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I was thinking of a way to give the player the ability to change way companions get stronger, but I don’t think there is a perfect solution.

What I settled on (for now) is a system that is similiar to the last option I talked about, with some changes.

Every month (four weeks) you get a window where you can distribute points to other kid companions. Raising your relationship with them will have no effect on this, but it will have different uses. One idea I have is to use it as a currency for changing their equipment, but I will have to think more about that before I commit to it.

Making their stat growth entirely reliant on time is better than making it relationship dependant. I don’t want to add too many grind layers to the game. In the end, this system will work pretty much like it does now. They will get stronger on their own. You will just be able to pick in what way they do.

As for changing their build and role entirely, I gave a small example in previous post. Once you fulfill certain conditions, you will get a quest. Finish it and you will be able to change your friends “class”. Helena for example is basicaly a mix of priest and mage class (in gameplay sence). You will be able to make her better at healing but weaker at dealing damage and vice versa. You will also be able to change her role completely. Turn her into cleric or paladin for example. This will change her default stat growth, skills and gear. Atleast that’s my plan.

There is still quite a bit of work I have to do left before I can release the next update. Making more than 120 (relatively small and relatively simple) maps takes quite a bit of time.

To help me keep my sanity, I decided to work on some other things in the mean time. Mainly the kid companions.

I think all of you are familiar with the way they work. They start as the weakest companions in the game and the end up being the strongest, if you play long enough. What I want to do is to give the player some way to influence the way the gain stats and how they develop.

There are technicaly three things that can shape your companions. First is physical stats, second is equipment, third is skills and fourth is out of combat use (workout with George is a good example).

I have second, third and fourth options figured out. As you progress the game, you will get quests that will let you change your companions equipment and “class” (Billy and the shotgun quest is quite similiar to what I want to do). I will also give the player some options in that regard. For example, Helena will ask you for a large blood stone. You will be able to give her only one. Her skills will improve depending on the stone you give her, so you can make her better at healing or better at dealing spell damage. George might ask you to find him new weapon. You can choose between low damage weapon with a lot of ammunition, or high damage weapon with less ammunition. You get the idea. Fourth option will get influenced by your and their age, their skills and things you did together.

It’s the first option that I’m not fully decided on and I would like some input from you.

Idea 1 First idea I have is to make stat for kids percentage based. For example, George will gain 20 stat points each week. 8 HP, 4 SP, 3 STR, 3 AGI, 2 DEX, 0 INT. That means his stat growth is 40% HP, 20% SP, 15% STR, 15% AGI and 10% DEX.

I will add a new screen that will let you change this percentage depending on your friendship level. On level 0, you will be able to change the stat distribution by 10%. Increasing your friendship level will inscrease this percentage and increase the total number of stat points your companion gets each week. So at level 0, George gains 20 points and you can change their distribution by 10%. At level 20, he gets 30 points and you can change his distribution by 30%, at level 100, he will get 60 points and you will be able to change his stats in any way you want.

In game, this will be explained by kids spending more time with you the more they like you and slowly change their daily routine to reflect that.

The upside of this system is its simplicity and unitrusive nature. You won’t have to micromanage your companion stat gains all the time like you do with your main character with wellness points. You simply set up desired percentage and forget about the system until you increase your friendship level. The downside is your control over companion stats being limited at the start.

Idea 2 Basicaly the exact copy of the wellness system for your main character. Each kid will get certain amount of points each week and you will be able to distribute them any way you want. Friendship level and age will increase the total number of stat points. Different characters will have different stat prices. For example, increasing INT for Helena will cost 1 point. Increasing INT for George will cost 5.

This system doesn’t need explaining. It is simple and effective. It has some disadvantages though. First I can think of is the players time. Distributing stats each week for 2 (soon 3) other kids will take some time. The game takes roughly 60 weeks to finish right now. If you spend one minute each week distributing stats, that will increase your playtime by one hour where you just move numbers around. The advantage is absolute control for stat distribution and I would get some creative options to allow the player to change the stat point price with quests or events.

Idea 3 Stat tree / perk system. This combines parts of the above ideas. Every few friendship levels, you will get a popup at the end of the week to pick one out of several options. For example, George gains each week. 8 HP, 4 SP, 3 STR, 3 AGI, 2 DEX, 0 INT. You gain friendship level 10 with George. At the end of the week, you get to pick one these options: +2 weekly HP, +1 weekly STR, +1 weekly INT and -1 STR. At level 15, you will get to choose from: +4 weekly SP and HP, +3 STR and -1 DEX, +1 AGI and DEX.

This system takes less time to from the player, since it triggers only at certain friendship levels. You have less control over stats, since you have to pick from certain options that are predetermined. This is an upside and downside. You get less control but it makes characters stand out more since their stat growth is steered in certain direction to cetrain degree.

Idea 4 Combination of parts of all the above ideas (And a personal favorite of mine). Once you reach certain friendship level, you will get a popup that will let you increase growth of stats in the same way you do now with wellness. For example, You gain friendship level 10 with George. You get 8 points. You can instease HP for 2, SP for 1, STR for 1, DEX for 2, AGI for 2 and INT for 3. Let’s say you pick 2 HP, 2 STR and and 1 DEX. His stats will now increase by this amount every week. Once you reach relationship level 20, you get 8 more points. You pick 4 SP, 1 HP and 1 AGI. From that point on, he will gain 3 HP, 4 SP, 2 STR, 1 DEX and 1 AGI every.

I like this, because I think it has the best qualities of all the other options with fewer downsides. It gives you a lot of control over your friends stats, but it doesn’t require you to play with the stat menu every week. It gives each character some individuality because stat prices will differ for each character.

This is quite a wall of text, so I will end it here. What do you think? Which option do you like the most? Do you have a different ideas? Let me know.

Just here to tell you that I’m still alive and I’m still working on the game. This update will take quite a bit of time simply because of the random dungeon.

I will be adding minimap to make navigation in them easier. Loot table will get expanded, more enemies will get added and I’d like to add several new weapons. All other things I want to add are at the end of the previous changelog.

On to of that, I will be adding new companion, which will act like other children in the game (His stats will increase over time)

Small patch

• Fixed crash after asigning wellness points if you didn’t join the German faction yet
• Fixed intelligence costing 4 wellness points instead of 3

Patch notes:

• Added new rank to the German faction
  • New cutscene when you get promoted
  • New outfit
  • Training area to the north gets unlocked
  • VR Training automaticaly gets triggered when you rest
  • New option to the schedule system
• VR Training lets you distribute weapon skill points every week
• New random dungeon (In development)
• New enemies
• Items in the loot window start unidetified. Pick them atleast once to identify them

Few words about the dungeon. It is heavily unfinished and looks boring, but mechanic wise, it should be close to complete.

• You can enter the dungeon by talking to the mission officer once you get promoted. Then talk to the soldier near the gate.
• Each dungeon has randomly generated layout ranging from 6-16 rooms. The system picks from roughly 120 different rooms.
• Your starting location in the dungeon is random. So is the goal location.
• To finish the dungeon, you have to finds the goal object and interact with it. Then you have to return to the room where you started and use the ladder.
• Enemies use default random encounter system. You enter combat roughly every 30 steps. You can escape from combat at any time.
• Each room has roughly 60% chance to have a loot chest. You can see the total number of chests in the dungeon when you open your first one.
• Loot uses the luck system from the kobold dungeon. Loot list is roughly the same.

Next patch will focus on tying everything together. I will add one new cutscene that pushes the main story forward and I will clean up every system and interaction with the German faction. The mine close to their base will become accessible, dungeon rooms will start getting face lift and proper enemy encounters, loot table will get updated, friend recruitment window will get fully implemented and so on. Ofcourse, I will fix any bugs you will report.

One more thing. If you use the anonymous messages to report a bug, please try to describe it as best as you can, idealy send links to some screenshots. Thank you.

To make the luck loot system more interesting, all items you can pick are hidden at the start. Once you pick an item, it will stay revealed for the rest of your entire playthrough. Each dungeon has separate item list.

This should make treasure a little more exciting and give it back a degree of randomness while keeping player control over rewards mostly intact.

You can, but I don’t think that much has changed since your last video. These past few years were really slow.

Just a small update.

The random dungeons are close to being finished. There are a few other things that I would like to add too, but I think you went long enough without any updates, so I decided to release the next version early.

If everything goes right, I will release the next test version sometimes next week. You will get new cutscene, new rank for the germans and new outfit. New training area and VR skill distribution. You will also get a simple, heavily unfinished random dungeon system. Here is what you can expect from the dungeon system.

• Dungeons have 6-16 rooms
• There is about 60% chance each room has a treasure chest
• Chests use the same luck system the kobold dungeon uses
• Each dungeon has random room selected as start and as the end
• To leave the dungeon, you have to interact with the objective and return to your starting point
• Random encounters are used for combat (Temporary)
• All rooms are very simple and look almost the same (Temporary)
• You can only enter the dungeon alone (Temporary)

Once this update gets released, I will collect any feedback presented and do alterations. I will also be working on individual rooms and making them more presentable.

One of the new things you will get access to when you get promoted will be VR training. This will let you distribute skill points in your weapon proficiencies at the end of the week.

It is still in the works. The dungeon system takes a lot of time. I will most likely release a barebones version of it that I will improve over time to make the wait more bearable.

Other than that, pretty much everything else I wanted to do is close finished. The dungeons and some schedule options are the only thing left.

The ticket number is at the top of the previous thread I linked in the first post, but there is no harm in putting it here again.

Ticket number: 302350

As for itch not answering indexing issues, I can understand that, to a degree. I get that they don’t want to reveal how their system works and what criteria it has for delisting games. However it is, in my opinion, absolutely inexcusable to ignore any ticket that wants to talk about issues connected to it.

I would be perfectly satisfied if I got a reply like this: “Your game was delisted by our automatic system for reason we cannot disclose. We will check it manualy and decide if it is fit to be re-indexed or not. We will contact you with details if we find any issues with your game that would make it unfit for re-indexing. Please be patient, as this process can take anywhere from few week up to twelve months. In the meantime, be sure to share the link to your game around, as your page is still accessible via direct link. Have a good day.”

Hell, even something like this would be better than nothing: “We are sorry. We can’t disclose the inner workings of our flagging system. Your game was flagged automaticaly and is in our que to get checked manualy. This can take up to one year. Have a good day.”

That’s it. That’s all I want. It’s the silence from the support team that makes me upset. If you get ignored completely by support, then something is very wrong.

I wrote here for for two reasons. One, I want to know how this went for other people. How long it took to get their games re-indexed, if they got any replies from the support team,… Stuff like that. To get a general picture from people with actual experience with this situation.

And two, I wanted to get some eyes on my situation and hopefully get someone from the moderator team to poke the support team again or to get some kind of statement.

That’s pretty much what I learned in the first thread.

At this point, it doesn’t really matter to if my game was delisted automaticaly or intentionaly. I asked support multiple times and got no answer. I gave itch half a year to sort this out and nothing happened. I dealt with support teams for multiple platforms for various reasons and at worst, I had to wait two weeks to get some kind of answer. This is absolutely the worst treatment from a platform I encountered.

To be clear, I don’t really mind that much that my game is delisted. It’s not in a state where I feel confident in sharing it around broadly. That’s one of the reasons why I put it on itch and not on steam. What makes me genuinely mad is the lack of care and what seems like disdain for people using this site.

Lack of comunication is the worst thing about this. Last time I asked around here, I got some answers from a moderator, but nothing concrete. Pretty much what I alredy read in the FAQ. When the game got delisted, I didn’t get any notification. Not even some simple generated blanket statement. Nothing. I sent total of two mails to the support team and I was being ignored for half a year and counting. I mean, what am I supposed to do now? I feel like waiting half a year is more than enough to get some sort of statement, but as far as I can tell, there is no way to contact someone from the staff directly and since I don’t know why the game got delisted, I have no idea if it really was done automaticaly or if my game broke some kind of rule that I have to fix.

My game got de-listed in august last year. I wrote an e-mail to the itch.io support and made a topic on this forum at that time. (this is the thread if anyone is interested: https://itch.io/t/5240228/my-game-has-been-de-listed-with-no-reason-given ).

Fast forward half a year and multiple e-mails to the support and nothing changed. I received no reply from the support team, the game is still de-listed and I still don’t know why and when / if it will ever get reindexed.

So I’d like to ask a few questions: Is there anyone I can contact directly to get to the bottom of this? Contacting support isn’T doing anything.

Is there anything I can do at all, except wait?

Is something like this happening often, or is this some kind of edge case?

Any kind of help would be apreciated. Thank you.

Small update.

I’m working on the new dungeon and I decided to make a system that will randomly stitch dungeons from predetermined rooms. It is quite similiar to how the endgame dungeon works, but much more complex. This new system will use roughly 120 different maps and will allow a single dungeon to have up to 16 of them. This means there will be a lot of variety.

To make things easier in the future, I re-use all those rooms for other types of dungeons, but change their looks by swaping tilesets and events. Here is a small example.

Both rooms have identical layout, but the looks are different and the type and amount of events is also different. This means I can use the same map multiple times and all I have to do is change the variable that tells me what type of dungeon you are currently in.

This entire system needs more testing and the maps them selves need to be finished, but if this works, I will be able to make new smaller dungeons more quickly and easily without them looking entirely same.

It’s not a proper uniform yet, just a colored tunic and trousers with pockets. Higher rank will get slightly different looking one with pouches, emblems and other details. Armored variants are planned too.

Preview of the new outfit you will get once you get promoted in the german faction.

Few thigns:

Firstly, I got fed up with the way itch handles upload sorting. When you upload new version, it automaticaly appears at the bottom of the list instead of the top. Then you have to move it manualy to the top by clicking a small arrow next to it, wait for a short animation to finish, scroll the screen and do it again. I had plenty of old versions uploaded that I made invisible (Mainly because some people had problems with their saves and needed older version). This means that I had to spend up to five minutes just moving the newest upload to the top.

To fix this, I deleted all old versions and uploaded them to google drive. The link to the archive is in the “install instructions” section on the main page, or you can just find it here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CobuX_GmEi-1Me3-72pXhVb4bhdZNzPE?usp=sharing

Only the newest version and one previous version will now be downloadable through itch. This will make it better for both me and you, since you will now be able to download any old version you might want.

Second, I made a backup site. It’s not fully set up yet. It has some dummy pages and simple design, but you should probably bookmark it in case Sinathir gets banned from here or I decide to leave this place for some reason.

https://sinathir.blogspot.com/

If you want to discuss this, you can make a thread in the general section of this forum and I will gladly read what you have to say.

Patch notes:

• Added one new cutscene (Reach standing 45+ with D.S.K. and go to the area with food vendor and tables)
• Added one new mission type with two variations
• Fixed a bug that stopped you from regenerating endurance between weeks
• Minor adjustments to certain enemy parameters
• Added resting system to all campfires (Except the ones that i missed)

Resting is simple. You have 5 resting points. Assign them to vitality or endurance with left and right arrow keys. You must assight all of those points before you can accept. Doing so will advance time by half a day. This means you can only rest once per week and you can’t rest if you did any other activity that day.

Simply put, you can heal 100% of either vitality or endurance, or you can change these percentages by 20 (Heal 40% hp, 60% endurance or 20% hp, 80% endurance and so on). This type of healing will not count towards you daily healing limit.

That one grows in the caves. Almost every cave area near your hideout should have some.

If you build the stairs upgrade in your hideout, you will get access to pretty much every plant in the game. They also regrow every week.

Here is a preview of the new “campfire resting” screen

Every campfire in the game will let you rest. You will be able to distribute few points between vitality and endurance. The number in the brackets is the percentage you will restore.

Resting will advance time by half a day and you have to use all free hours in one go, so it will be better to rest only when you really need to.

Next patch will also include one new cutscene and some minor changes and fixes.

With the L and R controller buttons, which means with Q, W, PGUP and PGDOWN on keyboard.

I’m glad you like the game.

As for the music, I sadly have no idea. Some of the music I use is downloaded from youtube and I make sure to bookmark it. It was called “Royalty free dark choir”, but the video was removed some time ago.

And for the workout thing, that’s an exploit. I will fix it at a later date, It’s not that high on my priority list. You can only do this exploit if you finish the game atleast once and at that point, I have no problems with people cheating or exploiting the game. Have fun.

I did a quick check and it turns out that endurance is not recovering properly at the start of the week.

It should recover to its maximum value at the end of the week. I fixed the error and I make a patch at a later date. I will also change the campfire recovery mechanic a bit.

There are multiple ways.

• Learning some alchemy related skills will give you recipe for energy powder, which can even be used in combat
• Waiting in combat restores 1 endurance (not really worth it)
• Advancing one week forward should restore endurance
• Using some campfires will restore your endurance. Not all work right now, but the one in the area where you meet Helena and Zach should work.

Endurance serves as a soft combat limit. Once you start to run out, it is best to just leave and go rest for a week. Once you get some energy powder, you can adventure for longer.

It increases power of spells and there are some skill checks that use it too. Other than that, it does nothing right now.

I returned to working on Sinathir a week ago and I don’t have that much to show yet, but I decided to give you a short list of things I want to finish before releasing the full 0.44 version update.

• One new mission type

• Rework ambush mission to account for player rifle skill and change number of enemies between two variations

• Add pre-promotion cutscene with Captain Vogel in the dining area

• Add new rank

• Promotion cutscene

• New uniform

• Atleast two mini dungeons / missions

• Atleast two new items for the quartermasters

• Unlock the training area and add training half day activities

• New schedule options

• Russian encounters to the world map

And more. For example, I extended the shield points system and gave it to almost all armor pieces. On top of that, I will give different armor pieces different AGI and DEX penalties depending on the armor type. Heavy armor will decrease your DEX and AGI by roughly 25%, medium armor for 10% and light for 0%. This should make armor more interesting and make chosing an armor more complex than just looking at the pure armor reduction value.

Those look really nice. God job.

This is a testing version of the new faction. This means there might be some serious bugs and unfinished features present. Backup your save files and if something wrong happens, be sure to report it here.

Patch notes:

• Added perk limit to character creation. Increases with each completed game run
• Fixed bike not working properly on newer maps
• Minor fixes to the schedule system
• Added several new maps
• Added the German faction initiation sequence
• Added faction tasks system
• Added faction quarter master system
• And more things I forgot to write down

About this version:

To join the new faction, you have to go with general Keller at Mr. White’s hideout. After that, wait for a few weeks and the joining sequence will start automaticaly.

There are two mission types with two variations each. These are pretty much just short cutscenes with combat at the end. Doing these will increase your faction standing (Useless for now) and gives you faction currency. You can spend this currency at faction quartermasters. One sells food, the other sells weapons, ammunition and healing.

Once the hollydays end, I will continue expanding on this version. Add more missions, next faction rank and new items and events. Once that’s done, I will release the patched game as new propper version.

Update is pretty much finished. I will now do some testing to make sure it doesn’t explode, but I’m 100% certain there will be some bugs present at release. That’s why I will release this update as a testing version. This means that you should back up your saves. Everything else will remain the same and the entire game will be playable like it was before.

New version will be released in a day or two.

The recruitment sequence is now fully finished.

Only few things remain before I can release the update. Finish the first mission and the quartermaster system.

Not really. This was just a test street I’ve done randomly to see how different tiles look.

Small update.

I’m still working on the new faction. There were some minor setbacks but nothing major. The update should be finished before christmas.

One of the scenes required a modern tileset, which is what I started working on today. Here is a very early preview.

Again, this is very early stage and it will look much better once it’s fully finished. I’m also slowly working on the faction missions. I want the initial release to have atleast five of these. More info on those soon.

Sure, go ahead. Be sure to post the result.

Small patch:

• Made notice board screen faster and easier to use (You don’t have to press the action button to see the quest description anymore.)
• Notice board quest handling has been rewriten and should hopefuly be bug free

As always, report any issues you find and I will try to fix them as soon as possible.

Thanks for sending the files.

I found out there was an issue with notice board quest when you pick the same quest two weeks in a row. From that point on, everything broke.

I had to rewrite a decent portion of the board scripts and it looks like that fixed the issue.

I will release new version in the next 24 hours. Your save files should work fine, but you will have to rest for one week for the board quests to get fixed.

Thanks again for your report.

I tested the game quicky and everything regarding the noticeboard quests worked fine. I’d like you to try this:

1. Try starting a new game, rest for one week. Go to Riverstone and take any quest you can finish (Hunter helper and smithy help needed can be finished easily at the start of the game). Try finishing the quest.

2. If everything worked fine, try loading your old character save, rest for a week and try using the noticeboard again and try finishing any of the quests in there.

If the first step ends up working, but the second step fails, then there is something wrong on your old save. You can write me and E-mail and send me your save files. I will check what went wrong and try to fix it.

If the first step fails, then there is something wrong with the game and I will have to investigate further. In that case, sending me your save file is not necesary, but it would still be helpful.

If both steps end up working, then there is no need to do anything and the issue was most likely in using older save. The game just needed to advance one week to fix some old issues from older version.

The initiation sequence is now about 75% complete.

Small patch:

• Graphical and mechanical improvements to the shield system
• Fixed an issue with the “Cure” quest
• Fixed notice board quests appearing in your topic log all at once

Thanks for reporting these.

There was a problem with the dialogue system, which for some reason gave you all notice board quests. I fixed that.

I tried that specific fence repair quest and there were no problems with it. I got the quest, got 5 wood and nails, raised my crafting skill to 10 and fixed the fence. Then I went to Billy, selected the fence repair topic and got my reward. Granted, I tested this once I fixed the previous bug, so that might have something to do with it.

Campfires are, for now, infinite. There are not that many ways to restore stamina otherwise. You can use the energy powder, but that requires quite a bit of science training. Food gives some stamina too, but not much and can be used only a few times per day. I will try and do something about rather soon, since more and more mechanics depend on stamina.

As for your post regarding the cure quest, I made a mistake when I was converting it months ago. I fixed it and now it should work properly.

As for the bloodstone, there are two different bloodstones. They give you different powers, so they are not the same. One is in the spider mine and the other one is deep in the caves. I described the correct path to take in one of the previous posts. You can give both of these to Zacharias and you will get powers from both of them.

I will upload new version in the next 24 hours. Thanks again for reporting these bugs.

The dialogue part with tadeas is not intentional and most likely a bug. I will look into it. Tadeas talks about the ambush with you the first time you talk to him, but he says it was him who got ambushed. It basicaly tells you to expect trouble.

Refusing the quest is just a roleplaying option and doesn’t do much else

Taking the money and finishing the quest is also intentional. When I was making the quest, it seemed to me like something someone would do. Take the money and then continue doing the oposite anyway.