SLARPG: General update May 2020 (Patreon)

Howdy everyone! Here's another progress update on what we've been working on lately.

The main thing that we've made progress on is the game's intro sequence! Some of you may not know this, but the opening of the demo actually isn't where the game starts. The demo features a highly condensed opening to get you into the heart of Greenridge as quickly as possible, but there's around 10-20 minutes of stuff prior to that in the full game. Some of this was seen in a less polished form  ages ago in the first trailer. (Boy, I sure do need to make another trailer, huh.)

Even though the intro contains some of the first dialogue I ever wrote for the game, it was actually going to be one of the last sequences we implemented. However, I realized that it would probably be a good idea to have the proper opening in place when we start doing private friends and family playtests of the first half of the game in the coming months. I wanna make sure that the pacing of the first hour is strong, and that the story elements that become important around the middle of the game are properly established early on.

It's a good thing I decided to work this stuff out, though, because it turns out the intro I had planned in my head was about twice as long as it needed to be and all over the place tonally. It contained a now scrapped scene that was intended to set up Melody's personal arc and frame her as an underdog. I was really proud of my ideas for this scene on paper, but in practice it made the start of the game kind of a downer and framed Melody in a poor light. I may have to share a video of this scrapped intro someday for y'all to see what I mean.

Ultimately, it was easy enough to transplant the few bits of important information from this sequence into another scene, making the intro much snappier and lighter in tone. We're very happy with where it's at now! The game is also starting to feel much more cohesive to me now that it's not just the demo with several hours of new stuff tacked on to the end.

On top of the intro, we've also been working on a brand new, never before seen area! I can't say much about it at the moment, but trust me when I say it's very pretty and has nice music. Picture it in your head now based purely on the fact that I said it's pretty. Woowww, what a cool zone, right

That's all for now! As always, thanks for the continued support, and stay tuned for more news!