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Game development Trembling Essence update:

Trembling Essence Demo
A downloadable Visual novel game. for Windows, macOS, and Linux

Hello and welcome new followers, it's been a while but I am here with another update! :]

Firstly, I just want to keep things transparent and catch people up to date for those that might not of seen my previous explanation for this delay and/or are new here.

I was very hesitant on making any new update posts because I wanted my original play tester who's been here since the beginning to look at everything first so I patiently waited. I didn't want to give out false expectations and add bunch of new content/concepts in update posts only to take it out or change it entirely if I couldn't make it work. In the end, my original play tester just couldn't make it so I recently asked someone else. Everything went really well, I had a lot of fun with how they played the game and they were very understanding. Their feedback really helped me when I needed it and I learned a lot from this experience, I am never waiting like that ever again. :]

Anywho, here's how things have been going as far as game development goes:

In my last update post, I was talking about a certain goal point I wanted to achieve and the game got a pretty big update!

  • I finished all of the morning settings/routes that now lead into day 4, this took a lot of writing and time. There is one specific route that I'm fixing because when my new play tester and I played it straightforward twice, it took a very long time to get through and we still weren't done before we took a break. :,]
  • There were two new paths that I also finished during all of this. For the first one, I decided to push it later into the game due to certain events happening too early and the second one is an ending which is slightly hidden somewhere. :]

All that'll be needed is minor adjusting, etc because the variables need to line up correctly since some routes can have different outcomes. I'm up for this challenge but it's going to take time to organize.

Here are some of things I fixed along the way:

  • Slight adjustment to an ending that required a certain trigger
  • Adjusted certain visual effects happening to early
  • Cleaned up various grammar mistakes
  • Fixed certain routes jumping into other routes
  • Minor fix to backgrounds appearing at the wrong time of day
  • Adjusted the volume of different background SFX's / Music

Here's one of several things you can eat in the game, can't survive on an empty stomach after all! :]

When it comes to CG's that involve food, my style approach will be a bit different. I was originally going to do realism but those take a very long time to do and after the first few, I got pretty burnt out from them.

Along with that, sometimes you might find things that will aid you along the way! This key is just an example, I don't want to show the other items just yet. :]

I'm also still testing this but I thought about adding a visual effect that appears on your screen when something is causing you to rapidly lose health(?) It's not in full effect right now, just brainstorming it.

Lastly, another thing that's kind of been on my mind once I looked through the routes again is how long they are, I'm not sure how people feel about long visual novels since I consider this one to be a slow burn game. I don't want you to feel as though you have to skip through a lot of the dialog unless you've already seen it, I want it to be fun and not feel like it's dragging on. I really would like to hear people's thoughts on this because I honestly don't know.

I think I reached the max I can type here so I'll post the rest in the following update post next week but overall,

Thank you guys for being patient and understanding. I wholeheartedly appreciate the support and encouragement! :]

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