Happy Halloween! It has been quite some time since I wrote about the progress of Pendulum Ascension due to my recent trip to GDC Online Down in Austin, Texas. Since then my team and I have made great strides in developing our game. The art team produced several art assets with more currently in progress, all the while a few members adapt from traditional art to digital. The programmers implemented a number of mechanics into the game including the first puzzle, specifically the combination-lock for the display case containing the pocket watch. As of today, the narrative group hammered out story elements which solidified the connection between what the player does and the overarching plot. In the case of art assets, I created a word document and a story for every member of the team to contribute to two lists, the first containing art assets necessary for our game, and the second for optional/aesthetic assets. With this, we are able to prioritize what the art team needs to develop and begin working. From that list, I have created a few assets including an ornate style door of a mansion, matching walls, and the pocket watch. During this development we ran into an issue with our engine, Flashpunk, in which it does not handle vector art efficiently. Rather than change engines, which might not had even solved the issue or introducing new problems, we made the decision to change to raster art. From this change, we need to be more aware of the dimensions of our assets as we lose vector art's ability to scale. In the case of programming, I don't have much to say aside from an issue they brought during the last team meeting. They feel the narrative team has not communicated with them clearly, specifically on the creation of puzzles. As a solution to this, Tyler and I are discussing schedule changes in order to get people from both programming and narrative to have some work blocks together, and have already made one change. In the case of narrative, some members of the team felt the narrative was disconnected or underdeveloped. It wasn't clear what importance the murders had or how they connected with the plot other than having a member of the Usher family involved. Without diving too far into spoilers, we made a connection between the Usher bloodline and our main character Martin Levine, and the various murders involving a pendulum type theme (think about what a pendulum does), and gave our antagonist a motive for his actions. As this subject was discussed earlier today, I can't give much more detail as it is still a work in progress and is subject to change after the other team members have a chance to hear; however I believe we now have a solid foundation and hopefully will be able to present more soon.