🔧 Devlog 23 - Critical moments, secrets and aftermatch (Patreon)

What I'm currently working on

This week I was very busy with critical moments — those moments you experience in training when one of the fighters' HP drops to 0. But since this is a real fight, it requires much more preparation.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, in the new fight, Diego's first critical moment (when he reaches 0HP) took about 20 hours to make xDDD. It has lots of images, sounds, specific camera placement and some other neat tricks.

I really like it, and I think for those who enjoy fight scenes, you will like it as well.

However, I did more things. I reviewed all the content up to the fight, polished it and fixed bugs. It was a bit of a relief because I still had several loose ends and I hope I'm not forgetting anything ;)

Ahh and I actually got around to planning MC characters art. Like a list of characters with different appearences you could choose from! I'll leave the ideia I had below for you to see. But I still prefer a first-person game, so I guess I'll have to use these for something else :P

A secret about the world

Since the game started, I've been dropping micro teasers about the world and about the characters themselves. They're quite subtle but they're there, in what the characters say or do. Hints, so to say. But it wasn't something I expected you to figure out on your own because, as I said, it's really subtle.

However, now that we're reaching a possible moment where this will become clear and exposed, I hope you like it. It was a decision that allows me to expand the possibilities of storytelling, as well as consisting of something unique to Trueclash (I think).

But this divides me in several ways for the next patch. Should I show and introduce this now but without being able to give you deep explanations about it? Or should I cut the patch short so that it is instead introduced in the the patch that follows allowing to include the big explanation as well?

I'm unsure and still thinking about it.

Feedback from Viv and Alex

They had the opportunity to play and point out bugs that I now need to fix hehehe. They really liked several moments, including what I think is my favorite moment of this patch. Something more emotional and storytelling-focused and I felt more in the zone writing it than any other moment so far.

I leave down here a summary of their experience with it:

I hope you will like it as well!

After the fight

I like storytelling where things aren't spelled out, where there are hidden reasons, that the world is introduced gradually and where your creativity can fill in the gaps.

That's why I left Ren's hobbies and a bit of his past up to your choice. But there's something we need to explore deeper: your relationship with Matt.

I'm aware of why this friendship is important, but you're not. So, after the fight, I'm thinking of giving more attention to him because so far, it's been 2 patches in a row where there's drama and you can't explore more of the other side of your relationship — and I think you're needing it as well.

But I also feel like I'm a bit of a challenging writer, in the sense that I write characters based on qualities/characteristics but also flaws/problems as well, which means difficulties are present. That said, and as I've mentioned before, I want your experience to be more positive than anything else. But expect some hardships along the road in some of the paths you may take.

That's it for this week!