Hello, dear players!
As much as I would love to create posts like this monthly, it doesn't always work out. Since then another person has joined the development team and is helping me with some aspects of the game, but it will only speed up development a little. The game now has an incredible number of people working on it - two! In the game itself, a huge number of different things have appeared or improved. Here are many things I can share without spoilers...
Game Intro... Again...
The beginning greatly affects the overall impression of the game and whether or not it will draw the player in. Therefore, a lot of effort had to be taken away from the development of the main story to make intro the right length and more interesting. At the same time, the name of the Day One demo will now be justified, because it will really only have the first day (and not three as before)
Forest District
Despite its natural beauty, the Forest District was hardly a point of attraction, not even for a pretty screenshot! Now that's not the case - by experimenting, we managed to create this kind of beauty:
There's even a little lake there!
Upcoming changes to Day One
After the release of Mondealy, it's demo version Mondealy: Day One will remain free and it will include an absolutely identical beginning to the full version.
The Day One version's achievements will be removed from Steam so as not to duplicate them between the two games.
In addition, the gallery and achievement menus will be locked in Day One.
But, the good news! You'll be able to port the gallery progress, achievements, and saves from the demo to the full game.
Translations of Game Sprites
The game already has Russian and English versions of all signs, banners, and other in-game stuff. And then I realized that the game won't be limited to these languages! And in general, the fan-made, even joke-based variants will only get better if they can translate the game sprites as well!
Now it's possible, also in real time!
(Text translations remain as easy as they were. Unlike some other games)
Hints
I really disliked the hints system in the old demo. It was a phone with oddly worded hints about what to do. At first I removed that element entirely, but later I realized that the hints were too important an aspect of player comfort to be thrown away like that. So I came up with something new:
After opening the hint menu by holding Q, you will see the hero's thoughts. Coincidentally, he's only thinking about how to go through the main story! (There is no specific hint in this gif)
Secondary quests will have no such hints.
Gallery
In the old demo, the gallery opened in real time and with all the character slides. Something I didn't like about this system, so I decided to redesign it.
Now, during the first playthrough, every single interaction with a character (i.e. a conversation) will open them in the gallery. And it, in turn, will only be unlocked after you finish the game once. But don't worry, you'll be able to see who's locked and unlocked during the gameplay.
Lighting and Graphics
The demo had two kinds of lighting, simplified and unsimplified, this created a lot of development difficulties and I decided to remove the simplified lighting from the game. Now, it will be prettier, but probably perform worse on the weakest of computers.
In addition, it will be possible to disable other shaders, which can put a strain on not the weakest computers as well.
Main Story
The game is about 70% complete. At the moment, I'm finalizing segments with Tori the deer, a character who doesn't appear in the demo. After that, there will be an extensive segment in the Water District and its new locations, and beyond that... And beyond that, you'll find out in the full game. I hope its pre-final segment doesn't disappoint you, as it seems extremely experimental to me.
Secondary Quests
Not every character has enough screen time, so I plan to add additional storylines with some of them. As part of these "quests", you'll be able to get to know the characters better, in locations separate from the main world (the game doesn't become a dating simulator, it's still an adventure).
This came to my mind after finishing Night in the Woods (cool game!)
(Yes, Froga is very tall)
Future Game Graphics Release
Gaming communities like to collect old versions of game graphics. Also, they sometimes make fan content that uses the original game graphics. To save you the trouble of digging out all the sprites somehow, I plan to open up a GitHub repository containing the game graphics and all their older versions when the full game is released.
You'd get all those sprites anyway, so you'd better let me give you convenient access to them.
That's all folks!
Add the full game to your wishlist if you haven't already!
(And check out the cool new poster.)
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1620520/Mondealy/
And join the Discord server of the game, it's the easiest place to contact me, the developer!
Or email me at [email protected]
Time flies by. But the work goes on, and the game is getting closer to completion. And the recent delay has given me confidence in my abilities! I hope to deliver the best possible product. Thank you for your love and patient waiting!
Sincerely,
uglycoal
:melon: