Mops & Mobs: Dev log for the weeks from 26-09-28

Friedrich:
A big chunk of the last few days I spent with replacing the graphics of the combat cards (with new ones by Johannes), and then nudging the UI elements here and there, constantly. This is a bit mind-numbing, but at least there's a visible improvement of the combat gameplay.
I also added character profiles to Mops & Mobs. This is quite rudimentary for now, but when you meet a new character, they will be added to your diary with a sketch and a (very) short description. The idea is that additional info gets added to these profiles over time. And while working on this, I thought it would be fun to add NPCs you already met to the start menu, so now you have a random friend greeting you at the start.
Another thing was cutscenes. Of course we won't have long movies or anything like that. I just wanted to add short and meaningful camera fly-throughs that emphasize something that might be missed by the player otherwise. For example, there's a lever that lowers the magma level in the forge, and by changing the perspective it's much clearer now to the player what's happening.
Oh, and it's October again already! We still have some Halloween in-game decoration that should appear in the first level (and in the demo). But as the level changed a bit since last year I had to move the decorations around (and fix some bugs).

Jana:
First off: We have a new helping hand aboard the MS RAT KING! Welcome, Tom! He’ll be helping us with social media and marketing. This week, I spent some time getting him familiar with what we’re working on, the tools we use, and all our documents.
Another thing I’ve been figuring out is how we could secure a little extra funding for the final month of development. Those of you reading this via our Discord will know what I mean. I’ve had a few chats with friends who had some helpful advice on the matter.
Apart from marketing and PR, I also worked on lots of little things here and there, without really settling into any one task. I watched playthroughs of the first level to figure out with Friedrich how we could improve the main puzzle in the demo, created some UI icons, checked our schedules, and so on.
All this jumping from one task to another is making me feel a bit scatterbrained at the moment, as there’s just so much to keep track of in the back of my mind. I’d love to focus on just one thing for a little longer next week.

Patrick:
Since Level 4 actually has more than just one floor to explore, decorating this level is a bit more time-consuming than the previous levels. Also, you can often see the ceiling in this level, which is why I’ve started decorating it more.
Here you can see a few nice, mysterious holes, and there’s also something glowing in between that I’m currently working on — but I think that’s a bit of a highlight, means I won’t say any more about it. ;)
As mentioned in previous devlogs, level 4 is a swamp area, so this week I also added a few ferns to the local flora.

Last but not least, we wanted to show the glowing fish in motion, so here's a little video by Jana: