I just finished playing the demo (idk which version because I downloaded the game some days ago) and I have to say I really like the way this is going! it seems like a neat idea, as for the demo, my only problem for now is just that doing a lot of stuff traps you in a black screen without nothing else to do, that and if you use the Return Bell in the island you just get softlocked cuz the boat will be at the other side, but other than that, pretty neat! can’t wait for the next updates!
Also there’s some debug stuff on the ruins, the pillars before the bridge just give you a lot of weight, I guess that was there to test the different heroes breaking the bridge, just saying so you don’t forget to remove it.
Someone on the itchio page said that they were unable to get the mac version of the game to run. I don’t own any mac products, so can anyone who uses that version confirm that it does/doesn’t work?
I’d like to ask are the fade to black soft locks when characters increase in weight caused by bugs in the events or are they there just unfinished placeholders?
At this point in time for the current demo, it is technically a bug but not exactly. What’s happening is that my system I use to play these cutscenes is working as intended, but it is getting stuck because it’s looking for a cutscene that doesn’t exist, then looping back on itself and trying to play the same cutscene that doesn’t exist. This repeats forever, causing the soft lock. That shouldn’t be in the next build, when I posted this build, I thought that only the pudgy Ophelia cutscene was causing that and it was fixed. This was wrong.
I think I’m going to rework how the succubus quest is planned to work since it was a bit of a messy idea to implement. So instead, I’m thinking of making it work more like this:
Ending A: Simply ignore or never find the quest in chapter 1. She will appear again only in chapter 7 basically as a gag, maybe have a small quest associated with her.
Ending B: Slaying her in chapter 1, she won’t appear again, this will offer the most substantial material reward over the other two.
Ending C: Keeps her alive, but at an arm’s reach. She will be present in every chapter except 8. Every day you choose to “spend time” with her as Sarah, increasing her magic defense stat, at the cost of current MP and gold.
Ending D: Keeps her alive, but she will stay with the party on the quest. She stays in the Inn and will do the same thing as ending c, but she will not charge money. The trade off, is that she will have several events that can make your life more difficult if you meet certain conditions.
Normally I will not go into this much detail about the quests, but since I already had a plan for this one and decided to change it, I’m making an exception.
Almost done implementing the background diet system into the game. I made some changes to how it works though. Now being on the diets that causes weight gain will have permanent benefits if you’ve been on them for a few days. This affects the meat, sweets, pasta, and gourmet diets. With the exception of the pasta diet and a part of the gourmet diet, you need to be on the diet for 3 days (doesn’t have to be 3 consecutive days) to gain a permanent bonus to relevant stats. Here’s a list of what’s effected by what.
Meat: +1 to defense
Sweet: +1 to magic defense
Gourmet: +1 to all stats except agility, and +1 max MP.
The pasta diet and gourmet diets will increase max HP every day by +2 instead of having to be on them for 3 days. This is due to how +1 to a stat point is way more valuable than +2 to HP. This is to make it more granular and balanced.
This is in addition to the buffs that meat, sweet, and pasta diets provide. Gourmet I’m still deciding on if I want it to give a level up or not yet.
Got the first 4 rogue weight gain sprites done. I got to get back to working hard on this game, I’ve been procrastinating for too long now. Sorry for that.
Weapons and armor had a bit of an overhaul to make things more unique and allow for more playstyles. I’ll go over them here, but I also added a bookshelf in the weapon shop that goes over this.
Swords: only warrior can use, basic weapon, allows for shield use
Greatswords: only warrior can use, reduces agility a little, does (1.5x damage compared to swords of the same tier + whatever the agility penalty was in damage).
shields: only warrior can use, increases defense, decreases agility
Staff: only mage can use, increases magic damage and physical damage by a tiny amount.
Dagger: mage and rogue can use, increases agility and evasion for reduced damage.
Bow: only rogue can use, does more damage than daggers, increases evasion rate but decreases hit chance.
Heavy armor: only warrior, greatly increases physical defense, reduces agility
Light armor: warrior or rogue can equip, modestly increases defense, increases agility
Robes: only mage, increases magic defense, increases physical defense by a tiny amount.
also thinking of adding an enchantment system for daggers inspired a bit by Elden Ring’s ash of war system. Where it changes the weapon’s element from physical to one of the magic elements, reduces the physical attack bonus from the dagger, and adds the stat points reduced from the attack stat to the magic attack stat.
NPCs have now been placed around town during the day and morning, these are the same npcs that you will see at night during the break in minigames. I still need to do their pathing, dialogue, and some conditions based on side quests for a couple of them. I intend to have them say different things based on time of day, whether or not they have been robbed by Sarah, and quest outcomes if it relates to that NPC.
The town map has been implemented, so now you can fast travel around town. For this chapter, you can go to the western, central, and eastern parts of town while not in the adventure field or during break ins.
Diets are fully implemented, but I still need to redo the diet description text since the effects have changed since I wrote them originally.
Mayor’s office/house is fully furnished, just need to add functionality to the NPCs inside. This leaves only the new building I added in town that still needs to be made.
Temple has gone under a bit of a redesign to better distinguish it from a generic RPG maker temple.
Ophelia’s weight gain will no longer cause soft locks.
For some reason I’M NOT getting money from working, i can read that it’s supposed to be given next morning, but i’m not getting it anyway so jobs are useless for me
So i did a little of testing and that’s what i know:
If i’ll try to work as mage, then warrior and i’m gonna pickpocket people as Rogue, i’ll earn ONLY 100 gold instead of 150
When i once tried to work as mage, then warior and i broke into house as rogue, i only earned money that i got while stealing from this house (i did not earn anything from normal jobs)
I think that normal “jobs” are kinda bugged
Literally a moment ago i ate as Mage while inviting everyone else (i ordered most expensive dish if that’s important), then worked as warrior and did pickpocketing as rogue, i got ONLY 50 gold.
I got this weird cutscene with sprite of Ophelia and text “Ophelia pudgy”, after that i can’t talk anymore with this witch/mage that offered Ophelia being guinea ping - i’m mashing space/enter/z and nothing happens
Yep, those bugs are still present in the demo that’s available, but I fixed those bugs for the next demo release. I hoping to get the next one out in a couple weeks. I need to implement just a few more things before it’s ready though.
Are you going to rebalance fighting too? I remember playing old version that did not have these annoying spiders and i was able to earn some money through fighting, now these spiders make this almost impossible - they are too strong.
Fighting is not really how you’re meant to get gold in this game, which is why every enemy only drops 1 at a time, just so there was some profit to be made by doing this. With the jobs now not being bugged, hopefully that fixes the gold problems. I only ever released one demo so far, so you probably just got really lucky to avoid them before, the lake also spawns them at an increased rate compared to the starting area.
I will rebalance the fighting though, as I really haven’t touched the combat portion of the game too much just yet, other than a few spells, weapons and armor. I already lowered the spider’s HP a bit while typing this, so I’ll see how that works out.
I’m working on some more of the fun stuff now. There is a part of the Fae path of the first dungeon that involves a lot of potential weight gain.
The dungeon, general polish, bug fixes and some insight into the game’s story are going to be the main focuses of this next demo.
The Fae/pacifist path of the dungeon has the most weight gain, though the other path will have some as well. The Willpower/fighting path will have some content centered around weight gain, but just know that it’s going to be a bit underwhelming in this build since I haven’t refined the combat in the game yet.
The main part in question can have several effects based on what you do there. It could be as little as gaining quite a bit of weight (or none if you want), the game’s first bad ending, or permanently gimping yourself for the whole playthrough (this is signposted as clearly as possible without spoiling, you can’t do this by accident).
Plenty of bug fixes have been done.
Polish comes in the form of more sound effects. Things like when you select a job for the day, a sound effect will play that corresponds to the job you picked (a dripping sound for the potion job, sweeping sound for the maid job, hammering for the weapon shop etc.), footsteps when going up and down stairs get louder and deeper in pitch when your characters get fatter, more screen tinting to fit the setting etc.
The nun (placeholder sprite) will also give a bit of insight on the game’s lore and will give you direction for the main quest (which at this point ends after you complete the dungeon). I also added another step to get into the dungeon in the first place.
Spent a lot of time working on a fun cutscene and the surrounding game mechanics you get access to after it. It’s the result of that one, typically really bad, choice I mentioned in the post above (not the bad ending). Probably not something you’d want to do in a real playthrough (although, I have added positive aspects of this choice since I typed the last post), but since this is just a demo at this point, I hope people check it out and enjoy it.
I got another sprite animated because of that cutscene too. I’m going to use it in other cutscenes during chapter 1, because I’m really happy with how it turned out. It’s got 4 frames to it, and I won’t say anything else about it. Most of you will just have to wait a bit longer to see it (I did post it in a specific discord server).
Speaking of animations, I also added a very simple animation to whenever time passes. I already added a clicking clock sound effect to time passing, but now there is a clock graphic that moves a bit when the sound effect plays. Hold Z, Enter, or left mouse button to make the time transitions go more quickly if they start to grate on you.
Once this cutscene is finished I need to;
Do more work on the spell learning system. Get the very basics of dagger enchanting in place.
Do some final touch ups on the Fae path of the dungeon.
Get the bare basic events of the Willpower dungeon path done (only like 2 event types).
The bad ending cutscene for the Fae path.
Some blob size gameplay features (I got the skeleton in place now, can’t have people getting stuck).
How’s this for a setback? My PC won’t start now. Thank God I backed up the game last night onto a flash drive to save the last few days of progress. I think it’s just the power supply and I’ve got money to fix it (unless the graphics card is also dead).
For now, I’m back on my old PC. I’ll be working on sprite assets for now, just so I don’t cause any conflicts with what little else I did yesterday.
I’m sorry to hear that pc issues are never fun but it shows backing up your work in multiple places is always the way to go. This way the only headache you have to deal with is the pc itself and not losing progress on with development.
