Ladies, gentlemen, fae from the meadowed wilds of Sylphtir, welcome!
Tonight we'd like to share what we've been working on in improving accessibility and just making the gameplay of Sunflowers and the Goddess of Death easier (from a controls/UI perspective) and more intuitive for all!
We're also very excited to share that Sunflowers is about 85% complete and is getting closer and closer to release! We sincerely hope all of you are as hype (even if it's just a little hype!) about adventuring through the world of Urdin as we are to deliver our finished tale to you :).
As always, thank you so much for following along with our journey in creating Sunflowers and the Goddess of Death. If you have yet to do so, we would be honored if you would leave us a Wishlist on Steam or try out our free demo. And if you like what you see, tell a friend!
View game page
All that said, let's get right into the improvements to the game coming with the full release of Sunflowers and the Goddess of Death in the not-too-distant future!
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Controls and UI
One of the key pain points for some of our players has been the lack of WADS support by default. While we've had WADS selectable as a control scheme from the Options menu in the demo for awhile, we knew we could do better.
So we sat down and cooked a bit with the controls, and have now implemented WADS from the moment you launch the game: no rebinding necessary!
Further, all controls are fully customizable in Sunflowers, so you can set up any control scheme you desire. This also applies just the same to controllers, so you can play how you want to play! Want L2 as Confirm and R2 as Cancel? You can do that!
We've also coded in Switch Joy-Con support! Sunflowers will fully support Keyboard, Xbox, PS4, PS5, and Joy-Con controllers at release: from playing the game, to in-game help menus, and even tutorial popups!
All of this will be included in the full release of Sunflowers right from day one.
Customize your controls however you wish, regardless of your preferred method of input! We also added in nice-looking icons for every button. :)
Hotkeys
While this may be a bit old-hat for players of the latest version of the demo, for those who haven't played in awhile, we have set up several hotkeys that access often-used parts of the game menu for quick access and smooth gameplay. The Inventory, Equip, Journal, Save, and Map menus are all accessible with a single button press, rather than having to open up the menu and navigating to their respective sections!
And just like everything else, these hotkeys are fully customizable on both keyboard and all gamepads!
Mapping Urdin
Another pain point some players have pointed out to us is getting lost. Urdin is a big world, and sometimes finding one's way around can been frustrating, especially when one just really wants to see what happens next in the story! We completely understand the sentiment, so we set out to do something about it.
Our result: a new Map menu option for the game!
Rather than creating a mini-map, however, which to us often leads to "hallway" gameplay where you're just navigating from one mini-map icon to the next, we wanted to create something more thematic and fun, while still serving that critical purpose of guiding players to important locations and keeping players from getting lost.
Some important notes about our maps:
A) They are all hand-made visuals of our locations, scaled to a bird's-eye viewpoint.
B) They do not show the locations of treasure or side quests. You'll have to explore and discover those on your own!
C) They will show key locations of interest, such as areas critical to the main story.
D) They highlight in yellow all points where one can transition from one zone to the next.
What opening the Map menu in the Lucanwood looks like, shaded under the pallid light of Emun.
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That's all we have for this evening. Thank you for reading our dev diary, and we hope to see you on the soon-to-come release day of Sunflowers and the Goddess of Death!
May the warm winds of summer find you relaxed and at peace, surrounded by the soothing ambience of a quiet forest or gentle, rolling waves.
-CW Hendricks