This month we accomplished three main things, which I will dig into detail in a moment, but we're very happy with the progress so far. We're still quite a ways away from a release, as it's hard to say exactly what art-to-text ratio we can expect as we've only planned out the finale art scenes, and one of the scenes we'll mention in a moment. We have space for a lot more, but as we have to focus on a lot of the essentials first, we won't get to look at them for a little while.
Firstly, following on from last months update, where we had set up one of the sexy sequences involving the three girl antagonists, we get introduced to a character: Rose Marino. This month we got to put together the first piece of art of Rose Marino (kept it hidden for spoiler reasons) This particular part of the sequence has a few different scenes as the main character slowly changes over time, but Rose Marino is a character that you sort've rescue from the torment of the antagonists, and she has some important plot beats to deliver to you in dialogue. Next month it is likely we'll be able to get a couple pieces for this sequence completed, as this month was her design and first piece.
Secondly, we built out a bunch of the library's functionality. It's different from the documents in the doctor's office, and the sheriff's office as they're able to use the same system of 'Open drawer, select folder, look at document, close document'. The library needs you to be able to read several pages of the same item, and the menu it's contained in, is choosing a book from a shelf. So the flow is instead 'Look at bookshelf, select book, page 1, page2, page3...' This means there will be some more longer form texts in the game for you to sink into a little deeper, which brings us to our last point.
Finally, we have two different books written and added to the shelves, and we also have our first reflection scene where the MC has inner dialogue that gives hints about the game state based on what information they've just received. This is mostly to help reinforce some of the notes you pick up from the different documents you read. The two books included are; a collection of first hand accounts on the original surveys and expeditions for the logging encampment that became the town of Castorfield. 100 years before it was a mining town, it was a logging camp, and these notes tell a first-hand account of what settling into the region is like. It delivers a lot of foreshadowing as to some of the mystery of Castorfield, but also helps point out some key locations of interest. The second book is a fantasy short story featuring a specific mythological creature, that has direct parallels to the plot of the game, and maybe hints towards what kind of creature is the one that haunts Castorfield. (once again no spoilers)
The idea behind the library and the other locations that contain documents is not that you would go and read through them end to end, but that the game would give you context hints for specific things that you could go and look up. Somethings will be important, and that means that some things need to be included that aren't important, but are still interesting to read. This update means that we have a few different areas where we can be working on adding content, there's still a lot of things that can be added in the sheriff's office, or the doctor's and we have notes on those, but more areas we can adding things to enables for more points of inspiration, and removing some of the monotony of game design.
I'm really happy with the progress we're making in the last few months, so I'm hoping that this update is an exciting one to read!