It’s been just a week since the demo came out, but it feels like so much has happened. An idle idea I had back in April - “I wonder if anyone else remembers multimedia CD-ROMs?” - has turned into something people are actually playing and enjoying!
Thank you to everyone who has been in touch - I’ve read every piece of feedback and it really puts a smile on my face to hear people are enjoying the demo.
Please do leave a review if you have the time, even if it’s short - it really helps with the Steam algorithm.
Just in time for the end of Finnish Games Week, and the start of Next Fest, I’m very happy to announce the new Demo v1.2 is available with some great new features and some satisfying bug fixes.
Features
Achievements!
There are now seven Steam achievements in the game, with more to come soon. If you already played part of the demo, most should unlock automatically when you start the game. Note: If you already finished the demo and completed Week 2, getting the final achievements (week 2 and end of demo) will require you to play through one “explore” cycle (from meeting the spirit to seeing the “Chapter Complete” screen). After that a new “demo complete” flag is set and the achievements will be unlocked.
New menu!
With a nod to the confusing “mystery meat” menus of the late 90s, I’ve put together a new, more visually exciting main menu with influence from classic 90s CD-ROM applications.
New type of inconsistency!
You will now need to check the spirits’ stories extra carefully to find if it’s a time violation, an impossible journey, or the new “Action inconsistent with location”. For example, it’s hard to ride a horse on the Tokyo Expressway.
The Marunouchi postcard is now part of the regular location, so spirits can appear there in Explore mode.
Changed the inconsistency generator so won’t get the same type of narrative inconsistency twice … except, to keep it interesting, on rare occasions you will. So read carefully!
Bug fixes
The mouse label will now reappear on “Parallels Mode” in the similarity finder, even if you complete one of the tabs, when you move to an incomplete tab.
Try to fix a weird bug where the fullscreen viewer appears out of nowhere if you click some wrong spot on the similarity finder.
Save button on database prep should no longer overlap the word list.
The button to open fullscreen view will no longer shrink if it is unclickable/under other controls.
Fixed the new volume slider not saving the music volume as an options file.
Fixed the new volume slider not being set visually on start-up.
Fixed a factual error regarding addressing Japanese emperors.
Other
Version number is now shown on the main menu.
The “right place, wrong year” logic has been adjusted to avoid choosing a location that’s has a start/end date too close to the current year. For example, if a place closed in March 1955, you could argue that it was open in 1955, for a few months, which means the spirit isn’t technically lying if they say they went there in 1955. To avoid this ambiguity, there is a buffer of at least 1 year between the start/end year for a location and the actual year of the story.
Added dev tools for testing report and exporting postcard data.