After another year of working on this fabulous project, I have something very exciting to share today!
Magic-lovers, I present to you... behold:
It's the demo again, but better
50% MORE music!
100% MORE gameplay!!
200% MORE cutscenes!!!
So, why did I do this? Isn't this slowing things down?
No, in fact I probably just saved myself an enormous amount of time in the future. When I refactored the game's dialogue system to use Yarn Spinner instead of... string Lists... I left a lot of lose threads unwound. Sure, it kind of worked for basic dialogue, but cutscenes? Complex events? Multi-NPC conversations? No, it was all still pretty dysfunctional and broken. So I figured before I made 4 more entire areas using a half-functional dialogue engine, I should make sure everything is good-to-go in the areas I already made. And BOY am I glad I did.
So what is this other stuff you added then huh
First and foremost, the item system. In the old demo, you could just walk up to someone when you're holding an item, and they would automatically notice you holding it and be like "WOW, nice item you got there buddy, can I take it off your hands?" I realized this style of dialogue would get boring and dumb pretty fast. Why would I not say yes to that if I know giving items away is the only way to progress the story? The game would just become a matter of talking to every NPC until something happened. LAME.
So here we have the item delivery system. It's much more reminiscent of puzzle solving games where you have more agency in using your resources. It also solves 2 problems mentioned previously. First, it cuts out the need to ask the player for consent to take the item. Second, since only NPCs who want items will have this delivery menu, it narrows down who the player needs to talk to to progress the story and will probably be less annoying. I don't necessarily want the difficulty puzzles to be the main draw of this game, I want it to be more about the journey you go on through the world as you complete them.
Now second I'll discuss all the fun stuff, most of which was added to the tutorial area. I felt like the original area didn't set a good tone for the game, it felt too dull and streamlined. But tutorial areas are usually dull and streamlined, so I wanted to make fun of that instead of being that. So it has this new song called "Tutorture", a song that is both funny-sounding and makes you want to leave the area as fast as possible. I also added some more humor in the form of a cutscene and some random NPCs to make the area seem less like deserted truck stop.
Last thing I'll mention is the graphics. My eye for colors and pixel art has gotten so much better in the past year, let alone since 2022 when most of the Town graphics were made. A lot of things just looked too grey, muted, and unpolished. So once I started updating some of the more egregious set pieces, it started a chain reaction to where now most things have been updated to reflect my modern skillset. See if you can notice any big changes! (hint: start with the trees)
So what's next?
I'm going to hit the ground running on the new areas! First up will be the Farm. I have a strong idea for the design of that section, so I think if I can grind a loose gameplay path in about a month that can be played through IN GAME, then I might be good in hitting my previously stated deadline of 2027. THEORETICALLY, getting the gameplay in now that I have an area fleshed out and an engine that doesn't suck could go pretty fast. We we will have to see about that one...
But in the meantime, stay magical, and thank you for reading and playing!