Hello! A lot to cover here so I’ll get right to it!

Me and Trent just released Contract Rush: Mission Sin, a short prologue where you can demo the character “Sin” and try out his moveset. 

We tossed around the idea of making a web version of the previous demo, but I think it’s more interesting to have this as a totally standalone game! Keeps the full DX game more of a surprise too for those that didn’t play the Next Fest demo. 

Go give the game a try and come back when you beat it! I’ll wait here.

Wow good job, welcome back. 

Now for the Contract Rush DX update…

We’re still working on it! What a dang shock. The past few months have been a grind to make all the endgame content. I said before on twitter that the game was playable start to finish, but that was only the normal ending.. We still had to create additional content afterwards for the TRUE ending. I’ve learned from Undertale Yellow that the best way to overscope and take too long is by having multiple endings, so of course we decided to do that.

Developing this final stretch does remind me of Undertale Yellow a lot, though I have a lot more categories of work to do this time. I sometimes go to Master Sword for advice and help since he’s been in these shoes before, scrambling to get everything together as director in the last months of a games development. 

We’re just about done with the true ending, we’ve got all perks and key items in, and nearly every sub contract. I’d place us at 93% complete with the game. There’s a very small amount of extra content to be made, and then just polish for the remaining months. 

For the release date… Pretend to be shocked when I say we’ll slip from the “spring” date ever so slightly. Why? Well, I was always planning to be cheeky with the spring date, and release it around the literal last day of spring. Upon hearing some advice to be wary of June release dates for indie games, we reconsidered and thought about it a bit more. 

Long story short, it will be more so Q3 than Q2. A lot of this time will be dedicated to polish. We likely COULD make an earlier date, even May if we really aimed for it, but it’d be a mess. This additional time also allowed us to make Mission Sin, so hopefully that’s an okay apology! I can’t give a solid date right now, but it won’t be long until we can. 

In other news… I can now introduce Team Ficus! This is our studio name we’re working under now, and the team we will be releasing future games under. Nothing has really changed, it’s currently still just us two, but think of this as a commitment to still creating games in a similar style for (hopefully) many years to come.

We have a website, and a Steam developer page (do give it a follow, that helps a ton! It’s like wishlisting, but for developers.)

The plan for Contract Rush DX is the same. No publisher, just us. We hope that if it’s successful, we can continue being totally independent and maybe bring in others to work with us! Who knows what the future holds, but it is exciting to be at the beginning.

That’s all, maybe my longest devlog I wrote yet. Thank you for reading!

Hello!

I was meant to write this like last week, but I'd been way too busy, and focused on working on the project, to get around to it. whoops...

We recently wrapped up with our Steam Next Fest demo, which was a short trial of 2 of our levels to get feedback and help market the game during the festival. The reception was VERY positive, better than I'd expected, and I'm feeling more confident in the final game than ever before! There was of course feedback and criticisms, and we're doing what we can to make adjustments based on those, without changing what's core to the game. There some elements i'm stubborn on staying the same though..

Launching the demo was almost like a small game launch itself, and I feel like it better prepares us for the full game. Shockingly we barely had any bugs at all in it! Hopefully that carries true for the full thing.

Speaking of the full game.. We're currently working on the FINAL BOSS. We just finished designing the final level, and everything leading to the boss, and now we're pushing onward with this and the ending. Within a few days, the whole game will be playable start to finish! It feels like such a huge milestone. Just looking back at all the work that was done on the game, its hard to believe the stuff we were working on in 2021 will launch at the same time as the stuff we're working on now. Like dang this is all the same video game!

Once the final boss and ending are finished, we're not quite done yet. There's still some bonus content, and then extra time to polish everything up to our standard. We've done a lot of polishing as we go, so this hopefully shouldn't take too long.

We're not quite ready to give a release date, though next delvog for sure will have the day locked down. For the time being, we are still aiming for this spring, or ever so slightly past it. It's getting damn close to being done though, so no matter the date it will be launching this year! Might be more in the middle of the year than this early half of it though lol.

That's all for now I suppose. Last night was a near all-nighter working on this endgame content, but I'm feeling very happy with how everything is turning out. I think the game will be super special once its finished, so I hope you look forward to it!

DISCORD

TWITTER

Heya!

Honestly I just wanted to write a post spouting whatever, most of my posts here have just been specific trailer drops, so what about a general LIFE update?

New Year

i didnt know i could put text in the center woah thats cool

2024 was solid for me. Made some big life moves, met many friends out of state, and ended up going to 3 conventions! I’d like to do much of the same this year, but more. I’m hoping to read more, experience more, and meet lots of new people. If I’ve never really talked with you before, what’s up how’s it going?!?

Maybe it’s lame, but i made a dream board for this year with goals written on it. I went fairly realistic, so I’m hoping to be able to accomplish most of them. I've got it pinned in my room so I see that shit every day!!

COOL POSTS

I'm always crazy inspired by art I see here. I'll often just scroll through the frontpage for inspiration on posing and rendering when drawing.

some of my favs recently!:

shorbo dorba.

by JestQuest

Just so many characters

by Doogler

ShinGodzilla

by mrFROST27

Ascending the Tower of Heaven again!

by ENErgyArtt

some stuff I've worked on recently?!

I'm always working on something these days. Balancing freelance with personal projects is something I've both always done, and ALWAYS struggled with. Either one or the other is on the back burner at any given time, so I'm hoping to become better at that this year.

• I did the sonic character creator section for fulpware! Many thanks to RGP for inviting me onto the project. I procrastinated finish my section for SO long, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Also there's a contract rush section in there by TheShammah which is CRAZY.

• I did some cutscene animation for Friday Night Funkin! It was for the Weekend update, which released early last year, but for some reason I never made a proper post about it here. It was an incredible experience working with Phantom Arcade on it, and I'm grateful to have been able to contribute to the project. I still gotta play the pico playable character update so I think I'll do that right after I post this :J

• If you like Undertale Yellow, we recently put out a free digital artbook! I contributed new artwork for the cover and end of the book, as well as commentary on tons of my older work for the game.

• sorry about all the links its just so satisfying to add them. this shits like a tvtropes page

That's about it i think?!?! Most days I just spend working on one thing or another, I'm hoping to strike a better balance this year in general! Don't wanna get burnout, but also don't wanna miss deadlines.. what do you DO

As for Contract Rush DX… steam nextfest is coming up so stay tuned…….

Long time no see!

Contract Rush DX is entering its last quarter of development, or around that at least. We're wrapping up Contract 6 of 8, so we are definitely reaching the end! Sorta almost. nearly. There's also upwards of 50 Sub-Contracts with smaller levels and challenges we also need to finish up so... It'll be a busy year.

Recently, we put out a trailer that has lots of new footage in it, including an animated portion I did. damn it took way longer than it should've but it turned out pretty rad so ITS ALL GOOD I GUESS.

Also as I was writing this I thought I should release something specifically for this news post so here is a LEVEL THEME woahh. This plays in the Rooftop Suburbs level, which you can see more of in the trailer!

Anyway, that's all for today. Remember the best way to support the game is by wishlisting on steam, and following on twitter! I always appreciate the support!

happy bday tom fulp

Kind of a late post but Undertale Yellow came out! WOOOOOO!

Well, maybe not everyone here knows what that is. Undertale Yellow is an Undertale fangame that I have been helping out with for the last nearly 8 years. We released a demo in 2016, which got pretty positive reception at the time, and continued to work on it up till release, which was on the 9th of this month.

The game was a big part of me progressing in artwork, and all of my Newgrounds uploads were posted AFTER I had already started working on it. I recently posted the launch trailer animation on here, but also here is a gif of a key shot that I animated in the trailer that didn't make it into that upload:

Also having worked on the game is Spasco, who is the co-creator of Neon Rhythm. If you enjoyed that game, there might be some little touches you'll notice in UTY.

It'd mean a lot to me for the folks on here to check it out! A lot of things I've learned from working on this game are being carried over to Contract Rush DX, so you can see where a lot of the DNA comes from.

Speaking of Contract Rush...

The game is still making great progress! Now with UTY out of the way, we will be able to work on it much more. We plan to stay quiet on it until we release the next trailer which shouldn't be TOO far away, so stay tuned.

That's all I've got for now. time to get back to the GRINDDD

Yo! It's been a while since I've talked much about the development on Contract Rush DX, especially here on Newgrounds. That means its probably a good time for a DEVLOG.

Where we're at: Right now, we are implementing systems for Sub-Contracts. These are challenge levels that have a variety of objectives, upon which completing you get a lotta CASH. There is a star ranking system, with different qualifiers for getting the stars.

The objectives for these levels can be anything from getting to the end of a short level in a time limit, breaking targets smash bros style, or beating special bosses. It's our way of adding lots of new gameplay types in without deviating from the general run n' gun style of the main levels.

The money you get throughout the game can be used to unlock CHARACTERS, of which we're aiming for around 5. Starting with only the protagonist, Cynthia, you'll meet new characters throughout the game who you can then hire onto your team. They'll then hang around the Cafe when not being played in a level.

Speaking of the cafe...

This is the Cafe, Caffeine Rush. It's the hub area of the game where you can talk to NPCs, or shop.

There's more to the area that isn't quite ready to be shown yet, but we've been making strides in adding all the extra padding to make it feel more like a real game. The title screen, file select, and pause menus have all also been mostly completed.

I also recently put up some more music from the game, so check that out!

The game has definitely gotten much bigger than it was originally planned, which I guess tends to happen with games.. Still though, I'm very happy with how its turning out. The overall structure is coming together, and even the STORY is being added in more. Haven't talked a whole lot about that, but there are plenty of story elements to tie everything together.

It's come a long way since the original newgrounds version. Things like shooting up, a melee attack, and crouching weren't even in there!

That's it for now, if you haven't yet be sure to check out the steam page for the game. I updated it recently and I'm thinking of putting this devlog there in the lil steam updates section or somethin. I wont add this part to it though this is just between you and me looool

SEE YA

NEW PROJECT TEASE

Me and Trent have been working on a fighting game project on the side for a while now, and to celebrate Picoday here's a small tease of it!

I don't want to give too much away, but it is a 2D fighter with gameplay similar to Guilty Gear, and a focus on Newgrounds-originating characters. We're hoping to finish it up this year, with a small roster and plans to add more characters to it overtime.

And for Contract Rush DX, we've been making a ton of progress on it recently. We are nearing the 50% point in terms of completion of the game, and have been occasionally posting updates to the games twitter account.

Anyway thats the end of this figburn direct, pretend I had a "one more thing" at the end and it was like cyberpunk 2 or something

WATCH HERE

Its been a while since the last update, huh. Me and @Trent-Sama have been working hard on CRDX, and we're finally ready to show off some of the new stuff added. New playable character, new stages, new bosses, all that.

The trailer also shows a bit of dialogue, which is something we've added since the original game. Theres actually gonna be NPCS and STORY and SHIT.

Development has been going smoothly! I'd say we're around 40% done with the game, which is more than I expected to be at. There's still plenty left to go, but I give an optimistic estimation on the release date as late 2022 or early 2023.

There's also new music you can listen to, from the new stage C:Drive.

Thats all for now I suppose, you can also follow the Contract Rush twitter account for more consistent updates.

WISHLIST ON STEAM

Me and Trent have gone back and polished up Contract Rush Dress-Up, along with adding more clothes and colors!

The game should now feel much smoother to play and use.

Also, we're doing a mini art contest with it! Just make any creation in the game, reply to this post with it (or on twitter with #contractrush), and we will pick our favorite 3 to get steam keys for Contract Rush DX! This is a short contest, so we'll be picking winners on October 31st

UPDATE:

Here are the three winners!

@chromxtic_

@moog404_

@Slepskel

Keep in mind that game is still SUPER early in development, so those keys are more of a pre-launch kinda thing and it'll be a while before they're playable.

The steam page for Contract Rush DX is now up! The game itself still has quite the ways to go, but you can now wishlist it in advance. From what I know, wish-listing is the best possible way to support a steam game before launch, so please consider it!

We've also released a slightly updated trailer to celebrate. The game is making steady progress, most of the major plot points (this one will have a story!) have been written out, and we're hoping for a 2022 release.

We still have more we wanna show, but we'll wait till a bigger trailer to show that stuff off. Hopefully we can get more updates out sooner!

Here is some art for one of the NPCs in the game, who you may recognize from some of my previous art.