Opening • Statement
𝒜nother month, another steam post. Hello, hello, greetings, and hi! I'm shocked, another month flew by without me noticing. Honestly, that's gotta be some sort of record. Three months, and we're somehow not dead in the water. It's kind of shocking, honestly. But, speaking of things that were dead in the water: me!
I got hit with this horrible flu in the middle of the month, and I lost a week's worth of progress because I was just stuck recovering. It may not sound like a lot, but a month is only 4 weeks, and I spent one of those doing literally nothing!
I was going to listen to every song by Chinozo, but by the time I recovered I lost a lot of motivation and never ended up doing it. I listened to some good songs this month, though! Shout-out to Anti-You by Chinozo and RuLe by Ado. I think I really like rebellious themes, now that I'm looking back.
...And speaking of rebellious themes, Snow • Fall! Woo! Despite everything that happened, this is a very packed month, with a bunch of content to go over. Prepare for a long post, 𝒶nd let's get into the progress!
...Sorry. I'm done with the cursive 𝒜's. For now.
Reminiscent • Progress
80% - Progress Leap?!
I thought I said I was sick? How could I have possibly done 50% worth of work? Well, I might have overestimated how hard it would be to finish Reminiscent Mode. Fuck, it's basically done already.
The two exclusive bosses have their decks done completed, I'm really just waiting a bit to add finishing touches to one of them. They might be a little bit underpowered for their level, but that's about it.
The Station Passives that I was talking about last devlog (go read it) got expanded upon, too. Now each enemy has 4 unique Station Passives, but can only hold 2 at a time. There's also the universal passives, but it's the same deal, 2 at a time. Hopefully this makes it less predictable and more synergistic.
The looping mechanic was also finished! Did I ever mention that? Well, if I didn't, Reminiscent Mode is supposed to be nearly infinite, the run doesn't end unless you want it to. The system I decided on is that after every 15 Nodes, players are given a choice to continue their run. If you pick yes, enemies will get a little buff, usually HP and damage related, then you'll go back to Node 0, and the process repeats.
That little feature forced my hand, let me tell you. I had to make a fodder item that shows up when you exhaust the item pool, which previously wasn't possible because the longest the game went on for before was only 18 Nodes. Breakfasting in Snow • Fall is real now. Not that you should be looping that many times anyway, seriously.
I think Mind's End Piece is a really cool looking item. Too bad most players will probably never see it. And the item sucks, too, so there's that.
The second most notable thing is that 1/2 of the Reminiscent exclusive enemies have been completed! Well, technically, it's 2 enemies, just from 1 faction. That's more so what I mean.
𝒜lzuru Station Personnel, they're quite the rebellious bunch, choosing to ignore any sort of conventional "rules." They use transforming dagger-bows to open the Pale Void, a place of infinite storage which lets them store cards and negative status effects inside of it. Anything in their storage cannot be accessed, which is very bad when it comes to cards, but very useful when it comes to negative status effects. Their decks center around harming themselves for massive pay-offs. They can do some pretty big damage if you let them set up, so they make for a pretty dangerous fight!
Look at them, aren't they just adorable? They look all innocent, but they will kick your ass. And yes, that is technically their uniform. But no, they aren't required to wear it, that would be a stupid "rule." And no, there is no male uniform. The men also wear dresses, because gender norms, too, are merely ignorable "rules."
Unfortunately, poor guys lost their eyes in the transition. Sorry, grunts don't get seeing privileges!
I also prepared a video showcasing these guys off. It's got voice acting and everything. If you're interested in lore, or just wanna see gameplay footage, check it out!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnUzN2iWPa8
At this point, there's not much else I can do with the mode at the moment. I could finish up the Station Passives and those bosses, but besides that, I can't really do anything. The sprites for the 2nd faction probably won't be worked on until late May. For now, Reminiscent Mode is almost complete, and will probably stay at around 80-90% for a while!
Misc • Progress
Achievements: 60% - Rewards are complete and implemented!
UI: 50% - Bro...
How does one go back 5%? Did I fuckin remove a screen or something? Well, the less funny answer is that I simply didn't do any work on the UI, and while I was working on the Alzuru enemies, I actually found a bug within one of the menus, so now I have even more work to do. Okay, It didn't actually knock me back 5%, but it's a lot funnier to imagine that I did so little work that the game actually devolved. But no, we're still at around 50% when it comes to the UI.
On a more serious note, I'd like to spend April actually working on some of the incomplete menus. Since Reminiscent Mode is in a near complete state, I can afford to sink a bunch of time messing up and testing things.
...Oh, actually, almost forgot, I redid the event screen, and it looks a lot better now. Dark, but it fits the aesthetic. So I guess I actually did make some progress this month. Erm...back up to 55%, I suppose.
As for Achievements, like I said last month, a majority of the achievement rewards are fully functional, though not obtainable in game. There's only about 4 items I have to complete, but I can always do those later. Now, the fun part comes with actually implementing the achievements and making them obtainable. I probably won't focus on it this month, but it's not a long process, anyway. I could dedicate like a week to that, and I could probably get it done.
That's all for the third month! Thank you very much for reading all the way through, and I hope I'll have even more to share in April. See you next month, and I hope you have an 𝒜mazing rest of your day! Hehe.