Everstone Daycare v0.8 - November Demo

Howdy everyone! Happy holidays!

This is not so much a content patch as it is a sorely needed makeover for the game, especially the title screen. We wanted the game to look more presentable and add new features for the benefit of future demos and content additions. There are no new story scenes added in this demo since last month, but we have added a couple of new systems/features that we will be detailing below.

Here is an exhaustive list of everything we’ve added this month:

Chapter Select - A chapter select screen to let you skip to certain time sections in the story that you’ve already played through. These unlocks should carry over between demos, allowing you to just jump forward to the point where it’s most convenient to access new content. Notably, it will only skip through main story related scenes and not any side content (such as meeting Trubbish or either of the Robo Hands scenes).

This unlocks after you finish the intro for the first time (and get put into the Retraining Program) and is accessible whenever you start a new game. You will be asked for your name when you start a new game after you unlock it, slightly altering the later scene where you would normally input your name with Nurse Charmeleon.

To skip to a certain section, click on the star sticker in the appropriate box (the part of the background that illustrates the time sections is based off of the in-game clock, and is hopefully understandable as is). You will be asked if you want to skip the accompanying cutscene. Saying ‘no’ will send you to the very beginning of that time section, while saying ‘yes’ will send you to the first point in that time section where you are given control.

I hope the layout itself isn’t too busy or confusing. We based it off of a daycare behavior chart (or even a potty chart), so we had to sacrifice a bit of function for form, hopefully to good effect. If not, we’d be happy to hear your suggestions!

Here’s a list of how to unlock each star:

• 1st afternoon star - Unlocked after finishing the intro. Sends you to either the beginning of the game or right after the intro.
• 2nd afternoon star - Unlocked after witnessing Garchomp’s spanking and returning Nurse Buizel’s cap. Sends you to either right after you’ve shared a cookie with Ekans or right after you’ve given back Nurse Buizel’s cap.
• 1st evening star - Unlocked after betraying Ekans. Sends you to just before you speak to Nurse Zangoose to ask for a make-up lunch.
• 2nd evening star - Unlocked after sneaking out of the Nap Room with the help of Scyther. Sends you to either the scene where you’re first taken to the Nap Room and meet Nurse Haunter, or to when you’ve snuck out from the Nap Room into the hallway.

Revamped the Title Screen - Honestly, the old one looked like a really crusty default RPGMaker titlescreen with a background that was never intended to be used. We’re really proud of how this new one came out (The BG art is still a WIP) and makes it look more like the VN title screens we’re used to seeing (though I’d love to improve on the formatting a bit more.) It has a lot more options that we thought were sorely needing to be added, including the next features that we will be explaining further below. Other than those, here’s a list of new functions we’ve added:

• Exit the game - A way to close the game without having to resort to ALT+F4-ing out!
• Options (Toggle Fullscreen and accessing the Volume/Text config menu) - Both of these used to only be accessible from a button on the textbox (so if you weren’t speaking/interacting with anything, you wouldn’t be able to adjust either.) Now you can finally adjust these before you load in or when you exit back out to the title screen.

CG and Replays gallery - As mentioned before, once you encounter a major scene or set of CGs during your playthrough, you’ll be able to revisit them from their respective gallery pages. View a slideshow of all of the CG art used in a specific scene from the Images gallery, or play through the whole scene again from the Replays gallery.

Here is a list of each unlockable gallery item (witnessing a scene unlocks an item in both Images and Replays galleries):

• Intro - Gengar’s betrayal and getting diapered by Nurse Charmeleon. Unlocked after finishing the intro.
• Garchomp’s spanking - Unlocked after witnessing Garchomp’s spanking.
• Betraying Ekans - Unlocked after siding with Scyther against Ekans and witnessing him get zonked right before he attacks you.
• Ekans’ Betrayal (Bad Ending) - Unlocked after siding with Ekans and getting dragged over to  Nurse Mew to be hypnotized (permanently).
• The Make-up Lunch - Unlocked after finishing getting spoonfed by Nurse Buizel and Nurse Ursaring.
• Scyther in the Nap Room - Unlocked after witnessing Scyther distract Nurse Haunter to help you sneak out in the middle of the night.
• Robo hands 1 (The Change Room) - Unlocked after falling victim to the robotic changing table in the Change Room beside the Nap Room.
• Robo hands 2 (The Storage Room) - Unlocked after narrowly escaping a malfunction robot changing table with the help of Janitor Trubbish

‘What’s New’ gallery - An extension of the Replays gallery. You’ll be able to play through the latest major scene added to the game without needing to unlock it in-game. Added this for the people who just want to drop in and quickly see what’s new without needing to follow a guide.

Minor Changes - I’ve also added a few, not-super-notable changes or assets in the game:

• A new icon for the .exe file - The old one was a hurriedly-made, low quality, and didn’t scale down correctly when viewing at a small size. Hopefully this new one sticks!
• Added a ‘Return to Title’ and ‘Chat log’ button to the in-game save menu - Not sure whether I added the ‘Return to Title’ this month or last, but I filled out that menu list a bit more and am considering removing the ‘Log’ button from the textbox to reduce redundancy (they both send you to the same chatlog.)
• Slightly changed the textbox - The old textbox extended awkwardly on the left to account for the name box. I’ve smoothed it out and made it more even. Hopefully you all prefer it!

Thank you all again for your patience and support! I’ve received a couple of helpful messages and replies in the last month both here and on Twitter, so please keep them coming! As always, feedback, questions, bug reports, and suggestions are appreciated, especially with the new designs for the title screen and the chapter select that we’ve just added. I’m not the best designer or typographer, so your help is welcome!

Please enjoy the new demo! And to everyone that has supported me this whole time, thank you for believing in me for a whole year. It's really a dream come true!

Note: Mac version now available!

Install Instructions

Due to the increasing size of the project, the file will now be hosted on my itch.io page for the game [password: Ursaring487]

Please extract the game folder to your directory of choice, and then run the 'Everstone Daycare.exe' file within to play the  game. Enjoy!

Please note for the Mac version that this is not a signed app, so you may encounter an error  when first trying to open this program. Please follow the instructions  on this support page to work around this.

Walkthrough

If you're stuck, please refer to this document: Everstone Daycare Walkthrough

Disclaimer

Any saves carried over from previous demos might cause issues when playing through them in the current demo. In the event that any flags, variables, and other data were changed in a scene after you had completed it already in your current save file, you might not be able to access the new content. Creating a new game file is advised.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed the bug causing the game to hardlock when opening the Inventory toy chest after obtaining Buizel's schedule from his locker.
• Fixed a bug in the second robo hands scene that caused a sentence to not be properly formatted and spawned an error window.

Known Issues

• [Mac version] Whenever you open up the game or return to the title screen, several error windows pop up. These shouldn't prevent you from playing the game as normal. This is caused by the project referencing several tags/variables present on the newer version of the program that aren't properly converted back when using an older version to export the Mac release. I will look into this further.