Helloooooooo!
It's time for the second public development update of Outcore's sequel, ːsteamhappyːːsteamhappyːːsteamhappyː Dead Watch ːsteamhappyːːsteamhappyːːsteamhappyː.
But first, let's announce the demo's release date
February 2nd, probably
Unless I don't finish my remaining tasks or a major unexpected problem shows up. That means there are fewer than two weeks until you can play a slice of Dead Watch. Hooray!
So what's new?
New sprites
The guy impersonating Lumi (internally called Fake Lumi or Flumi) received new sprites. He looks much better now. Look at those abs!
Capi & Comi also got a bunch of new sprites (not gonna post them all though, gotta keep some exclusive to the patrons 👀)
And Lumi finally learned how to feel sadness
Playtesting
The game went through several playtesting rounds and was adjusted multiple times.
Initially, most of the castle was open for you to explore right away. The problem was that players kept getting lost, often before even finding the first puzzle they were supposed to complete. That left players frustrated, especially when they found items for puzzles they had not yet encountered.
So to solve that, I decided to lock players to the first floor until they managed to solve the first big puzzle. After that they gained the knowledge they needed to unlock the other floors whenever they wanted. That drastically improved the pacing of the game.
Another issue was that one player complained the game was mostly a fetch quest. You find a puzzle, then you find an item that solves that puzzle.
That's... somewhat ok, since I do want the game to have such puzzles. But I didn't want it to feel like that was most of the gameplay. The main loop should involve solving puzzles through the knowledge you gain using your power to loop back in time.
So I decided to rewrite some of the content of the demo and changed the puzzles. This was honestly hard, took me WEEKS to figure it out. But once I did, implementing the changes was relatively quick.
Between major changes, bug fixes and quality of life improvements, the reception of playtesters to the game is now MUCH better. I can't wait for you to try it out too!
Meta systems complete
When I say meta I don't mean it like in Outcore. Rather, I'm talking about boring but important stuff like a main menu, a pause menu, a settings screen, credits, a save system, etc...
In Outcore, I took a minimalistic approach for the UI. With Dead Watch I wanted to put more effort and inject a bit more style into it. I'm proud of how it came out.
What's left?
So far I only tested the game on Windows, so I need to build native Mac and Linux versions.
I need to continue working on the localization system. Initially the demo will only support English, but I hope over time to add translations for more languages.
There are some bugs left to fix
MARKETING - Releasing a demo is a big marketing beat, and I should make sure as many people hear about it as I can. I also want to prepare video reels for the game's new Instagram page.
I should be able to complete my tasks within the time left, or at the very least the ones that are important for the demo release.
Where to follow
First of all, on Dead Watch's page. This is where I'll be posting big announcements
Other than that, there's Discord, Reddit and other socials where I post stuff occasionally
If you want to support the game development and be rewarded for it then there's also a Patreon page
Thanks for following Dead Watch's development! See you on February 2nd (I think??? hope???)