Progress update! Working on Thea's route...
over 6 years ago
– Sat, Feb 22, 2020 at 07:42:53 AM
Our dear backers,
We're happy to let you know that the work on Thea's route has been going well!
Thea's route is the second longest after Nod's, and it can be roughly divided into three big parts. We're currently working on the second part, and we hope to finish the route in the middle of the year... This year : )
I shared another winter screenshot with you in our previous update, and some people expressed their concern about Thea freezing to death. Don't worry, we already tried to kill her once, so this time we got her covered - literally:
Variants of Thea's "winter outfit" by Demi. Can you guess which one we picked?
Other players wondered if the rest of Thea's route will take place in the same locations as Nod's. Not to worry either! Thanks to Adam's relentless work, most of the areas that Thea visits in Royce are either entirely new...
...or can be seen from a new angle, so to speak:
Wait, sorry, that screenshot is missing one important detail:
I wish I could share more screenshots with you, but it's a bit risky - now that Nod's route is out, they're full of spoilers! What I can tell you is that Thea will get her own skill, just like all other playable characters. Originally we didn't intend for her to have one, but since we want to keep the gameplay engaging and diverse, and Thea's route is quite long, we decided to spice things up a bit.
***MINOR SPOILER ALERT***
Without going into too much detail, Thea's skill will allow her to see the location that she's at from the outside (under certain conditions). For example, here's one of the locations that she visits in "normal" mode:
And here's how it looks with Thea's skill in action:
This gives us an opportunity to use some pretty cool (hopefully) concepts visual, puzzle and story-wise.
***END MINOR SPOILERS!***
In parallel, we've been working on the improvements based on the feedback we got so far from our Early Access stage (huge thanks to everyone who provided it!) - like this chapter select screen, which has replaced character selection screen, and which will allow you to start from different parts of the game:
Most of the screen is blocked, of course... huge spoilers! Anyway, in addition to selecting where to start from, we want you to also be able to pick a set of choices that you've unlocked prior to that point. That way you won't need to replay the whole route, or even game, several times just to try various combinations of those choices.
I'll be honest with you, this is NOT an easy screen to make, and it's still a work in progress... But I hope it'll make your navigation throughout the game much more convenient! Ideally, it will be complimented by a manual save system with the same feature, and perhaps later we will also add indicators for missed extras (cards, artwork and music) - this screen seems to be well-suited for that.
Some other things that we're working on based on feedback (that we plan to roll out with Thea's route):
- Proper output of Chinese language (without that horrible extra symbol bug - I'm really sorry that it turned out to be such a problem to fix!)
- Optimized elevator descent scene - some players had issues with it (up to the point of the game becoming unplayable), which is most likely caused by unoptimized assets and animations; we've decided to rebuild this sequence from scratch to address this
- Adjusted post-Bygone puzzle - it turned out to be very confusing, so we're replacing it with visual-based exploration (no text wall!)
- Some other minor bug fixes and improvements
Other requested features that we're keeping in mind (most likely for Mentor's route release or later):
- Gamepad/touch controls support
- Auto-dialogue option
And that's that! As usual, let me know if you have any questions or comments, and we hope that you're looking forward to Thea's adventure!
PS: we've updated Club 703 with new content - lots of concept art, exclusive development screenshots, a brand-new music playlist and some additional info. Do take a look when you have time!
Love,
Nick & u7committee
Russian translation is (finally) available! Plus - a development update!
almost 7 years ago
– Tue, Nov 26, 2019 at 12:13:00 PM
Our dear backers,
First things first: we're happy to announce that the Russian translation of Nod's route is finally available! I will post a more detailed update on Steam about it soon, so to all of our Russian backers: please check it out when you have time! It will also include the translation of this post.
And now - a development update.
Our Early Access launch turned out to be extremely exciting! We were all immensely thrilled to watch you play the game, unravel its secrets and discuss the lore and the story. It was especially cool to see that almost no stone was left unturned: sometimes we wondered if someone would actually notice all those references and little details, if they were maybe too vague, but nope - you found them, and it was absolutely amazing.
Now we just need to repeat that four more times.
Luckily (in a way), other routes aren't as long as Nod's - his accounts for about half of the game in terms of its overall length. So you won't have to wait two more years until the release of the next route - rather, we plan to finish the rest of the game in the next two years, with each remaining route taking roughly six months to complete and publish.
We also decided to change the order of releasing the remaining routes, and to stick to the original plan, since we believe it will make more sense story-wise. This means that the next route that we're going to release will be Thea's, followed by Mentor's, then Unter's, and then finally Richie's. I hope this comes as good news to those who became interested in Thea as character, not in the least because of her fantastic voice over by Brittney Karbowski, which was often complimented despite her relatively small role in Nod's route. Those of you who'd like to see and hear more of other remaining main characters (who of course have amazing VAs as well) will have to wait a bit longer : )
We have actually been working on Thea's route for a while now... And just like in other remaining routes, in hers we want to explore the world outside of Royce more. For example, you will travel to Mira DC and visit Thea's old home:
In Mentor's route, you'll drop by one of TFX android factories, among other places, and even meet a new... "character", so to speak:
With Richie, you'll visit Nova Corps station that Nod was so eager to get to, as well as the streets of the Second Rim district:
And as for Unter's route... Unter's route is just going to be bonkers.
Of course, while we're working on the new routes, we will also do our best to implement improvements and fixes based on the feedback that we received (and continue to receive). We made sure to include all of it into our backlog, and we'll be introducing it gradually as new routes come out. Some more important things, such as mysterious Chinese extra symbol bug and optimized elevator descent scene, will get patched up first (the former turned out to be a serious issue that we're still working on fixing), followed by quality-of-life improvements like more convenient saving system (oh yes, oh yes, as Unter would say), better post-Bygone knocked-out Nod puzzle, hopefully an option to auto-advance dialogue, and so on.
Other than that, it's business as usual: we'll post updates about the development and to Club 703, and our beta testers will get access to new builds a couple of weeks before we publish them. One more thing that we're currently thinking about is when would be the best time to produce and deliver physical rewards, and I will include the information about it into our next update, or maybe post an update about it specifically. If you have any questions, please let me know in comments below - you know I'm always happy to answer them : )
PS: one more thing! A fellow game developer and one of our backers, Nayru, has launched an already successful Kickstarter campaign for an escape room visual novel with point-and-click elements called Blankspace.
The project is currently short of its partial voice acting stretch goal, which it definitely deserves reaching, and you can help Nayru make it happen : ) But hurry - the campaign has only 48 hours left. Blankspace has a great demo that left me wanting for more, and oh my God it also has a Minotaur reference (in case you make the right decision about "naming" your character). So do check it out!
Love,
Nick & u7committee
