Slicer said something about hoping that everyone is approaching the polishing stage of their projects. The notion that I'll be able to focus on "polish" seems rather wishful thinking at the moment but perhaps it's not entirely out of reach.

The player can now... I guess "evoke" is the word, a shadow orb into his hand and throw it. Currently, when thrown it seems to curve somewhat around trees, which is rather unexpected but actually pretty cool. I think it may be the result of some steering behavior code but I thought that I left that part out. I need to add one more small animation so that when the orb comes to rest it forms a pool like shadow on the ground that is a hazard to the player. Also, the shadow orbs, as well as everything else, need a bit of a shadow of their own for some sense of height from the ground so that there's a bit of an indication as to why it just seems to stop. When I have that in place, I should make sure the player can die from contact with the pooled shadow orbs on the ground. And then I can finally see about getting the skeletons added. Their AI isn't going to be much at all but if I get them moving towards the player and they attack in some way, then I do believe I have my main elements and something that resembles a game, for all its rough edges.

In this screenshot, I didn't move the player while firing off orbs in various directions. The resting appearance will change by the end of the night. You can see the curve where the orbs landed. I had intended on making the player charge up the spell to evoke the orbs before being able to throw them but I don't think I have time to work on that and it's also pretty cool to fire off a bunch of them in rapid succession. Given that every orb fired becomes a hazard to the player (skeletons won't be affected by the missed orbs because... um... magic), I think I'm better off with the way it is. I'd like to try a charging mechanic afterwards though to see how it might look for other projects. It occurs to me that maybe the shadow orbs or the resting orbs don't look so shadowy. I'm hoping that I can get an effect or two in that might help and otherwise be convincing that what I have is a black shadow based magic as the main mechanic even if it's not what might be expected graphically. If not... well I've been having fun doing all this which has been as much my hope as anything.