Devlog: Happy New Year! What's Cooking?

Happy new year everyone! We're back with a new update after a short break from socials for the holidays. Let's cut to the chase:

Queen Kyu Visual Update

A familiar face makes a return in the form of Queen Kyu! Completely visually updated and with an incredible new face rig (We're collaborating with the amazing A Large Wooden Badger), she'll have a completely new life of her own. The old model was never intended for expressive usage, so this was a necessary update. After seeing their expressive rigs, we though they'd be a perfect partner to bring her to life.

While V1 was adequate, these were so low poly the faces barely had any expressiveness possible. Sir Myu (Now known as Pike) also used the same body with some accessories on top. It was jaaaanky.

We had another rigging artist fall through late last year but Badger came in and rocked it. Excited to do some test work soon with the new and improved Queen Kyu. Nice to finally get this update off the backburner.

Kiera's Kit & Kaboodle

Following a push regarding Kiera for multiplayer, she's in a playable state and was deployed to MFF in December for testing to great fanfare. Overall the initial feedback to her kit is really good! She's an up in your face character, and we spent part of Q4 last year getting her basic kit up and working. As of now she has one special, Hurricane (A very cool projectile that combos into other stuff) and most of her ground kit complete, including combos. Was a ton of fun seeing people lab her.

And we're planning on adding Kiera Cannon next, which functions as both a projectile punish and an anti air. We use a mockup system like above to concept the moves using the 3d models, then animate them when we get the frame data and other design matters figured out.

Kiera Still Needs:

-Aerial moveset (Punches, kicks)

-Hit reactions outside of temp ones

-Super/Throws

Roguelike Prototype- The Next Focus

This is currently what we're focusing on till March- And we are in the trenches atm building out the metric ton of UI/flow work required and content that will power the roguelike. While we did systems work last year, we are now proceeding to art/content generation for the prototype- Which will cover one act.

An example of what an ultra upgraded Sidewinder will look like in roguelike

While Rigman builds moves and upgrade trees for each, I've been at it working on extensive UI work required. We worked through the holidays on generating new moves, artifacts and encounters to integrate and we've hit the new year running.

Recent documentation from the dev areas regarding the roguelike

It's no joke! We have a lot of work ahead of us, but having swappable moves with upgrade trees will make this mode super interesting and replayable. In conjunction with artifacts which add fun modifiers and a good variety of enemies this should be quite a fun romp with some story elements tossed in too.

The amount of UI work required is NO JOKE. All of this is up and running in engine now, we are just going through screen by screen and updating content. Been working hand in hand with Schmerp on all the UI work, while other teamsters handle the coding side, tools, audio and everything else required.

The goal is to have something ready by around GDC to see if there are any publishers picking up titles. Considering how tumultuous 2024 was for the industry that remains to be seen, but we're always trucking forward and keeping our ears open.

2025 Touring/Thoughts

For the first 6 months of 2025-We're still mulling options for PAX East, as to whether we'll exhibit or just attend and do business as attendees and meet up with peeps from the Discord. Due to rising costs we just have to be strategic with budgeting. Talks are still ongoing.

We might hit some other smaller and cheaper cons, potentially Texas Furry Fiesta as it's in our neck of the woods and maybe a fighting game con like Combo Breaker/EVO.

Next Diamond Care Package: Project Cereal!

An idea we've had for years now has had to do with cereal, and we're happy to say that with the added support we received from new backers we'll be able to execute on it. We are making some legit cereal themed packaging for our next package- Which as of now will include the Kiera Daki/Body pillow, a brand new XL Standee featuring Volley in her new look and a few other special items I don't want to spoil yet!

The cereal box will actually feature a comic by our writers on the back teasing some lore related to the single player, as well as the printed names of all Diamond Backers. These will be featured at cons with any merch we sell in 2025. I'll have a dedicated post when we're a little further along but so far it's been a ton of fun to plan. For supporting us, we want to make sure you get cool stuff! I'm thinking this will be our coolest (And first themed package) to go out to Diamond heads. There will be a dedicated post later this month featuring the full box design reveal and more details.

Thank you again for supporting us and look forward to discussing stuff in the Discord! Cheers and happy new year to everyone from the team. We've been busy. <3