[We realized we could be making more use of the Announcements page to let everyone know things have been going, and will try to do it whenever we reach a milestone from now on. Here's a post about the progress made during the last year!]

Happy new year, explorers!

We are still steady with the development of Raider Kid and the Ruby Chest, having worked on it every Saturday last year despite being a busy period of our lives. 2022 had struggles and losses, but also overcoming and reunions. I myself moved and changed jobs twice 🥵 - one being to another continent - while Lumi and Fabio moved from Europe back to Brazil. Despite this, we kept a consistent routine of working on the game every Saturday.

We didn't meet the goal of releasing the game in 2022, but we just finished the Beta 🎉 which we want to start testing later this month (read this post until the end to see how you can become a tester). We'll use the feedback to make final fixes and adjustments. After that, we'll implement achievements and credits, and the game will finally be ready to be released ❤️

Without further ado, what we made last year:

• Last boss fight and ending sequence. That was more work than anticipated!
  
• Border arts - We had many people criticizing how dull the full-screen version of the game looked. Lumi made this great Non-Specific LCD Gaming Device border to make you feel back in the 90s enjoying the newest release for your portable system.
  
• 3 new enemy types - We realized the late game needed more combat variety, so we added a few enemies with more versatile behaviours.
  
• Level design revisions. A lot of them, to accommodate new features and enemies.
  
• Input improvements, including buffer for jumping and attacking.

This is our new border art! What do you think? If people like it, we might add more neat customization options.

If you would like to participate in the closed beta tests, please answer this form[forms.gle], keeping in mind that this version will lack final level design and a few features. Should we receive too many requests, we might limit the beta to the first few responders. We are always happy to know that some of you out there are so eager to play the final game, so in any case, don't worry because the wait for it shouldn't be too long this time 🙂

Have an adventurous 2023!

Pedro