Next Update News from lead programmer Ursa Senior (Patreon)

Long overdue - we've got some things to share! The Summer Update pt 2

Development of the major Summer Update has now concluded

Beta branch release is playable now for those who want to get involved in playtesting & feedback

Steam general release will be ready in a week or more - just for stability & balance

The major features of this update include:

Ability skill ranks, allowing you to rank up & change the affect of all playable combat abilities

Monster migration (replacing the old Dungeon Cycle system) to introduce new & different enemy mobs to the dungeons

8 new wild enemy monsters; 4 Holstaur & 4 Wolf units will now appear in the Savannah on different weeks

It's nearly the end of 2023! How is development progressing?

Roadmap progress is behind schedule

This latest update's major feature took longer than expected, especially when deliberating on combat balance

We have hired a 4th programmer to join our team in a fulltime capacity

This will give us the best possible chance of staying on-target and with the full feature set laid out in the roadmap

We actually started some of the content for next update ahead of time

See more below in 'what else are you working on?'

Will Cloud Meadow's development be affected by Unity licensing changes?

As we are quite far into development it would likely not be viable for us to change engines for Cloud Meadow

The proposed runtime fees in addition to our ongoing Unity Pro licenses would approximately double (or more) our total license costs to Unity, for no benefit to us.

However at the time of writing this, Unity have declared their intention to adjust the proposed policy changes again

What else are you working on? How about...

In addition to the new Holstaur & Wolf enemy units, we've also close to concluding several new sets of enemies for the dungeon;

3 new pirate units

4 new wild Lamia units

4 new wild Harpy units

We're preparing to begin work on introducing Kiram - the 10th & final recruitable NPC

Kiram's combat toolkit is getting a revision from the old playable prototypes

We're setting up his introduction with a unique story sequence

This will branch the end of the Poacher's story arc into beginning a new arc, setting up their shadowy benefactor & leading into the Forest dungeon

More work behind-the-scenes:

On the art side of the team...

Environment assets on the first zone & additional boss area for the Forest dungeon

Concept art for sections of the second Forest zone, including new harvest nodes

New expression portraits for dialogue characters!

The writing team has been busy finalising dialogue & cinematic scenes for the story Act II introduction, especially Kiram's introduction sequence

Progress is also being made on narrative sequences for the Forest dungeon

New plans for written content to make Cloverton feel more alive are also in the works

Our animators have been progressing well in their many-months work on the new HD sex scenes

Evan x Orchid loop section was completed quite recently

Animation improvements & finalisation work has been contributed to future upcoming combat units; demons, cyclops & others

If you have any questions we are always readily available in the following places:

Introduce yourself, discuss the game or send bug reports directly under the eyes of developers - in our very own Discord [ https://discord.gg/cloudmeadow ]

Drop in on our Livestream where Artists, animators & programmers work daily on Piczel [ https://piczel.tv/watch/Spurple ]