29 September 2026
Good morning! I owe you a little update on Unchosen.
After injuring my ankle, I hit a pretty rough patch mentally. I was exhausted and feeling defeated, so game development slowed right down. Since the last devlog, I’ve made it through three tutorial videos. I could try to reconstruct every step, but honestly, I don’t remember them well enough to give you a useful play by play. Here’s what I do remember building, plus the enemy behaviour I worked on myself.
Treasure chests that stay opened
One of the tutorial projects was a treasure chest, along with persistent data for its state. If you open a chest, leave the scene, and return, it should still be open. You shouldn’t be able to collect its contents over and over just by walking out and back in.
It’s a small thing to see on screen, but an important thing for the world to remember.
An enemy that can chase you
We also added a chase state to a new enemy placeholder: a goblin with a vision cone. Step into its field of view and it starts chasing the player. After a certain amount of time, it gives up.
I did briefly run into an issue where the enemy wasn’t leaving its chase state properly. The exit behaviour needed attention, and that was fixed fairly quickly. I wish I had more to say about the tutorial work, but I’d rather keep this update accurate than invent details I’ve forgotten.
Getting the retreat state working
This is the bit I’m most excited about, because I worked on it outside the tutorial and finally got it working last night.
I wanted an enemy that reacts when the player stays too close. The enemy has an Area2D around it to detect the player. Once the player has remained in that area for a set amount of time, the enemy enters its retreat state, moves away from the player for a set duration, and then leaves that state. It’s a simple dodge or retreat for now, but it already makes the enemy feel a little more responsive.
Getting there took some debugging. My enemy state machine calls each state’s physics(delta) function during physics updates. At one point, my retreat code wasn’t running as expected because the function in the state didn’t match what the machine was calling. Once that was lined up, I still had to work out why proximity detection wasn’t triggering the behaviour.
The useful breakthrough was seeing the player’s hitbox print entered and exited when I walked into the area. That told me the area was detecting something, but the hitbox wasn’t a reliable way to tell whether the player was standing nearby. I switched the retreat area to detect the player’s CharacterBody2D through body_entered and body_exited, then matched the area’s collision mask to the player’s collision layer. After that, it worked.
I could build on it later with a cooldown so an enemy can’t keep retreating repeatedly, or vary when different enemies decide to back away. Right now, though, I’m just happy I got my own enemy behaviour working. That was a really good feeling after such a slow stretch.
The rest of life
I haven’t made more Unchosen art lately. I got sidetracked drawing a League of Legends piece after the new skins came out, and life has been busy in general. We’ve bought another house, which settles soon, and I’m looking forward to the upcoming public holiday and PAX Aus. My wig is here; my cosplay isn’t yet, so fingers crossed it arrives in time!
There’s been some good progress with my ankle, too. I’m finally out of the wheelchair and the moon boot, although physio has been a big part of my life lately. I also saw my horse for the first time in about two months over the weekend. I missed him so much that I cried when I saw him.
I’ve also been completely absorbed in a new hospital simulator game. I watched the Resident Evil movie and briefly considered writing a review, though I’m still deciding whether that’s a post anyone wants from me.
What’s next for Unchosen?
The game is still in progress. I’m doing what I can when I have the energy, even if this month has been much slower than I wanted. Next, I’d like to start replacing placeholders with the enemies and items that will actually be in the game, and build out the art assets for Level 1. With the Christmas break getting closer, I’m hoping I’ll have more time to put into it.
This is a leaner devlog, but I wanted to be honest about where things are. I had a bad break, and for a while I didn’t have much to give to the project. I’m feeling better now. The chest remembers that you opened it, the goblin can chase you, and, as of last night, an enemy can finally decide you’re too close and back off. Things are moving again.
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