Bruoche

Hi all, and a late happy new year! It has been an insanely long time since my last update here, but I am reaching the final stretch of work toward being finally able to post the first part of the full game (out of 3), so I thought I'd make a post reassuring the few that'd care that the game is in fact not dead, and that I am still working toward pushing out new content. I had been hopefull that what I'll call "Act 1" of Ruby Dungeon would be out by last September, but as y'all can see this very much has not been the case. In typical dev fashion, I severely underestimated how much work was left and how long that work would take.

Causes for the slow developpement A large hindrance for my progress have been managing the daily duties of real life. Up until october I had the privilege of being able to work "full time" on game dev as a gap year (tho even that time was already divided by preparations for my return to school, having to find an apprenticeship, school and a place to live). I have then been extremely lucky on these areas, having gotten the job and school I hoped for and living in a comfortable place close to those. Unfortunately, none of that is helpful toward the Ruby Dungeon cause, as I now have dramatically less time to work on the game, my progress being at least 4 times slower then it was prior to being back to school/work (when I get progress in at all). Another reason why developpement has been slower then anticipated is the amount of unpredicted work that came with the ideas I had, particularily since I try to polish everything I do from the get go, both from a coding perspective and for the user experience. That mean that systems take a long time being implemented to the best of my solo dev abilities, and I also end up piling fixes and polishes and QoL features everytime I add something new or test the game, continuously increasing the workload as I go. The good news Starting from yesterday, I am now finally done adding features and fixes to the game as far as what's planned. I may find a few more bugs that'll need fixing on the way onward, as one always do, but the entirety of the issues and ideas I had piled up so far are now done and dusted. All that is left is purely content, that is text, images and music with minimal programming thanks to the systems I have put in place.

What is left As mentionned, in total 11 areas and 5 bosses were planned to be added, for a total of 14 areas and 6 bosses in act 1 when taking into account content from the demo. (Btw "Act" is a pretty loosy goosily used term here, it's just to say the game will be released in 3 parts but this isn't a linear narrative kind of game). As mentionned before, half the areas have been made and a boss has been added. Meaning that there's only 6 areas and 4 bosses left to implement. Broadly, that's 14 to 20 drawings for the areas and bosses, plus some small ennemy sprites, around 9 musics to be made, and texts for all of that as well as some small snippets of code for the special logic of bosses and the like. If I was still full time, I'd consider it light work, and compared to all that was done I think it will be light work, but I am also no longer full time so even that will take a long while. Nonetheless, it's safe to say I am in the final stretch before finally being able to let the baby out. At the rythm I'm going at it will likely take a few months to make all the content I need to, and once I'm done I'll probably make some more fixes to polish the new stuff up and give myself a few extra months to test the game and prepare a minimum amount of marketing material for it. Altho I despise working on marketing and likely will neglige it a large amount. Nevertheless, I am very hopefull Act 1 will be coming out this year. Not a high bar to reach considering we're in January, but the past year has taught me not to be overconfident in my time estimations...

I have made a large devlog going over the past year's progress on Ruby Dungeon since I last updated it's demo.

In short, there's still months of dev needed before Act 1 is done, but I should be able to finish it before the end of the year.

Find the full post here:
bruoche.itch.io/ruby-dungeon...

The initial sketches I made for the design and concept of our #GMTKjam protagonist vs end design.

I pitched the character as a timid historian in contrast to usual intrepid adventurer like Indiana Jones.

'Initially got inspired by Tintin for the design, but ended up choosing to make 'em fem.

The initial concept art I made for Tracking Rubies during this year's #GMTKjam.

I used it as reference for the color palette of all assets made after, and stuck very closely to the vision here for the end product.

#art #artist #conceptart #gamedev

Tracking Rubies by Bruoche, Paria12 A side-scroller platformer where you evade traps to reach the end... Then try to make your way back!

Me and a friend decided to try joining our first Game Jam today with the #GMTK2025, I'll probably post a few concept arts I made for it in the following days :)

bruoche.itch.io/tracking-rub... #indiedev #gamedev

Happy birthday!!!

'Wanted to give a quick little update on Ruby Dungeon's developpement.

I've made great progress with a few areas and fun stuff for it, but won't spoil surprises just for marketing.

One change I can talk about tho, is a rework of the inventory system, making it much more legible

#devlog #indiedev

The new Ruby Dungeon update is here, and you can now talk with the merchant!

Really proud of how that system work, and now offering over 50 different dialogs for y'all to find while doing your errands!

#update #indiegame #indiedev #rpg #roguelike #gaming #fantasy #medieval

Train Ride (full speedpaint) YouTube video by Bruoche

Just posted the speedpaint from yesterday's drawing!
If anyone's curious about the process behind it

#drawing #digitalart #digitalartist #illustration #antrho #anthroart #furry #furryartwork #trans #transgender #transfem

The drawing made for yesterday's song, available on my youtube currently!

#drawing #digitalart #digitalartist #illustration #antrho #anthroart #furry #furryartwork #trans #transgender #transfem

I Should Code Instead YouTube video by Bruoche

New little song drop :)
First original non-8-bit music I'm posting, hoping y'all will enjoy!

#weirdcore #synthwave #music #song #indiemusic #electro #furry #anthro #furrsona #originalsong

Don't hesitate to ask if anybody have any question, the character limit made it hard to explain everything well in those posts alone.

Spells only use three glyphs to be written, "╭" ("0"), "ʌ" ("1") and "ᴎ" (";").

Spaces, indentation and parenthesis can be added for readability. "╰" can be placed to signify the begining of a spell too, so indentations are more logical.

A more detailed version of the graph :

The Finite State Automata defining spell syntax in my magic system.

This automaton is nearly deterministic, with the exception of the validating "root" state.

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #worldbuilding

The final spell of my spellbook, and only advanced spell, Stone Wall!

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #worldbuilding

The ninth spell and last intermediate spell in my spellbook, Ice Bridge!

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #worldbuilding

The fourth intermediate spell in my spellbook, Pick-up!

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #worldbuilding

The third intermediate spell in my spellbook, Throw!

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #worldbuilding

The second intermediate spell in my spellbook, Silence!

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #worldbuilding

First intermediate spell, and fifth spell of the spellbook, Explosion!

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #worldbuilding

The last basic spell in my spellbook, Stone Pillar!

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #worldbuilding

The third basic spell in my spellbook, Magic Protection!

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #worldbuilding

Second basic spell in my spellbook, Glowstone!

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #worldbuilding

First spell of my spellbook, fireball!

One of the four basic spells.

#sigil #pentacle #spellbook #spell #spellwork #sorcery #magic #magicsystem #grimoire #fantasy

Just finished working on my first small spellbook for the magic system I made!

'Will be releasing each page for the 10 spells I made one by one next week.

#fantasy #spell #spellbook #grimoire #magic #sorcery #mage #magicsystem #worldbuilding

Started to work on a custom font to write spells in the magic system I've been developping for a hot while, hoping to make a nice spellbook-style presentation of all the spells I've been developping so far.

Really liking how it's slowly turning out.

#magic #spell #spellbook #magicsystem

The dialog system for my game is nearly done, can't wait to share it with y'all in the following weeks!

#gamedev #update #indiegame #indiedev #gaming #rpg #roguelike #retro #medieval #fantasy

Concept art for scrapped content in Ruby Dungeon.

#drawing #art #artist #gamedev #gaming #indiegame #indiedev #rpg #roguelike #conceptart #characterdesign #characterart

Concept art I made for all Ruby Dungeon's armor sets.

Fun fact : The stats are automatically generated according to weight-class and level, so I just looked the generated numbers and designed what would fit.

#gamedev #indiedev #art #artist #sketch #conceptart #characterdesign #fantasy #medieval

Me and my boyfriend as Armored Core pilots
(outfit style inspired by Evangelion)

#ARMOREDCORE #ARMOREDCOREVI #ARMOREDCORE6 #anime #animeart #evangelion #art #artist #drawings #fanart #digitalart #digitaldrawing #trans #transgender #transfem #lgbt

Just released a major Bug Fix today on Ruby Dungeon after realising that the boss has been missing from his cell for an entire month-

I apologise to anyone that was impacted by this bug, if there were any.

#update #indiegame #indiedev #rpg #roguelike #gaming #fantasy #medieval