Sunday Show Out - 2/22/2026

First, some clarification.

Just Beneath the Holler (JBtH) is the full top-down, 2D Zelda-like game I’m creating. It’ll be a few years before that sees the light of day. In the meantime, I’m making Beatdown in the Holler (BDitH), which is a combat-only, Link to the Past meets Vampire Survivors prototype. The BDitH prototype is slated to launch May 4^th, while a fuller, standalone release of the game coming in early 2027. Both of these are being created in service of making sure JBtH is as polished a game as it can be.

Now, onto the good stuff.

What did I do?

I’d already fixed one issue before Monday’s to-do list went out to subscribers, which set the momentum for the rest of the week. I discovered that I could create an elevation parameter in a TileSet and assign specific elevation values to individual tiles. At that point, all I had to do was edit the reelshot code in Zel’s player script to only grapple posts/reel in enemies if both were the same elevation. I was then able to edit the enemy’s script so that it would now only attack Zel if they were on the same elevation. And all that was before lunch on Monday!

Later that day, I renamed enemy.gd to enemy_base.gd to use it as a template for all future enemy types. I then created ranged_enemy.gd which extended enemy_base.gd and modified relevant parts of code. I created ranged enemy and projectile scenes and, after some bug-fixing, had an enemy that shot pellets at Zel when she got too close. I now had two enemy types I could iterate upon for variety.

I like to end the day by beginning the next day’s task: it allows me to jump into a new day already knowing what that day will bring. I can start the day faster and, invariably, get more done. So, I ended Monday by creating the placeholder images for a menu screen before hopping onto itch.io and setting up this:

Tuesday, I had this weird hunch that I should spend some time in FL Studio. A good Zelda-like game needs a good overworld theme and after a few hours, I had that good overworld theme. I’m pleased with it, but I’m also going to revisit it in a few weeks with fresh ears to hear all the subtle horrors that will need to be made right. For now, though, it’s good enough:

The main menu remained unfinished all that day. But on Wednesday? On Wednesday I woke up, meditated, drank my coffee, and made this:

It isn’t terribly pretty, but it is absolutely mine. I don’t know why I settled on v. 0.01, it just seemed right. Regardless, as that number goes up, then I’m making progress. And the main menu (mostly) works! I can enter the game, the game goes back to the main menu when Zel dies (that part took a bit to figure out, enemies were still holding onto Zel’s scene and it was crashing), and the game will close when I quit. It’s got a lot of game-like pieces and BDitH feels like a game now.

The rest of the week wasn’t terribly exciting but vital for meeting the May 4^th deadline. There are ten weeks between today and BDitH’s release date. That number feels both so large and so small at the same time. I only have the weekends to devote a significant amount of time to developing the game, so that number is even smaller than it appears. I absolutely cannot release BDitH on time unless I manage my time. For me, that meant spending Friday and yesterday creating a daily schedule that prioritized the weekends for getting more work done while assigning smaller tasks to weekdays in an effort to maintain momentum.

I ended the week in Aseprite, making a template for all of Zel’s animations. I have fifty-four individual sprites to make for her to have a complete sprite sheet, but I’ve got an empty canvas begging to be filled. That, however, is a Next Week Problem.

What did I learn?

It’s best to place all walkable tiles on the same TileMapLayer. You can manually assign elevation values to individual tiles and it’s easier to write a script for one layer than it is for multiple layers. If I learned anything else from fixing the elevation issue, it’s that the game the player sees is just an illusion of what’s really happening behind the scenes.

The value of “easy wins” for personal morale was reinforced this week. Game development even when everything is going well, can be an absolute slog. A lot of the work is iterative, if not outright repetitive, and that can grind your soul down to a fine powder if you let it. It was important that I choose an easier task mid-week, something I was confident I could implement in a few hours. The main menu was that easy task for me and finishing it broke the monotony of coding while making BDitH feel that much more complete,

What’s next?

I’d like to create at least one more enemy archetype before BDitH releases. That would give me three basic enemy types upon which I could iterate. I think that would be best tackled next weekend, as this week will be spent completing Zel’s sprite sheet and making sure her animations look solid. Not great (at least, not likely great), but good enough for a prototype.

As always, I’m thankful that you read this far and would be even more thankful if you were to subscribe to the newsletter. Thank you for joining me on this journey and I’ll see you tomorrow!