Cards of Gluttony Dev Log #25 [26/11/2025]

Phew, it's been a hot minute since the last Dev Log, but now that 0.7.0 is finally out, things are back on track!

This month, I've actually been working on a few art assets to add to existing parts of the game, but first, let's begin with something discussed in a previous post:

The Journal - Poll Results

So in the 0.7.0 release post, I went over the issue with the Journal in its current form - why it wasn't viable to keep going and the reasons it had to be changed - and attached a poll to decide what to do about it.

In the end, the poll was nearly unanimously in favor of streamlining the journal into more like a quest log, so I've begun the first few steps and rewrote the first chapter of Beau's journal to figure out what exactly I want this new "streamlined" style of writing to be! Here's a small chunk featuring the intro of Beau's journal:

You can check out the current log in the game and compare the two to see just how much things were compressed.

It's much less prosaic and fun to read this way, but I also found that it is now much more legible and faster to find the info you need - the entire page for Beau's first journal chapter now fits on the screen without a scroll bar! Despite originally being a compromise/cut done for time reasons, I actually think this change did end up improving the Journal overall.

Though I admit it is a bit of a shame I had to throw out the journal entries for some of the saucier parts - hell, if anything, they were the main reason why I opted for the original wordy style in the first place! Well, nothing left to do other than move on.

More characters!

Moving away from the Journal and to something with pretty pictures instead, here's a new face that you'll be seeing in the next update! However, rather than being a new character, this is actually a model for someone who already appears a few times in the game - it's the paramedic in charge of the emergency medical team that always comes pick you up when things go awfully wrong!

They don't exactly get a lot of screen time currently - hell, the only spoken lines you can even see right now only happen if you're able to beat both Bucky and Franklin!

And aside from that, they're only really referred to as "the medical team" and have largely functioned as a plot device for losing battles so far. However, as they are, in-universe, a pretty critical part of the Stout Group, I've been wanting to expand on this part of the narrative a bit more for a while now. Now that there is a "representative" for the emergency team, I can start involving them in the actual story a bit more.

As part of this lore-writing session, I actually ended up defining the structure of the Stout Group a bit more, including a headcount and rough draft for some of characters in the various departments - something I hadn't really done in detail until now. The one thing that's been quite noticeably lacking in the story so far is... well, the other Stouts. We're told that the Stout Group is an organization, but so far, the only people you actually meet are Gordon, Cedric... and Allegra. Plus, the doctors: Ricky and Lua (who only appears in very minor scenes).

I even have several sketches for these potential yet-to-be-seen Stout Group members, though for now I will keep those to myself for now until their characters and roles in the story are a bit more defined.

Another thing that's been missing

Aside from the paramedic, there are also other... less in-your-face visual pieces missing, namely several backgrounds:

The back room of Arnold's bar where he takes you if you express interest in him.

The forest cabin where Akello takes you at the end of the camper altercation - both an exterior and interior shot.

Ikem's bedroom.

You might've noticed that the game just uses an empty black background for these scenes. I've debated a few times whether to keep it that way, or whether to draw entire backgrounds for scenes that likely won't be used much outside of one scene.

In the end, it's very likely that all of the above places will reappear in their respective storylines more than just once... so that solves things for now.

I actually quite enjoy drawing backgrounds - it's a fantastic reason to practice a neglected skill that I can't really avoid if I want to work on the game - but the only issue is that it takes quite a lot of time, so I have had to be quite selective about what to draw a background for so far.

Anyways, this month I decided to tackle Akello's cabin which you can see below:

A familiar face in an unfamiliar fit

And finally, the last thing in the art department I worked on this month is a new outfit for a certain someone, take a look:

It's good old Ricky! As we're now reaching parts of the story where Ricky will likely have to step out of the medical ward, it was time for me to give him a more casual, non-doctor-y outfit to wear outside.

Aside from switching out his lab coat and polo shirt for a more casual jacket and t-shirt, he has also decided to accessorize a bit. The reasons for this should be pretty obvious, and it's a pretty neat example of the narrative affecting the character design - and I quite like the way it looks on him too.

And now something for the game, but not in the game

The final major piece of art I worked on this month is actually something that won't appear in the game itself. What could it be? Take a look below:

It's a new album cover for the soundtrack to the game, which has been available on Bandcamp for a while now. Since 0.7.0 introduced new music for Ambush battles, I went back to the album to add the new songs, and also to reformat the metadata tags and names a bit... because, wow, was it disgusting before that.

Until now, the album cover just used some generic art assets from the game glued together to form something akin to cover art... so it was about damn time I made actual cover art for it. The game really needs more fancy promotional key art in general, but as always, time is quite tight, considering the workload that a project like this requires. I'll likely off-load those to after the main work on the game is at least done.

The album's actually missing the 2nd overworld theme - due to the fact that the evening variant of it isn't finished yet, which I hope to finish in time to coincide for Bandcamp Friday next month.

Unrelated side note:If you're unfamiliar Bandcamp, it's a website where you can buy digital music.It's my preferred way of obtaining music due to Bandcamp Friday - a day when they temporarily waive the platform fees, meaning that when you buy music there, all of your money goes directly to the artist instead of a cut going to the website as is the norm. If you have any favorite musicians that you want to support, these are a pretty great time to do so.

Alright, that's enough of that! To end off the post today, we get to enjoy another Card of the Month at last:

Card of the Month

Happy to oblige

Discard all OFFENSIVE cards from your Opponent's hand, gain +1 Wgt for every card.

"Be a good boy and do their job for them."

You might've noticed there is a card with a similar effect already "A taste of your own", which also discards all of your Opponent's OFFENSIVE cards, but it instead inflicts Wgt on your Opponent and also makes them draw beforehand, which... just sounds literally better? In that sense, you could say this card is a "lite" version of that one.

Frankly, I didn't realize the similarities until after the card was already implemented, but considering the differences between them - "A taste of your own" is a Signature card you only get if you fight and beat Ratko, whose cost is 7 compared to this one's 3 - it might be worth exploring cards with similar effects but slight downsides/upsides, especially as alternatives to cards locked to only certain branches.

And that's it!

I don't really have any sneak peeks of dialogue to show this time, but the things I did show do imply a little bit of what you can expect to see in the next update! And with that, as always, thank you for reading and for supporting the project!