Yo! It's time to talk about LOCKING IN, and what it means for Sealed Fortress.

That's right, we're talking about locks, keys, doors and chests. That and the fact that I'm going BEAST MODE

MECHANICAL CHANGES:

I've been thinking about things. The game is progressing well but I've been considering ways to make it feel better. I've had for a long time now something itching at me about the ways keys work in the game. You would be able to buy keys from Meadow at camp, which was strange but for a while I've just thought of it as necessary so that I could have locked chest and doors without having to place a bazillion keys around.

But then what happens is that the player reaches a locked chest or a door there's usually a feeling of "Guuuh I didn't buy a key, damn it I gotta go back to camp and backtrack all the way out here with a key" which is less of a cool dungeon crawley feeling as I wanted it to be.

And also there's the weirdness of the shopkeep having an infinite stock of old keys from a sealed off castle. That never really sat well with me. And that got me thinking recently: What happens if Meadow DOESN'T sell keys? Well we end up back to the problem of having too many locked things for me to hand place a key for each one throughout the level. Okay, so what happens if none of the chests are locked? Now things a starting to make more sense!

So the changes end up being so:

- Keys are no longer sold at the shop
- Chests are no longer locked, they only have the chance of being trapped
- Thief Picks no longer need to unlock chests, they can simply disarm traps.
- And so I can lower the cost of the Thief Picks a bit, so you can grab one on the way out from camp without too much consideration.
- Locked doors now are mysteries to be solved, rather than a paywall
- I think it makes keys more exciting to have
- I can now use doors to gently gate progress at times
- Now Old Keys and Thief Picks have clear delineated purpose which cleans up the design a bit.

So a lot of positive! And some might think that this should've been a conclusion I should've foreseen way sooner... And I think that's a fair assessment, I'm not entirely sure why it took me so long to figure it out, but hey we're here now, awesome! Moving along!

PROGRESS REPORT:

I've now completed the third major area of the game, the Temple Spire, or at least it's juuuust on the cusp of being completely finished. As I finish it up and test it, I'm going to gather footage so that I can make that trailer! I'm excited to do that.

Now that the 3 main areas are done (mostly) I will start working furiously on the side area, the fortress's dungeons, and once that is done, all that's left is the final area and the tutorial!

Annnnd the intro, and the ending, and the extra story stuff.... But how long could that take! haha (fear)

I'm steeling myself and forging ahead! I'm very excited!

That's all for this Devlog! See you next time!

Byebye!