Lately we've been thinking. Who are we? What do we want? Why are we here?
Our little game project got caught up in these kinds of thoughts too. It doesn't help that we have such an exciting mix of genres going on! Because, let's be real: what are we? Yes, we have horror elements. Yes, there's a dark mystery hidden in the soil, waiting to be uncovered. Yes, we want to ask big philosophical questions and take a stand against discrimination and fear. But all of those are just aspects of our story.
At the heart of it (literally) is the love story.
It hit us like a brick: stripped of all the embellishments, our story is all about love. Because love is complicated and complex, and it can hold all these themes we're dealing with. Love is big.
With that realization in the back of our minds, we were especially thrilled that others seem to see it too, like the great people at Studio Élan, who once again feature us in their Fall in Love visual novel fest!
We're happy to be there and excited to see all the other games. So check out the festival, and keep your eyes open for streamers who might pick up our game as well!
To honor the occasion, we updated our demo to v3.0.6 — and it's a BIG one...
(Very mild spoilers at best)
ADDED
A new start screen, with a new song and effect.
A new scene on the train.
A new, quieter scene on the river with Audrey.
Sign language now appears in the writing. Some lines are signed rather than spoken, which changes what the characters can say to each other — and when.
The ring of fire now has an actual fire...
The flashbacks now have proper backgrounds.
The Epilogue of Episode 1 was overhauled, including a new song and more details about your playthrough!
CHANGED
Audrey was rewritten and expanded on. Again. xD
The equipment has a new mystery to it. Better keep an eye on that.
The quest right at the start of the game is harder to win now. (Might make it even harder soon, so enjoy it while it lasts!)
The river sequence was restructured, cut, and tightened up!
A certain ending branching from the long route is darker and hits harder.
Several choices now check different traits, so some unlocks open on different builds than before.
Episode 1 now has a title: Dead Man Walking. (Might change it once it gets old, but we love it for now.)
Retuned timers on several timed choices.
FIXED
Squashed a resolution bug that caused a crash.
Improved general performance and cut the file size down by around a gigabyte. More performance work is on our to-do list!
Dozens of typos and awkward lines cleaned up across the whole script.
Wrong or missing sprite expressions corrected in a lot of scenes.
Sound cues fixed, including success/failure moments that played the wrong jingle.
Thanks for giving this a read and hope you will have fun!
-Larissa from Klabautermann Games