"Aeron's Descent", the first chapter of Vaults Of Vvorr, has been unpublished for now but will soon be re-released (again as a free stand-alone download) on gamejolt.com and itch.io. Since the initial release last year of the first builds of Chapter 1, the game has evolved quite a bit and now includes much more content. Chapter 2 is mostly done while the final and 3rd chapter is still work in progress but is coming along nicely. I decided to re-release Chapter 1 so it reflects all the things that have been implemented over the past year such as overhauled visuals, enhanced controls, as well as gameplay and balancing improvements. Check out the brand new Battle Trailer to catch a glimpse of the exciting things you will soon experience in Vaults Of Vvorr and follow me on Twitter, Facebook and TikTok for updates!
February 19, 2021
New build of Aeron's Descent available
Build 0.1.0.595 of Aeron's Descent has been released. Experience the first chapter of our retro pixelart platformer Vaults Of Vvorr in glorious fullscreen, now conveniently available in the options menu with the latest update! Previously, fullscreen could only be activated via a commandline added to the game's desktop shortcut, something only players who read the readme textfile included in the package were aware of. The new fullscreen option can be found in the main and pause menu under "Help and Options > Settings". Furthermore, the update includes a major bugfix: The player's level, skills, collected seals and unlocked awardments will now reset properly when starting a new game. A bunch of minor visual improvements and adjustments to tutorial messages have been applied, too. So now is the perfect time to check out the game and satisfy all your OCD needs while getting a jumping and running workout at the same time!
January 30, 2021
Aeron's Descent available now
After three months working on the project day in and day out, I finally published the first chapter of Vaults Of Vvorr last night. It is now available as a free download on Gamejolt and itch. Testing the master build still uncovered some minor issues that needed fixing and I also couldn't resist adding one final feature to the time trials. It's never a good idea to implement a new feature shortly before release. But I missed this one sorely during testing and just had to get it in there: When viewing a time trial, a green checkmark now indicates whether you've already mastered it. What's still missing is a timer in the HUD, though. I also tweaked the second bug race of the chapter and made it a bit easier to leave those nasty bugs behind.
Depending on your play style, Chapter 1 will take somewhere between 30 minutes and one hour to finish (probably longer the first time around). After you've (literally) dropped into the adventure, you get to explore the caves below the Hills of Silence, where you can discover two mine shafts you can plunge yourself into to reach the vaults deep underground. Nine of these vaults are just waiting to be looted by you, but beware the Vvorrminions guarding the treasures! The vault under the Shrine of Vvorr will only be accessible, if you manage to recover all 17 Seals of Vvorr from under the Hills of Silence, though. You also get to compete in seven time trials and two bug races, all of which are optional but reward you with a lot of experience points, which you will need to unlock Aeron's special skills. Luckily, you can unlock boost barrels for the mine shafts, so you will be even quicker on your way down to the Vaults Of Vvorr!
Head over to the Games page to download Chapter 1: Aeron's Descent now, I hope you will enjoy the adventure! Feedback is very much appreciated, so if you have any suggestions or issues to report, feel free to get in touch here, on Twitter (@oddworm) or via oddworm[at]gmx.com.
December 6, 2020
Replanting Florence
A post mortem
When I started writing the post mortem for the original Face-Plant Adventures, it really was just about getting something done that had been long overdue. Some time after release, my brother (2D artist on the project) had started preparing a draft of an article on the art style of the game but for some reason never finished it. I took that draft as a basis for my post mortem but neither did I intend for it to get that extensive nor did I have any intention of working on the game itself again. But the more I thought about it, the more it saddened me that our game was gone for good after Microsoft had decided to close down the Xbox LIVE Indie Games channel on the Xbox 360 marketplace in 2017. We had never released the game to other platforms so it would be lost beyond recall.
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| While I'm dreaming of a PC port, Florence's dream in the new intro sequence is dominated by golden leaves. |
I decided that this was not a worthy fate for Florence Face-Plant and tried to figure out how much effort it would take to create a PC build of the game. Being a level and audio designer on the project but not a coder, I knew that some of the required adjustments would be tricky for me, and crash, the game's original coder, had long moved on and was not available anymore. But I knew that I would have to rectify at least some of the original game's flaws or else I wouldn't be happy with a PC release.