On a lot in a forest in town, it's possible to build a lumber camp (or another, currently unannounced building). If the lumber camp is built, the player can interact with a local lumberjack turned foreman: Hector Gray.

Hector belongs to a renowned family of local lumberjacks. Having learnt a lot from his father, grandfather and uncle, Hector is undoubtedly knowledgeable about everything that has to do with cutting, transporting and planting trees. Even though he is not very talkative, he is respected among the workers, as well as the town in general. Sometimes, he can be seen acting as a bouncer at the local inn for free. Needless to say, Hector is a competent and trustworthy man, even if he has a hard time conversing with others.

The final character to introduce for the demo version of the game is none other than the captain of the local guards: Celia Quinn. Celia inhabits the guard barracks, which is one building that doesn't share a lot with another building (unlike the mage tower/alchemist laboratory, fishing docks and lumber camp).

Celia is an ambitious, hard working and competent young woman who is determined to keep Mistwinter Bay safe. Having turned around one of the most dangerous districts in the Straenian capital, Freykeep, Celia has lots of experience cleaning up after scum and criminals alike. Her main motivation is to keep bandits away from people and she has done a good job with that so far - the number of bandits have greatly reduced since she took over the role of captain in Mistwinter Bay. As for why she decided to leave a prestigious job watching over a large district in Freykeep - well, that's a story she would have to tell. Perhaps over a mug of beer, followed by some dancing?

Now that all the characters in the demo have been revealed, it might be a good idea to show some in-game features and mechanics! So, for that reason, we've created a video that shows how the inn, building a lot and hanging out with a character works. It's demonstrated with Celia in the following video:

The current in-game season is winter, which is indicated by the visuals in the town view as well as the music.

In the town view, the player can see who is visiting the inn and for how long when they click on the inn-lot in town. The character who visits usually indicates which building they belong to, so that the player can build it and have them move in to town permanently. It isn't required to have a character visit the inn in order to have them move in, but they can't visit the inn after they have moved in.

When clicking on an unbuilt (but buildable) lot, information about cost and so on appears. Once a lot is built, it cannot be replaced. Immediately when a lot is built, the corresponding character (if there is one) will automatically move in to town. This can be seen when clicking on the built lot, where the owner's name is mentioned, or when looking in the character roster menu in the throne room, as seen in the video.

In the throne room, it's possible to see a list of characters who are available to hang out with. The first hang out event for every character can be played immediately upon them moving in, but the second one is unlocked when the reputation with that character reaches 25 or higher.

Today, the main menu has gotten a small update with the addition of some social media buttons. Clicking on these buttons will open a browser window to the respective social media page. The buttons are in the top left and are quite small by design, so as to not be too in-your-face.

The background may change before the public demo is released. Now, work will start on some optimization to reduce loading times (hopefully).

It's been a while since we last gave an update. That is partially due to summer time, partially due to the process of starting up a company. However, we have been working a bit on the game as well, preparing and polishing the demo for its official public release. The video below demonstrates two additions that have been made this month (July 2022).

Besides the additions shown in the video, a third long event has been written and is currently being implemented. Depending on how long it takes to get our company approved (which in turn determines when the demo can be realeased), there may be time to add an additional long event and/or a couple of short events.

We are hard at work polishing the demo for the public release, as well as dealing with all sorts of things related to starting a business (there are so many applications to be done!). One of the things that have been updated recently is the main menu. Now, it has reached a stage that can be considered completely finished. The video below shows what it looks like now, complete with particle effects.

It is not too long left until the demo will be released. There will be lots of small but important changes made in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for future posts! (Hopefully, between actually working on the game and starting a company, we will have some time to give a few updates...)

We've been hard at work this week with improving and polishing the game based on feedback. The video below shows some, but not all, of the improvements that have been made.

The top bar shows town resources and other information. The lower bar shows the player's personal finances mainly used to buy gifts. Both bars are split in two parts, with the upper section showing the monthly income of that resource and the lower section showing the current amount of that resource. The town resource bar has five sections showing (from left to right): current population (which does not increase monthly), food, stone, wood and gold.

Gifts have also received icons to more easily show the price and impact of the gifts. This is shown further in the following screenshot:

As such, the gift menu now displays an icon for the gift, the name of the gift, the price of the gift (in coins, the new name for what was previously called "personal wealth") and the increase or decrease in reputation.  This menu also uses anew resource icon for coins, much like the resource bars previously mentioned.

Then there has been an update to the menus showing who can receive a gift. The following screenshot illustrates this:

Now, the menu shows a picture of the character in question. Not shown in the video or screenshots is that a character who has their birthday during the current in-game month has a highlighted box/button, to more easily distinguish them from others. Also, the portraits shown in the screenshots are also used in popups for reputation changes, as well as in the hang out-menu. The hang out menu has also been improved with an image (the same hearts that are used in the roster menu, showing the romance level) instead of text to show which hang out is available.

Last but not least, the trading menu has been updated, as shown below:

Now, the trading menu uses the new resource icons. The current amount of resources owned by the player is also displayed at all times. Instead of having the price per one chunk of resources (right), it now displays how much the player will receive of that resource. Arrows for changing the player's resources (the resources which are sold) are now only displayed if it is possible to go in that particular direction. That is, if it's possible to increase or decrease amount sold based on current resources. Some balancing is still needed for trading costs (especially food, which has been updated in other parts of the game, but the update is not represented in the trading menu).

We will continue to work hard on the game from now until the free demo release in the near future!

Just like last week, we've been working hard on improving the game in various ways. The following video shows some, but not all, improvements made this week.

As shown in the video, a combination of images and sound make it more clear when the player switches to a different building in the town view. Having both images and sounds to convey that something is happening is usually a good idea. However, it's always important to not rely completely on sound effects, since there's the option to turn them off. The picture below shows the current appearance of the building information menu.

The dialogues have also been updated to make it more visually clear which character is talking. This is made using a subtle sparkle-particle effect behind the character. There's a bug related to this at the moment, which will be fixed next week. We also consider adding an additional visual indicator for the talking character.

Another visual indicator that has been added is a screen to indicate the end of a monthly event. Text, particle effects (if they are turned on) and a sound effect (if sound is turned on) tells the player that the event has been completed.

In addition to everything listed above, we have also been working on some other things. In the game, we've balanced food a bit, removed arrow buttons in certain scenarios (so that the start or end of a menu is clearly indicated) and removed the mouse pointer when changing rooms and other fading effects (to make loading appear smoother). Slightly improved loading has also decreased the live gameplay stuttering (which wasn't that big to begin with, but the less stuttering, the better).

Besides work on the actual game, we have also begun working on a video devlog! Video devlogs are but one type of promotion that we have in consideration for the future, but we will see what works best in the long run. The main focus is, of course, the game itself.

We're moving closer and closer to the release of the free demo. By now, all planned major improvements and additions have been made. You can view this week's improvements in the video below.

By separating the mouths and eyes for animation, the player now has the option to choose a mouth. This has, of course, been added to the character creator. Also, the new background for the character creator can be seen in the video as well.

Last but not least, we've added a log to the game. Due to the way the dialogue is set up, it's not possible to have a log with several previous lines of dialogue. Instead, it's only possible to view the last line of dialogue prior to the one currently shown. We deem this to be sufficient, since it can be easy to skip over a line of text by accident at points and we only wanted a log for that reason. Besides, having some sort of log is better than not having one at all!

Besides the work on the game, we've also recorded and edited our first proper video devlog (devlog #0) and the script for devlog #1 is written. We'll inform you when a devlog is posted on YouTube.

Starting next week, we'll hopefully start proper playtesting, as well as complete a final long event. There is of course some marketing and business management that needs to be done as well, but all in all, it hopefully won't be too many weeks now until you can get your hands on the free demo. Stay tuned for more updates and info about the release!

We have now released our first video devlog! In this video, the game and the process of working on it is summarized. Several more devlogs are already in production. (Don't worry, we're still working hard on the game, too. We can do both, since we are two people.)

We are back with another devlog! This time, we discuss the game's artstyle and the road to getting the game to look the way it looks now.

As an example, there is one new short event where Dawn and Cecil interact. In order for this event to appear, both Dawn and Cecil must be living in the town and, naturally, be alive. There are also a few other requirements for this event that don't matter in the demo. The addition of this event also introduces a new "mechanic": the fact that it can become impossible for the player to hang out with and marry a character if certain choices have been made. This will, of course, rarely ever happen and will only be based on events that are deeply rooted to the characters in question. It is also clearly stated that a character has lost faith in the player once an event is over. In the full game, examples of events where this may occur is if the player is forced to support one country over another. Naturally, that makes the unsupported country's regent cross with the player, and all relationships that are deeper than surface level are impossible to achieve with that character from then on. As for why Dawn's and Cecil's event can make them that upset... Well, that's for you to find out when the demo is released.

Now, proper playtesting will be our main focus. We're getting really close to the release of the demo. In fact, we are happy to announce the estimated release date for the demo: September 9. That's Friday next week! We'll do our best to make the demo as good as possible for that date. Be sure to keep an eye out for the demo release and please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel if you're interested in the devlogs. We promise we have a lot more to show there in the future!

The demo release is drawing very close now - it's only two days left! Today, we posted the demo trailer on YouTube (and yesterday, we posted another devlog, talking about the creation of the town view. You can find it on our YouTube channel). Here's the trailer:

Hello everyone! We have very exciting news: the free demo is out now! You can find it here: https://swordlake-entertainment.itch.io/mistwinter-bay

We would like to thank everyone who has been keeping track of the development so far. We don't think we'll be posting any more devlogs on here, but you can always keep track of the development by supporting us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/swordlakeentertainment) and watching our video devlogs on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCICWzkpUmB-Xv_52sAh_tUw/featured). You can also find us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/swordlake_ent) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/swordlake_entertainment/).

Thank you so much for the support so far! We hope you enjoy trying out the game for yourselves!