Hi everyone,
Here I come with our new milestone report! As we explained in the previous one, these reports are common practice when working with a publisher to let them know how development is going internally. Hopefully, this is also of interest for those of you who want to get a better understanding of what goes into developing a game and working with a publisher. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to add them below!
Here is the most recent report for the game!
“I can say that, for the first time in the whole development, we’ve had a smooth, agile and trouble-free milestone delivery. Earlier in the year we had some challenges with the development which could have jeopardised our overall schedule, so we made several changes to the design of the days to come in the game. This didn’t necessarily consist of content reduction, but rather a series of efficient changes to avoid (or go around) many of the problems we had become aware of.
These changes were planned from Day 7 onwards (since at that time all the dialogues and design of Day 6 had already been done, even though we weren’t yet working on implementation yet) and, I am very happy and proud to announce that they have taken effect!
Thanks to them, in this milestone we have been able to deliver Day 7 and 8 (instead of one day per milestone as we used to) and, as I have already mentioned, its implementation has been relatively fast and painless. There are still plenty of bugs to uncover and fix - such is game development! - but everything is now far more manageable.
Apart from this, we’ve added music to several new areas of the forest and we’ve also made a slight change in the final dialogue with one of the main NPCs after completing a certain puzzle in Day 6 in order to reduce backtracking. This will lead in the future to the fast travel system that we have planned, but as it is not yet implemented, for now it’s just a simple connection between the end of Day 6 area and the forest entrance.
In the future we’ll have a map of the forest and the player will be able to choose where to go. We have a wonderful artist working on an amazing world map that will serve this purpose. I would love to show it to you but… it’s still in progress 😉
Apart from this, all game dialogues are already written (including side-quests) and ready to be implemented! The animators are already working on Day 10 animations and we also have the final cutscene of the game done (except for the backgrounds, which I'm taking care of these days).
I have also completed the list of all the items and collectibles of the game and their visual assets have also been created. They are on standby until we start with that task, and let me tell you they are looking great!”
Conclusion
Things are going well and we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! Last month I also attended the Tokyo Game Show, where Chorus was showing Last Time I Saw You at their booth. It was nice to meet up with them again in person and meet some of the team that I talk to on a weekly basis but we hadn't met in person until now.
Surprisingly, IGN Japan wanted to interview me to talk about the game, and it was a very pleasant experience. I share with you the video where you can see me talking about Last Time I Saw You as my face becomes redder and redder as time passes due to the terrible humidity and heat of that day 😅🍅
During the interview we briefly talked about the inspiration that the first Shenmue had had on me when I started working on the game (it's funny that Yu Suzuki was also interviewed minutes later in the same stream, coincidence of life!). This led to a Shenmue fan site to write a very interesting article about Last Time I Saw You.
And I would also like to thank The Gamer site for the nice article they wrote about the influences of Makoto Shinkai's work on the game. Both articles speak quite well about Last Time I Saw You and explain very well the concept behind the game. I recommend you to read them!
Hope you guys like them!
See you next time! 💙
.Juan
