Hello everyone! I'm SkilZ of SkilZent, and I'm here to welcome you to SkilZent's glow-up blog for Type Her to Sleep. I'd like to go over with you what's been going on behind the scenes for the past 3 months since our last community post.
If you've noticed or even remember, the game on the Steam page looks a lot different from what it was since we first announced Type Her to Sleep around 3 months ago. This is for a simple reason. We rebuilt the game from the ground up so it'll be of a quality we'll be happy with.
A Visual Upgrade
When we put up the game on Steam around May, the game was more or less done on a fundamental level and all we had to do was add content to it and release the game in July. On June, we looked at the game from top to bottom and came to the conclusion that it was way too flawed for our liking so we went back to the drawing board.
The first thing we ditched was the 'split screen' gameplay, where the bottom half of the screen did absolutely nothing but display a .jpg while the top half is where all the gameplay happens. You won't believe my justification at the time why we opted for such a weird design, but I'm glad we ditched it and opted to utilize the full screen instead.
In case you've forgotten, this is what the game used to look like:
This is what the game looks like now:
Night and day difference, right? That was the first of many things we had to rework of the next few months.
Gameplay Revisited
One thing that was discussed among the team often was that the game's title 'Type Her to Sleep' was never earned because it was never portrayed in the game (she even looked like she was already asleep in the old art for goodness’s sake!) Yes, there was the 'sleep' and 'status' bars on the corner of the screen, but it never felt tangible. So while we were redesigning the game's presentation, we decided that the character should show visible facial expression changes depending on how the night is progressing as well if the player made typos. I think we got this right, as the character's expressiveness during gameplay has made playing feel more tangible and impactful. I actually feel guilty making typos now.
Another gameplay change we worked on was the movement of the word clouds. In the previous iteration, words only moved in a straight line and nothing else. I found this boring, and we were on a quest to really emphasize that this is a game about typing a girl to sleep so we decided to extend that philosophy to the game mechanics as well.
A fundamental change in gameplay compared to the June version was that now the various gameplay objects start erratically and slowly calms down as the character's sleep gauge goes up to simulate what's it like slowly falling into slumber when you have too many thoughts bouncing in your head. Balancing this hasn't been easy as we want the game to still be challenging to those who want it while also maintaining the game's core theme. We'll definitely talk more about this as we head closer to the upcoming Steam Next Fest.
Unfortunately, Steam doesn't allow videos in community posts yet, I think, so I'll just list on the top of my head what this has manifested as:
Word Cloud travel speed starts fast and slowly becomes slower as the sleep gauge increases.
Word Clouds move in a wavy line and slowly straightens out as the sleep gauge increases.
The Word Cloud sprite animates way too quickly at the start and then slowly mellows out when, you guessed it, the sleep gauge increases.
Overall, this made the gameplay much fun and dynamic from our experiences during our internal playtests. We can't wait to get this in your hands soon, and, hopefully, tell us what you think.
Who's The Girl Anyways?
A personal desire of mine and also from what we got from players who playtested the old version was that they wanted to see and know more of the character you're typing to sleep. So that's what we did next.
I introduce to you, Ada Hejmiika!
Ada's been having sleeping problems for a good while now thanks to the responsibilities of her work following her at her home that she barely has time to pursue her own happiness.
Recently, her boss asked her to be the keynote speaker at the upcoming company conference and Ada knew she wasn't in any shape to lead such an event and finally had to take up her friend's advice on how to get better rest each night.
She hopes that with the sleeping technique her friend taught her, she can finally sleep on time on a consistent basis and not stay up late due to her thoughts keeping her up at night.
You'll learn more about her, her life and her work soon.
A Story Now Actually Exists
Since we wanted to see more of Ada in the game, we had to get rid of the old way we presented the game's narrative.
In case you've forgotten, this is what it used to look like:
We planned to put in flavor text in the middle of the interface while the player is choosing their modifiers. Needless to say, it had to get a complete makeover.
This is now what this interface looks like in our internal builds:
We're still hard at work adding some finishing touches to the second screen, but I'm happy how it turned out. I could say more about it, but I'll leave that for you to discover.
The Work Ahead
If you've noticed, modifiers are completely missing in the screenshot above, or in the new trailer, or in the Steam page description. That's because it's currently undergoing a complete overhaul as well, and we have nothing presentable to show at the moment. You will learn more about what has become the modifier system and much more very soon. Stay tuned.
I hope you're as excited as I am for this new chapter in Type Her to Sleep's development cycle, and I can't wait to show you more of the game soon!
And if you haven't already, why not wishlist and follow Type Her to Sleep to get notified on updates as soon as I make 'em, as well as be reminded by Steam when the game is out.
Cheers, and thanks for reading!