Tanya here to send y’all a big “hello, hi, how are ya doing!?” from the Toasty: Ashes of Dusk team here, at Pocket Llama Studios! Now, I know many folks have been wondering about our development journey and outside of our monthly newsletter, there is no direct log of what has been hip and happening with the Toasty team. So I decided to write y’all this beaut of a mini novel called “Toasty: Ashes of Dusk Development Update”, original right? Thank you, it took me all week to come up with that name. So hold onto your socks folks, because we are gonna jump right into it! As many of you know, not too long ago we hosted a Merch-Kickstarter, and y’all blew it out of the park! We hit our goal on October 22, 2020, exactly one month since it’s launch! We were all so humbled and mind blown by the support and generosity. This provided the team with many opportunities to grow and take charge on things we otherwise would not have been able to. And oh man, have we ever been busy since then! To all of you who participated in this Kickstarter, from the bottom of our hearts, we cannot thank you enough. We are honestly blessed to have a community as supportive and loving as all of y’all.

As there is a LOT to cover, I will break it up into 4 main categories: Art/Assets, Programming, Narrative/Concept, and General

Art / Assets

Our Art Director, Brian, and Narrative Director/ Concept Artist, Ivy, have been the busiest bees in all of the sea! Errr…. Well you know what I mean haha. They have had a very VERY long list of assets to be created and animated over the last few months, and honestly, I am blown away by their diligence and skills. As the team started to move out of Shroomville, there were naturally, entirely new assets needed. Everything from ground tiles, maps to characters themselves for the respective new areas. Some of the assets created, but not limited to, are as follows:

• Overworld Maps: Things like another big city, explorable areas, and caves which pop up along the early stages of Marshall’s journey
• Dungeons: THREE new dungeon maps have been created and we can’t wait to see if everyone can get past our traps and tricks!!
• NPCs: Did you think we had enough NPCs in Toasty? YOU DID?! WRONG!! WE NEED MORE!! ….so, we made more. Don’t get to comfy though, there are still plenty more to come *insert evil laughter here*

Programming

Our programmer Faulty is an absolute LEGEND. He has been tackling the massive undertaking of completely redoing the game’s infrastructure. In his hands, the original code behind the game has been turned into clean, bombin’ greatness. Once the ground work here was set, he was able to move onto more specific things. Some of the MANY things Faulty has been working on since October 2020 are as follows:

• Combat touch ups and polish
• Parrying projectiles with your shield
• Pushable boxes
• Object and tile depth sorting
• System to silhouette the player and enemies when they are behind a large object
• Ledge jumping
• Room transition system
    - For classic Zelda style scroll transitions among other transitions

• Some dungeon puzzle mechanics
    - Conveyor Belts
    - Light all torches to open doors
    - Defeat all enemies to open doors

• Implemented a Dialogue system
    - Added character themes for the dialogue system
    - Added some accessibility options for text boxes (high contrast mode, font selection)

• Shadow system for entities
•  Entity-Component-System (ECS)
- This is a code architecture that allows for modular components to be swapped in and out on entities to change their properties

• Various systems for AI management and decision making
• Added various enemies
    - Glub
    - Glublet
    - Fat Bat
    - Ranged Fungi

• Knapsack items

This list only scratches the surface of all the behind the scenes work that has been worked on. What baffles me still, is just the pure openness and dedication that Faulty has when trying to  make the team’s weirdest requests work. I cannot wait to see the progress on all of his current projects as they come to life!

Narrative / Concept

Every game can only go so far without the flavor text! Our Narrative Director/Concept Artist, Ivy, and Creative Director, Justin, have been busting away to bring the world that is Geldia to LIFE. You know in those movies, where you see those folks bustin’ away at a table doing the whole “creative brainstorming”  thing, and then hitting that eureka moment? Well picture something like that but more chaotic haha. They have officially written out the entire ending of Toasty: Ashes of Dusk. Kinda huge right? They have also pumped out a butt ton of side missions, quests, and character personalities! These are all starting to get integrated with the assets made by Brian, and then translated into the coding empire of our dear Faulty! I cannot tell you how inspiring it is to see it all come to life like this!

General / Community

Just like anything, there are always some general things going on that are always exciting to share! However, I of course am gonna keep the banger for last...JUST DON’T CHEAT! Or do...but just know you ruined it yourself. So if you are still reading this in order, you have my gratitude and are rewarded with some quick little updates!

• We now have a monthly newsletter called The Geldian Gazette! Click that and jump on board, I promise they are fun and cute! (At least I hope so...I make them so I may be a bit biased).
• All of our Social channels have been revamped and we are doing our best to share new fun things every day on them! So be sure to follow along if you got dem twitters and stuff.
• Our YouTube channel has also been revamped and we are dropping a new OST every week! So definitely hit up our Tube and press that Subscribe, and little bell to be first to know when those tracks go public!
• We now have our very own Merch store, so you too can rock that Toasty: Ashes of Dusk swag that you never knew you wanted! There is a pretty rad design of a parrot by the name of Party Pete on there that you should definitely get as a shirt...just sayin’.

I know you've been jumping in your seat for the biggest news of all, so if I can get a drum roll please!? Toasty: Ashes of Dusk is now officially backed by a publisher! That’s right folks, we now got a publisher in our corner to push this game to new heights we could have only dreamed of. Though we may not be able to say who that publisher is JUST yet, please be rest assured that this is going to change things in a GREAT, HUGE, and EXCITING way! *coughConsolescough*. So I hope you are ready for a crazy ride folks, cuz we are strapped in and ready to GO!

With the power of our publisher behind us, we are super excited to announce that we will be launching a production Kickstarter in the near future! If you would like to help support us in our development, we would love for you to click the link and follow our Kickstarter page! It really helps us and will notify you when our project goes live. See below:

pocketllama.com/ks

I will do my best to keep y’all updated on here more regularly so that you can get all them juicy details when they are hot off the press. But please, if you are not already, give a follow to our socials, those I post on daily now (except for Sundays).

Thank you so much for reading the novel that is the Toasty: Ashes of Dusk Development Update! We are all having so much fun working on this game and interacting with this community. This has already been the time of our lives and we are so excited to see where this journey takes us next.

Until next time!

Your Toasty Community Manager, 

Tanya