or 100% effect. Now it ramps in from 0 - 100%, as you hold down Brake. Its a subtle change, but it means you can now feather your brake presses to have small slowdowns, or stamp it down to slam on the brakes!

This patch brings a pretty focussed single feature, which is that the game now pauses when the Steam Overlay is displayed.

Although this may seem like a small feature, it actually involved some quite involved work. Once the basics were in place, i.e. the pause when the Steam Overlay was displayed, it did show that a few of the features of the game did not actually pause correctly (this is an on-going task).

From this, a rabit hole opened up, and we had to visit a number of elements to ensure they paused as they should.

The end result is that the pause is now a little more robust. If your interested on WHY Pause has taken so much time to implement, have a read of my Blog post on the matter.

Well, it's the small hours here in Marble towers, and we have just put the finishing touches to a pretty focussed update. A request came in, to ensure that the game pauses when the Steam Overlay is displayed. Seems a fair point, you have the overlay open, so you probably want to do something in it...

So, we jumped on it. Its just about complete, but its a little late here, so, we'll carry out a little more testing tommorow, and hopefully have a new release out in the evening.

We'll give a little more detail on the changes at that point. See you then!

The time is here. Marble Odyssey has been released on Early Access and is now available for purchase! The price for Early Access is $29.99 (or equivalent in your local currency).

What will you get for this?

• 20 initial levels (in various states of completion).
  
• Access to our Beta programme.
  
• Exclusive access to Early Access chat channels.
  
• Access to new levels and features, as they are developed.
  
• Talk directly to the game devs.
  
• Your feedback and bug reports will be listened to and great ideas WILL make it into the game.
  
• Post-release, the first FOUR (yes 4!) level expansion packs are free, with 20 levels in each pack!

Why Join Us?
Because you can be involved in the final journey to the games full release in the Holiday Season 2019. We want to hear your ideas about the current gameplay, levels you love. Tweaks you would like made, new hazards and bad guys for you to pit yourself against. We can't promise to put every idea in, but we will certainly listen and we hope our community of Early Access players will help us take Marble Odyssey to another level of quality and of course, fun!

The focus will be completing the current 20 levels, squashing bugs, buffing all of the gameplay elements used to a high sheen, tweaking the UI and so on, until the game is ready for its full release.

Post-release, you will be invited to submit ideas on new levels, bad guys, marble designs and so on. And as soon as those new levels are ready for testing, you will get on-going early access to these levels and features.

The first four packs of levels, featuring 20 levels each, are yours for free. We plan to sell these for approximately $7 each when they are released. Which means your effectively getting the game for $2.99! by buying in the Early Access phase. PLUS all the exclusive Early Access features listed above.

Game Features

• 20 Levels of action in the initial release
  
• Each level needs a combination of speed, marble rescue and gem collection to win.
  
• Cunning AI-driven enemies will try to thwart your progress!
  
• Special powers allow your marble to Jump, Brake and Turbo speed.
  
• Pit yourself against a range of challenges, including perilous ledges, jumps and pinball table elements (Plus more!).
  
• Unlockable Marble Skins, achieved by rescuing your marble comrades, try to collect them all across your adventures.
  
• Unique Marble skins, some unlocked in-game, others available from the Steam store, will allow you to expand your Marble collection and express your individuality.
  
• DLC Level packs, will offer further tests of dexterity, quick-thinking and speed.

We still on track to launch Marble Odyssey on Early Access today at 10AM PST. The price will be $29.99 (or equivalent in your local currency).

What will you get for this?

• 20 initial levels (in various states of completion).
  
• Access to our Beta programme.
  
• Exclusive access to Early Access chat channels.
  
• Access to new levels and features, as they are developed.
  
• Talk directly to the game devs.
  
• Your feedback and bug reports will be listened to and great ideas WILL make it into the game.
  
• Post-release, the first FOUR (yes 4!) level expansion packs are free, with 20 levels in each pack!

You'll join us on the final journey to the games full release in the Holiday Season 2019. We want to hear your ideas about the current gameplay, levels you love. Tweaks you would like made, new hazards and bad guys for you to pit yourself against. We can't promise to put every idea in, but we will certainly listen and we hope our community of Early Access players will help us take Marble Odyssey to another level of quality and of course, fun!

The focus will be completing the current 20 levels, squashing bugs, buffing all of the gameplay elements used to a high sheen, tweaking the UI and so on, until the game is ready for its full release.

Post-release, you will be invited to submit ideas on new levels, bad guys, marble designs and so on. And as soon as those new levels are ready for testing, you will get on-going early access to these levels and features.

The first four packs of levels, featuring 20 levels each, are yours for free. We plan to sell these for approximately $7 each when they are released. Which means your effectively getting the game for $2.99! by buying in the Early Access phase. PLUS all the exclusive Early Access features listed above.

Game Features

• 20 Levels of action in the initial release
  
• Each level needs a combination of speed, marble rescue and gem collection to win.
  
• Cunning AI-driven enemies will try to thwart your progress!
  
• Special powers allow your marble to Jump, Brake and Turbo speed.
  
• Pit yourself against a range of challenges, including perilous ledges, jumps and pinball table elements (Plus more!).
  
• Unlockable Marble Skins, achieved by rescuing your marble comrades, try to collect them all across your adventures.
  
• Unique Marble skins, some unlocked in-game, others available from the Steam store, will allow you to expand your Marble collection and express your individuality.
  
• DLC Level packs, will offer further tests of dexterity, quick-thinking and speed.

We will launch Marble Odyssey on Early Access on Monday 9th September, at 10AM PST. The price will be $29.99 (or equivalent in your local currency).

What will you get for this?

• 20 initial levels (in various states of completion).
  
• Access to our Beta programme.
  
• Exclusive access to Early Access chat channels.
  
• Access to new levels and features, as they are developed.
  
• Talk directly to the game devs.
  
• Your feedback and bug reports will be listened to and great ideas WILL make it into the game.
  
• Post-release, the first FOUR (yes 4!) level expansion packs are free, with 20 levels in each pack!

You'll join us on the final journey to the games full release in the Holiday Season 2019. We want to hear your ideas about the current gameplay, levels you love. Tweaks you would like made, new hazards and bad guys for you to pit yourself against. We can't promise to put every idea in, but we will certainly listen and we hope our community of Early Access players will help us take Marble Odyssey to another level of quality and of course, fun!

The focus will be completing the current 20 levels, squashing bugs, buffing all of the gameplay elements used to a high sheen, tweaking the UI and so on, until the game is ready for its full release.

Post-release, you will be invited to submit ideas on new levels, bad guys, marble designs and so on. And as soon as those new levels are ready for testing, you will get on-going early access to these levels and features.

The first four packs of levels, featuring 20 levels each, are yours for free. We plan to sell these for approximately $7 each when they are released. Which means your effectively getting the game for $2.99! by buying in the Early Access phase. PLUS all the exclusive Early Access features listed above.

Game Features

• 20 Levels of action in the initial release
  
• Each level needs a combination of speed, marble rescue and gem collection to win.
  
• Cunning AI-driven enemies will try to thwart your progress!
  
• Special powers allow your marble to Jump, Brake and Turbo speed.
  
• Pit yourself against a range of challenges, including perilous ledges, jumps and pinball table elements (Plus more!).
  
• Unlockable Marble Skins, achieved by rescuing your marble comrades, try to collect them all across your adventures.
  
• Unique Marble skins, some unlocked in-game, others available from the Steam store, will allow you to expand your Marble collection and express your individuality.
  
• DLC Level packs, will offer further tests of dexterity, quick-thinking and speed.

Yes, Early Access is just around the corner. Just a few small tweaks to ensure testing goes smoothly, and we will release the game to the store for those that wish to make an impact on Marble Odysseys future development.

Why the delay? Well, the last couple of months has seen development of Marble Odyssey take a small swerve, as a significant new feature was added ( more details of which soon!). But it has made some quite positive impacts on game play.

So, a small delay on progress towards opening of Early Access, but, we hope the results will be appreciated.

More news very soon!!

So over the last week or so, we have been concentrating on the socail aspects of making a game. That is to say, letting people know we exist.

We have of course also continued work on Marble Odyssey development, to get it into ship-enough-shape to share via Early Access. Right now the game IS playable, but there are a few rough edges we want to buff off here, before we let others in on the fun.

What have we been working on? Well, specifically

• Social web stuff (aka marketting!).
  
• Buffs to how level data is loaded, and game progress saved.
  
• The LEVEL START screens loading UI, to show that a level is loading.
  
• Buff to environment maps, to give them some HDR splendour!
  
• Some level set dressing.

More news soon!