Proof of Life #340: Am I having too much fun with this? (Patreon)

Hello everybody and everysoul, how's it going this fine morning/afternoon/evening? Have you ever found yourself working on something with no clear finish line, so you just keep adding more and more stuff simply because you can? Well, that’s exactly what I’m dealing with right now.

I’m still in the “adding NPCs and editing maps” phase, and I might be going a bit overboard. Maybe?

Basically, the Magic Shop, the Inn, and the Church (specifically Jazon’s room) have been updated to reflect the time skip and the new “status quo.” I’ve also added the bordello as a location you can visit every evening.

On top of that, each area has been populated with NPCs for every single time slot. Most of these feature small freeroam events that rely primarily on visuals and audio rather than dialogue. The vast majority of the NPCs have their own dialogue lines, though, and I’ve tried to bring back as many recurring characters from the story as possible: Jazon’s aunt? She’s there. Merri and the barmaids? They’re all there, too. Characters from the mini-stories? Added, and you can even catch two of their freeroam events in the screenshots above.

Naevyr, Teresa (the former court magician), Julie, and Esmelda (the woman from scene two of Update 27) can all be spotted around the map, and I plan on adding a few more.

As you can see, things are still very much in the testing phase, hence the placeholder sprites in the top-left screenshot, along with a few pending assets like the dancing barmaids in the top-right screenshot.

Anyway, the goal here is to make the world feel truly alive and give players a genuine sense of time having passed rather than just delivering an update where you walk between freeroam events with only the two main characters and the two side characters.

I should wrap up the NPC placements and dive properly into the main content this week.

That’s it for this PoL! I’ll see you again next Monday~

Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful week!

N_Taii