Hey again folks,
I'll try to post these updates a little more frequently - both to share development progress outside of twitter and also to keep track of development publicly! Sometimes it'll be smaller things, sometimes bigger, and I'm hoping to get some general feedback and comments from anyone looking forward to the game!
1. Production Planning
This past month or so has been a decent amount of planning for the full game. I'm currently aiming for six in-game days, meaning that the final game will be approximately six times as big as Open Mic. That should end up being about 10-12 hours per playthrough, which I think is pretty perfect for a game like this. The idea is still that you should be able to replay it and see new things every time (provided you make different choices and try a different character build) but I also feel like going over 15 hours or so might cause the game to overstay its welcome.
2. Tons of Art
Besides planning, I've been doing tons of new art for the game - all the art for Day Two is now completed, and some of Day Three is already done as well. Every scene in the game is hand-painted (on a tablet, granted) and every frame of animation is drawn and painted separately, so it does take a little bit of time but I feel like I've made pretty swift progress, which feels great.
3. Reworking the Intro
One of the most common points of criticism was that the intro was too slow, or felt railroaded. I didn't initially think it was, but enough people mentioned it for me to reconsider. As a result, the opening scenes are getting reworked to be a lot more interactive. In the final game, you'll get up from your desk and walk around almost instantly after you're done with...
4. CHARACTER CREATION
...which is also something I've been reworking completely! Not only is there now an actual dedicated screen for character building, but I've gone ahead and added three new stats along with a choice of eight perks, which makes your build a little bit more unique. This does mean that a lot of pre-existing dialogue will have to be re-written or heavily edited to make use of all these new features, but I feel like it's worth it at the end of the day to keep the entire game a lot more fresh.
Don't worry about the UI for now - this is all WIP and will be polished for the final game!
That's all for now - next report will probably be ready in a month or so! Next, I'll be finishing the intro rework (should be another week or so) and revamping all the dialogue currently in Open Mic. After that, I'll move on to dialogue for Day Two, which might end up being even more than Day One. (which I think say at around 100,000 words, which is far too many)
Have a good one,
Martin