Hello dear Dreamers!
Thank you for your patience with this month's update. We are in the process of finalizing a new backer demo that we will be rolling out in stages to everyone. The first backers who will see it in the next few days are those in the higher tiers that include game testing, then in the next few weeks, to everyone. All of this is building up to a season of festival submissions, and more important for you all, finally entering Steam Early Access!
To give you a sense of everything we've been working on, here are just a few new things you'll see and that we have been working on this month:
Nemo's house
This is a big one for us: previous demos included some levels that you can choose between, notably the Night Sky and Mushroom Forest. Since those are the most "camera ready" levels, we will still have those primarily included as the explorable Slumberland areas of the demo, but now instead of selecting them from a menu accessed by hopping into bed, you must solve puzzles between levels and access the levels from portals around the house. After consulting with some narrative designer friends of ours, we thought this would both keep the house an interesting part of the overall gameplay and be more narratively interesting than using the bed for absolutely everything.
Featured in the demo is an early version of a puzzle where Nemo has to collect seeds from plants around the house and put them into the proper place in the garden. We'll likely continue refining it as we go along. Please note that art for some of the puzzle areas is still being added, so folks interested in what games look like during development can enjoy looking at the in-progress artwork in the meantime.
The magic of game development!
Bosco quick travel
This is still in an early state, but we currently have an early working version of Bosco the Dragon as a quick travel system. First, you find the Slumberland court magician and civil engineer, Mysto, and she asks for a candy donation to fund building a platform in a location. Afterward, this platform can be a place that you can quick travel to (and eventually start the level from.) Mysto is a character that we included in art from the Kickstarter campaign, and are excited to get working in the project.
Mysto
Intro and cutscenes
Another big push the past few weeks has been bringing together the game intro and cutscenes to tie the whole game together. With these, you'll really be able to get a sense of Nemo and friends' world.
We don't want to spoil everything, but the world is imbued with much more story than before, and a sense of danger as you see the damage that nightmares are starting to do.
We've also refined the intro level on the city rooftops, which will be playable in the demo. Notably, it includes our version of Winsor McCay's walking bed comic from 1908, having players (and Peony) chase the bed through Nemo's town.
Line art for the bed napping on rooftops and being startled by Nemo when he approaches in the city rooftop chase sequence
One more thing...
That's just a bit of what we've been doing, but we want to let folks see things in the demo as we roll it out to the different tiers. But before we go, we wanted to share this awesome animatic for our upcoming trailer/animated intro to the game, by the awesome Studio StarCharm:
We're really excited about this one, and having yet another avenue to share more of the game's world.
That's it for now. Stay tuned for the incoming demo updates - within the next day or so for testing-tier backers, and later this month for everyone else.
Cheers and many thanks,
Chris and Team Nemo