General
- The reports proved to be useful not only for our followers, but also for us: we always feel like we are not doing enough, but looking back, we realize how much has been done. And it's always a surprise even for us. This realization motivates and energizes us.
- We hired a new developer, Kirill.
- We also started outsourcing some programming and animation tasks.
- We are working on the demo!
- We finally came up with and approved the prologue script.
- We made almost all the interfaces for the game.
- I lost my job, but didn't look for a new one. I took all the money I had saved, part of the money from selling my apartment, put it all on the stake, and finally decided to devote the rest of my life to games. And I've never doubted my decision! I'm full of optimism and hope.
Game design, script and general information about the demo
- We have a game script and a story script for the prologue with all the quests. Only the texts and dialogues are not ready yet.
- We will not say anything about the duration of the demo and its content yet. Let it remain a secret for now.
- We were thinking about putting the entire prologue of the game in the demo, but then we decided to shorten the plot of the demo a bit. To make it to the Next Fest and to find investments before we run out of money.
- We decided to make the game more interactive and tactile - so that boxes would open with the player's movements, valves would turn with the player's movements, keys would turn in keyholes, and so on. This adds time to development, so the demo will have simplified versions of the mechanics we planned.
- Everything that we had to shorten now, will appear in the final version of the game, and maybe even in the demo itself, but in its future updates. Or we'll release the prologue as a separate chapter later.
Game art and animations
- 13 interactive scenes for the prologue.
- 4 locations: 2 recycled old ones, 2 new ones.
- 1 location sketch.
- Almost all locations and scenes are animated.
- 28 stop-motion sequences for locations and scenes (there are more, actually, but some of them are similar, so I put them together on this list).
- 3 new animations for Nastya.
- 1 new intro.
- 16 video references for development.
UX/UI
- 20 animated icons for the interface on the game's scenes and locations.
- 14 icons for arrows to indicate active items, pointers and inventory, resized for a higher resolution.
- Pause menu.
- Main menu.
- Screen settings: resolution, brightness, etc.
- Sound settings.
- Language settings.
- Control settings: selecting hints for gamepads, reassigning buttons, etc.
- 33 screens with all states.
- UI elements: 4 types of buttons, scrollbar, volume/brightness scale, 6 new icons.
- Pause animation.
- An animated confirmation window for non-game interfaces.
- 4 illustrations of gamepads.
- 163 button icons for reassigning controls + 47 more icons in a dark version.
- An animated English version of the logo.
- 1 video reference for development.
Development
- Pause menu and pause itself.
- The main menu and loading of saves before starting the main menu with a smooth transition to the game itself (like in Dead Space).
- Save and autosave system.
- Control settings and key reassignment.
- Screen settings (resolution, vertical synchronization, active monitor selection, brightness).
- Sound volume settings.
- Language selection.
- The entire UI for settings and various menus was made and made adaptive.
- Pathfinding and automatic hiding behind the cover.
- 4 locations.
- 7 interactive scenes.
- A dust effect in rooms.
- Added the ability to crawl.
- Mouse control in the menu and on scenes.
- Optimized sprites with sprite atlases.
- Refactoring and cleaning the project.
- Reworked the inventory system.
- Improved the input system.
- Added support for all types of gamepads + made vibration.
- Reworked UI scene scripts and made them more universal: there are already about 300 scripts in the game.
- Made transitions between locations.
- Replaced all icons with better-quality ones.
- Made changes to icons in accordance with the controllers and platform.
- Reset all settings and save settings in the game files.
- Fixed a bunch of bugs (it's hard to even count them) and even the old bug with arrows in UI scenes (you haven't seen it and won't see it, but we couldn't figure out how to fix it for a long time and it really annoyed us).
- Worked with feedback.
Sound
- Tasks for sound.
- Sketches of musical themes.
- Sounds for 1 location, menu and 3 scenes.
- Not much has been done on sound, but the main work will start on September 16 and we will try to do everything as quickly as possible.
Other
- Studio logo.
- 6 new arts for social networks.
- A set of stickers that we prepared for the competition.
- Made a shortened version of the trailer in English
Marketing
- We held a contest for our followers in VK. There were a lot of talented works. Drawings, photos, videos and even models were sent to the contest.
- We participated in the contest from the e-magazine "Кибер". We did not take the prize places according to the voting results, but we were personally chosen by the organizers of the contest!
But we were chosen by experts
IGM's choice: 1st place!
VK Play's choice: 2nd place!
Astrum Entertainment's choice: 3rd place!
- The experts who chose us spoke warmly about The Temple of Children! And although we didn't earn $3000, we will receive merch from them, and a copy of the game Alone in the Dark Digital Deluxe Edition.
- We applied to participate in the Horror Games Community Showcase.
- Dragfess - made a video reaction to our trailer
- NedVelka - made two videos about the Temple of Children!
- Spanish online magazine uVeJuegos.com mentioned us on Twitter.
- The creator of the game DISTRAINT noticed us on Twitter!
- The game description is translated into Japanese.
- Created a foreign page for donations on BuyMeACoffee
Wishlists
6767 wishlists on Steam! Slowly but we are approaching 10k. We are waiting for the Next Fest as it will boost wishlists big time.
Donations
We received $95 over the summer!
Special thanks to: Maria, Diana, Hilda, Ilya, Igor, Darina, Vladislav, Kirill, Anonimus.
You can also support our work here.
Plans
- The most important task now is to release a demo!
- Participate in the Next Fest!
- Find funding/investors/publisher!
- Publish reports on Steam as dev diaries (done ✅)
Read our previous reports here: https://medium.com/@childrentemple