Hello everyone! I hope you’re doing well.
I’ve been working a lot to improve Zefyr, and this month’s update is pretty huge.

I – Polish

Levels

First, I took some time to rework some pretty old levels. They were functional but a bit empty and rough around the edges. I mainly worked on a mansion, a snowy tower, and a pirate chase (no precise names to avoid spoilers). I added grass, trees, ivy, rocks, lights, benches, dialogues, paths, animals, and various other details. I also fixed lots of little bugs and reworked some cutscenes (positioning, behaviors, missing elements). I can’t describe everything, but here are a few screens:

Some improved environments…

Items & Gameplay Elements

I improved the grapple and the magnetic bow. Now, there are little particles and nice sounds when you use them. I hope it’s easier to read and understand too. The magnetic bow now uses the climb/magnetic energy instead of separate ammo, which makes level design easier and is much more forgiving for the player. I added various FX & SFX (bosses, weapons, camera placement on explosions, rock breaks, …)

The magnetic arrows bounce off walls with many visual fxs.

The grapple now has this violet/purple translucent look which is consistent with all the magnetic item/weapons.

I had to design logos and visual identities for the game various events/enterprises.

Breaking rocks is not that easy to code; you have to take into account the volume and orientation of the base shape to generate smaller stones.

UI

I integrated some UI effects, including particles and sounds when you gain life or money and when you move around the menus. There are also background particles to bring life to the interface and a custom cursor for the mouse.

Optimization & Steam Deck

I spent quite some time optimizing dynamic loading times in the open world. It’s not perfect but much better than it was. This enabled me to re-test the game on Steam Deck, and it works pretty well with good quality! I also rechecked all the font sizes (not too small) so that I could ask Steam to get officially validated for Steam Deck. Sadly, it seems I’m too small for them to review and stamp the game.

Rewriting Code

While optimizing, I also cleaned the tag system and integrated the localization of controls (which is a 3rd party library) into my main localization system. It’s much easier to support now!

Audio

On top of working on various sound effects for items, characters, and gameplay elements, I set up a centralized audio system to avoid the annoying comb effect when the same sound is launched multiple times at the same moment (or too close in time). But this forced me to decouple sounds from the visual effects. Still a work in progress.

Options & Menus

As I optimized the game, I added several options regarding performance and other aspects:

• FPS target
• Full screen vs. windowed support
• Changed the dropdown menus to simpler buttons, which are easier to navigate
• Controls now have 2 categories, with hopefully more intuitive settings regarding axis inversions
• Option to disable step echo
• The item wheel selection is now easier to navigate from both joypad and keyboard/mouse
• Better help display
• Menus are navigable with the d-pad

Various graphical options.

With all these new features, I updated the demo on Steam.

II – Marketing

As usual, I still struggle with marketing. However, I applied to the Indie Cup, the OTK Pixel Pitch, and the Jump High festival. I also entered the Steam Autumn Festival with the Zefyr demo. Hopefully, these will bring some visibility to the game.

I also tried to post more often on my social media (Twitter, BlueSky, Threads, Discord) and even reached out to streamers/players on Twitter, but without any success for now.

And that’s it for now!