Demo Release 2: Whats New, Whats Upcoming, and The Future.

Update 2 has been long overdue but its finally here! There's a lot to cover and go over but lets give the short rundown of it all.

Whats New?

• Portraits for (major) characters in dialogue
• 3D Overworld Map (Main Town and Mirror World)
• Dungeon 2 +Extra Side Content
• New Battle Animations
• Hermits Den Shop and Norns Cathedral Location

That's whats currently in the new version of the game, however I do have plans to release another smaller build or two for the second version of the demo. To polish the game up a bit more and get it into its most presentable state as a demo, as well as lay the groundwork for a lot of the game going forward.

Whats Upcoming Before Paid Releases?

• Reworking the overworld character tiles to be more descriptive (Such as unlabeled ones being characters, ones for marking area transitions, ones for marking quests/story important nodes, etc.)
• Stomping out any major bugs that crop up in the current build, weather its stuff I find in testing or from what people report.
• Giving the current selection of content a solid proofread, as the current script I am well aware has issues that should be ironed out for a first impression/demo release.
• Updating any outdated art from old versions.
• General polish wherever else applicable.

This list is generally more informal and based on what I deem best for the free versions of the game, but more or less the idea is the demo is going to really only get one or two more iterations, as spending too long making this perfect will take away from development time on newer content.

Going Forward....

For the next bit of major content, its going to be Chapter 2, Dungeon 3, and Introducing the new party member. Now for those who might have played the original 2022 Version of the game, this will be going into what would be that games first real dungeon. For many reasons, such as being later into a play-through, being the first paid version of the game, and personal design ambitions and sensibilities changing a lot over the 4 year gap since I first designed that area; Said dungeon will be getting a massive overhaul in its design and layout.

As for pricing of the game, I am debating between two payment models at the moment. And I've been asking around for anecdotes and opinions from friends and mutuals to get an idea of how to handle it.

What I had in mind...

• Option A: Game in Early Access is priced at a fixed rate for its entire life. Whatever it starts at stays at that point outside of sales periods or anything of that sort. (Example: Game is a fixed 10$ US for whole life sans sales)
• Option B: Earlier versions of the game start at a lower price-point, but as new features and content get added the price slowly climbs to its full price before reaching it in the main release. (Example: Chapter 2 is 3$ US, Chapter 3 is 6$ US, etc)

Overall I plan to have the paid version be no more then 12$-15$ US in total (depending on the content in the game) And its overall something I just need to think about. For all I know it could just be a secret third thing haha.

If there's any questions, bugfixes, suggestions, etc. regarding the new build, don't be afraid to comment under this post/games comments section. I can also be reached out on Bluesky (@bluwraith.bsky.social‬) if you wanna ask me anything directly for follow me on there if you haven't already.

Happy exploring! -Blu_Wraith,