Devlog - Months Ahead (Patreon)

Hayo~! Devlog-chan here!

Been a while since we did one of these. We've been making steady progress, getting all of the high priority items done since last we checked in, and a bunch of the medium priority stuff, while making sure there's new content each week. So let's talk about what we'll be working on, and then what comes after.

Alright, so first, the UI. We've been steadily working on the UI whenever we build up a buffer on weekly content, and some of that has already made its way into the game, notably the Character Customization screen and the Brothel UI. The remaining UIs are a mix of placeholder (Quest Log, Save/Load screen, etc.) and semi-finalized (Battle UI, Title Screen, etc.) Our plan is to finalize all of them, and we've written out all the requirements for that, and we've been making good progress on it behind the scenes - we have new Character and Inventory screens that we're keeping under wraps. 

Aside from something we need to finish, the UI isn't just the UI - as we finalize it, it'll open up more gameplay-features as well, which will let us flesh out the RPG aspects of the game. With character relationships comes more cross-encounter content, with inventory use during encounters comes more interactivity and complexity within a given encounter, and now that we've finalized the inventory screen, we'll have more interesting stuff related to equipment and customization.

At this point we've committed to animating every character, and we're well on our way to doing that.  Over the next few months we'll be completing the existing cast, and then once that's done, we'll begin expanding it again. As it stands, every member of the cast has CG-art, so that's one sweeping pass done. Once they're all animated, and the UI work is done, we've got backgrounds... and then it's just pure art and animation work!

We've been working on story mode stuff behind the scenes as well the last few weeks, as well as new story mode content. It's now a lot easier for me to place the story mode map, and to add cool new time-based features that will start to shape how story mode is played. Over the next few months, we'll be expanding story mode into a full-blown, well, story. 

But don't worry, there's still more planned for Adventure mode. With the new characters that will round out story mode, we'll be placing the map bosses for each map, and creating a few new maps to finalize Adventure mode as  well. 

We know there are certain things that everyone is clamoring for - more expansive endings, more companions, more role-playing options, and, of course, the Evoker, and that's all planned, but it's one step at a time. Some of that stuff will come over the next few months, and some will have to wait until we've got the core gameplay experience of Story and Adventure modes fully operational. 

But Beta is in sight.