Demons Within Update 11 devlog 4: The final tidbits

Hey hey!

Here we are again! Another devlog as promised!

I guess I should address what you see at the top first! That is middle of the update things. Is it a wonder that Resnick gets excited when he thinks about the Dawn Tournament? We'll be seeing this poster in the update, hence why we drew it up! Our first glimpse at Grandmarshall Alistair, who has been mentioned before as the leader of the Order. So inspiring! I usually leave visual assets to the previews tier, but they got a lot already this month, so I'm offering the special treat we'll see in-game here as well to spice up the devlog! :D

I have a bunch of things to go over today so let's get to it. First and foremost, I'm happy to be able to announce that the writing for Update 11 is in its very final stages and getting ready to be closed up. I have some final tidbits of possible branches to still write and tie together, then I have to go through all of my reviewing process and all, and theeeen... it'll be done! I fully expect to finish by the end of the week, though.

After that, all that's left is to bring it all to life in coding. That usually takes a while (and the longer the update, the longer it takes!). But, this update doesn't have any super extravagant visuals so I don't expect it to be too challenging. I have a few extra features I'm bringing to the game alongside this build as well, but I'll talk about those in a bit and they're mostly done anyway!

About the stuff I wanted to go over here, the first involves the writing. The update is sitting at almost 16k words, which is pretty big for an update. I try to average updates at around 10k words since it makes for a sizeable chunk of gameplay and can be done in a timely fashion. If you've been following my devlogs, you know I usually fail at keeping it that short... but I try not to get TOO overboard with it as to not delay things too long. Still, sometimes I feel like the story needs to go up to a certain point, or that certain branches need to be there to make the game as best as it can be and that's always my priority. So, it becomes what it becomes.

HOWEVER! With all of that being said... Some of you might have noticed after playing through Update 10 that it ends with either Ludwig or Edwin coming to talk to Resnick at night. The plan has always been to have the (possibility of) a scene with either of them at the end of the camping day. At the beginning of this update, I started writing the Ludwig side of this and then continued on with the rest of the update content. The rest, however, was quite extensive. Some... events happened, and I felt like I couldn't cut things short in the middle of those. You'll see what I mean! That does mean, however, that we're sitting at 16k words... without Edwin's side even existing yet. Judging by Ludwig's side of things, I'm confident that Edwin's side would bring around 6 to 10 thousand extra words, so in order to keep things timely I had to end up... leaving Edwin's side for Update 12. I'm sorry for that, Edwin-lovers. I know there's plenty of you guys given the last poll. Everyone is going to have to see the bear's side of things this time, but rest assured that I do this so that I can give Edwin's side of things my full attention too. It will come in Update 12 retroactively, so Edwin lovers have something quite big to look up to.

I won't say too much about what I plan for Edwin's side of things, but since we didn't get it this time, I will at least say that unlike Ludwig, who at this point might possibly have never done anything with Resnick yet, our tiger buddy has 'played' with Resnick at least twice at this point if we get here on his side, so the scene with him is meant to reflect the 'evolution' of their relationship in the things they do!

Alright, alright. That's plenty about that. Though yes, this update will bring a saucy scene with Ludwig, that's just the beginning of it as we wrap up the contents of Update 10. The events that follow will move on with the story in several ways.

I've mentioned this on Discord already, but I think this update will make people who like Ludwig, Boris, or Sam pretty happy! We're seeing a lot of the three of them this time in different ways.

I think this is already plenty for a single devlog! As usual, I'll be letting you guys know with another devlog as soon as we're getting to the end of the development phase. We'll be getting ready for the beta build, then finally, the full Patreon build! Finally!

Aaaand as always, thank you all for your continued support! I hope you like my developer ramblings!

Cheers! Love you all! :D