There’s a big update chunk for Telepath Tactics, the strategy roleplaying game (RPG) in production from independent developer Sinister Design. It details plans for more audio work and a ton of visual changes.
If you like sprite work and neat animations particularly, you should dive into the blog post and take a look. There’s an impressive array of characters and animations shown.
In the post, the developer states now having to pay for animations out of pocket, which would indicate that the project’s Kickstarter funds have started to run out. To cut costs, some animations were done in-house, which apparently only took 6.5 hours and saved hundreds of dollars in budget, which is rather impressive when looking at the results.
All base classes of Telepath Tactics should now be animated. In addition, artwork for the promoted units has been done as well.
The update also takes care of some optimization. Character sprite sheets have been shrunken to remove empty areas, the text box now adjusts itself to use free space and more info is available on the screen.
For the campaign of Telepath Tactics, some new cutscenes have been put into place, as well as adding more characters, loot, battles and so on. Quest items are also a part of the update.
There are new weapons in the update, class-bound gear, new attacks; it’s a lot of stuff all added into the game.
In the update, the sole developer talks about having to make areas for non-linear progression, leveraging against how cost effective it is to implement these in the game, stating:
I cannot make something (1) long enough to be compelling, (2) make it non-linear, (3) do so as a solo developer, and (4) do it in a reasonable span of time. Not all at once. Something has to give. With the end of the year looming, it is clear that thing #2 cannot stay: I simply cannot afford to take 10 days creating a single explorable area again.
Developing games is hard work, certainly when seeing how elaborate Telepath Tactics is getting to be. Crunch time for the Fire Emblem-esque title has started.
