Hello everyone! Long time no see. Today marks the one-year anniversary of the original release of the Gumball demo on itch.io, and what better way to celebrate than share what's been going on recently? I've been hard at work putting together a team of  people who will help me make Gumball into the best game it can possibly be. What was once a one-man effort (with some help from two others) has grown into a six-person project, with more on the way. The team now includes the talent of a 3D character artist, a programmer, and a best-selling author, in addition to a composer, a concept artist, and myself. So without further ado, here's what we've been doing.

A Bigger, Better Map

A lot of work has gone into redesigning the city that is your playground. It has gone through many iterations, with this being the design we settled on. It's going to be a while before all the buildings are modeled, so it's monochrome for now. It's still a demo of course, so it's pretty small, but still a step up from the old map:

Gumball's 3D Model

Gumball finally has a 3D model! It's still a work-in-progress, but it looks great. Unfortunately it isn't animated yet, but we're working on it. Having a 3D model like this also gives the game a new feature: Seeing your whole body in VR!

This is something that I actually had working while I was prototyping the game, but I couldn't release the demo with a retextured Zero Suit Samus, so that model had to go. This new model wasn't created so you could see yourself in VR. It was created so the game could have...

Third-Person Gameplay

This is it. Gumball can now be played by anybody, not just those with a VR headset. The game is being made in such a way that VR and third-person can coexist harmoniously, with everything you can do in one mode being possible in the other. This also goes for the game's HUD and menus, being designed to be compatible with both, so there is no need to do extra work. Making third-person swinging feel good also helps improve the swinging experience for VR. VR users can now shoot a gumline almost anywhere and get a good, satisfying swing. Not only that, but you can even switch between these two modes any time you want!

And that's all I have for now. Soon, you will be able to play this on the beta branch of the demo, so you too can help us make the game. Until then, I'll be posting more regular updates on how everything is going. See you next time!