Special Project previews: Demon "Shard" Slots

Hey hey!

It's been quite a while since I've had time to work on and talk about the special extra project. So much so, that some people that have joined Patreon recently might not even be aware of its existence, but you can read more about it in the initial post about it if you don't know what we're talking about!

With the regular updates hanging over my head and the collaboration with Shelter demanding my attention, I didn't have time to look at this little side project at all. I had been itching to work on it again and, this week, I finally managed to get some good work on it done! Because of that, I wanted to talk a little about it again and show a special preview of one of the little elements of it that I hadn't shown yet.

The game itself is taking shape quite well. I know I haven't gotten into too much detail about it just yet, but that's because it's shape and concepts were still at the very beginning and shifting a lot. I want to have something more solid and working before I go really in-depth about it! For now though, what everyone should know:

• It's NOT a separate game! It's a little mini-game that you play INSIDE Demons Within and concepted to go along with the visual novel side of it.

• The mini-game will help us, the players, act as Lust as it is acting inside Resnick by, in concept, actively shifting his lusty thoughts towards different people and, in turn, unlocking memories, visuals, and even imagination about said character from it.

• This little game is meant to be a kinda-sorta idle game that you mess with a little, and then, while you read the actual story and play the visual novel, it generates resources and does things that you then go back and use/do more stuff with them.

Its working is somewhat simple, but I'm still working hard to make it as unique as fun as possible!

Here's a small screenshot of how it's looking right now. It's HEAVILY WIP, as I'm mainly working on the internals to make things work rather than the visuals, but I'm happy to say that Blain and I have already worked on quite a few of them to make them cool:

As you progress through the VN, the intent is that you will unlock many things to then use in the side-game. Most of it becomes available as Lust gets stronger during the game or, maybe, sometimes through going down a branch or another. One of the things, however, that I really wanted to touch on was in Lust's ability to manipulate the other Essences as well.

That brings us to the other new piece of preview today: The slots for the 5 other essence shards. I don't think it's that big of a secret anymore which other essences are represented in the Essence Wheel. A lot of people have already figured it out! We'll see them when we see them. They'll play a part in the game as well, although how I cannot say just yet. In the image above I don't have their slots placed in the screen yet, but enjoy seeing them here:

As I mentioned, they're slots! They're meant to hold things that we'll unlock later. Very special things!

The main intent of this post was still to show some previews and let you all know I'm working on things! I can't say when this will be out, as even a "small" game like this has SO MANY things I have to think and take care of! I'm steadily working on it, though!

I don't want it to delay the regular updates too much, however, so I'll likely begin working on the next update next week already. I'll do a proper devlog with some more information of some of the other side things I've done and then talk more about the content that is to come!

For now though... Cheers! Demons Within still has a lot to give and it's gonna be awesome!