Team Work Makes the Dream Work

As Henry Ford once said, “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” After inviting three new team members to RillyBoss Studios, I am starting to really understand what Henry Ford was trying to convey. We have truly made great strides in our project since the arrival of our new members – but in order to be successful – we we will need to not only stay together, but work together strongly as a team.
Each of our three new team members have studied Game Art at the Art Institute of Colorado and are highly talented artists. We have brought on Jared Barner, a former armed forces member of the United States Navy, Jeremiah Baker, an environmental artist as well as a tutor for game art, and Julaian DeHerrera, an accomplished artist who has been honing his art skills since he was in elementary school. Together, they will help us deliver a product that is truly unique and encompasses our vision. Jared, Julian, and Jeremiah are already hard at work producing art assets for the next level in our game. Each team member will be posting weekly blog updates, so you can stay up to date with each members progress!

Let Me Tell You A Story

We have created the concept for our story, and think that our fans will be as excited about it as we are! We plan on having each player start in tavern in a fantasy setting. Within this tavern, the locals will drunkenly retell grandiose and humorous stories in which the players will get to relive and experience. As the game plays, our drunken narrators will slowly unravel the plot for each level. We plan on inviting multiple guest narrators to join us and tell us a drunken tale. We will then hold contests to vote which stories will make it into our game! Please let us know if you have any interest in helping with our project!

Whats In a Name

Today, we released a survey to our fans to vote on the name of this game! Now that we’ve have narrowed down a plot and tone for our game, we believe we will need a unique name. We will no longer need to refer to this project as “RillyBoss Studios upcoming VR project.” You can find the survey here and vote for your favorite! As of this post, we have already received over 80 responses. We are so very appreciative of everyone’s support!

Humble Beginnings

Earlier this month, we teamed up with Player 2 and Platte Park Brewing Company to provide a live playable demo of our game. We had over 30 new players try out our game, receive some free swag, and provide stellar feedback! We really appreciate everyone who participated and are offering free copies of our game upon our release to all participants!

We hope to see an even bigger turn out at our next live demo! Be sure to follow us on social media to stay in the know with all of the latest RillyBoss Studios events!

Back to Work

One of our main goals of our Labor Day demo was to start receiving feedback from the community. Our core value is that the customer comes first. Therefore, we are working diligently to ensure we provide a polished and fun product that meets our fans expectations. I have taken the feedback, and started address comments and concerns submitted by our participants:

• One of the major complaints is that players felt that enemies were coming too close to the player. We are experimenting with providing a “push-back” towards enemies when they enter the players personal bubble.
• Players felt that they could not tell exactly how hard to hit the enemies for maximum damage. We are working on adding visual and audio effects to signify a significant strike on the enemy.
• Some players feel the overall volume was too loud. We are working on adding volume options for each type of sound effect so that players can adjust all sound levels to their liking.
• Players felt the difficulty was far too hard. We are adjusting player health, enemy, health, weapon damage, and more to get the perfect difficulty setting.
• Some players experienced difficulty in picking up items that were dropped on a slope. We are working on increasing the range to ease this problem.
• Some players felt that they could not hit the enemies. We have since adjusted enemy hit boxes to make attacking the enemies more reliable.

We have also added some new features:

• Voice Chat. Users can now chat with nearby players via their voice.
• We have modified how damage is calculated. You now deal more damage the harder you swing your weapon!
• When hit, enemies will search for a player. If no player is seen, they will run for cover.
• We have added events that can be triggered in the environment, such as an ambush by a large amount of enemies.
• We have updated the player characters to match the environmental aesthetic. Players are no longer pink hot dog men!
• We have created a prototype for the first boss. You can see a sneak peak in the video above!

Whats to Come?

We are hard at work creating our first level as a team. We are shooting to finish the minimum viable product by the end of the month. Stay tuned, as we will be offering another live demo when completed! We have the following features in the pipeline for the new level.

• Multiple New Weapons
  • Bow and Arrow
  • Crossbow
  • Battle Axe
  • Pickaxe
  • Staff
• 3 New Enemies
  • Sandwurm
  • Firelord
  • Bugdog
  • Secret New Boss
• A hand crafted desert environment including:
  • Sand Dunes
  • Cliff Side Maze
  • Spires, Buttes, Arches, and other interesting rocks.
  • A lush oasis.

Closing Thoughts

We are excited for whats to come. Every day we work our butts off to make something we are proud of, and we hope you will be too.

Much love,

Billy