774 days ago I booted up Godot with a simple goal in mind: make it so a unit in my Medarot combat system prototype can soak up damage for a different unit. Today, Afterlife Gladiator is finally out.

The last few days leading to release are a blur. 2 holidays and a long weekend were sorely needed blessings to make sure I could meet my self-imposed deadline. However, the results of sleeping poorly at odd hours while also dealing with work, training and responsibilities in general are getting to me. I'm not sure if I can competently write anymore so I'll try to make this brief.

The biggest change this time around is the addition of new game +, mostly because I had a cool idea on how to contextualize it and because I thought it would be fun to play the game with lots of perks since the beginning. Also, reaching the maximum level and unlocking everything is satisfying for me and with some tweaks the challenge stays surprisingly balanced.

I also welcomed the chance to write more dialogue. Sometimes I wish I could keep going forever, but that would make for a terrible story.

Besides that, I finally got around to fixing all of the small quirks that had been bothering me for a long time such as certain events not triggering properly, portrait animations resetting, bugged journal messages, etc. In total, I accumulated 1090 notes. That might seem like a lot of mistakes, but compared to what?

Some closing thoughts: I used to draw tiny characters in the margins of my notebooks at school. I believe that the most valuable thing I got out of making a game was rekindling that feeling of wanting to create something. Good or bad, that's up for others to decide, I tried my best. 

Thank you for reading and thank you for playing. If I ever make another game, I hope to see you there.

Wishlist Afterlife Gladiator on Steam!