Sorry for having gone rather silent for the past week on the development front;  I’ve been hard at work on “the secret third game mode” that I’ve mentioned a few times before.  To be honest, this secret third mode is probably actually the fourth game mode;  there’s “on foot” (which is mostly about collecting and tuning game rules), “on graveship” (which is mostly about setting up the game world map), and the unnamed “high altitude” mode, which is a bit like the “on graveship” mode, but concerned with larger-scale features of the world, and overarching design decisions.  Of course, I don’t expect people to spend much time at all in that “high altitude” mode, so maybe I shouldn’t count it;  for the most part, you set it once and then forget about it.

Regardless, I’ve been spending a lot of time working on this other “fourth” mode.  And while I’ve been making games for an awfully long time, it’s an area that’s very new to me.  A bit like when I spent a week or two learning how to program collision and physics systems, back around the time that I made “Muncher’s Labyrinth”.  Only  more so.  In fact, this is a new enough idea that I wasn’t even sure that it’d actually be fun in a game until I finished prototyping it yesterday;  I’ve certainly never seen it done before.  Anyhow, I’m still keeping it under wraps for the moment, but I wanted to assure you all that I haven’t just vanished into a pit or taken a week’s vacation or anything;  progress is still being made!

I’m just not willing to spoil the surprise, yet, by describing what I’ve been up to or posting screenshots.  :)