Hey everyone! 👋

We are Evernight Studios, a two-person indie team based in North East England, and this is our first title: Crypt Creature Catcher!

👾 What Is Crypt Creature Catcher?

Crypt Creature Catcher is a hybrid of the creature collector and dungeon crawler genres, and is a fusion of games such as Bugsnax, The Legend of Zelda & Hexen: Beyond Heretic. We’re combining the aesthetic and gameplay of old-school first-person action games with the joyous adventure and sense of completion of collecting various fantasy creatures across one open, interconnected map.

• 🏰 Explore an open dungeon filled with crypts and graveyards which house many treacherous traps & fearsome foes!

• 🔮 Enjoy a retro aesthetic with dark fantasy inspiration, yet flavoured with a cartoony, lighthearted, colourful twist!

• 🐾 Collect cutesy fantasy creatures. Select your favourites, have them follow you around as your loyal pets and enjoy the special buffs they grant you!

• ⚔️ Engage in real-time melee combat with a variety of mythical foes. Pile up your defeated foes in masses in true retro first-person action fashion!

• 🧩 Solve puzzles to unveil secrets and progress deeper into the forgotten burial place of an ancient dark sorcerer and his ascetics!

🧑‍💻 About us

Our two man team is Cameron & Jamie. Although Evernight Studios has been in the works since we met at college (6 years ago) 🎓, we’re still a “brand-new” indie team in terms of officially launching our first game. Over the years, we’ve worked on small game jam projects and honed our skills along the way, but now we’re ready to go all-in and share our first full title with the world! We are aiming for this to be our official debut into the indie game scene, and we couldn’t be more excited! 🚀

• 👨‍💻 Cameron: I’m the programmer on the team. I’m responsible for building the gameplay systems, mechanics, and overall functionality of the game, focusing on making sure everything feels good to play and works as it should. The style and structure of Crypt Creature Catcher bring together a lot of my knowledge and experience from other projects and ideas I've explored in the past.

• 🎨 Jamie: I’m the artist of the team, specialising in 3D, but have a little bit of experience in everything. I’m working hard to create a unique look for Crypt Creature Catcher, inspired by numerous retro games, haunted house attractions & some Minecraft texture packs.

🛠️ What We've Done So Far

Right now we are in the early stages, here is what we’ve done so far:

• Player mechanics are set up, including melee combat, a dash ability, and more ⚔️💨

• Basic goblin enemies are implemented, and we are constantly refining the combat 👹

• Basic traps such as a dart trap and swinging axes are in place 🏹🪓

• We have set up a damage system where the screen loses colour and more blood appears the more damage you take 🎨💉

• Vases that obtain health pickups can be broken and used to regain health 🏺❤️

• A basic creature AI has been set up for testing, and the ability to select that creature and have it follow you around, granting a buff has been added 🤖🐾

• The system for picking up items such as keys and having them serve a function (like opening doors) has been implemented 🔑🚪

• We’ve worked hard on making the UI and menu navigation as satisfying as possible ✨

• A settings menu is implemented ⚙️

• Controller/gamepad support for gameplay and menus (excluding the settings menu) is working 🎮

• Tutorial environment is ready 📜

• We are nearly finished setting up the tutorial itself, and once that’s done, we’ll be ready to move forward with building the rest of the level! 🏆

📔 What to Expect From These Devlogs

Our goal with this initial devlog is to introduce ourselves and our project into the wonderful game development community here on Gamejolt and the rest of the internet. 🌍

What you should expect from future devlogs:

• 📅 A breakdown on what we’ve each been working on for the week, accompanied by images and gifs.

• 🔍 Developer insight and thoughts on how the project is coming together and on our individual work.

What we hope to gain from devlogs:

• 💬 Interaction with the game development community.

• 💡 A chance to gain insight into what people think of our project at any time and an opportunity for constructive criticism.

• 👀 Marketing our project and gaining followers.

• 📈 A tangible sense of progression to look back at.

We would love to hear what you think so far, and if you’re interested, make sure to give us a follow here and over on Instagram as well.

Many thanks, and stay tuned for more updates! 🙏

- Evernight Studios