Camp Palut has been updated with some minor edits to spelling and grammar.

The endings for Cassie and Bianca have been tweaked slightly to better fit the vision I have for the game, but the changes are minor.

Feel free to keep sending me spelling errors as you find them. I want the game to be the best it can be.

Hello everyone!

Once again, I want to thank everyone for their patience. I hope some good news will make it up to you-

We have a release date!
Camp Palut will be released June 15th


New Demo
To celebrate a release date, I have also published a new demo. This demo is more or less what the beginning of Camp Palut will look like and includes a number of changes from the previous demo.

The third and final counselor has been added to the game. She was designed by one of the backers and isn't she cute?



The main menu UI and accessibility features have all been added and should be available for use. This includes changing the text size and font, changing the textbox to be opaque or solid colored, and adding alternative text for sound effects.

The main menu interface had to be tweaked to allow it to be more accessible. Now the interface will change to OpenDyslexic font when selected, and will now work with self-voicing.

You can also now toggle affection on and off. This allows you to see where each love interest will be on the camp map and also give an indication when you gain affection with one of the love interests.

When beginning the game, the player will have the option to rename Jess to whatever they would like, up to ten characters. Unfortunately that's the longest a name can be and still fit comfortably on the namecard above the textbox, but I hope that's better than nothing!


Coding and Art
The routes for Amy, Nat and Cassie are complete and ready to be played. Bianca is the last step I am finishing up. She has already been written and programmed, I just need to go through it with an editor's pen and make sure it measures up to the other three.

All of the CGs except for one are complete, with the final CG is already in the works. The art is so beautiful and I can't wait for you all to see it!


Final Thoughts
I can't believe how close we are to finishing and how excited I am for everyone to play it. Thank you all so much for supporting Camp Palut and helping me to make this a reality.

I also want to remind everyone how important reviews are on Steam. Once Camp Palut has ten reviews, it is able to be promoted much more because of the way Steam's algorithm works. Once a game hits a threshold of 500 reviews, Steam can promote it even more. So every review helps, and I hope that if you love the game, you will consider leaving a review.

Thanks for your continued support!
See you next month,
Nicole

Hello everyone!

First, I wanted to apologize for missing an update for February. I was working so hard on the game I forgot to tell you about it!

The February edition of Steam Next Fest was a huge success, and we gained over 200 wishlists in that week-long period. Wishlists are incredibly important to the success of a game on Steam, so this was an exciting boost.

But now let's take a look at our progress on Camp Palut itself.

Art and Music
Background Art is complete

Music is complete

The final backer funded counselor is currently in the works, and I am so excited to show her to you when she's complete.

CGs for Nat and Amy's Routes are complete

One more CG for Cassie has been completed, meaning there's only two more to go

Bianca's Route has three CGs left


Coding
Nat and Amy's Routes are complete, now awaiting playtesting and quality assurance

Cassie and Bianca's Routes are programmed but need to be run through a few more times with my coding style guide before I pass them off to playtesters

Common Route is complete, just waiting for final counselor art before passing off to playtesters

The user interface is finally finished, including this new options screen



The biggest change is currently called "Affection" but I am searching for a better label for it. When this is set to "show" you will see a cute little image on the screen when you make a choice that gains you affection points with a love interest. It will also show the face of the love interests on the camp map screen here



If this is set to "hide" then you will need to listen to the conversations to figure out where each love interest will be at each point in the game. You also won't immediately know if any dialogue option gained you affection points.

I'm having a hard time deciding what to call this on the options screen. If you have any ideas, please let me know!


Accessibility
I have spent a long time the past two months adding as many accessibility options that my limited coding knowledge can handle. I know that I could continue to add to this forever, but this will be the extent for Camp Palut.



This gives you the option to use the OpenDyslexic font and also to make the font larger.
It also lets you change the look of the textbox to whatever is easiest for you to read.

Ren'Py, the engine I am using to create Camp Palut has a built-in assistive self-voicing. If you press V on your keyboard, whatever your mouse hovers over, the computer will read out loud. (Except for the Start, Load, Options, Gallery, Quit, Return on the left side, I'm working on fixing that)

You can also enable alternate text, which writes out any sound effects for you.

Last but not least, you can turn off bad ends entirely. You can still make choices and you will get different dialogue based on those choices, but when the time comes, you will still get the good ending.


Release Date
The biggest thing slowing the process down right now is the art. This is entirely my fault, I waited too long to pull the trigger on getting my artist started on the necessary CGs. We have five more CGs to go. These CGs can take anywhere from 1-2 weeks. Then I will need another week for quality assurance and another week to get approved by Steam's process. So we are looking at anywhere from 7-12 weeks before the game will be complete.

I wish I could narrow it down further, but I don't want to rush the art. As soon as I have a date, all of you will know immediately.

If you haven't wishlisted Camp Palut yet, maybe give that a try. It really does help in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks for your continued support!
See you next month,
Nicole

Check out the developer of Camp Palut playing the demo!

Hello everyone!

Very exciting update this month, we have a new and improved demo of Camp Palut on both itch.io and Steam.

Here's a look at some of the changes you can expect in the updated demo

-New user interface for the menus
-New interface for selecting dialogue choices
-New Accessibility features
-OpenDyslexic font selection
-Larger font option
-Adding a gallery to view unlocked CGs
-Improved music and sound cues
-New Test of Courage "monsters"
-Small rewrites and edits to scenes

As big of a change as it is, there are still a few changes and improvements that will be made to the beginning of the game for the final release.

This new demo is coming in preparation for Steam Next Fest which takes place February 21-28. This is a great time for Camp Palut to reach new interested players ahead of its launch and for you to check out other fabulous indie demos.

Let's take a look at the writing and coding chart to see our route progress.



Camp Palut is finally entering its final stages! Each route will need to be combed through thoroughly to look for any typos, or grammatical mistakes, as well as adding additional sound effects and cleaning up the code. I am also continuing to add accessibility features.

Other updates not related to the demo, two more of Nat's CGs have been completed. The artist took a short vacation this month, but she will be returning soon and we will begin in earnest to finish up these CGs. I will be having a conversation with the character artist to get an idea of when they will be completed and hopefully in the next update I will have a release date!

If you haven't wishlisted Camp Palut yet, maybe give that a try. It really does help in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks for your continued support!
See you next month,
Nicole