First, a quick status update!
- We are 15 enemies and 12 bosses away from being finished with the literal hundreds of monsters in this world, probably our biggest hurdle throughout development, and it's nearly complete. A few of these bosses are final bosses, so I assume they will take more time, but we can clearly see the light at the end of the tunnel, and it's bright as hell.
- I have 20 more pieces of furniture left to colorize, polish, and add properties to, out of 700+ each with rare alts (so 1400 in total). I'll do a whole post on the details of this soon, but it was another big one for me personally and should be finished by tonight. High probability I’ll add more once we get to the end of development, but I think 1400 is a high enough number at this point.
- All cat abilities are 100% done (outside of a few that need updated icon art). We still have to do a pass on diseases/parasites, so probably 50 or so more "passive" abilities will be added, but at this point, I'm calling it done.
- Matthias and Jon are finalizing and finding a singer for the game's final track. They will have some minor scoring for mini cutscenes and a few in-game jingles left to do as we finish, but basically, the OST is also finished.
The three main things left on our plate are items (roughly 1/4 of the way finished), events (about 1/6 of the way finished), and SFX (I think about 3/4 of the way done, but this one is hard to figure out). Overall, I'm feeling pretty good about where we are at and being basically content complete by New Year's. Once that happens, we will polish and start the hype train, lock down a release date, and crunch on the details until release! Exciting :)
Now let's talk about NPCs and favor...
So when we started development, the general idea of the game's "hub progression" was very similar to Animal Crossing. You had a few shops in town that would refresh their contents over time and a Tom Nook-like character you would pay to upgrade your house and other aspects of the game. You’d buy shop items and pay off debts with the leftover money you find from adventures, so there was a bit of a grind when it came to your adventures and saving up enough cash for XYZ. This appeared to work, though such a focus on a single in-game currency made the adventures a bit too money-focused, and we were currently also dealing with a more major issue... house population control.
For those unaware, in Mewgenics you have a house hub where you breed your cats to grow your army. But once things get moving, the number of cats in your house goes up astronomically, and we found ourselves leaving cats outside when they were unwanted, and that felt horrible. See, cats require food, and overcrowding causes cats to become unhappy, so "removing" extra cats was kind of important. But we came up with a plan that ended up yielding many awesome results.
CATS ARE CURRENCY!
Yeah, it was as easy as that! Every NPC in the game wants cats. What for? Well, that's their business. All you need to know is each one requires something specific. Tink wants only kittens, but Butch requires cats with adventure experience. Some want cats with diseases, others want cats that are fully domesticated. Sending out these cats is super simple; you just pull your cat into the pipe next to your house and send it to the NPC in question! And just like that, you have fewer cats and more favor with that NPC!
But what does favor do? Well, it's different for each NPC, but building favor is like leveling up your connection with an NPC, and with each level up, they will yield something amazing. Sending cats to Butch will level up your inventory storage, giving them to Frank will grow your house! There are even ways to upgrade your cat knowledge, gaining key details vital for breeding, like how gay a cat is and who he might murder if left alone in a room with. NPC favor goes beyond these general upgrades as well and pushes into the long game, but I’ll let you figure that out on your own. All you really need to know here is cats are worth more than gold to the right person, especially if they have some rare disease!
Anyway, that’s it for this update. Tune in next time so I can dump some info about furniture and "the Nona cat" all over your face!
Bye-bye
-Edmund