Hello everyone!
Well, it’s time to make some changes! We have completely revised the approach to the release of updates. Sometimes it so happens that you plan one thing, yet you get something different :-D
For some time, we were unable to work properly during the working hours due to the illness. Therefore, we are trying hard to complete everything we planned for the current version, but we are not sure if we meet the deadlines. But the quest seems to be entertaining, and we hope you will like it!
We also hope you will enjoy the way the updates will be released :)
From now on, we will release separate fragments of the plot approximately once every two months - full quests with arts and animations. They will be a kind of mini-games, extracts from the plot. In terms of the amount of content, they will be comparable to the ones we released before, but the content will be presented more conveniently, as each fragment will be focused on the story of a specific character.
We believe everyone will benefit from this approach.
The game becomes heavier and heavier. Only the first third of the plot has been presented for now, and the events are just beginning to swirl around the main characters.
The release of mini-games will make it easier to get acquainted with the story update without spending a lot of extra time looking for new content in the whole game and get to know the characters better, not to mention that there will be a lot of interesting things to do in the main game too.
Let me make it clearer by giving you an example of how it will work for the next mini-game. It will be devoted to the quest named “Special Fun”, which part has already been loaded in version 0.2.4.
- You will immediately get access to this quest, as well as some accompanying plot events that unfold around this time in these locations;
- There will be no need to download 3-4 GB of the game to play the new content;
- All hidden choices, achievements, and others affecting the development and availability of events will be activated to show most of the content available in the quest. But, there will be no access to further events that will follow after such a quest.
Meanwhile, the main build of the game will be released less often. However, all quests that have come out during this time and further developments with the characters will be immediately available in it.
During the quest “Special Fun”, you will have to make a choice whether to develop the events further or to reduce them to a minimum and exclude them from the further development of the plot. The main build of the game will contain the further development of relations with the protagonist of this quest, the opportunity to visit this character for some time in the same location and get to know him or her better. Thus, the main build of the game will have the expansion of events with this character, and, if possible, its full development to a certain turning point in the plot.
What are the advantages for us? Everything is simple here. This way, we can specifically focus on certain quests, completing them totally in one update, instead of coming back to it again over several patches of the main game, as it was before. We used to spread into too thin trying to complete different kinds of work, and we wanted to do everything simultaneously... we had to finish it here and there, then to make some improvements, and to add or fix something else.
Besides, it will be faster to add or extend the scene than to create all the content required for the entire quest.
Moreover, such mini-games will minimize the complexity of transferring the game to the updated engine since we won’t have to constantly fix MV, so our programmer will be able to focus on the MZ version of the engine.
By the way, there is already some progress in transferring the game to MZ. It is likely that the game will become much less resource-intensive and less demanding on hardware comparing to MV.
But it’s just our assumptions. The actual result will be seen at the beginning of February.
Here are the release dates:
- From February 3 to 7, a mini-game “Special Fun” v 0.7 will be released.
- From February 16 to 22, there will be a full version of the mini-game - “Special Fun” v 1.0.
- From March 1 to 3, the main build of the game version 0.2.5 will be released. It will include everything we did over the past months.
In spite of being ill, we did at least what we were able to do. Although the final version of the quest “Special Fun” is slightly delayed, we managed to do something. A detailed list of things we did will be posted along with the release of version 0.2.5, since this post turns out quite long.
Perhaps that’s all for now. No doubt we have completely recovered as instead of writing a short text consisting of a few lines, there are 2-3 Word pages... :-D
Never mind :) We are working hard to make an interesting and beautiful game, to the best of our abilities, and we hope that when you see what I have described here, you will like our new approach.
Have a good day!
With love, ElisarStudio!