Posted May 08, 2026 by KeeperAtTheGate
It's time for another release. v0.050 marks the addition of music, the continuing storyline, a permanent pixel art location, and tweaks. Tweaks everywhere.
I must say that the music addition was quite the eye opener. I knew it was going to be a challenge, but I wasn't quite expecting what I encountered. First of all, the licenses. I never had to read so much fine print for anything like I had to do for this. Creative commons is great and all, but there are so many variations of "royalty free" music with gotchyas buried deep. For example, some royalty free music is available to use, but only for online videos like youtube, otherwise it requires a paid license. Those free licenses do not extend to games. Royalty free also doesn't necessarily mean free to use, just that there are no perpetual payments for each play. Licenses aside, there are thousands of tracks available to chose from, and no good way to sort through them all. Even finding the tracks in all the noise of the internet is a challenge in itself. Adding music is going to be quite the ordeal for the entire development process.
With that said, I did add music to all sections of the game. The earlier sections didn't really get a solid listen though. I'll have to reevaluate many of my choices when I'm on my end of episode polish and rewrite work. For example, the exploration tracks might not be appropriate for Gatekeeper. I wanted a break from the mellow seclusive tracks that make sense for most of Gatekeeper's environment, but techno type beats might be pushing it a bit too far and feel out of place. I'll have to playtest with the tracks for awhile to decide.
The storyline with Cateline continues. I'm trying to write a back and forth type relationship between the MC and Cateline. However, it feels like it might be becoming stale. Maybe that's just because I've spent too much time with it personally. Regardless, v0.050 marks the end of their current storyline. Most of the remaining parts of the episode will be gameplay mechanics and exploration. I'll need a scene or two with Cateline to introduce said mechanics. For example, she'll have a scene teaching the basics of fighting to the MC. Otherwise, there won't be anything else that's forced storyline with her until the end of the episode. At the end there will be one more "journey", but it will be only nighttime scenes at the tent, and those scenes will play out differently depending on how many points you earned with the match 3 minigame.
Going forward, v0.060 and v0.070 will introduce battle mechanics and the labyrinth mechanic. Both sections are already programmed and ready to go (I made them back in the winter). However, they will require testing and tweaking... and additions and modifications... It will take time to integrate them into the game I'm sure. After that v0.080 will wrap up Episode 1, and then the fun begins.
v0.100 will mark a major milestone with the rough version of Episode 1 complete. Then I will have to go back through the whole game and see what works and what doesn't. As I said before, Episode 2 will be it's own thing and will only be released when it's complete. So I'll be maintaining two branches of Gatekeeper, a v1.0 and v2.0.
Alright, that's that. On to battle mechanics. I'll try to post an update from time to time, however real life in the summer means less free time to work on Gatekeeper. But the struggle will continue as it always does. See you in the next post.