Hello, all you spicey gamers, Gideon here, the Director of Night Spasm and the founder of FanFaction. Welcome back to the Night Spasm devlog!
It's been a month already, hasn't it? Luckily for us, we remembered today was the day we share our monthly report (you can't trust Google Calendar... or a regular calendar!)
A lot has happened since 2022 rolled us all out of bed. Today I want to open this devlog with information regarding Chapter 2 of Night Spasm, as that's the big question buzzing around our community. With Night Spasm going free-to-play, many players have already finished the 40-hour experience of Chapter 1, so we're moving on to the next phase of the story!
But that doesn't mean we don't have more FREE content for Chapter 1! (You guys like free stuff I assume?)
What can we expect from Night Spasm Chapter 2?
The deal:
Chapter 2 will take place right after the ending of Chapter 1; No time skip, no transition, just the fall of Inevit's walls right away! Chapter 1 doesn't have a true "ending" for say, as you're still able to progress in the game after you've defeated the Region's final boss. But once Chapter 2 arrives, you can backtrack to MOG's meeting area and fulfill the necessary requirements to move on to Chapter 2 (if you haven't already)!
Similar to Toby Fox's "Deltarune" (which heavily inspired Night Spasm), Chapters 1 and 2 will be split up with Chapter 2 approaching in the form of a paid DLC. Previously, our plan to make the entire game a single purchase wasn't going to make the cut now that we're turning Night Spasm into the most ambitious indie game ever known to man!
Chapter 1 (Region A1 of Night Spasm) will serve as the free base game, while the other chapters will expand outwards from Region A1. The content of Chapters 2 and beyond will be downloaded into the base game even if you haven't bought access to the next required chapter. With all the data combined into one Steam package, it will allow us to develop and manage updates within a singular set of engine files, meaning any core engine or gameplay changes made from the base game will carry over to the future chapters. Additionally, moving Night Spasm onto other gaming platforms should be a simple task since the PC versus console versions will be made up of the same data with different, more fitting, program rules.
That's it for the boring stuff, anyways...
The premise:
Oh boy, THIS is when you get to see the TRUE COLORS of the Night Spasm world!
Night Spasm has been called many things by the fans:
-"A musical experience that keeps me up at night." (xXSedecLimeXx)
-"If Earthbound and Xenoblade had a baby." (Solid6Emanual_)
-"...Fever Dream Star Wars." (Alminut)
We're honored to be given these weird and wonderful titles for our project, and we're not planning to disappoint!
In Chapter 2, the Congo Snake Queen has been defeated, crumbling the walls separating Region A1 and the regions beyond! Play as MOG for the first time ever and travel with him to the commercial landscape of Klipiston Island where new friends and foes await!
Sail the water of the Island to explore the grand world of the Rechance, featuring new enemies, items, combat mechanics, and characters that will branch out your route even further! See how your interactions with characters from Chapter 1 come into play, either helping or harming your new grand objective. Will you grow your relationships to arise a new storyline? Or will they return to stop you in their tracks? What you say and do makes all the difference!
Chapter 2 is an adventure you don't want to miss out on! Meet new friends of MOG, stop a mysterious assassin trying to take you down, and learn more about the darker side of the Island's past. Is there any hope for the colony as the world goes against you?
I think you get the idea. This is where Night Spasm TRULY SHINES, with other features including major base upgrades, a colony conversation system, and more interactions with your colony members. We can't wait to tell you more, but that's for another time!
Stories from the workplace
An Unfortunate Data Crash
Around the beginning of February, we were working hard on the bigger half of Chapter 2. Everything was going as intended, and we really impressed ourselves with how quickly and efficiently we ground out most of the grunt work. We had taken a long Winter break on the game's development, focusing on marketing and planning out the remaining large details of Chapters 2 and 3. When we came back in February, we put all of our plans into action. It was fun to do and showed a lot of potential!
But then, on a busy Friday night, after hours of work from morning 'till then, we just finished programming and designing many rooms and battle scenes, and in the middle of saving our work, the power went out! It didn't come back on until late at night. After restarting everything and booting up the engine, something was TERRIBLY wrong!
Due to the interrupted save, about 15 main data files were corrupted; The item data was gone, the battle sequences didn't function at all, and half the code was missing for the actual player functions. It was so bad we couldn't even get to the title screen before a crash message hit us. The worst part was when we tried to recover the broken data without backups, all the backups either weren't there or were affected as well! It was absolutely devastating.
The biggest loss was the code and layout of one of the new regions. We worked for weeks turning our plans into a reality, all for it to be gone. It was a heavy story-driven area too, so all that juicy dialog went away with it. Tons of new game mechanics had to be 100% rewritten, and previous data from Chapter 1 had many undone changes.
Though we're still working on recovering the lost content, we've decided to stand firm and find the silver lining. Redoing everything encouraged us to shorten the smaller details, like compressing the actual size of the map and saving certain gameplay mechanics for later. By pushing old ideas forward and replacing them with other Night Spasm plans, it makes development far more exciting. Though this data crash definitely wasn't for the better, our new alterations inspired us in ways that will make Night Spasm the unique adventure it's set out to be!
And don't worry, we now have 5 different backup systems at hand. Call us paranoid, but it's better than nothing!
Plans for other platforms
Steam is great and all, but other gaming platforms, from PC stores to consoles, and streaming services. They all have their own benefits we want to get ahold of.
Our first bet is Itch.io, a classic platform for indie games alike. It would allow us to branch over to other computer platforms much easier due to its simplistic compatibility with Linux and Mac. While Night Spasm is optimized for all computer platforms, that's not the case vice versa, as a lot of optimization controls for the actual game engine live on many Microsoft resources (XInput especially). Additionally, Itch.io's simple upload process should allow us to release updates faster, although we'd rather keep Steam as our target platform.
Epic Games is another great PC platform. Its developer-friendly tools and large audience should help us manage the community. You guys have sent in many wonderful ideas for Night Spasm, and with Epic Game's moderation capabilities, we can respond to you guys quicker. Epic Games should be a well-deserved investment.
One market we REALLY have an eye on is the mobile platform! We've wanted to move Night Spasm onto Google Play and/or the App Store for a long time now, and we have a good idea of how to get it done. It would be a simple process too, only requiring an external touchscreen gamepad exclusive to the mobile edition (compacted into one app of course)!
Now while all of these markets are wonderful in their own way, we want to start light. We should be able to manage all of these platforms should they come into play, but you have to learn to walk before you can run. Therefore, we'd like to ask YOU what our next step should be! Please, in the comments below, tell us what platform you would like to play Night Spasm on!
-Mobile: Play Night Spasm on the go on Android and Apple devices, complete with all features and new optimization settings for older phones! No ads, just the straight-up game wherever and whenever you want!
-PC platforms (Epic games, Itch.io, independent launcher?): Play Night Spasm with all the new features each platform has to offer! Perhaps we'll include exclusive content and item bonuses for certain platforms? Maybe even a few crossovers...?
Oh, and if you're wondering about console editions, we're still working those details out. We're aiming for every option here, but how that will play out it's too early to tell.
A new update coming soon!
While we continue grating the cheese of Chapter 2, there's more fun to be had in Chapter 1! The next update isn't anything too big...or is it? Whatever changes may come along the update, while it may seem small, perhaps there's more to it...
And by the way, we're refraining from adding any new content that requires you to play the game again. No matter what point in the story you are, all future content of Chapter 1 continues to fit the open-world experience.
Say, has anyone checked the volcano recently?... Oops, that's for ANOTHER update! Pretend I didn't say that...
That's it for the devlog! Thank you for reading these messages, we put a lot of time and effort into them! Expect another one next month and be sure to keep an eye out for other news and announcements!
Please consider following the Night Spasm Steam Community page and our other forms of social media. Your feedback and support are greatly appreciated. Keep those keyboards busy!
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