February 2025 Update

Hey there, Ryan the Art Guy, here dropping a smaller update!

A monochrome green pixel animation walk cycles of five anthropromoprphic animal bandits from left to right: bear wearing an executioner's makes wielding a large club with thorns wrapped around it, a small weasel wearing a bandana over it's face and a little knife, a fox archer, a fox holding a knife, a tanuki archer with arrows in his hair as a quiver.

After 6 months, We’re poking our head out to report on the progress of Blackmask. 2025 will be a better year to reach further in the journey!

Development Progress

Blackmask hasn’t progressed much as I’d reported. I hoped 2024 would be the year to make real progress on a playable demo, but it wasn’t in the cards. The features we wanted to demonstrate for the demo aren’t polished or implemented yet. I also didn’t want to show off this color build because it clashes with the monochrome art direction I decided on.

In terms of gameplay progression, the tough nut Adam had to crack over the 2024 was the enemy pathfinding and behavior stuff. Enemies seemed to be get stuck in composite tiles, but Adam’s smashed through that issue.

A monochrome green pixel art background illustration of a decrepit altar room full of broken pillars and owl people statues.

At the beginning of the 2024, I dived into Unity myself to learn it’s interface. After a while of learning how to import assets and using the animation tools, I hit a wall and fell off of working in Unity. So I spent my time writing a story and dialogue draft for Adam to test the Text Engine with.

Screenshot of the game assets in the Unity Engine Editor. Featuring the enemy characters, friendly non player characters and the background assets and environments.

Nad Greentail Boss Animations

2024 was when I got my Nad Greentail Boss Sprites completed. Despite being a smaller sprite than Mongo the Bear Clubber, Nad is still an involved design.

A monochrome green pixel animation of an anthropomorphic tanuki archer with a tail he uses as a quiver to store arrows that he shoots. This animation demonstrates the tanuki's running cycle and an evasive roll into a round ball.

The animations I created with Nad also inform the gameplay of what I’m interested in doing with the boss fight as an ranged archer character.

A monochrome green pixel animation of an anthropomorphic tanuki archer with a tail he uses as a quiver to store arrows that he shoots. This animation demonstrates the tanuki's walking and running cycle.
A monochrome green pixel animation of an anthropomorphic tanuki archer with a tail he uses as a quiver to store arrows that he shoots. This animation demonstrates the tanuki's ability to use his tail as a shield to block incoming attacks. The tanuki also shows a tail swing attack.
A monochrome green pixel animation of an anthropomorphic tanuki archer with a tail he uses as a quiver to store arrows that he shoots. This animation demonstrates the tanuki firing arrows in three different directions, forward, at an up angle, and above him.

Outside of my own suggestions I’m inspired by playing other games, I’m not as savvy as I like on boss design, but we’ll be sure to bounce this around outside heads for trusted feedback.

Streaming and Future Updates

Updates are likely to be infrequent, but I’ll post when something significant can be talked about. I do work on sprites during my weekly livestreams on Twitch so follow me there to ask me about the game’s progress.