Hello!

This is the fifth devlog for Hadonaut, after a very long break. Even though there hasn’t been any news since 2 years, I have gotten back to working on the game during the last 8 months. I was able to make good progress both in the code of the game and the visual design. More importantly, I have worked on the organisational structure and the development process, and made important decisions regarding game design, visual design and code structure, mainly to be able to include other people in this process. Below are the new developments that took place during the 8 months.

The game has now a new title; what was Hadonaut is now Aphotic! I have come to the conclusion that the name Hadonaut is both too generic and flew over people’s head (Hado-naut: hell traveller)… It actually went through a couple of changes before becoming Aphotic: the game’s title was Hadoscaphe (Hado-scaphe: Hell ship) before I even started to talk about this game on here. So, Aphotic is (hopefully) the final choice. The word describes an aquatic area in which not enough light goes through to sustain life; it represents both the gameplay and the story.

I have also migrated the project to Godot 4, to have access to the many new and improved functionalities! I am especially interested in the new navigation system, but also in the new Tween management, the new Gdscript syntax, and the very much improved editor UI. This allowed me to revisit crucial functionnalities of the game, like the saving system and especially the Pathfinding system.

Another big news: Aphotic is now on Steam! After a lot of work, I have created the game page within the Steam store, and you can now wishlist the game there! I have also created a Ko-fi page for those of you who would like to support my work.

So, I am now back to work, and I am looking forward to releasing a new demo of the game. There is no doubt that this will take a lot longer, since I work on this project only in my free time. Talk to you soon in the next update!

Have fun!