Hempuli's blog

The reveal trailer for Noita, the game we’ve been working on at Nolla Games, is now out along with its website! I made the most of the pixel art & enemy designs. This has been under covers for a long time, so it’s great to finally get to announce it to the public!

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Here’s finally that one weekly update I missed some time ago! I wasn’t feeling very inspired and ended up working mostly on Baba after all. The stream was pretty slow but I did fix some bugs, cleared up a very curious unintuitive mechanic (thanks Mokesmoe!) and added a new level. The word I added last time has turned out to be a pretty tough one to create levels for, but it’s interesting enough that I think it can stay. I have plans for a really odd and cool word to add, but that’ll require a bunch of work and despite my plans saying otherwise I didn’t get started on that today. Oh, and I added those brick tiles seen above!

In ESA 2, I made some sprites for a new boss, so that’s nice! It’d be interesting to have fun designing a boss again. :)

Today I streamed again with just one monitor; it’s a hassle and I really want to remember to get the necessary equipment around next time. I adjusted & redesigned multiple Baba Is You levels and added one(?) new one. I also added a new word, which turned out to be a huge hassle to get working and there are still situations where things will break down with said word. However, I feel that it could have potential for some pretty cool levels!

I intended to break the lull in ESA 2’s development with some boss work, but the single-monitor issue along with a couple extra breaks drained my motivation so this ended up being just a Baba stream. I’m still one weekly stream behind, so maybe that belated one will be dedicated to ESA 2?

Today’s stream concentrated on Baba Is You, as has been the case for the past months, but ESA 2 also saw some work. In ESA 2 I added a new level and some new tiles to go with that and an important visual element that’ll be used in a bunch of cutscenes. The room added is the last room before a boss, so that’s sweet. In Baba I finished a room I had started before and added 4 (I think?) new levels, although 3 of those were replacements for removed ones. I edited a certain word mechanic pretty heavily (which necessitated the aforementioned replacement), and while I lost what I think to be a pretty funny mechanic, I got a fairly similar substitute in its place and some new potential puzzle elements. There was some nice chatting going on, and I think Alvaro_as was the one who suggested making a poem in Baba; it’s a wonderful idea! Now I need to figure out how Red and Blue work, though.

Nolla Games has now gone public!

I’ve been working at this studio for the past 4 or so years mainly as a graphics artist. The studio consists of me, Petri Purho (Crayon physics deluxe) and Olli Harjola (The Swapper). Our secret project, one we’ve been constructing all this time, is almost ready to be revealed, and thus establishing the company behind it is now relevant. As can be seen, we’re dealing with some complicated pixel-based physics simulation here.

There’s going to be an official Nolla Games stream in 11 AM PST 7/13/2017!

We will announce our project on Monday the 24th!

Nolla Games website

Official Twitter

Official Youtube

Press kit

I’ve been painting a bunch with my girlfriend and just finished this piece; I’ve generally considered myself pretty bad at drawing spruces and creating a sense of distance, but I think both work pretty well in this one! I was really hesitant to add those darker shadows in front of the beetle, but ended up adding them (after encouragement from my girlfriend <3) and I'm very glad I did; the piece is much better with them.

A new word was added to Baba, and it turned out to allow for some pretty interesting levels; as the title says, I managed to create 4 new ones using this new word, which is really nice! Another new word was on the to-do-list, but I realized that I’ll have to ponder on how to implement it properly because some potentially problematic cornercases turned up. Some new decorative objects (and their respective words, of course) were also added; the plan is to differentiate the game’s map into various visually and mechanically (or difficulty-ally) distinct areas.

I had started a new room in ESA 2 but left it unfinished, so the stream ended with me finishing work on that room and some related story flag things. I’m very very close to the end of the final area, here, although the amount of things I’m not happy with is so long that I’m not sure if this is something to feel good about just yet!

The chat was very lively and encouraging today, thank you a lot! :)

Unlike I had planned beforehand, today’s stream concentrated on, well, Baba Is You. I redid a couple levels and fixed some bugs. I think I have a good amount of levels now, but more might be coming & the existing ones need enormous amounts of work.

After this I returned to ESA 2 which I’ve really been neglecting for the past couple months; A new enemy was added (as seen above, although it’s still fairly WIP) and I added decorative stalactities/stalagmites with the new prop system. I also adjusted the behaviour of an older enemy to be more predictable. All in all small changes, but nonetheless something.

I’m one stream behind schedule at the moment, so there’ll be an extra stream someday, but it’s hard to say when exactly. We’ll see!