#nowheremi

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - Jogging Bombs

Every game has to have some kind of explosive-adjacent enemy in it. I don't know when this rule got put into place, but it holds true to this very day.

In keeping with this natural law, I've implemented a LEGALLY DISTINCT WALKING BOMB WITH FACE into my game. They're called Jogging Bombs. Because they jog at you. I'm very creative.

Anyhow, you can parry their leap by shooting them in midair, allowing you to juggle the bombs and redirect them into nearby enemies. Jogging Bombs always explode on death, but if they aren't parried during their leap it won't damage nearby enemies.

Below is some concept art from when I was trying to figure out how to design them without it feeling too similar to Bob-ombs. I ended up going for the spherical-bomb-with-fuse design anyway because I managed to make the face and appearance feel distinct enough in practice.

The landmine design will probably also be coming in as a high-heat obstacle that appears in areas that were previously free of low-cost leg removal services.

(Background music is Permission Slip by Mainland)

[midnightcrustcat]

recently saw the Nowhere, MI demo in the newest haunted ps1 demodisc,and already in love with it

drew a lil Concord too

can't wait whenever the full game releases!! :0

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - Meet The HNX Snapdragon

The DoE built the snapdragon in response to a research incident that created a powerful supernatural predator that could not be slain with conventional weapons. This same creature ended up ripping a hole in space and disappearing, rendering the snapdragon completely unnecessary.

Rather than a bullet, the HNX Snapdragon uses a concentrated hair-thin beam of ephemeron radiation to "trick" the universe into believing that there's solid matter where the beam travels.

What ends up happening is that once the radiation dissipates, the laws of the universe realize there wasn't any solid matter to begin with and in an effort to over-correct, it replaces the space with a hard vacuum. The speed at which this happens causes a localized implosion that destroys everything in the beam's path, organic or not.

By using this exploit the beam can technically pierce any armor (since ephemeron cannot be stopped by most solid materials), but risks destabilizing space-time as a result. Oh well! I'm sure nothing will go wrong if you keep erasing matter over and over again. For fun.

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - Aquajet

Let's go for a swim! Ha! Ha!

[feverdreamjohnny]

I haven't made music in a really long time, but recently I was inspired by a friend to pick up FL Studio again and try to compose some combat music.

This is a WIP for Fusion Mourner Jupiter's boss theme.

WARNING: This track is a bit loud lol

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - Souls

Needed some kind of boss drop for important items, slapped together a lil thing today.

[feverdreamjohnny]

The new toolbench system is done, so you can get augments and frames for your guns to make em really unique.

Need your rocket launcher to become a primary? Put an assault frame on it and just go ham. Need the shotgun to be meatier? Try the ivory tusk frame and get 500% more damage per-shot.

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - Burdens and Augments

Diabolical Combos

I always love it when games let you make these really ridiculous combinations that can clear an entire room if you line everything up right. My first experience with something like this was actually Dead Space 3, which I played as a young teen and quite enjoyed (despite it apparently being the worst in the series lol).

Keeping up with the joys of tinkering and making horrible combos, I implemented augments and burdens as a part of Nowhere, MI's core experience. I've shown augments off before, but I don't think I've ever really spoken in-depth about it much, so I thought it would be cool to do that here.

ANYHOW, so as you play you can unlock new forms for Concord that have different specializations. There are four planned (with three already implemented). These are: The Revolver, The Rocket Launcher, The Shotgun and The Railgun in that order. Each of these forms has three modifications slots:

Slots A and B are for augmentations, which fall under two different categories: Elemental and Mechanical.

Elemental Augments cause rounds to trigger unique effects as well as deal specific types of damage to enemies. An easy example of this is Magma Casing, which causes your rounds to explode and light enemies on fire. These types of augments also change the gun's color, so at a glance you know what effects the gun should have.

Mechanical Augments are meant to synergize with elemental augments and modify how projectiles behave. For example, Nut Cracker DX is a mechanical augment that causes projectiles to leave small bombs behind, which then take on the traits of their source. Bombs modified with Willow Wisp will levitate and fly after enemies, Rolling Dynamo bombs will fire small jolts of electricity at nearby targets before exploding into a large bolt of chain lightning, and Nobi Gen causes bombs to explode into a cluster of smaller bombs.

The third slot is the weapon's frame. Frames are rare modifications that overhaul how a gun behaves, allowing it to cover a different specialization. For example, PX-2 Hornet causes the associated weapon to act like an assault rifle, which allows you to take the relatively slow-firing shotgun and rocket launcher and use them as primary weapons. It also makes the revolver act like an SMG. A weapon's frame can have drastic effects on how that weapon can synergize with different augmentation combos, such as in the video above where I use PX-3 Ivory Tusk to get huge slow rockets that deal a lot of damage, and I use Rolling Dynamo to make them shock nearby enemies. After that I throw on Vega GAZ-R to manually control my rockets, and now I have a launcher that allows me to fly a little blimp drone around.

Now then, that sort of joints into the other major element of Nowhere, MI in the form of the burden system. Similar to how the player gets surrogates that allow them to double jump, dash and use venge veins, there's also a set of surrogates that have a cost to equip, but allow for more unique gameplay choices. These are called burdens. Burdens tax the user's metabolism, causing their internal temperature to increase the more of them the user has equipped. From a balancing standpoint, this serves as a hard limit on how many burdens you can have at once. From a pure gameplay standpoint, the higher your heat, the greater the enemy threat becomes as you start to attract attention to yourself.

Think of these like how Dishonored handles bonecharms, except way more evil.

Burdens come in four flavors: Common, Heavy, Rare and Ultimate. The costs of these burdens are 10%, 25%, 50%, and 0% of the heat bar respectively.

Common Burdens typically augment small aspects of the game and serve as flat upgrades. This includes a 15% chance to dodge incoming attacks, increased health and defense, the aforementioned Vega GAZ-R which lets you control your missiles, and the ability to run quicker.

Heavy Burdens tend to be more exotic and add some fun modifiers to gameplay. Some examples include summoning pets to help you fight (in this case, a little smiling ball), drastically improving the performance of your jet dash, and changing how some augments behave (such as allowing Rolling Dynamo to turn enemies into tesla coils as well).

Rare Burdens are some of the most powerful upgrades the player can unlock. These include being able to revive when you run out out health and summoning a guardian to fight for you, Having a small orbital familiar that fires beams corresponding to your current weapon's augments and frame, or even launching a vacuum cannon when reloading your gun.

Ultimate Burdens are almost impossible to find and tend to have extremely potent effects. Unlike other burdens, ultimate burdens don't cost heat. They cost other stats. An example of this is a burden that gives you a 90% chance to dodge any incoming damage, but locks you at a single pip of max health. Another is a burden that increasingly gives you defense as you lose health, makes you slower and slower as it goes.

The hope is that with all of these little systems, players can fit into their own fun niche and explore the town of Nowhere while nuking entire rooms because I failed to balance everything correctly.

I hope you folks enjoy the game when it comes out!!

(Background song is "I Got Knocked Out The Same Night England Did" by Bilk)

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - The Toolbench!

I'm very excited to present the newest (and arguably most crucial) feature of Nowhere, MI: Weapon customization! Now you can combine upgrades found in the world for some really exotic effects!

Along with the toolbench is a new silly mechanical augment! Want your bullets to leave sticky mines behind? The "Nutcracker DX" has you sorted. The mines even have special behaviors depending on which upgrade they're paired with (Homing rounds causes the mines to float and track enemies instead of sticking, and nobi-gen rounds cause mines to explode into even smaller bomblets)!

The new frame system also adds extra depth to weapon customization! Do you hate how slow the rocket launcher is? Swap to the PX-2 Hornet frame and rapidly fire a bunch of tiny rockets instead! Need more oomph for the shotgun? Slap the PX-3 Ivory Tusk on there and blast your foes! Each frame has its own unique pros and cons to help you specialize your guns, so choose wisely.

(Music I was listening to is CHAOS by LUNA AURA)

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - Dialog Improvements

Finally took some time to add proper character nametags as well as dialog options!

Under the hood there are a couple improvements to the conversation system. Firstly, conversations can now bridge into one another seamlessly, which is useful for creating dialog tree loops as seen in the video above. Another improvement is a direct integration of the game's trigger logic system into the dialog manager, so dialog options can be hidden or exposed depending on the game world's condition (as well as what items the player has, random chance, the player's current heat level, etc).

With all of this work out of the way, it'll be super easy to implement new quest lines into the game as well as sharing lore via adaptive conversation trees.

I hope you all enjoy it when it's done!

(Song I was listening to is Go For It by CRUISR)

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - The Faltering World

If you fall through the level you will end up meeting god!!! Wow!!!

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - Jet Jet Mouse

It's him! He's here to improve your jet dash with his words of encouragement.

Music is Bete Noir by On Video

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - Shops and Money

It's a bonafide American past-time! It's what we were fated to do from birth! It's...

Shopping!!!

I decided to add money to Nowhere, MI because I realized a while ago that if enemies are going to be able to respawn after their first slaying, killing them repeatedly needs to actually benefit the player in some way otherwise they'll start to become obnoxious obstacles between you and your destination. I had been planning to add some kind of money/shop system to the game for a while, but the initial plans resembled a bartering system more than your conventional storefront arrangement, and it felt kind of clunky conceptually.

What happens with all of the upgrades that are just like, "so-so?" Bartering can only take you so far for that, unless you implement a bunch of smaller common items you sacrifice for them, and that started to feel a bit too much like some kind of primitive crafting system which I vehemently wanted to avoid. Do you just sprinkle them in the world and hope the player will find them as they go? I mean the good upgrades can be rewards for quests and bossfights, but for the basic burdens that improve some of your stats and stuff I needed another way to approach it, so the shop system got revamped alongside the addition of Chroma so you can just buy stuff at whatever storefront is nearby.

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - New UI Visuals

I've been reworking some of the UI elements to look a bit fancier, including Concord. Here you can see some new bullets, while the old sprite for the magazine has been replaced with a sort of faded background.

Not sure I'm sticking with the faded backing, but the pre-rendered rounds are here to stay!

(Music is Paint it Gold by Fake Shark Real Zombie)

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - Weapon Sound Design

Threw together some new sounds for the shotgun and rocket launcher! Also bullets now have proper tracer behavior and don't just "winkle out of existence" as someone once told me.

[feverdreamjohnny]

Nowhere, MI - New Monkey Art

As a part of a larger effort to make the game's aesthetic more interesting, I've been looking to replace most of the NPC art with new pre-rendered characters.

Here's what the monkeys will look like from now on! You can thank @bryce-bucher for such a wonderful monkey. He modeled and animated the sucker!!!