Trembling Essence Devlog 8:💙Route progress + New CG's!💙

Hellloo and welcome new followers, It doesn't feel like it's been a whole month but it has so here's how things are going! :]

This update might be a little short this time because I want to avoid as much spoilers as I possibly can but I've been balancing out the game routing and redrawing some outdated/new CG's. So far I've been focused on the "Afternoon" as of late.

Choice progress:

I decided to make a progress bar chart to kind of give an estimate on how far I've gotten with the choices that can be made in the game! This includes dialog, fixed CG's, testing, choices, grammar checks, etc. The "Continue to wait." choice isn't up there for right now.

Update to the Afternoon route:

I've been warming up to the new content and I feel a lot more positive about how it's turning out compared to a few weeks ago.

I am being super careful with the pacing and my play testers have been very helpful through all of this so they deserve some credit! It took way more time than expected for me to get used to the new changes that fixes some if not most of the issues I came across when the [Talk to Noah], [Look around.], [Go to sleep.] and [Continue to wait.] choices were outdated and not complete. There was a chunk of a dialog scene that was cut however, I turned a part of it into a choice instead! I like this a lot more and it makes it easier for the story to flow correctly! :]

Here are some sneak peaks from the new content! >:3

New CG's:

I talked about this here and there but I do plan on updating some of the very old/outdated CG's in the game. At first, it was starting to look as if doing this would drag [Extended Demo] update out later into the year but I noticed I've gotten a bit faster with drawing CG's. Even though my art style fluctuates a lot I am happy seeing how far I've come with my overall drawing skills! :,]

For this scene I wanted to go for a foreboding atmosphere:

When it comes to updating these I try to look at the "bigger picture" :P and think about what all could be improved.

I don't want to spoil where this takes place but I've been wanting to fix this for a very long while. Around the time I originally drew the old version I was still getting used to drawing and I didn't have an official reference sheet for Noah yet ((still don't buttt I still want to improve my art skills a little more :P)). I thought the outcome of the old one was good back then but now I feel very different about it.

I had to go and search for the old file because I actually liked the old background itself, just not the way I colored it. For some odd reason it took longer to fix the old version of the background because I originally colored the door frames brown?? I have no idea why I did that as the area where his bedroom door etc is are varying shades of a cream/tan white color. Once I finally got it to look correctly, I went on to fix Noah's overall look in the frame. I wanted to have Noah's pose facing more towards the front and take up more of the shot versus him leaning on the door frame.  

My play testers really helped me out when it came to advice so for the tense atmosphere of the situation, I added some animation too and more depth to the shading. Once everything was settled they did a couple of tests and gave it a thumbs up! One thing that also made me happy is being able to convey this part using only 4* CG's instead of the old version having 7! :,] I have no plans on updating these CG's again unless it's for minimal stuff otherwise it'll just lead to burnout. :[]  

Speaking of CG's I'm really happy going through and cleaning so much of this up. I never knew just how much space these drawings were taking up until I compared them to the old drawings. Hopefully when all of this is fixed up I'll have enough space to keep it under 1GB by the time Day 4-7 are added in the full game! :D

Right now I'm still replacing a lot of the old CG's but once I'm done with that, testing, etc, I'll go forward with the Morning route which is going to need some TLC. :,] I think this game development post is long enough so I'll stop here!

If you like what I create, please consider supporting what I do on kofi [Here]! All donations and tips help tremendously while I continue to work on the game!

Q&A / Ask box is open:

To know and understand Noah through Asks and random posts about lore, they'll be under #Get to know: Noah ! :]

**Some asks won't be answered if it contains spoilers but I do appreciate what I receive. :]

If you have any questions about Trembling Essence/Noah feel free to ask here or on itch.io please. This makes it easier for me to see and answer accordingly! I enjoy hearing from you guys!

Thank you to everyone's continued support, I really appreciate it!! :,]

Trembling Essence Devlog 9:💙Finishing up the afternoon route!💙

Hi helloo and welcome new followers! Now that things are quieting down from summer break here's how game is going! :]

Quick recap:

I plan on doing a future update that serves as a quality of life to fix issues from the [Extended Demo] I didn't catch during the initial release. This includes updating most of the script, CG's, and bringing the overall story up to date with how I want things to be. :]

This update might be a little short again as I'm trying to avoid spoilers. Overall, I've been finishing up the "Afternoon route" by updating most of the outdated CG's and placing new ones in. With all of them done I went through and double-checked/did a lot of testing.

Choice progress:

This is how far I've come with these choices so far! Yaya! >:D This includes dialog, fixed CG's, testing, choices, grammar checks, etc. The "Continue to wait." choice still isn't up there for right now but I'm happy that I'm slowly starting the process into updating the "Morning route"! :D

New CG's:

Before:

After:

One of my favorite parts was re-doing a lot of the CG's. I didn't realize how much I improved until I did side-by-side comparisons and kept track of what could be adjusted. I really like going for an immersive-like feel towards scenes so it was nice doing an even better job at making it be known. I also learned how to optimize images and save up space within the game. >:]

**Certain CG's might be re-used in specific parts of the game in Day 4+ etc, just in case/to save on file space. :,,,]

Afternoon route finalization:

In 2024 I hadn't played this route in months after uploading the [Extended Demo] so I had a fresh perspective of what I wanted to adjust once I finished updating the start of the game leading up to Noah going back to his room. I began fixing up this route in late December of 2024 into the spring of 2025-ish and even though I got a good amount done, this was during a time where I wanted to do 4* routes. Now that it's only 3 I had to go back and pretty much adjust everything I did during that time and make sure all of the pacing was done correctly. It was very rough at first having to change so much of what I originally had planned but with the help of my play testers and you guys answering some of the polls I did, everything eventually went smoothly. :,,]

With everything finished, I'd say the 'Afternoon route' is abouuuutttttt 85%(??) different depending on your choices. :,] Speaking of choices I did edit/combine some of them to make the flow of the story a bit better. I have no plans on updating anything else for this route again unless it's for minimal stuff otherwise it'll just lead to a loop of burnout. :[]

Other than that, I don't think I have much else to say towards the 'Afternoon route'. Anything else that I left out is more than likely something I want to be experienced through the future update instead. :P

If you like what I create, please consider supporting what I do on kofi [Here]! All donations and tips help tremendously while I continue to work on the game!

Q&A / Ask box is open:

To know and understand Noah through Asks and random posts about lore, they'll be under #Get to know: Noah ! :]

**Some asks won't be answered if it contains spoilers but I do appreciate what I receive. :]

If you have any questions about Trembling Essence/Noah feel free to ask here or on itch.io please. This makes it easier for me to see and answer accordingly! I enjoy hearing from you guys!

Thank you for all the continuous support, I really appreciate it!! :,]

Trembling Essence Devlog 10:💙Going into the Morning route + Fail-safe balance!!💙

Hi helloo and welcome new followers, here's how game progression is going! :]

Quick recap:

I plan on doing a future update hopefully before the end of the year that serves as a quality of life to fix issues from the [Extended Demo] I didn't catch during the initial release. This includes updating most of the script, CG's, and bringing the overall story up to date with how I want things to be. :]

I usually get very busy closer to the end of the year so I tried to get as much as I could done. So far I've been editing the "Morning route" and updating most of the story building which includes outdated CG's. I did end up getting a good amount finished before spooky month starts! :,,]

I want to be super careful with the pacing but this shouldn't take as long compared to the "Afternoon route" which took more time than expected when the [Talk to Noah], [Look around.], [Go to sleep.] and [Continue to wait.] choices were outdated and not complete.

Morning route adjustments + Fail-safe balance:

I only played/fixed a little bit of the "Morning route" back in the spring of this year when I wanted to do 4* routes. Now that it's only 3 I now have to go back and pretty much adjust everything I did during that time and make sure all of the pacing is done correctly.

The 'Morning route' might be abouttt 65%-80%(??) different depending on your choices but I still need to do a bit more work towards this. Some choices were edited/combined and a good amount of dialog/certain scenes were updated to make the flow of the story a bit better. While I was going through the demo I found more continuation issues that I didn't catch. If Noah's closeness towards the player(Y/N) doesn't lead to a Bad Ending but isn't high enough you'd get alternative dialog but when the game continues the rest of Day 3, an error would happen. There was also a section of dialog in this that I decided to cut since it's very outdated and I think It may have added as a form of 'filler dialog' initially but I'm not sure anymore. I also added 2 more fail-safe's in the game to balance things out a bit more. These have also been adjusted with updated dialog and CG's.

I'm reallllyyy hoping these fail-safe's aren't too intrusive during game-play. I'll probably do a poll about this in the future after the update to the [Extended Demo] has been out for a while. :,,,]

Choice progress:

Here's the progress on the choices being updated. At first I had a good idea on what to do and I got pretty far with my ideas but unfortunately I hit a writers block during the middle of this month because there was a continuation issue that I just couldn't write around. There were also some interactions that happened way too early in Day 3 between the player(Y/N) and Noah that ended up creating 3 branching arcs that were too spoiler-y and too much for me to try handle. Eventually I got help from my play tester and we bounced off ideas and there was a happy solution in the end that I liked. Speaking of my play testers, in good news both of them were able to test out the new content and I got a lot of great feedback! :,D

New CG's + sneak peeks:

I was really looking forward to re-doing a lot of the CG's for the "Morning route". Back when I uploaded the [Extended Demo] this route was actually missing(?) CG's but at the time, I really wasn't good at perspective so a lot of them were scrapped. Something funny happened while I was testing things out though, I discovered I had two different living room CG's that were slightly different in morning hues. I have no idea how I didn't catch this when uploading the [Extended Demo] back then but one good thing that came out of this was finding a hidden Noah sprite behind the CG's which got a laugh out of me. Speaking of this I ended up finding a few more in different sections too. :P

*Speaking of CG's, certain ones might be re-used in specific parts of the game for Day 4+ etc, just in case/to save on file space. :,,,]

Here's an example of what I mean! This CG can be seen in the "Afternoon route" but things like lighting etc, will be adjusted for different times of the day in the routes. :]

Other than other stuff being taken care of behind the scenes, I don't think I have much else to say for right now. :[]

If you like what I create, please consider supporting what I do on kofi [Here]! All donations and tips help tremendously while I continue to work on the game!

Q&A / Ask box is open:

To know and understand Noah through Asks and random posts about lore, they'll be under #Get to know: Noah ! :]

**Some asks won't be answered if it contains spoilers but I do appreciate what I receive. :]

If you have any questions about Trembling Essence/Noah feel free to ask here or on itch.io please. This makes it easier for me to see and answer accordingly! I enjoy hearing from you guys!

Thank you guys for all the continuous support, I really appreciate it!! Happy early spooky month! >:]