Resonance: Rhythm in You - Ooze - Pt 1

Spring is upon us, and Resonance Games comes bearing frogs!

First off, before we get into today's content, I personally want to apologize to those who follow our posts. I made some statements previously about the frequency of posts we would be making, and I've done a poor job of keeping up to those dates!

Being completely transparent, having to manage the game's development as well as multiple social media platforms (including these longer form posts), is quite brain melting! Also for these longer form posts, it usually makes more sense to package a bunch of things together (in this case, Ooze related material). If you want to stay completely up to date with all the most recent Resonance Games content, I would ask that you either follow us on Twitter or Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/resonancegamescommunity
https://twitter.com/Trinity_Xtreme

I usually post updates on those platforms more frequently (a post anywhere between a week and two weeks on average). It's no excuse to not keep the excellent itch.io community in the know, however, so I hope you will forgive the slow updates here.

With that out of the way, let's "jump" into it with everyone's favourite frog who grooves.

Anyone who has played the alpha prototype (link on the game page) knows that Ooze was a VERY frog -looking character, and naked to boot! While I love the old art taken from the talented ansimuz here on itch.io, I'm super stoked to see Barret Frymire's concept art come to live. gatekid3 (on twitter) has done an absolute fantastic job of conveying Ooze's cocky, self-aggrandizing personality into pixel-art, and I think you'll agree. So without further ado, let's present Zephra's number one frogy-bandit:

I don't know about all of you, but I think these animations are absolutely oozing with personality...
...I'll let myself out.

But honestly, I think gatekid3 did an excellent job of etching Ooze's personality into these and I can't wait until we can share his combat animations! These animations you see above are actually Ooze within the overworld environment, and he'll have a completely unique set of animations for when you're battling to his funky Soul Song (stay tuned for that soon!).

As I did with the Hero in our last post, here's a bit of a narrative take on Ooze. Enjoy!



The coin flew through the air, its glint catching the fire's light as it began to make its return journey.

"...listen boss, it aint' no trouble at all..."

The green skinned fogrett turned his head; the coin descended and he reached to catch it as his attention was drawn towards Christopher.

The metallic disc slipped past his fingers: a miscalculation on his part, as it hit the ground with barely a sound on the dirt and broken wood.

A snicker from across the campfire followed by a swift refocus towards Dusty: eyes wide as the fogrett gave him a sharp look.

"Uh... sorry boss, that was a... tough catch.." the bandit's eyes hit the dirt as he avoided his boss' gaze.

The green lips parted as Ooze, leader of the Zephra Brigands, turned back towards Christopher.

"Listen Chris, I'm not gonna let you go another month without sending something home." Ooze quietly croaked, leaning forward on the log.

The wind spoke up, catching the huddled group under the shade of the great oaks surrounding them. It had been getting colder as of late, and Ooze hated the cold.

"I haven't said anything to you boys, as I don't want to make exce...- empty promises. But you should know I have a few top notch ideas that will go way past us getting our pay day." His hand absently had drawn his dagger and his smooth padded finger traced the edge of the blade, unable to cut his rubbery skin.

"Ah, boss, you aint' talkin' about that half-mad plan again, are ya?" The deep voice of Erik piped up as the large man seemed to take his attention away from the piece of wood he was whittling. "I thought you said that it wasn't worth the effort?"

Ooze stood up, his long legs carrying him far above the fire as he looked down on his Brigands. The knife twirled in his hand, and unlike the coin, didn't cut his pride.

"...I know... I said that before, boy do I know.." Ooze's voice trailed off as he turned, placing a foot up on the log he was sitting on and facing the dark forest around them.
"But think about it, boys! Do we really wanna just sit around the forest all day as the low-lives from Castle-Crap take a dump on us everyday? And what about the scummy Zephra Talons or Kid Candle's gang, huh? We just gonna let them take what they want or, sweat on my butt, stoo..- stomp down to their level and start..." his voice depply croaked, exasperated as he leaned on his knee with one arm.

The Zephra Brigands stared into the fire. They surely didn't know.

"Listen boss..." Christopher meekly spoke up. "I can jus' take another loan from 'Tucci' down on main..."
Erik's deep voice cut off the defeated bandit. "We could go fishing around River Side, see what we can find?.."

Ooze's chest swelled two sizes for a moment as he took in a deep breath, held it a moment, and then released it in a deep croaking sigh.

"Yeah, I mean, sure... we'll go trash diving tomorrow and find enough to split up for Chris." Ooze turned back to his men. "Tell the other dead weight dumpkins: we'll do a spread throughout first thing in the morning. And get mean boys. If another two-bit dungbat tries to cut us off, we cut them." He sheathed his dagger as if to emphasize the point, but pinched his finger in the space between the sheathe and the hilt.

A small painful croak exited his mouth, as he held back the sharp pain. His men didn't seem to notice.

Ooze continued to issue orders to his Zephra Brigands and they continued to listen. Wasn't much else to do in the forest that night.
Tomorrow was a big day, and Ooze wasn't going to let another scavenger get in his way, no sirree.


Seems like there's more to Ooze than being a simple highway bandit. I won't spoil anything, but I really wanted Ooze to be a character that the player will love in some ways and perhaps feel less  warm towards in others. Maybe the Hero's unending determination and honourable way of living will sway our amphibious criminal?

Now before I sign off for today, I wanted to follow up on something I mentioned in my last post in February. As I mentioned in that post (check it out to learn more about our Hero!), Resonance Games attended Global Game Jam Vancouver 2021, and we presented the alpha prototype as well as shared all of our latest updates. If you want to check that out, it's only an hour long and you can get an inside scoop on the development:

As part of that presentation we introduced the idea of Resonance Games' Heirloom Packs. These are basically packaged collections of Resonance Games... well... stuff.! In this first Heirloom Pack, we commissioned stickers and emojis from some talented artists (maramel and bunnyobuu on Fiverr) and shared them with the GGJ crowd as an time-exclusive gift for watching our presentation!

And now we're sharing them, piece by piece, with everyone here on itch.io!
Here are the Ooze emojis:



As well as a sticker of our Hero vs Ooze:

We hope Heirloom Packs can slowly become a Resonance Games tradition, with all sorts of goodies in the future. For now, feel free to use these in any non-commercial capacity you wish!

I think that's quite a long post for now, but I hope you've enjoyed learning more about Ooze, and continue to stay excited for Resonance Games updates. It can be a bit of a bummer not seeing gameplay yet, but I promise that we have stuff coming down the pipeline. Slow and steady as they say, and I'm confident the foundations we're laying today are going to build a game project that will have staying power.

As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read these (I hope someone is haha)...

...can you hear the music?

Kurin Laing
Founder of Resonance Games