WIP Wednesday:WIP Wednesday:WIP Wednesday:September 2, 2026September 2, 2026September 2, 2026
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Hey, everyone! I’m here tonight for the first Work-In-Progress Wednesday of September. I’m excited for Fall! Here’s what I’ve been working on lately:
Road to Effects Gigapack v3.0.0
Above, check out the first completed effect for Super Pixel Effects Gigapack v3.0.0! This is a sci-fi charge-up effect, and I wanted to make it have a little more character than previous charge-ups. A swirling vortex of energy combined with frequent lightning bursts makes for a volatile, powerful-looking charge!
Atmocopter Experiment: Charge Boost
Speaking of “charge”… I continued working on Atmocopter a little bit last week following 2D Con, and tested out some new moves for our intrepid little copter-bot that should help him out in future missions. Let’s have a look!
Hit “Continue Reading” for more GIFs and the full post!
Above, you can see Atmocopter doing a charge boost attack (work in progress- No visual effects yet). To do this attack, you press and hold the attack button until Atmocopter fully charges up, and then you release it to quickly dash forward, damaging any enemies you hit!
Smaller enemies can be destroyed and passed through…
…while larger enemies or enemies with enough HP to survive take the damage and cause Atmocopter to bounce off. You also bounce off of walls, as you could see in the first GIF.
This gives Atmocopter a more powerful attack, and a brand-new movement ability. You can use it in mid-air to give you a horizontal boost, or use it against enemies for a lot of damage. It also opens up new possibilities- You might be able to break an enemy’s shield or break destructible terrain with the charge boost!
Atmocopter Experiment: Ground Dash
For a long time, I’ve been trying to figure out how to give Atmocopter a quick movement ability that (A) doesn’t feel overpowered and (B) is clear when you can use it. Previous attempts at adding a dash or boost ability resulted in dashes that felt too strong or had arbitrary limits, like a meter or an invisible cooldown. In this new version of Atmocopter, I thought I’d give it another shot… Introducing, the ground dash!
For the ground dash, Atmocopter uses his arms to quickly propel himself forward. The ground dash can be performed only while Atmocopter is on the ground. Since Atmocopter’s a hovering character, I thought it might be a little difficult to figure out when you can/can’t use it, but I figure that since players can already figure out when you can jump, they’ll be able to figure out when they can ground dash.
As you can see above, it lets you move pretty quick! To keep it from feeling overpowered, Atmocopter returns to his normal move speed when you leave the ground, such as by jumping or falling off a ledge. Aside from jumping, you can also cancel a ground dash by pressing the opposite direction on the D-pad (or stick, or arrow key). Since the player’s arms are used for the move, you also can’t ground dash while carrying an object, which will make future puzzle sections interesting and challenging.
Like the charge boost, you bounce off walls if you hit one while ground dashing, but not as much. I think future speedrunners are going to have a lot of fun with this one!
Atmocopter’s Officially in the Slow Cooker
As I mentioned in the postmortem after the convention, Atmocopter will now be in the slow cooker as I work more on pixel art and on SparkBolt Studio- Just wanted to do these last couple experiments above first. I’ll be continuing to work on the game design document in the meantime. The latest progress is that I’ve done a first round of brainstorming on what abilities you’ll get from each boss. I don’t want to spoil it too much, but tentatively you’ll be able to mix/match abilities from different bosses, and depending on what you have equipped Atmocopter’s appearance will change. You’ll also be able to spend the nuts and bolts you collect to upgrade those abilities!
That’s all for today- I’ll be hard at work for the rest of the week on pixel art. I’ll be on a much-needed break next week, so I’ll see you on the next Work-In-Progress Wednesday with more art on Sept. 16! (I’ll take a lot of corgi pics over break to share, too!)
See you then,
-Will