As we wrap up development on Jointed, we want to take a moment to thank everyone who has played, tested, and supported our project along the way. Your feedback and encouragement have been invaluable in helping us shape the experience into what it is today.

A very special thanks goes out to our supervisors, Emiel and Brecht, for their continuous guidance, sharp insights, and honest feedback throughout this journey. Their support played a huge role in keeping us on track and pushing the game to the next level. 

What started as a rough idea slowly transformed into a fully playable adventure—complete with heart, challenge, and atmosphere. This final devlog marks the end of development, but the beginning of Jointed being experienced by players the way we envisioned it.

From the entire team: thank you for being a part of this!

With that out of the way, let's talk one last devlog:

Our Artists:

In the final week, Stan focused on adding those last artistic touches that really brought the world of Jointed to life. To break away from the more rigid and rectangular shapes of the level, he created additional organic cutouts in Photoshop—placing them throughout the environment to add visual interest, variety, and a greater sense of depth. These elements helped make the forest feel more dynamic and natural.

Beyond the level, Stan also took charge of the game’s trailer. Drawing inspiration from existing examples, he crafted a strong and engaging intro to grab viewers' attention and maintained a clear visual rhythm to showcase gameplay and atmosphere in the best possible light. His eye for pacing and composition played a key role in selling the tone of the project:

Finally, Stan prepared a selection of in-game screenshots to feature on the main page. These stills give potential players a quick but powerful glimpse into the visual identity and mood of Jointed, setting the tone even before they hit play.

To enhance the level's visuals and cohesion, Hanna made a final adjustment to the pits, replacing some of the randomly placed spike traps with a new variation of spikey vines. These larger versions maintain the same shapes and color palette as the earlier ones, but now better match the look and feel of the final section of the level. Especially alongside the giant leaf platforms, these new vines make the ending feel more intentional and thematic.

She also made a small visual update to the rotating cookie platform. As Elias will mention later in the devlog, the cookie now changes its face depending on whether players are standing on it, giving it more personality. To support that further, Hanna added little holes to the cookie model to make it more readable as a biscuit — a subtle change, but one that helps the world feel more cohesive.

And finally, Hanna gave our Itch.io page a visual facelift. She added a custom logo, banner, and color scheme to give the page a warm, polished look — perfect for welcoming new players into the world of Jointed.

At last but certainly not least, Flor wrapped up the final animation touches for Jointed by creating a few unique sequences for when the characters join together and respawn, adding more personality and polish to these important moments in the game. As the project neared its finish line, Flor—along with the rest of the team—focused on ironing out the last visual and technical kinks to prepare the game for export.

To support the final presentation of the project, Flor also created two quick character renders, helping to showcase the game's style and bring the characters to life outside of gameplay.

Our Devs:

Elias added life to the gingerbread platform by making its face change dynamically whenever players stand on it—an expressive detail that adds a lot of personality to the gameplay. He also implemented a scrolling background for the start menu, giving the opening screen more visual interest and making the user interface feel more alive.

In addition to these improvements, Elias took care of some final bug fixes, ensuring a smoother experience overall. To finish the polish sprint, he also assisted with capturing gameplay footage for our trailer, helping us communicate the feel of the game to future players.

Mathies, one of our programmers, focused this week on ironing out key gameplay bugs and polishing systems for the final release of Jointed. He tackled an issue where players didn’t behave correctly on moving platforms, ensuring smoother and more intuitive movement. Additionally, he refined how the curse rope behaves during respawn — now it spawns cleanly with the players, avoiding awkward movement and visual glitches.

To improve the game’s flow and prevent players from backtracking, Mathies reworked the respawn system to always spawn players at the furthest checkpoint reached. He also ensured several RFX were properly implemented, helping bring our visuals up to par across the board.

To wrap things up, Mathies contributed to the creation of our gameplay trailer, helping to capture the best moments of Jointed for players to see.

In the final week of development, Bram focused on fine-tuning and polishing the user experience. He adjusted several gameplay and UI values to ensure everything felt just right, while also squashing some lingering bugs, such as buttons that weren’t scaling on hover or were unselectable altogether.

Additionally, Bram contributed to the visual polish of the game by helping implement the animated, scrolling background now visible in the main menu, adding an extra touch of life and atmosphere to the opening screen.

Screenshots 

Before thanking you all for staying with us during all of these devlogs and reading all the way till the bottom, we want to share the in game screenshots that are also shown on our main page:

✨ A Final Thank You ✨

As we close the chapter on Jointed, we want to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who supported us throughout this project. Whether you playtested, gave feedback, followed our progress, or simply cheered us on, this game has been a real labor of love, and it wouldn’t have come together without the collaboration, creativity, and dedication of our entire team.

Special thanks again to our supervisors, Emiel and Brecht, for their guidance and insight along the way.

We hope you enjoy playing Jointed as much as we enjoyed making it. Now go forth, grab a friend, and see if you can make it through the forest, together.

– The Jointed Team 🌿🪢