Trees! Resprites! Delays!

Hey! Over the last few weeks I've taken a mini break from the expanse to consider its future, as well as work on a few other projects such as this year GMTK jam and my upcoming comic series. Sadly when uploading my jam submission, I didn't bug check the exported version and the shop and info tabs are inaccessible which is my fault entirely. Anyways, on with the updates!

Last night i had a sudden burst of expanse-juices flowing through my mind, and decided to rethink some of my older ideas. As seen in the screenshot ive finally made a neat tree design which me and my friends enjoy the look of quite a bit. Keep in mind that drawing is subject to change but it looks nice regardless.

About the game though, ive made a few choices that result in me needing to completely reworking the game, likely starting from near scratch. This is good though, i understand how i coded the original expanse game and i can definitely cook up what i had before much faster than before, no need for some one month wait.

Story Elements!

I believe this is written on the game page, but The Expanse's core story telling element is that you are invited into a sort of futuristic oasis type virtual reality game, but upon your joining a virus infects the game leaving nothing but a small island. This series of events i believe could make for some very interesting game mechanics! one concept flowing through my head is that if you do a certain amount of tasks in a day, the night rolls around. During this night time, corrupted creatures would emerge from the ground and skies, also potentially morphing your island temporarily to match the scene of all this fighting?

Another idea in mind is related to this screenshot! Maybe as you plant seeds and grow trees things have the possibility to 'corrupt' into new resources and farms that could very much help the player! Some of these ideas would be things like stone trees for new resource gathering, and rare types of crop which could be sold at a high price to those buying.

"Who would be buying from you?" You may ask, since The Expanse is a rather secluded game you'd expect to remain alone during the journey, but that could not be further from the truth. As you play you receive a number of quests from your little tutorial buddy (similar to how Navi works in OOT), some of these being allowing for other residents to join you! some ways of going about this might be building a house, or if they don't have the transportation maybe even crafting a sort of "sky train'!

Also, corruption gives me the idea for some sort of "chip" collectable. they could be used for holding recipes, schematics, unlocking new areas, and much more! but I'm still polishing that idea much like the rest of the game

So yeah, that's what I've been cooking up the last few months! Hoping to see some gameplay i can show off by next time i do this, but i guess that's all for now, see ya!

(Also I'm considering a video dev log! thoughts?)