Lock & Key Progress Update - November 2024

Hello again, Magical Girls! Rachel here with another Lock and Key update.

November was a HUGE month for us. New sprites, new music, new special effects, new, well…just about everything! We’ve also made significant progress with regards to formatting and programming in order to streamline development as we enter the home stretch. Can you feel the excitement? I certainly can!

First thing’s first: here’s a sneak peek of a brand new character design! Say hello to a trusty ally of our main characters, Jude! A fellow current generation Magical Girl, they’re the kind of hero someone like Ruby can look up to. And definitely not develop a crush on, of course. Even if we can’t have a sprite for every character in the game, we’re striving to deliver as many as possible without compromising on quality. And with milkgrrl’s terrific art, quality is guaranteed!

And speaking of high quality, I’d like to show off Theo’s mind-blowing new effects for Sherri’s Spirit Reflection! It totally blindsided me with its detail and intensity, and I ended up watching the video of it at least ten times before I got around to responding. It’s just that good. Magic should feel, well, magical, and that’s certainly what these new visuals feel like to me! (see the video attached up top)

To top it all off, we’ve begun work on an entirely new trailer for the game! That means new visuals, new story details, and some awesome new music. We’re planning to debut it on the KS page, but perhaps our Patreon peeps might have a chance to see it early…just saying.

And we can’t forget the music! Not only has this month yielded multiple new tracks from our ever-talented esselfortium, she also took the time to go over older tracks and rework them for the sake of sonic cohesion and all-around listenability. From horror to heroism, there’s a track for any mood the story might be feeling.

As for said story, we’ve got progress to report on that front as well! The script is largely finalized, with only the endings and epilogues needing to be touched up. If all goes as planned, we should have the entire thing finalized by the end of the year. And with scripting underway, that’ll provide smooth sailing for our programmer for the rest of the game. Exciting!

So, yeah. I know the last couple months have been a bit sparse due to personal issues that required time off, but we’re serving up a full buffet and a half with this one. There’s nothing quite as energizing as knowing that you’re in the home stretch, and we’re all fired up for the big finish! I hope this news is as exciting for you as it is for us, because I couldn’t be happier watching it all come together. We’ll have even more to report next month, so stay tuned and please look forward to it!

With love (as always),

Rachel