Another two weeks, and another update! We've been working hard like good little Goblins since we last spoke, having officially moved into Production on the game (woo!) and so far things are going really well! Of course they are, we're like 2 weeks into the Big Plan so there's not been time for anything to go wonky yet. Still, I'm very pleased and the team are feeling confident 😁
Progress
Let's get into some neat specifics!
- The paper design for the player's progression is done. This covers things like the long-term saving goals that drive the main route through the game, and considerations like access to new Tools and new Gameplay, making sure we know how best to lead the player through satisfying purchases and keep doling out fun things in a way that feels good. Of course, as soon as we get this into the game and people play it for real, it could all change - but the structure and the tools are a strong foundation. We've also laid out the design (using Flowcharts!) of the first Golden questline - it consists of a lot of steps! This first Golden Quest is also (sort of) the tutorial and onboarding phase of the game, and we know it can change dramatically as we see how people are playing it. That said, the focus here is for the systems that drive Golden Quests to be built, which includes things like quest steps, key moments, unlocks, character interactions... an awful lot of interweaving systems!
- We've designed our first two new Named NPCs, and there are already some early concept sketches of them as well. If you're in the discord (see below!), you might've already seen some of these because we're huge teases 🥰
- There are a ton of concepts for new Trinkets, including a range of Charms and Lockets for you to find and customers to buy.
- Several brand new Trinkets and their icons are in the game and ready to be turned into Chipping challenges, alongside a new material type we're calling 'goopy' which is very exciting as we're always looking for ways to surprise you and keep the Trinkets feeling varied and rich in their various aesthetics.
- We've designed our dynamic music system (we use Fmod for anyone interested), and have even got first drafts of music in! We're trying to keep the game feeling chill, and are looking at games like Tears of the Kingdom for inspiration in how to keep music part of the experience and reinforcing the player's emotion, but without being just a traditional soundtrack. At the moment, the music changes and adapts to the time of day, as well as each of the main gameplay sequences - chipping, cleaning, talking/selling to customers, and talking to /buying from Aimon. This is all to ensure that over the many hours of playtime you'll be spending in the world we're building, you'll never get bored of the music, and hopefully never notice it looping.
- We've fixed up our build machine. This might sound really boring, but as of this moment, we have a constantly playable game deployed to a development branch on Steam, built every time someone commits any work. This means we can test on-platform which is super helpful (sometimes bugs that occur in Unity don't in the actual game, and vice versa) and also the build machine will notify the team if a build ever fails. Super useful automation, it keeps things moving nicely.
Rewards on Discord!
We're gently but insistently nudging all you lovely Goblins to come and join the Discord! We've started rolling out the Discord Rewards - an exclusive role and access to a private channel which everyone who has backed the game on here gets; it's a lovely little space to share work-in-progress snippets and behind-the-scenes glimpses with you, and just generally all be total Goblins together.
So if you haven't joined yet, please head on over to discord.gg/spiltmilk so we can give you access!
The sort of fun tidbits we show in the exclusive backer discord area!
That's all for this update, and until next time - stay lovely!