Heyo! It's me again! That one cube guy nobody's heard about!

The second status update post, neat. Not sure if I can keep up this monthly track record, but we'll see.

STUFF

Things have been pretty steady lately. I’ve been spending time with friends and family, dealing with usual university stuff, and tinkering.

A lot of tinkering...

That’s mostly it for now. I’m still kind of on a mental break, but I’m slowly starting to get back into development. If things go well, I might be able to properly begin development on the Pricklz reboot in the next couple of weeks.

Before anyone asks: yeah, I’ve been procrastinating the CDH4 update. If anything changes, I’ll probably just adjust the final cutscene asset later. Don’t expect a full post about it though.

ANIMATION??

That’s right!

I recently got my hands on Adobe Animate and spent the past hour experimenting with it. It’s actually really fun to use so far.

However, I won't be making any promises yet. It’ll take time to get used to the workflow, so proper animation work will come later once I’m more comfortable with the software.

For now, I ran a simple experiment recreating The Shadow’s jumpscare (from CDH2 Reshined). The result came out promising, but there are still issues. Mainly timing being a bit too fast in the impact frames, and some transitions not having enough easing or control.

Still, for about an hour of messing around, it’s a strong start. As I keep learning the software, I’m looking forward to improving it further :]

PRICKLZ REBOOT THINGS

Like my other projects, I’ve been doing some prep work in the background. The title screen and settings are mostly finalized for now.

That said, once development properly starts (and especially once I begin recruiting), I’ll likely want to revisit the logo. The current one is merely just a placeholder, but I'm not too sure how to improve it.

If you've got any ideas and suggestions, let me know down below.

Overall though, planning for the Pricklz reboot is basically ready to go.

SCRAPPED PRICKLZ REBOOT IDEAS

Cool, right?

Development hasn’t even started and I’m already cutting ideas.

Remember that Sonic Worlds screenshot I posted?

The scaling issue happened because the engine seems to break when switching from its intended resolution (428×320) to a higher resolution (1920×1080). I tried to work around it, but couldn’t get it stable.

But that wasn’t the only issue. Pixel art production turned out to be way more demanding than expected. I’m not a pixel artist, and forcing it would’ve made everything look inconsistent. On top of that, the sheer volume of sprites needed (somewhere around 10k) made the scope way too large for a single minigame segment. Even if it may have been cool, I ultimately decided to scrap it.

After that, I tried a Pac-Man-style minigame. The systems themselves worked fine, but I ended up scrapping it. It just didn’t really fit the direction of the project, and I didn’t feel motivated to take it further.

I’ve also been exploring a few additional gameplay ideas. Out of the many different options, one of them stood out more to me. I’ll keep it under wraps for now, but I'm sure it will surprise many.

GATHERING A TEAM

I know I made a post about this already, so I won’t go too deep into it again.

Alongside planning, I think I’ve come to a clearer idea of what roles I’d actually want filled for the Pricklz reboot. I won’t go into specifics (that’ll come in a proper recruitment post), but I do have a better understanding of the structure I’m aiming for.

Right now, it’s less about “building a full team immediately” and more about identifying what’s realistically needed so I can avoid over-scoping things early on.

Of course, as time goes on, things will change; and there will probably come a time where I may need to recruit a few more people. But for now, let's just enjoy the ride.

PRICKLZ REBOOT GAME PAGE COMING EARLY??

I think it’s probably time to stop only making game pages when a project is already near completion.

I’ve noticed that without a central game page, updates and posts tend to feel a bit scattered, and it also makes older information harder to find or reference later on. Even I struggle to keep track of older posts sometimes.

Because of that, I’m considering moving away from my usual “keep things secret until later” approach and instead setting up a proper game page earlier in development.

It would mostly be for organization and accessibility; having a single place where updates, information, and progress can be tracked more cleanly. It also makes it easier for anyone interested to follow along without needing to dig through random posts.

On top of that, I think I want to start sharing progress more naturally as development continues. Instead of waiting for things to be fully finished or reaching major milestones, I’d rather show features once they’re in a presentable state. That means smaller but more frequent updates, focused on visible progress rather than “completed” systems.

So yeah, this is less about “revealing everything early,” and more about making development easier to follow and more consistent to update.

That's all for today. I'd like to hear your ideas and suggestions in the comments!

Take care, stay safe, God bless!