Hello everyone!
A month ago I released Memento Medica in Early Access here on Steam and it’s been a busy month! I’ll lay out briefly what has been worked on since launch, what is being worked on right now, and what is going to be worked on in the future.
What’s been done?
As I said in the last (and first) devlog, my primary focus is to polish and enhance what is currently available in the game before moving forward, and with that goal in mind there have been leaps forward. Without going into boring details here (that can be found on previous patch notes), there have been some significant QOL and usability improvements, large gameplay balance changes, additional items, recipes, and afflictions to make use of underused tools and crafts. Beehives and shellfish were added to make use of the bottle and gloves respectively. In addition, there have been some optimisations that should help smooth out level generation and gameplay. There's also been a number of bug fixes. Overall, the gameplay has rounded out, is more responsive and less opaque generally than it was a month ago.
What’s next?
To start with, this week is the first week since the launch of Early Access in which there will be no update. The reason for this is that moving forward updates will now include larger changes to the game. It is likely that for the time being updates will release every other week. Next week’s update will feature several changes:
An overhaul to the cooking system. As it stands now, cooking is far too cumbersome considering there are alternatives to curing hunger. It is far easier to simply gather the food or fish and hand over raw ingredients. The reverse should be true: Cooking should be the go-to method of curing hunger. As such, Cooking will no longer be locked to the Crafting Stations like the other mini games are. Instead, Beatrice will be able to start cooking and collect cooked meals whenever she is close to her wagon or whenever she is navigating any crafting menu. This will allow for more seamless cooking alongside other activities, which was always the intention. This will also require adjustments to cooking recipes and food items more generally.
Several new blessings with a focus on manipulating existing blessings
“Favoured” blessings. Each Venture will provide an increased chance for blessings of a certain category (fishing focused blessings, crafting focused blessings etc.) This will help vary gameplay by gently nudging players towards a specific area of gameplay. The active blessing category will be displayed to the player when a region begins.
And what about after that?
After this patch there will be a series of updates, each focusing on a separate portion of the game that I believe needs improvement before venturing forwards into additional content. Much of this was discussed in the previous devlog, but briefly:
The updates will include:
Biome Diversity: Towns will be more varied than they currently are. Both the towns and environments will include features unique to their particular biome.
Crafting Mini Games Polish: The audio-visual response and some of the artwork in crafting mini-games will get a fresh lick of paint to make sure that they are engaging.
NPC and Beatrice sprites: There will be an update dedicated to refining sprite animations for both NPCs and for Beatrice. In particular, afflictions will better represent whatever it is that the NPC is suffering from, and death and recovery animations will do the same.
Narrative update: Finally, there will be an update dedicated to fleshing out the narrative up until the start of Aeldenfield Part 2. This will include an exploration of events between the end of the tutorial, and the start of the main game as well as a look at her relationships with the people around her.
And then?
Once these pieces are in place, the City biome along with the narrative for Aeldenfield Part 2 will be the focus. Without saying too much about it, the gameplay of the City biome will operate differently from the other regions. Instead of the regular balancing act of Morale and Despair, Morale is conspicuously absent. The battle instead is to keep Despair from overwhelming Beatrice. The intention is to conclude World Tiers 4-6 with an endless game mode.
And that’s all for now!
If you’ve read this far, I really appreciate your interest. And to everybody who has tried Memento Medica I thank you from the bottom of my heart, but remember… Plague is coming.