Hello world! This is VoidLynx. 

This is VoidLynx, over.

Hey, you! Hello! Welcome to voidlynx.com, the newfound home of VoidLynx, a software development company that makes video games, web apps, software optimizations, and occasionally blogs like this! This is an intro post for our new blog and site. Here you can find content regarding game design, computer setups for various tasks, tech tips, programming solutions, DevOps, updates on our own projects and much more!

Aside from the occasional posts of varying topics and categories, we plan of starting and following up on these two series:

1) "What makes games great?"

This will be a series on video game design. We will analyze a given game, look for what it does right, and what makes us enjoy playing it, what makes us love it, what makes it... great! The first entry will be called "What makes Terraria great?", and it'll be analyzing, you guessed it, Terraria. 

We'll discuss how each aspect of the game was carefully constructed to make you want to drop out of school or work, and start a new world every time a new update is released . 

Everything, from the design of each item category, the bosses, the in-game events, to the player's goal and main motive to play; everything adds up to a formula, a substance that results in the players laying in their couch for 8 hours straight, and then thinking "Man, these are the best 20 bucks I ever spent!".

Like Picasso once said, "Good artists copy, great artists steal". 

So logically, we should just find an open-source clone of terraria, call it Terracraft and sell it on Steam! Thanks Picasso! 

I'm kidding! What the famous phrase actually means is, at its root, about finding inspiration in the work of others, and then using it as a starting point for your own project. And no, this isn't being a copy-cat. As long as your game isn't a shameful exact replica of Terraria, you shouldn't have many complaints on this regard. 

What you should do, in this case, would be to implement the philosophy, logic, functionality and/or any other design aspect the game does correctly, and implement it on your own project.  

So this is, in short, what the "What makes games great?" series will touch upon. The first entry will be released the following week.

2) "The Last Wrath" Development Journal

A subsidiary of VoidLynx is VoidLynx Game Studios, and it makes video games! Our current project is "The Last Wrath", and it's a very interesting project.

The Last Wrath is a 2D, top-down, boss rush, action-adventure  game. Set in a (weird) post-apocalyptic world, the land is inhabited by humanoid rat-people, punished by their gods for their excessive lack of faith. Their once glorious civilization has been reduced to a few isolated tribes.

Your dying tribe's Head Priest has found an ancient writing, describing a sacrifice to redeem the species sins. The sacrifice: The tribe's greatest warrior. He must defeat 7 dark spirits to prove his worth. Each battle that is won will help build a celestial bridge to the Sun Temple, where he must defeat on of the god's physical form. After that, he shall enter a Secret Chamber, where, apparently, the sacrifice truly begins...

In this game, the player can pan around the camera, walk, roll, and slash his sword. The combat mixes up some bullet-hell elements. Everything that can harm the player comes in the shape of "Evil Energy" (color green, we'll come up with better names later on in development), which can be projectiles and what not. If the player touches the green Evil Energy, he gets damaged.

On the other hand, some Evil Energy will randomly turn into Good Energy (color red), and the player has to make contact with this energy to charge up his magical Ceremonial Sword... When the player's sword is uncharged, he may slash with it, and it'll slash like any normal sword. But the enemies that await you can't be slain with steel, they must be slain with Good Energy. So the player can only execute effective attacks with a charged blade. 

Green = Bad, Red = Good. It's a Star Wars reference.

So the combat consists of dodging bad bullets, running into good bullets, charging your sword, and then heading up close to pull of a satisfying slash. The result is, in a way, similar to that of Dark Souls: The player  is orbiting the boss, dodging and rolling over waves of attacks, only to close in and get a hit whenever the opportunity arises. It's quite thrilling.  

Slash without charge

Slash with charge

The project is still in early development. The player, controls and combat are already set up, two bosses are already functional and the initial tribe is finished... but there's still a long way to go, and a lot of what we have now will change, and every update will be documented in this Development Journal.

So there you go! That's a brief overview of what we'll be doing here. Hopefully people will find it useful and/or entertaining. 

That's all for now. Have a great day!

- The VoidLynx Team