It's the Creature of Castorfield February update, our one game that is being worked on behind the scenes!
This month we focused on some expression work for the main character, as there isn't going to be RenPy like dialogue where characters rotate expressions while chatting, and there is instead going to be comic-book like dialogue, expressions might seem a bit out of place.
This is for a slightly different purpose, where we see the main characters internal monologue, either through reacting to new information given, remembering an objective, or simply becoming tired because their energy is depleted. This gives the game a way to communicate to the player what is happening, without necessarily breaking the immersion of the gameplay.
Each day there's a limited amount of energy for investigative tasks, (which forces the days to progress forwards, and MC gets feminized slowly as days progress) and a sleepy expression will appear with a dialogue bubble saying it's time to turn in for the night. This expression will slowly update to match the MCs total change progress.
The thinking expression is going to be mostly for internal dialogue that accomplishes a few tasks, sometimes giving a summary of what was just learned, or connecting two pieces of plot together; which is a system I'm still working out. As the game is intended to be fully non-linear, it's likely that lots of parts of the game will be linked together to give a little summary of something that just happened, or something that happened a while ago, but is just now relevant. Something to help keep you on track with the inherent story of the game, without having to have parts repeated multiple times, or to have to keep notes.
This was unfortunately a little lighter update this month, because my PC had to be taken in to be repaired for three days, which unexpectedly ate into my time allocated to this project, but will not affect the other projects. Hoping I can make it up next month, by implementing a few things I've been working through, and so we'll see you in that next update!