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We'd said update 1.2.5 would be the finalizing touch of the demo as it currently stands, with the project awaiting its publishing greenlight to carry forward at all. As the year comes to an end, I've felt there is some closure the current prologue demo hasn't received yet, and one that I want to cement for the months of 2022 regardless of what will come of them. As such, I'm presenting update 1.3.0 as a culmination of our rebuilding efforts for the past six months, on all fronts, and to the greatest degree possible. This is why the demo can now call itself "One Spirit: To Die a Stranger", the name the prologue was meant to receive, the demo covering its first segment as an introduction to everything that is to come. There are no other news on the project's 2022 roadmap, as we are still working towards securing the options we need to carry on forward. The notes to update 1.2.5 still hold true, except the bit where they said there'd be no 1.3.0. Enjoy, you guys.
On popular request, we've decided to release the demo's current OST as a token to the community that keeps asking for it. Have at it, guys. [previewyoutube=SEUcGT7qzWY;full][/previewyoutube] IMMER WIEDER, WIDERSTAND SVADOCH Creator, Director, Writer
Attention, narod: We presented patch 1.2.0 to you over a month ago, and with it we've toured Steam NEXT and Indie Dev Day 2021, where we were awarded Best Story. Version 1.2.2 served as a bit of a preparation. With patch 1.2.5, we plan to bring in some cool improvements, quality of life features and some editing over the demo's narrative structure. Somewhere else, probably all over the devlogs, I've said the demo inherits an older, phased out narrative structure that needs an overhaul should the project begin to take off. This is not on the level of the text, but the conception of what, when, how and why events and themes are presented all around. While we've brought it to the best state it can be, and have received very positive feedback on it (especially lately), I am confident the next major improvement will have to be a strong rebuild. The costs of this are plenty, and not only financial or purely economic. It's only reasonable to do this when stronger support has been cemented. For now, however, I'm bringing to the table another minor update to help the current hit the mark better. We expect 1.2.5 to be our final or close to final version of the current demo.
Over here!
According to Steamworks, we've accumulated in one day the amount of wishlists we would only ever have over the course of weeks, at least normally. That's neat as fuck, and we're here to remind you that, after giving the demo a run (or not), you're welcome to come meet us on Discord or Twitter, where we're always keeping an ear out for our people. Don't be a stranger!
After all, this project is an encampment in the middle of nowhere - community does matter.
Attention, narod: Patch 1.2.0 is possibly one of our last pushes. Two months of feedback have taught us to rethink, rebuild and reform. The process has been severe, but straightforward: where we have counted our losses, we have chosen to remain and carry on. What you see here is the closest we've come to a proper, final demo with all the components we can wish for, at least in its present state. Some of these features were already hinted in the past devlog, but you will find other additions here in this release. Voyvod is a small team, a fact that has made endurance our primary virtue and our longest struggle. We have poured into the OSP demo, from version 0.5.0 to 1.2.0, everything our hands have been able to handle: corrections have been applied, features have been added, entire aspects have been left behind like shed skin. Without a radical restructuring of the demo itself, and possibly the whole project, we say firmly that we have done as much as we could without risking our financial, career or social security. This is not to say we back down: we will continue to work on whatever requires our effort, and maintain the promise that One Spirit is not a trivial matter. However, as a team with limitations, and one that has to be reasonably cautious about sunk costs and investments, we force ourselves to be sensible and know when there are lines to draw. A 1.3.0 patch is unlikely, then, but not minor corrective patches, events or promotion plans. We hope to offer version 1.2.0 in the upcoming Steam NEXT Fest, a massive showcase of demos where One Spirit will land as well. We are also confirmed to be attending IndieDevDay 2021 in Barcelona, Spain on October 9th and 10th, next month. As we release our last major patch, we are ready to accept whatever result we get in the following months. Like Spenglers image of the Roman legionnaire by the Vesuvius, we die in our posts knowing duty to our role is what holds truest. For the patch, we have: FIXES:
Attention, narod: It has now been one month, roughly, since the demo was released. Daily, we've been tracking the statistics, reading your comments, talking to you wherever you've reached out and keeping up the work we've chosen to make our duty. Previous patch 1.1.0 (which included 1.0.5) can be considered the first half of the effort we undertook after our Kickstarter's shortcoming and our will to rethink, rebuild and reform. Patch 1.2.0 is the latter and final half of this effort. While we don't discard further patches, especially if further feedback keeps our hands tinkering, it is likely this will be our last push towards bringing the demo to where it deserves to be. Being the director behind it, I would likely change it profusely if I could turn back time, on more levels and details than I can hardly count. The demo itself comes from the original story prototypes of mid 2020, primitive compared to what we have now, and less embracing of the newer themes and mechanics the full game is meant to include. While it's unfortunate the finished demo cannot rebuild itself from scratch to hold these closer, much can be done still to make it more representative, engaging and, after all, promising.
Over a month ago, we dropped the first link to the community's hub on Discord. For all those who have tagged along later, be reminded you can join anytime. It will likely be some time until activity grows, but we've steadily kept updates rolling and conversations going. If you've been following us for a while, we'd love to see you drop by as long as you don't request we make a NSFW channel, because anyone who does is shot on sight.
Attention, narod: Over here we had prepared some of the notes you will see down below, and which are now expanded according to our latest work. There is no update planned past 1.1.0 beyond hotfixes and adjustments relating to minor tweaks and issues. We hope you can enjoy the demo at the fullest it has been, and the highest it will remain so for a long time. We are posting this patch as major due to its fundamental changing of the experience and content, especially in the early demo. Patch 1.1.0 Notes For the patch, we have: FIXES:
Attention, narod: We've patched a few things here and there in preparation for version 1.1.0, whose notice you can find here. For 1.0.5, the following is now live:
Attention, narod: It is essential that we address the state of the project's crowdfunding, in tandem with the future work it intends to bring about throughout the following weeks. Our small bastion here on itch.io, as well as on Steam, has been growing steadily for the past days, from which we have extracted lessons here, and found new horizons there.
Now or never!
One Spirit's Kickstarter is up and running. We've come far, and further we shall go if this campaign can be ours to take.
We hope to see you there!
It has been a few months, perhaps more than what we had liked, perhaps less than what we had expected, of development for One Spirit's demo, set to release as version D1.0.0. This devlog will be particularly brief in summing up what you may expect:
Originally, in the game's earliest plans, the setting for One Spirit was meant to be a fictional (or fictionalized if real) soviet socialist republic (SSR) integral to the Soviet Union. A trace of these ideas are preserved in Yuri and Lada, who inherit from their father, a Soviet emigr, the patronymic component of their name: thus Yuri Arkadyevich Danilin or Lada Arkadyeva Danilina, despite the fact Sysican naming customs do not allow for patronymics, following instead a more Latin convention for names. Further, Sysican utilizes a unique variant of Cyrillic, which is historically grounded on the early evolution of Cyrillic in Europe throughout the Middle Ages, from its inception in Bulgarian scholarship and its evangelizing spread to its major institutional reforms. And yet, many of Sysican's stems, verbal norms, syntax... could be more Western, less related to languages like Russian, which the world would quickly associate them to. Because Sysica's history is built from the ground up, it plays, distorts and simulates these bases, and creates something unique for the game's world and feel.
One Spirit's demo, or its extended version to be released after a potential successful Kickstarter, are relatively linear in that they allow for detours, minor choices and, of course, the classic mechanic of unlocking new dialogue/narrative options through interacting with the world or having relevant conversations. While this is effective at preventing OSP from becoming a kinetic novel, it does not allow the level of choice we'd like for a more complete game, where dozens of environments, plenty of characters and a far larger story unfold. Soon enough, we'll be backing all these ideas with prototype visuals, especially so for our crowdfunding campaign.
As we'd said in Devlog 2, we are rather skeptical about conceiving characters as static, perfectly planned models of imagination. While it is us authors, artists who are in ultimate control of them as they're delivered to an audience, the process they're created through can be far more chaotic, far less calculated. Devlog 2 already explained we don't believe naturalist visuals are a necessary condition for realism. For this reason, we've considered it acceptable and as we'll see now, also desirable to use a style somewhere between Western and Eastern aesthetics to pay tribute to our own brand of realism.
Picture yourself directing a play - your characters appear to be puppets, trains on rails. You lead them on like an orchestra is led by the moves of a baton. They actors are only actors because of their role. Once they're off the stage, with their face relaxed and tone regained, they're just people. Suddenly, you have a bunch of randoms storm in; and, while seemingly regular people, they still claim to be actors. "Characters", they say. You're a director, after all. You write and direct that kind of thing. You think them mad, but those characters go on and on about their story, and you feel you're somehow beginning to explore it. By the end of it, you're asked to finish it - to wrap up their characterization. How does a director relate to their characters? Oftentimes we think them some form of engineering gods, creating and then manipulating their making. What's the reality of a story and a cast, then? Are they merely artificial? How do we connect with them, then? What can they represent to us?
Welcome to our first true devlog! If you haven't yet, we suggest reading the first one to grasp what we're going for as we post these; plus, knowing the fundamentals of this odd thing we're making goes a long way in tracking us. As for the structure of devlogs, we'll be dividing them in two essential areas: PRODUCTION and COMMUNITY AND PROMOTION. As our development nears release and new affairs need attention, we'll let our devlogs grow longer and more specific in their structure.
In this brief introduction, well be explaining the basic principles and goals of our project: both creative and commercial. Im Svadoch, lead developer behind One Spirit and director of Voyvod Arts, and these are the key points of our project:
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