Welcome to 2021’s last monthly sync. November and December were a bit of a roller coaster for me. The loss of a relative and the IRL work going a bit hectic did drain me from developing the game. So, this will be a short one (I don’t have much work that would be easy to show off anyway).

First up: How is version D0.33 is coming along? In short: it’s close to release. I do need to do some balancing work for the game, but most of the actors are locked in. One thing I noticed during private beta-testing was that the game was quite unbalanced at the start, which can make the game until after the prologue. Since the story is more of a slow burn (at least how I structure it), the imbalance did make the game less fun. This primarily due to Rick and Jena taking buffs in certain cases (Rick’s damage scales on lost HP and Jena gets a buff when DP is max). I’m working on re-balancing the battles and the stats in the prologue, in addition to introducing some variety during Crystal Cave. In the long term, I do want to do some tweaks to the story to improve the pacing.

In other news, I have implemented some quality-of-life improvements. First off, the option to start in full screen was added. A new font is also used throughout the game. Roboto Condensed was a favorite of mine, but the new one (Inter) is much easier for readability. And it’s a variable font, so I can scale it to whatever style I need. I’ve also added achievements to the game as well.

So, that’s all for now. Once I’ve settled down with the IRL stuff, I hope that I can bring some people to help me polish the game. It will take some time, but if all goes well, I’ll be able to finish the game. See you all in the next post. And have a great new year.