Hi all, Tom here!
Sorry for being so quiet around here the last few months. As some of you know I (like many solo indie devs) have a day job in order to support making games like CRT7. Unfortunately, said day job has been rather hectic the last few months which has taken most of my development time. I'm hoping that in the new year I'll have significantly more time to work on pushing forwards into the depths of the dark and these posts will speed up again.
The good news is, however, that it hasn't taken away all the time and there has been some progress!
The Viridian Room
The paper puzzle section I mentioned previously is now (mostly) finished for now! It's even been tested by some lovely paper puzzle experts and it is seemingly fun and interesting. There is just one puzzle left that needs redesigning to finish this stage up. Alongside that, there have been large changes to the visuals and some extra quality of life things added. First off, it is now a fun hybrid of retro phosphors and art deco to match the rest of the game better:
Also, players can now mark spaces where lines can't be, which is a classic thing you might do in a puzzle like Slitherlink, or Picross – two inspirations for this puzzle – so it just feels right for them to be in here. In fact, internally I call this new puzzle design Slithercross!
Other bits of the game have gotten some glow ups too. Slight tweaks to a book here, to some visuals there, with my favourite subtle improvements done to the packing puzzle you might have seen in the trailers:
Wrap Up (Warm)
The next steps are pretty clear: get back to working on the rest of the strange devices in the main room! There are some coding tweaks which need to be done to unlock the next phases, and then I have some plans for changing the radio device puzzle that is in some of the screenshots... but I'm keeping those changes secret for now.
As always, if you want keep up to date with development and help out a (mostly) solo dev, you know what to do:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2096780/CRT7/
-Amicable Animal