Ladies, gentlemen, merfolk from the shores of grand Aordhos, gilded in its splendor, welcome to our humble tavern! Leave behind the comfort of moss-covered stones breached upon the shoreline, for tonight we have prepared for you further tales of wonder and magic!
Greetings anew everyone! My name is C.W. Hendricks, lead writer, developer, and designer for Sunflowers and the Goddess of Death, and today we at The Incandescent Bard are launching patch 1.4 for the free demo that brings an enormous art update, new player-friendly guidance techniques, and another level of polish and tweaks to story beats throughout the game to add further lore and flair to the world of SGoD.
These are updates we’ve been working on for the full version of the game and we decided to push an update to incorporate all of these features into the demo. Much of this update is thanks to all of our players and the incredible feedback we’ve received, so we want to extend a huge thank you to everyone for giving our game a try and reaching out to us with your thoughts!
Without further ado, let’s get into the meat of what this update contains:
Artwork
With any great RPG comes great respon icons! Icons are those little pictures players see constantly throughout the game that represent items, equipment, magic, skills, menu items, status debuffs, parameters, etc. The list goes on. While small in stature, icons play a very important role in immersion; you can’t see that Emerald Periapt on your character, so having an icon that showcases the accessory in all its glory helps make the item more grounded in the world in which it was found. It also makes chests and treasure that much more fun to discover; you may find something that looks too cool NOT to use, even if perhaps you really don’t need bonus MP on Cormac…
Our icons before were, quite frankly, generic. We used the same icon for every sword, another for every necklace, etc. But no longer! We’ve been hard at work over the last month reworking every icon in the game (of which there are hundreds) to bring them up to the same quality of work as everything else, and we’re super proud of what we’ve accomplished here.
Now everything has a unique icon that captures what that item is, or what this parameter means, or what that magic spell does, etc. All of this new artwork is now live in the demo!
Leave it to Niall to highlight his newly redrawn stock, front and center. You may notice some new information in the TLDR panel on the right; we did a light redesign pass on every item and the windows they bring up to more clearly define what that item is or does and what about said item is important.
Player Guidance
This is a bit more of an abstract concept, but basically “player guidance” means things like breadcrumbs quests, well-laid-out roads, etc. and is incredibly important to the overall experience of playing any game; particularly games like RPGs that tend to have more open-ended routes for a player to take.
One of the most common issues our players have had in SGoD is feeling a bit lost on where to go or what to do next when exploring the world, and so we set our sights on improving this experience to make the game world more player-friendly and easier to navigate.
After a great deal of discussion, we decided we didn’t want to take certain routes that detract from immersion into the game world. Mini-maps are one such example we decided against. While they can be an incredibly useful tool for the player, what they also do is pull a great deal of focus from the player off of the game world and into the mini-game of staring at the mini-map.
Instead, we wanted to better lay out the world itself in such a way that figuring out where to go became easier, and use in-game tutorials to help highlight and explain the world to players as they go along. While Sunflowers and the Goddess of Death already had some tutorials, we’ve added a few more and shifted others around in order to better explain game mechanics earlier and help guide players in navigating the world.
Further, NPCs and in-game journal entries now use “nudge text” to help the player hone in on parts of conversations that lay out where to go next. “Nudges” are a tool that can be used to gently guide the player around the world and include things like Navi and the Owl in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Sometimes however, if used too much, nudges can be a little invasive and detract from gameplay (we get it, owl, we need to visit the princess in Hyrule Castle. Enough already!).
We decided to use nudges only within story-related, regular conversations with NPCs and journal entries to try and highlight where to go next without leaving the player feeling like pushy NPCs are trying to dictate their game time.
Niamh wishes to gently remind you that you need to speak to Niall to advance the plot. We very strongly recommend you do not disappoint her…
Patch Notes 1.4
New artwork and player guidance features are not the only new additions! Below you can find the full patch notes for version 1.4 of the Sunflowers and the Goddess of Death demo:
🌻Massive icon-related artwork update for every item, spell, weapon, armor, interface option, etc. Everything you find, purchase, interact with, and so on across the game will look more unique and have a more Celtic, nature-y flair in-line with the themes and story beats of the game.
🌻Updated item details across all items to more clearly define what items are and what they do.
🌻Added new text highlights, tutorials, and journal updates to better outline where the player needs to go next to advance the story, as well as explain certain game mechanics more clearly.
🌻Weakened some monsters in the very early game to make the first couple character levels feel less punishing before the player has more tools to counter monster strategies.
🌻Updated code related to area transitions to make them smoother and to allow music and ambience to tie in directly with moving around the world rather than on separate triggers. (dev note: ultimately, what this accomplishes is a noticeably cleaner and more smoothly connected world when shifting around maps).
🌻Many small adjustments to story beats, artwork, and code for an extra level of flair and worldbuilding.
🌻Fixed bug related to screen tint when quick-traveling from the Verdant Temple to outside the temple.
🌻Shifted some enemies around in battle templates to clean up in-battle movement and special attacks.
🌻Added new conversations with some characters across the main story.
🌻Polished up various cutscenes across the demo (includes fixing minor bugs related to movement and screen shifts and adding some new improvements to the narrative).
That’s all we have for you today aside from a small progress update: we are hard at work creating the world of Sunflowers and the Goddess of Death and development continues to move along apace. For our next dev diary, we will dive into new features and areas coming with the full release of SGoD.
Thank you so much for taking the time to try our demo and we sincerely hope you enjoy this update to the game.
May your days be ever-graced with the soothing warmth of the sun, and your paths laid bare with glimmering moonlight.
-C.W. Hendricks