8/24 Status Update

The first supporter version of the demo is out and I've already started to receive feedback. In the video game development process, an early demo like this is made to give a baseline vision that will be picked apart and edited often until pretty much everything has changed one way or another. So the game mechanics, character relationships, story, all is subject to change. And after a lot of iteration the goal is to get a version of the game that's as fun as possible.

This is a more public version of this process than I normally do, but many features that might seem core to the games they're in often arrive fairly late in the process. For example, things in At Mountains of Friendship like characters having three level scaling abilities they can switch between, spending Eldritch Energy on XP, and quite a bit more didn't show up until fairly near the game's release.

In this demo for example, the whole elemental affinity system was added mid this week. It's been in the game for only a few days. There's already a few mechanics that I'm thinking about changing even with the limited feedback I've received so far. Another change made very recently is Zaman and Vashti's relationship. In old updates I talked about Zaman and Vashti being engaged to be married, well that's completely gone now. In fact, between more closed playtests and this demo I changed the entire goal of the journey the main characters are on.

So that's all to say that what you see in this demo might be very different than what's actually in the final game. Or it might be the same, it depends on how things are received and what needs to be changed to fix what isn't working. In the meantime though, I'm pretty sick of playing these first three levels again and again, I'm working on stuff that happens later on now.

Above is a very WIP version of level 5, where TF elements first get introduced. Unfortunately that's beyond the reach of the demo, especially since level 4 is pretty complex. The game is already introducing concepts pretty fast, there's a lot to teach the player before we get to boys turning into girls and vice-versa. So while I'm sure people would like to be running around with female Zaman right at the start of level 1, there's some development that needs to happen first.

This WIP illustration is the last of the first batch, which covers the game up until level 6. There's two more batches of nine needed for act 1, for a total of 27 illustrations that will be in the game for that first chunk of the game I plan to release.

What exactly does act 1 mean though? Act 1 covers the first 11 of 21 planned levels divided into 3 acts. The switch from one act to another is signified by a few things. A major story development, but also new classes for the characters and changes to the gameplay and relationships that go along with that. For example, if Zaman and Shahrazad stick together until the end of act 1, Zaman will become a Captain, Shah will become a Handmaiden, Azar a Myrmidon, and Vashti a Witch.

But let's say Vashti stole Zaman. Well now Zaman is a Count, Shah is a Thug, Azar is still a Myrmidon, and Vashti is a Countess. And gameplay-wise, now Shah is the one trying to break up Zaman and Vashti and win him back.

Act 3 is more of an accentuation than a big change. At this point there will only be a few levels left and things will be locked in place. Classes will start to get crazier with things like Anarchist, Idol. Slut, Femme Fatale, Bimbo, Dominatrix, and more. In total there's over 50 classes planned, more than a dozen per character.

That's all for this week. If you have access to the demo, send your feedback my way! As always, thank you for your continued support.