DEVlog: The Project At Large

G'day!
Mr. MegaloDEV here!

Wow. As cliche as it sounds words can't really relate how continuelly floored we are with the reception so far to the game. 10.5k users have viewed the itch.io page, nearly 2k downloads, and we've hit the halfway point on attaining our first major funding goal. Holy Guacamole! Thank you everyone!

As we approach the end of the year I thought I'd share some details on the project and our overall plans. This might be a bit of a boring read, but if you are curious... READ ON!

And apologies ahead of time on the wall of text maybe I'll do some pretty graphics in future posts.

Funding

If you've looked at the goals recently, you may have noticed a swap to using dollar amounts as well as a revamp of said goals and what they entail. The reason behind the change was that people were contributing way higher dollar amounts than we anticipated so I felt a more transparent goal structure was necessary so that supporters could see where exactly their money was going as the project progresses.

Like most other developers just starting out this has to be done on  the side of a full time "day job". While the Mrs. doesn't have this  luxury, my "day job" just so happens to be effectively freelance. I can work as little or as much as needed. So what I've been doing since the Summer is accepting jobs far beyond what I'd normal do and regulating much of that extra income towards asset development. Essentially overtime. Obviously, this has the tradeoff of eating into time that could be used towards directly developing the game.

Ultimately, the amount of art assets planned to be in the game is massive and a huge endeavor to undertake. So our mindset was to have the art pipeline going as  steady as possible from the start regardless of the current income of the project. Once our first goal is met I'll start refusing those extra jobs and focus more on direct development. No offense to my day job  clients, but working on the game is much more fun and rewarding ;) .

Graphics Overhaul

While we've got a lot of positive feedback on the "graphics", I presume those to be specifically referring to the character designs and CGs. If you've followed the project since we launch, you might know that we were working on overhauling the maps to a new 32x32 tileset. For now we are going to hold off on directly working in this area and instead  solely focus more on adding more story content as art is completed.

Concurrently to making this decision, I've been taking a look at various pixel artists and decided to make a commission with one of Emma in her "casual" attire. If all goes well, we'll continue making small commissions here and there as funding allows. When the pixel artist goal is met we'll expand the funding as stated leading to more art being commissioned. Then at a certain point we'll have enough assets to  implement all the pixel art into the game.

I feel this is right move for now as it'll let us test out map  layouts for gameplay as we work on a cohesive style. Also, here is a WIP of that Emma sprite:

Combat

Originally we had the game billed as "optional-combat", however that hasn't been the case since around early October I think, shortly after we launched the first public build. The main takeaway from us originally planning "optional-combat" is that we don't want any combat grinding in the game. Personally, I loathe grind... Probably why the Legend of Heroes series is now one of my favorite JRPG series. Aside from the epic sweeping story through multiple installments, awesome characters, Estelle... Just go play them if you like JRPGs *Ahem*.

Anyways, we want combat to be fun and not detract from the H-content. Ideally, we want Accursed to be a Game not a vehicle for delivering h-content. Also known as a yo-anyone-got-the-full-gallery-save. To be clear, this isn't a knock at that kind of style. It's a mood. Sometimes you just want THE STUFF. Overall, its a huge endeavor and huge props to all the devs in the industry that have successfully merged both  aspects of a h-game.

Updates

The goal right now is to release one update a month towards the end of the month for Snorkeler-tier supporters and then the public release 1-2 weeks later. Something to keep in mind is that as project funding increases and time passes not only will the quality of the game increase but the updates will tend to get meatier and meatier.  This will be due to multiple reasons:

• We'll be able to spend more time on the project
• Contracting additional help.
• Major systems will be completed

My guess is around 0.1.x release this will be more noticeable on all accounts.

Roadmap

Keep in mind that this roadmap is tentative as we are in the early stages of the project. Overall the goal is to finish phase three of the game in around three years then spend another year polishing and fully implementing the "pure" path.

Phase 1

• Finished first pass of Prologue and core systems- v0.1.x - [ETA - Q1 2023]
• Finished first pass of Act 1 - v0.2.x - [ETA - Q2 2023]

Phase 2

• Finished first pass of Act 2 - v0.3.x - [ETA - Q2 2024]

Phase 3

• Finished first pass of Corrupted Act 3 - v0.4.x - [ETA - Q4  2024]
• Finished first pass of Corruption Endings - v0.5.x - [Q1 2025]

Phase 4

• Implement alternate "pure" path.

Phase 5

• Polish and release 1.0

Note: It's also possible we may decide to release a 0.5.x version in Early Access on Steam, but it's too early to tell right now.
Note 2: Funding can speed up or slow down development to a certain point. Given that there IS a ceiling AND floor to that production speed. Basically, at a certain point additional funding won't speed up development any further. Although, that is certainly a long ways off for now.

Additional Operating Systems

As of typing the only officially supported OS is Windows. I was able to get some help by the wonderful aura-dev on a tool they use to compile their own Linux and Mac OS versions so I'll figure that system out soon.
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Well, that's it for now! We'll be dropping 0.0.9 to the public shortly.
Until next time!