Hey everyone!

Well it looks like that little setback with the development tool cost us our bug testing time. And we’re not comfortable with releasing the game with only a day or two of testing. So we’re going to hold the game back until the 27th of May. We are just putting the finishing touches on the game now. Some features have hit the cutting room floor and some will be coming later down the road in updates in order to keep you coming back to play the game again!

So the game is very much close to completed, we’re just polishing and bug killing as we speak.

So the only things being cut for now (but possibly still being added later):
– Auto player 2. It worked, but way too well. Auto player 2 could actually finish the game for you and that was bad. We aren’t removing this from the code however. But for now we will keep it out of the options until we can tweak it more. It was sad to watch the Dwarf run ahead of you and kill stuff before you could even hit the button! Also with the addition of Co-op it kinda made it a little pointless.
– Sound Test. I wanted to do something a little fancy for it. So it probably come in an update. But it’s not there for now.

And the things coming in updates are the following:
– Arena Mode and Surfing Mode 
– Side Quests and selectable (from map screen) Items. We will add one or two side quests to the map with most updates for you to play and get power up items to give the game a new way to play!
– Additional Languages. We are starting with English and as we get new translations we will be adding them to the game. Brazilian Portuguese will be ready within a few weeks of initial release, with more languages to follow.

Other than that, the main game is intact. Co-op is in, multiple characters to play in co-op, 16 stages with a bunch of gigantic boss fights. A bunch of mini bosses (The King is a pain in the butt). Probably about 20-30 different enemies. Corpse Surfing… So basically it’s just the extras and not the main game play effected. Oh – the naked zombie lady dancers made it in. Hopefully no one will complain about a pixel nipple 😀 This in fact part of the original story. The undead wizard however was replaced by an undead priestess (becomes playable character). The crusty old man/wizard zombie wasn’t working for me, he looked like all the other zombies.

The priestess is a playable character for player 2 between stage 12 and 15. Pic below is of The Mouth of Hell stage:

Thurstan actually has the sword in this stage but the stage was built before we added that part of the code to the layout!

Speaking of which – once you have the sword, the way you play as the main character changes. He is limited to two very powerful attacks instead of multiple weaker ones. This was to go with the story. It also makes the final stages of the game more exciting since you can’t easily pummel enemies from the sides of the screen with daggers anymore.

So aside of the push back and the removal of auto 2p (for now) it really wasn’t that bad. We’d rather play it safe and make sure the game is awesome the firs time you play it and not full of bugs we missed because we ran out of time!

Thanks for being patient! It’s only a little over a week away!!!

Chris

Completely rebuilt stages, tons of additional graphics, better enemy graphics… sound and the real sound track!

With the addition of the second player, we’ve decided that the old Nintendo styled stages were no longer going to work. We’ve made them all more arcade or SNES like in order to accommodate both players on screen, no chance of getting stuck behind a million walls!

With the rebuilding of the stages came a ton of all new graphics and effects. Stage one, as you will see in the video below, has had many additions made to it aside of the new level layout. Stages like the plagued city and the graveyard which were originally wall jump heavy, have now been stretched out with minimal wall climbing parts and way more action. Wall climbing is easier with single player and causes a lot of issues between players falling and jumping when near the bottom or top of screen.

Also, the heroes have been updated with a grab button. You can now toss zombies freely through the air as well as the addition moves that came with grabbing certain zombies like using an arm as a weapon, tearing a zombie in half over your head or mashing it’s neither regions with your boots.

Full sound and proper music has also been added in game now.

Also – you’ll notice in the video we’ve added widescreen support!

Check out the video below to see the full stage one update complete with villager mangling intro!!

Cheers and thanks for all the support!!!

Chris

Causal Bit Games is proud to announce that we are now officially a Nintendo approved developers.

We have two games already planned for the Wii U, with Insanity’s blade being the first release. Even though the development for the new platform is on its early stages, we are working hard to make the release of the Wii U and PC versions to be as close as possible, but for now, no guarantees…

Keep up with our updates via Facebook, Twitter or Google+.

And for PC users, please show your support through the Steam Community voting on our Greenlight page!

Aside of a few people here asking to keep the 8-bit as an option, 16-bit+ has gone over extremely well on all fronts! So we will continue along as Insanity’s Blade: The Arcade Experience!

I’ve already made many more changes to art and we are currently rethinking the HUD. We’ve also added in a very early wide screen support which will need a lot of things worked out for it but overall, it’s working great already. For the beginning of some stages there is an empty space to the left as it was build to show a 4:3 amount of gfx only, So it should only be a matter of adding extra background bits to cover up that empty space!

Thurstan has had another palette change as I’ve found him to be a little too orange! As far as the 8-bit goes, it’s only myself doing the graphics in my spare time. We will try to put an 8-bit mode in since the graphics are 75% done in NES format already. It would be a shame to waste them. We will probably do that as an update after release so we don’t miss our April release date!

I’ll be adding more little effects to the levels now too, like the falling platforms in stage 1’s house area will catch on fire as you walk over them before they fall. Possibly some smoke FX, etc etc. I want to capture the atmosphere as much as possible and that was something that wasn’t really doable in 8-bit with such a limited palette.

Anyhow a big thank you for the comments and pm’s! Your support means a lot, every bit of feed back counted! Stay tuned for the full stage 2 update, we’re nearly there – bosses and all!

Chris