Welcome to 2019, Flynn boy!
over 5 years ago – Fri, Jan 18, 2019 at 12:49:29 AM

Hello once again to all you Crimson babes, we hope you've had a great start to 2019 so far! 2018 was a pretty exciting year for us, even though we have to keep most of it a secret! We'll be sharing these new developments in Flynn town soon, but for now, here's what we've been up to after our holiday season refresh. 

For this year we're planning to update you more often on our developments with frequent, smaller updates just so we don't disappear for as long. Though if your eyeballs are ever feeling lonely and need some extra Flynn pixels, we're often active on our Twitter with GIFs! - @ThunderhorseCO

Magic!

Now replacing the bow is a set of spells to learn. This is mostly an aesthetic change as they function the same way as arrows, but also gives us many new possibilities for the future. 

A note to our Beta Backers

No we definitely didn't forget about you! We're still far from an official Beta, but we are building a plan for some alpha demos for all of you generous beta backers. In the next few months you will be able to join the exclusive Discord channels and gain access to combat builds we will be updating often. Nothing spoiled for you, just pure combat fun as you test out our new battle systems! We look forward to all of your feedback :)

See you all again very soon!

Flynn's Halloween Spectacular!
over 5 years ago – Thu, Nov 01, 2018 at 02:28:05 AM

Hey all! Would you look at that, it’s been just about a full year since we were successfully funded on Kickstarter and what better way to celebrate that milestone than with something spoopy, it is that scaaaaary (spoken with an old creepy man voice of course) time of the year after all!

Graveyard portrait backers will be happy to know that we’ve been engraving your gravestones and have started piecing together the Rustwood graveyard itself. The stones will be interactive if you wish to read them, showing the backer name. We’ve buried some fun skeletons that may or may not have a fondness towards Flynn too. All in all, the graveyard is a small area which will have some bearing on the story/gameplay but also provide you with a spoopy area to drop in and out of to hang out with some goofy doots whenever you please.

Next up let's talk about the new improved camera system. On the surface it’s the same with no major changes but deep inside the fiddly codings we have opened up so many more possibilities. One thing this improvement allows is zooming. Yes, we’re ready for the “But my immersion will be ruined, the pixels are all wrong, the resolution isn’t right” comments, but we’re 100% committed to knowing this is a great feature to create vast scenes such as the one below.

 
As you can see, if we were to keep the camera zoom locked throughout the entire game then we’d have to do a lot of messy camera panning to keep these big and memorable environments in view. This method also allows us to create larger scale bosses too! You might have already noticed on the above gif that we’ve started experimenting with coloured ambient light, we think it works a charm for atmosphere.

Over the last 4 - 5 weeks we’ve made major changes to how you traverse and progress through the game. Instead of a huge sprawling “metroidvania” map, we now have an overworld in which you complete stages to progress, with some stages having alternate exits that open up new paths to new areas and so on. Don’t fret though, the “metroidvania” elements still exist by returning to a previous stage with a new ability. This makes things 100x more manageable for us as developers and hopefully you as a player but we’ll go a lot more into detail on this soon. We’re very happy with this change as it allows for much more interesting level design which is already showing.

Story elements are coming together nicely in-game, we’ve been hard at work constructing the intro scenes to grab your attention and put the emotions into place. We really want you to develop an attachment to our characters so we’re putting every bit of feeling into them as we can, we really hope you feel the same as us when Flynn discovers that his d… Whoa, spoilers!

Did you know Flynn has a coming soon page on Steam? Every wishlist on there helps us greatly as we get closer to release! https://store.steampowered.com/app/737520/Flynn_Son_of_Crimson

See you all in the next update soon!

We’re still alive!
over 5 years ago – Thu, Sep 13, 2018 at 01:50:09 AM

Hello to all you crimson cuties!

Apologies for the lack of updates in the last few months, we’ve had to hold onto some pretty special information and an announcement which will be let free to the world soon. Case, our programmer, has spent the last few weeks refactoring major areas of the code to make any future additions/changes much more manageable and we’re just about caught up to where we were before the refactor. It was a small step backwards to make future steps bigger and smoother!

Again, since the last update, we’ve gone through many changes and additions to really knuckle down the general feel of gameplay, whether that be how we incentivise combat or where you find certain upgrades and items. It’s all really important and we want to be 100% on these design choices to create the best experience we possibly can.

We’re generally active with updates over at our twitter, follow @ThunderhorseCO and @Case_Portman to see what we’re up to! Speaking of which here’s a short video of early gameplay posted last month in case you didn’t see it.

https://twitter.com/ThunderhorseCO/status/1029829035067461632

While we’re here, we might as well use the time to go over how we designed one of our latest enemy additions: Scourge Knights. These guys are one of the more difficult enemies in the game and if you’re not careful will quite easily take you off guard!

This process is how we design most of the enemies and have developed a nice flow which enables us to bounce ideas off of one another. It’s a beautiful thing seeing a seed of an idea that developed in your brain sponge come to life (the artists in the team are magicians!).

We’re as hopeful as ever for the future of Flynn and cannot wait to share our big announcement soon! If you’d like to wishlist Flynn: SoC on Steam, you can do so here, each one helps!: https://store.steampowered.com/app/737520/Flynn_Son_of_Crimson

Thanks again for the continued support!

Flynn's video Devlog #1 and The Great Rosantican Forest!
almost 6 years ago – Fri, Jun 08, 2018 at 01:09:29 AM

Hello to all our beautiful Crimson children! We have something new for you all today, a video with mouth words coming from our beloved programmer, Case! 

Video Devlog #1

Travel along on his journey as he tickles your earholes about some of the gameplay tweaks and new mechanics we've been slaving over in Flynn!

 
The Great Rosantican Forest

We've all been hard at work on all the above over the past month, but not only that, our own Phil has been deep in a new mossy forest, The Great Rosantican Forest! He has been covered in dirty moss for weeks, it's kind of gross.

This forest will play a big part in the world, connecting pieces of land together, like Mistral Peak, Sanctia, and Rustwood. Plus many secrets of course ;)

A new Scourgey animation style

Flynn animation expert Hunter has been working on many secret things, but here's a sneaky peeky at a new style coming to the Scourge enemy animations she's designing! Spooky, smokey, whoa!

 See you all in the next one! 

About Dex, everyone's favorite Crimson pup!
about 6 years ago – Thu, Apr 19, 2018 at 12:25:49 AM

Hey folks! It’s time to update you all on our on-goings, additions, fiddles and diddles. If you’re following us on Twitter, you’ll notice updates have been slightly less regular and a bit more sparse, but fear not there’s a good reason for this. No, we haven’t slowed down or stopped any progress or anything like that. In fact, it's quite the opposite. Work started on the introduction of the game a few weeks ago and we know how incredibly important it is to grab the player’s attention right away, so we’ve been making sure that is where it should be. Plus there are many parts of the game we simply don’t want to spoil currently being worked on too.

Thankfully, we have almost fully implemented many of the systems that aid the player on their journey, such as the map and inventory. This means we can almost fully focus on level design and story exclusively for a good amount of time at least, great news!

A little bit about Dex

It seems like a lot of people have taken a fondness to our fluffy, lovable non-human character Dex the dog/wolf/lion (what is she anyways?) so we’ve gathered up some information for you guys to give you a better idea on how she came about and her role within the world of Flynn: SoC.

Early Dex
Dex is a character we’ve had involved pretty much since our first iterations of the game as we’ve always liked the idea of having some form of companion throughout your adventure that you could interact with. Originally, ‘Dex’ was a play on the word “Index” and it took the form of a small (almost cat-looking) robot but this was way back when we had no idea what we were doing (shhh don’t tell anyone!). Fast forward 12 months or so and Flynn became a much more organic (less futuristic) game and the original idea of Dex just didn’t fit so some major changes were made.

The name Dex stuck with us as we transitioned from cat-like robot to a giant furry creature that resembled a lovable dog.

Who is Dex and what is her purpose?
Dex is one of the five Rosantican guardians, specifically Cardinal Island (A small isle that Flynn is currently living). She was brought up and cared for by Flynn’s Mother Sorrell in order to keep the peace and tranquility about the island. She can be lazy at times, hates bath time but loves walks through the forest, she is a pooch after all!

She and her Brothers and Sisters were born into Crimson and developed their powers and strengths simply by living on the island. They all acquire a natural ability to use Crimson energy built up within them to fend off any foes (more info on her abilities later, secrets for now!). Dex herself has grown a strong bond with Flynn since he was a young age and always looked out for him. Now they are best buds and teach each other new things every day. Dex, roll over!

Unbreakable Bond
As stated above, Flynn and Dex share a truly wonderful friendship and in the early game the player will feel that whilst helping her pass obstacles as she keeps a keen eye on you. Pet her, hide from her, chop down those terrible shrubs and vines as she growls at them, it’s up to you! Just don’t feed her chocolate.

Here’s a sprinkle of some absolutely wonderful fan-art that include this fluffy floofer. Go follow these amazing artists, their twitter profiles are below!

To Beta Backers
Don't worry, we didn't forget about you! We're working as hard as we can on getting a solid foundation for the game before sending anything out. Working on a solid test build right now would take a lot of time away from important features we need to focus on, so we hope you understand!

We'll continue these updates monthly. See you in the next one!