Act 2 Scene 1: The Ball Scene!

*takes you by the paw* Let's begin Act 2 together, okay?? <3
A gigantic scene, similar in length to S4
Tons of new art, music, sfx, and animations!!
19 lore bits for the new scene (more than any other!)

New Success/Failure Effects

A cool animation will now play when you win or lose a minigame
New sfx for both as well

Added Shield items

Automatically consumed to save you when you would normally fail a minigame
Handy for keeping your combo going!

XP System

Level up by winning minigames
Level ups will reward you with Shields and Seeds
You can now earn 4 different bonuses for exceptional minigame performance, which will all boost your XP gain

Garden Prototype

Drag Seeds from your inventory into the textbox to grow flowers over the course of your playthrough
Currently just for fun, but will eventually have more purpose!

Audio

About 10 new sound effects
7 new music tracks + variants
Two new ambient tracks
Unique titlecard sfx for Act 2 scenes
Tweaked quizWin sfx to be a bit less grating when used repeatedly in the story
Loudened storm.ogg (ambient wind thingy)
Loudened Trouble in Bitch Town track

Art

"Party Time" animation
Ball sprite + floating animation
Pet sprite + floating animation
Beautiful Suit and Imp CG by suki!
Replaced placeholder art with NEW SPRITES for Master, Derebella, and Analyst

Two mysterious new characters with many sprites each
2 small doodles (Eileilal and tree diagram) for the lore bits
4 Officiary sprites
3 Suit sprites
1 Dancer sprite
6 Deadghost sprites
A suite of alternate sprites for Dancer and Healer during a certain part of the scene
Tons of sprite edits for Healer, Mimi, Dancer, Imp, and even Null
Fixed Healer's derpy blindHappy sprite a bit, but its still extemely derptastic
Swaggy "goth corporate casual" Never edit
New "dark spirals" effect
Massively upgraded blackout garden bg
One new "character" with horrible, weird smudged art

Misc

Added sprite animations (Healer can now bounce up and down)
Text slam effect now works with text that has odd spaces (Imp)
10 new achievements
Emotional effects (flowers/spirals) now spawn while word-by-word text slams occur, instead of after the animation finishes
Added a "not allowed" custom cursor for a certain character
Fixed golf ball taking an extra 3 seconds to stop at the end of every shot
Minigame combos are now saved when entering the Trial
Fishing bobber will dunk much faster and more consistently
Increased the time limit for Veil (arrow keys/ball minigames)
Inventory items are now sorted by category

Thanks for playing, everyone! <3

[ 2024-08-31 18:35:59 CET ] [ Original post ]

OST release!

Hi! We're still hard at work on the beginning of Act 2. In the meantime, we've released the game's original soundtrack on bandcamp! It's 10 USD and you get all current and future tracks in high quality. Some tracks don't have high quality versions, so they're included as a link in the description, for free. Featuring music from the extremely talented Taycat, Leonovsky7, Veki and Johnie Perreault.. And covert art from the loveliest Suki! The proceeds are split between the artists, so if you want to support their incredible work additionally, this is a good way to do so.

BANDCAMP

[ 2024-07-19 17:22:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.5.2, the loading and trial fixes update

A small update with 2 important fixes:

Make sure data is loaded when going from intermission into a scene. The important data would load fine, but things like combos wouldn't
In [spoiler]the trial[/spoiler] make sure the camera properly saves when loading the game to a line where the narrator is talking

[ 2024-05-06 22:05:35 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.5.1, the music player & small fixes update

Hey. We're pushing out a small update. The changes are as follows:

Intermission now has a music player. You can listen to all the tracks currenly in the game
The "random thought" button in the test hub should work now
A1S4 had one teleport point missing in the intermission, it has been added back
Nerfed the "Skull Jelly" fish, so it's not as difficult
A bunch of typos fixed

[ 2024-04-23 15:03:25 CET ] [ Original post ]

Update 0.5.0, End of Act 1

Welcome to Love Exalt 8372, update 0.5.0: the end of act one. We went completely bananas for this update!! With the death of [character] at the end of Scene 4, the gang was left in limbo but immediately, upon the start of Scene 5, they launch an investigation into [character]s death. Is there really a killer hiding among them? If there is who killed [character]?! And WHY? Please take good comfort and enjoyment in this luxurious swath of free content!! Now that the game is almost certainly double digit hours of playtime, we plan to raise the price to $10 or so. For now, though, buy it up at the $5 price while you can!!

Act 1 Scene 5: Deductive Frenzy

Ended Act 1 with a massive, sprawling finale scene 5,826 lines long, more than double the length of Act 1 Scene 4
New interlude with three mini-scenes
12 new lore bits

New 3D Game Mode

Massive new way to experience the story, with a new game mechanic tied directly to character dialogue!!
IKIKIKIKIKI

Audio

8 general story sound effects
7 new sound effects and three sfx sets for the new game mode
21 new music tracks!!! Thank you very much Leonovsky, Tay, and Johnie

Animations

New story animation (about two thirds into the new scene)
New Clue Get! animation
Tons of new assets and animations for the new game mode

Art

4 new Chef & Healer duo sprites, plus a ton of edits, found at the end of the new scene
4 new CGs
9 new backgrounds
Added sprites for Chefs mom, Seer (she appears in Act 1 Interlude 1)
Added a new sprite for Tank, Guardian, and the Officiary
Added 5 sprites for Imp
Added 9 sprites for Chef
Added 12 sprites for Healer
Alternate spriteset for Healer
Alternate spriteset for Mimi
Alternate spriteset for Dancer
Alternate spriteset for Pet
Most of these are edits of existing sprites, but there are lots of totally new ones too!
New Rainbow Mage badge, and two badge edits

Minor Changes

New secret achievement in the Inventory!
Added some more music to Scene 1, Scene 2, and Scene 3
Added Discord and Steam rich presence: shows which chapter you are reading, progress in some minigames, and how many badges you dropped in the main menu
Added the ability to return to your place in the story if you accidentally open the Scene Select menu, added save support for this too
Refactored save files without breaking old saves!
Doubled the speed of emotional effects (flowers, spirals, etc)
Fishing minigame has been balanced to be a bit more forgiving, you will now lose progress 30% slower
Updated Godot and GodotSteam to 4.2.1
Softened the extremely loud and obnoxious slider sound effect in the settings menu
Increased the size and alignment of the nameplate to fit some new, longer names
Made the Veil labyrynth lenght random
Adjusted item drops to be more frequent
Added a teleport that puts you directly at the three-way in A1S1 (thanks Askareth for noticing this)

Fixes

Fixed a golf minigame bug where the ball could fly through the wall (thanks @kemonopriestess on Discord! <3)
Fixed some missing/stray pixels on Healer and Imp portraits
Nerfed Guardians booba
Fixed extra finger on one of Guardians sprites
Fixed many small text errors (missing Xs in Deadghosts dialogue, missing character name highlights, mentions of hands instead of paws)
Fixed one of Nevers sprites being unclickable
Adjusted multiple choice mode to fit more text
Lore fix for one of the Scene 3 lore bits

As always, thanks for playing!! Veki & Vaartis

[ 2024-04-05 17:55:21 CET ] [ Original post ]

Tiny Cute Small Fixes Patch for 0.4.0

We've added some small fixes! Typos and bugs have met their end!!

A few small quick Healer sprite edits at the start of the game, and at the end of scene 3
Tons of typo fixes and wording tweaks in the dialogue from scene 1 to scene 3
Fixed the purple fish being called Test Fish in the inventory
Fixed a bug where, when you fill out a fish's lore description, catching more of that fish would break the icon (Thanks Suki!! @kemonopriestess )
Added a way to exit the intermission without going back to main menu!! Pog
Fixed a few lore mistakes in the s2 lore bits
Change the PERSEVERE button on the main menu to CONTINUE to prevent confusion for new players
Fixed kerning on text of main menu buttons
Fixed scene 4 lore bit achievement not counting your progress
Background tweak in scene 1 to prevent spoiling that ||the train can fly||
Some simple new music tracks for the quiet parts of scene 2
Scene 3 music is a bit more varied and fits the tone a bit better
In scene 3, results of the AB Game are now displayed one at a time for breathing room and clarity
Added licenses to the main menu's about section

Thanks very much for your patience on this next update, everybody. We're still working super hard!! -- Veki & Vaartis

[ 2024-02-12 08:47:28 CET ] [ Original post ]

Update to the 0.4.0 browser demo

You can now download your save data from the browser demo on itch and then import it into the full game. You can find the button in the "REMEMBER" menu (but only in the web demo), it will tell you how to import your saved game. The steam version has been updated to allow importing this data.
A bug where the quiz minigame would sometimes lack names has been fixed. Reported by Nelo390 on our discord server.

[ 2023-11-25 13:15:29 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small update for the 0.4.0 version

Fixed a bug that replaced too much of DEADGHOST's blinking Xs when the epilepsy setting was turned on, thanks to Nelo390 for reporting it on our discord server.

[ 2023-11-18 13:25:14 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.4.0 update

Welcome to Love Exalt update 0.4.0, boys!!!!
If you like the game, please check out ourDiscordand follow us at@team_veki!

Big Stuff

Vastly improved Act 1 Scene 1: Last Call

We've added a more juicy intro to the game, and we've overhauled the existing dialogue with better writing, proper character sprites, sound effects, three beautiful new backgrounds, two CGs, and two music tracks! All of these changes will be reflected in the demo, too. If you've already played the scene, you can check it out through the Intermission (scene select) button! Your progress won't be set back or anything.

Fishing

We've added a new fishing minigame with custom Healer art!

Eleven new fish items

We wanted to try a minigame with metaprogress, so every time you catch a fish, you'll gain them as an item! If you catch duplicates, more and more of their lore will be unlocked.

New cute boy character!!

He only appears briefly in the intro, for now, but he's got a nice set of sprites and a sleepy disposition~

Added MacOS support!

It's a bit experimental for now, so please do report any issues you encounter. Older versions of Godot used to have some issues, but it should be fine. If you download the gameon itch you still need to allow it through Gatekeeper, but the steam version runs fine without asking. So yeah, you can now run the game on MacOS!Let's go!

Five new Guardian sprites

Guardian was the last character with only one sprite. Now, she's got a bunch of haughty and stylish poses throughout the entire game~

Small Stuff

Added alternate version of Deadghost's dice animation

Tons of polish and bug fixes

Fixed a bug where the scene select's arrows displayed incorrectly on some platforms
Fixed catastrophic golf bug that caused your ball to fly backwards sometimes
Fixed a crash when spamming through dialogue too fast during white flashes
Fixed class reveals being spoiled by the nameplate
Improved the volume mixing on a few tracks

Recent dialogue and minigame combo counter are now saved between play sessions

Added a cool voice that says LOVE... EXALT when you start a new game

What's next

Up next we're going ALL IN for the end of Act 1!!! Can't spoil too much, but we're working on a fundamentally different mode for the game, something a little more lively than usual. We're super stoked to push the story forward and learn some new skills for this one!! Thanks for playing Love Exalt, everyone! This update was a bit more of a polish update than a huge content bomb, but you can bet the next one is going to be an absolute banger. Your support is much appreciated. <3 If you have feedback for us, please consider leaving a comment in our Discordserver! Thanks for playing!!! <3 -- Veki and Vaartis

[ 2023-10-25 16:39:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.3.0 Update

The second major update to Love Exalt 8372, update 0.3.0, is HERE!! If you like the game, please check out our Discord and follow us at @team_veki! First were gonna go over the small things we added, then the big things:

Small New Things

Fix some issues with clickable portraits

You can now pet Pet more consistently.

Better minigame RNG

Previously you could roll the same minigame three or four times in a row, which was boring now, with our new Pseudorandominus Hardswitch Cycling System they should be more diverse!

New minigame timer

Instead of a basic blue rectangle, weve added some fancy spritework:

Added lore bits tutorial

The very first lore bit is now fully visible, so you can know what to look for! We also added a little tutorial for gamepad users, and changed the pick up lore bit binding from LB to Y or triangle on controller.

Added 50+ class titles to the Quiz minigame

Itll now offer you a ton of different classes as possible answers! Its nothing crazy yet, but we plan to add more badges to the minigame as well.

Support for multiple gamepads

If you have more than one gamepad connected, you can set a default in the options and the game will remember it.

Photosensitivity and color blindness options

The photosensitivity option slows the animation speed of the Deadghosts X text and the speed of white screen flashes when characters are surprised. We also applied a high contrast option for certain assets. We hope this helps more people experience the game comfortably!

Reverse text direction in a certain Act 1 Scene 2 animation

Used to be youd see the last word of the text first, and have to read it backwards hopefully now it should be more readable!

Fixed being able to open menus on top of each other

You can no longer stack a bunch of options menus on top of each other. It hadnt caused any big problems yet, but it was probably going to eventually

Changed minigame transition from fade out to slide in

Full-screen minigames now have a sick animation where they slide in from outside, pushing the UI out of the way.

Keycharm pixel image added to Act 1 Scene 3

The keycharms mentioned in text are now also shown as an image on that same line.

Added collision to main menu buttons

The badges now cavort around a lot more, and they wont be able to obstruct anything!

Improved tutorial

There was a lot of confusion about what the blue thought button does, and sometimes even some initial confusion on how to progress the text in the game, so we tried to make it clearer with some fancier tutorial images at the start.

Graphical upgrades for the golf minigame

Most of the tiles were recolored and some completely changed. Upgraded the sprites for in vs out portals, too.

Added text to loading menu if theres nothing to load yet

If you clicked REMEMBER with no save files, it was empty and desultory now theres some cheeky text there to keep it warm while you cook up your first playthrough.

Fixed typos, stray pixels on Healer and Mimi sprites, rotten tiles on some golf maps, and incorrect miss chance for Deadghosts ability INDEBTEN

And probably dozens of other little things like that!!

Improved off-key golf music

The brass section was up to 10% lower in frequency than it was intended to be. Its all better now.

Big New Things

Pause menu

Where before you could only return to main menu, you can now access the conversation log, inventory, settings, and scene select!

Conversation log

Love Exalt 8372 is officially a real visual novel now that weve added a log!! Everyone begged us for this not being able to rewind was painful if you accidentally skipped a line, and frustrating if you zoned out while reading. Now, you can refresh yourself on the last 10 lines of dialogue.

Log lines have correct color highlighting and even show thought lines, which appear in { curly brackets. }

Inventory and item drops

There are now items that drop when playing the game!! The more minigames you win without failing, the higher your drop chance! You can pick them up same as you would pick up a lore bit. Items and lore bits can now be browsed from the new inventory, accessible at your leisure from the pause menu. Certain items are also stackable, revealing more and more of their lore as you gather them.

Scene select reworked in a big way

From drab beige to a slick dark gray in line with the rest of the UI, and also new scene select dropdowns which should make it a lot more clear how to continue the story after you finish a scene. Heres a peek at how the golf track selection looks:

The scene select part is similar we replaced the confusing next chapter with a list of teleports to different parts of each scene, and weve added little notification dots to show what youve completed and whats new!

New minigame with 2 variants

Epic new minigame with 2 different variants, where you need to press buttons in quick succession. The first variant is just that, press the buttons shown quickly. The second is a randomly generated track that you need to guide a little ball through. Aim for precision, cause if you make mistakes, youll get stunned. The inputs required will also adapt to gamepads!

New Timed minigame variant

Multiple green zones can now appear in the timing minigame! Youve gotta hit all of em to win, but as a trade-off, misses are just a stun, instead of a loss. Even if you miss, you still have the chance to clutch.

5 new golf tracks

Thats right, FIVE new tracks. Some of them are in the random rotation, some you can only play from the intermission (because, frankly, it would be unfair to put them in the random rotation theyre quite tricky). Weve now got 23 tracks in total, and more to come!

Minigame combos

After each minigame win, your combo counter will go up! So hype!! Theres an achievement for getting the highest possible combo, too good luck.

Cool new animation

Theres a new animation for a key story moment in the middle of Act 1 Scene 4, akin to what weve had in Act 1 Scene 2. Cant add a gif here, of course, cause that would be spoilers

Several CG fullscreen arts

Scenes 3 and 4 now have several full-screen arts for certain special occasions. Cant tell you anything else, because thatd be a spoiler too a big one.

Choice buttons

During group discussions, several people will offer something to say, and its your choice who takes the floor. Usually only one answer moves the conversation forward so choose carefully! Or choose wrong on purpose if you wanna see all the content, lol.

Five new tracks by Veki and two from Taycat!

[h4]Veki[/h4]

Deixie
Homelord
Johnny
Sycalia

[h4]Taycat[/h4]

Fight Fight Fight
Godstepper

Act 1 Scene 4

Huge new scene that incorporates everything described above: new music, new portraits, new mechanics, CGs, and the new animation.

Steam VN Fest

Were participating in steams visual novel festival, which just started! The game is 20% off during the event.

Whats next

During the next month or so, were hoping to rework Scene 1 and bring it up to par with the rest of the scenes; so much has changed since it was first added, and it deserves a makeover. Were also gonna add another little minigame to the rotation. After that, we aim to end the first act with its final scene: Act 1 Scene 5. Thank you all so much for playing and supporting this project. Stay tuned for our Dev Thoughts post for this update, coming soon! More amazing stuff is on the way!!! <3 Veki and Vaartis

[ 2023-08-07 17:35:12 CET ] [ Original post ]

Another small 0.2.0 update

While we're hard at work for the next big update, here's a smaller one. Changes:

Changed default font size to 24
Added social media buttons to the main menu
Fixed several typos

[ 2023-07-09 21:45:40 CET ] [ Original post ]

Small update to the 0.2.0 version

Changelog:

Move characters around in the menu so tank isn't obstructed by dancer, as suggested by @retroparrot on the steam forum
Make the first lore bit more noticable
Fix typos, change some wording, music, and backgrounds

[ 2023-06-04 17:58:38 CET ] [ Original post ]

0.2.0 Dev Thoughts

Hey. We just dropped the first major content update for Love Exalt 8372! With TWO new beefy scenes, a new minigame, scene selection menu, script import system, and emotional effects, we blew past our original estimate of 1-2 months and went 3 months deep on this one. We think it was definitely for the best to spend a little extra time on the update that takes the game out of demo status and into "totally real game" status. Here's a bunch of dev thoughts on what we changed and added!!

GOLF

From the start we knew we wanted a new minigame, and, with the complexity and time-to-beat of the other minigames in mind, we settled on minigolf. We considered making it 3D, but two things held us back: 1. We don't have a 3D modeller, and learning to 3D model is hard... 2. Godot's 3D is a bit subpar in the browser, and we wanted to add the new minigame to the HTML5 demo, too! We have played around with 3D before-- here's a prototype we had for Deadghost's dice ability, which would have rolled around on the 2D screen before landing on 6, 6, 6.

But, ultimately, we decided to go with 2D. For the golf ball we use a random badge sprite, but everything else in the minigame had to be built from the ground up like we were making a whole new game-- the tileset, track designs, sound effects, hit particles, portals, and boosters, everything took a ton of work. Even then, we had to tweak the physics a ton to get the minigame to feel satisfying... though the right sound effects and particles helped a lot there too.

Originally the shot indicator (that dashed line) showed the angle of the first bounce, but it was always off by a bit, which was frustrating, so, in the end, we scrapped it. We made 18 tracks, but only 8 of them are actually in the random minigame pool, because the others are a bit complex or tricky. But don't worry! You can still play these tracks...

... from the new Intermission menu!

INTERMISSIONS

This menu allows you to replay the previous chapters of the story, play the other golf tracks, and read the lore bits you have previously discovered. There's also special music when playing golf from the Intermission menu... pretty sweet. You get access to the Intermission menu between the chapters of the story. If you decide to go back and replay previous chapters, you can go back to the intermission menu anytime-- however, it won't be available when you're playing through a new scene.

IMPORTING DIALOGUE

Another massive change was an internal one: I created a tool to import lines of dialogue straight from text files. In the previous dev log we mentioned using Godot GUI to add lines manually... but with the wordcount tripling this update, Veki needed some way to do it automatically, and along the way I added sweet extra script functions like the ability to set character sprites, sfx, music, and backgrounds. The format is pretty simple and is based on how Veki actually wrote the script in his text editor. It looks like this:


Ch = Chef

---

Ch: (img=scared, break=flash, emotion=Exclamation, sfx=hurt) ...!

The first part before --- is the character definition, which links the two-letter shorthands (like Ch:) to their full names. To set Chef's sprite to a scared expression, you can just throw img=scared in the parentheses, and the import system will grab that character's sprite directory and set it in the Portrait field for that line in Godot. Anything that comes after the parentheses will be the actual text displayed on screen. Nice, simple, and slick! Most importantly, though, the actual lines of dialogue in the engine are still special godot resources, so we can still adjust them manually if need be, and this is still how we do special effects like Deadghost's dice, or branching perspectives-- but without this import system, we would've had to add almost 3000 lines with clicks, alt+tab, and copy and paste, which was a truly untenable prospect. I've cobbled together a little tool that shows a preview of the whole thing, too. (Text is blurred because spoilers!)

EMOTIONAL EFFECTS

This update breathes some visual spice into the game with new character sprites and backgrounds, but also with new animated particles like spirals and flowers which pop up over the character sprites to better convey their emotions. We've also updated the intro chapter to include these.

I think they're pretty fun and add a lot, especially when combined with the new character portraits and sfx.

CONTINUES

Oftentimes people would accidentally close out of the game or return to main menu, and it wasn't clear to players that the game autosaves, so they didn't realize they could just use the REMEMBER button to load up their most recent save. To help solve this issue, and for the juicy convenience, we added the PERSEVERE button to the main menu, which works like a continue button that will load your latest save. This is all I can remember for now... we hope to keep going until the eventual full release of the game and add a lot more fun things, so stay tuned for the next update. Thanks for playing! -- Vaartis ------------- Yo, Veki the writer and other stuff guy here!! Dude I'm actually the real him!!! And my story actually goes somewhere now!!!! That's sick!!!!!!! The actual writing part of this update only took about a month, though, which is both good and bad... it's good because it means that it really won't take too long in terms of pure wordcraft to bring ACT 1 to a satisfying close, but it's bad because it means that for every hour I spend on writing, I'll probably have to spend 2-3 hours on other stuff, so the progress of the story will be kind of held back in that regard. Ah, but who cares though?! The writing is nice and all, but the game is the game, it's more than just a damn gay novella. It's a gay experience. Bro let's really even get into it with some categories. Who's reading this, anyway? You want categories again, like Vaartis's part? Those categories which I added, myself, into his own part, which was his, but I still added them in there, for him, with my own hands? Sure, I'll re-add them into my own part, in keeping a mirror tandem with his part-- part of which I did do in due part.

THIS IS THE FIRST CATEGORY

INTERLUDE 1

Here we go. Within this initial category I'll speak of the raw initial drafts; the first words placed after the roaring, somewhat hurried ACT 1 SCENE 1: LAST CALL, in which twelve un-exposited un-introduced characters and twenty-four unique original concepts are thrown at you in about thirty minutes of reading. I was very unhappy with the writing in the demo, I'll say that much. It needed another draft, probably two, but to get a serialized story off the ground you just have to ignore some problems in each stage and commit to move forward, or else nothing will get anywhere. Plus, I mean, ya gotta write the damn story to find out what you like about it and what you want to fix or change; until it's on paper and you can compare it to your newer stuff, the "problems" might actually be just a baseless vague of malaise, whereas the "epic parts" might appear lame to you later, once you find out what the definition of epic truly is. Regardless, I knew that I had to slow the pacing down, and give players something to hang onto in this crazy world, so the first thing I wrote was-- [expand type=spoiler] -- Act 1 Interlude 1, a brand new type of thing that's NOT a scene!! And this Interlude included flashbacks for Tank and Chef which give a little more context to core aspects of the world like monsters and badges, which were both pretty vague concepts in A1S1 (Act 1 Scene 1). Also wrote the Officiary and Deadghost part of the Interlude to help the pacing a bit, giving the player some time alone with the Officiary for ruminatory purposes, and then some time with Deadghost to re-solidify the reality of the death game, which originally felt very "ok I guess this is happening now" in A1S1. More on that in the ACT 1 SCENE 3 category. [/expand]

ACT 1 SCENE 2

It's kind of neat re-reading Act 1 Scene 2, because there are parts of it which are much older than others, and they're mixed in chronological order; in general, the action scenes are new, and the non-action scenes are older, and I can really see the difference as I got better and better at writing this cast-- in short, I think the parts of the scene in which goals and conflicts are most clear-cut are the best parts by far. When writing A1S2 I made the mistake of letting characters just talk to each other about scattered topics-- which can be good for worldbuilding and slowing the pace down, but it's not good for engagement... not one damn bit...! Thankfully, once I had finished writing A1S2, I refused to let the update launch with such a muddled, peaceful vibe. So I cruised by for another dip... a true dip. You might even call it a True Dipper's Dunk... into the true nature of this death game.

ACT 1 SCENE 3

By the end of A1S2 I had placed a poultice to the pacing and plunged some leagues deeper into the game's world, but now a new issue had really started to get noisy and angry at me in the background: what is this dumb death game stuff you're trying to do on top of all this other stuff...?! Well, it's supposed to be the premise for the story, and it's supposed to serve as a hard, thrilling structure for the rest of the entire game... and yet, essentially, the only part of the story that really had anything to do with it was a long explanation from Deadghost at the end of A1S1, and some characters ruminating and discussing it in A1S2... which meant it was talked about and insisted upon by the writing, but never actually WRITTEN!!!!! BLAST!!! CURSES!!11 Come on dude, grow up. Get real. Act 1 Scene 3 takes what I learned (remembered) about the importance of goals and conflict and centers its whole dang self around that stuff; the death game finally begins to feel real, I hope, and the story switches from worldbuilding and characterbuilding to the conflict of eleven souls trying to survive and to strategize in a life-or-death situation. I'm quite happy with the pacing and the story moments in this scene. It's got some issues, especially with trying to juggle six different plotlines at once, but for the most part, I think it's pretty exciting, emotional, and feels like a good payoff to the buildup of the first two scenes!!

THE NEXT SCENE...

Stories where a small group of characters are trapped in a location together... in a closed circle... these stories graph a distilled network of conflict where the rules of engagement are simple and known by everyone; and yet, each person approaches these rules with their own strategy, in accordance with their nature-- a rainbow of tryhards, if you will, forming alliances and making enemies. I just love watching all the moving pieces come together and bounce off of each other in this place where no institutions or hierarchies of power may interfere... it's so dope. So, for the next update, the story will most likely go in this direction-- now that everything has been fully established, and the rules of engagement have been made clear, it's time... It's time for some plays to be made. Hope ya enjoyed the update, you handful who played it! <3 Seeya in the next one! -- Veki

[ 2023-05-25 07:48:54 CET ] [ Original post ]

First major update and release on Steam

Just released the first major update that include two new chapters. The game is now also available for purchase, in addition to the demo, which still includes just the first chapter. For this release we also finally have a trailer. If you haven't seen it on the store page, here it is: [previewyoutube=h2djaBmo3JI;full][/previewyoutube] We hope you enjoy the new chapters and will continue working on the rest of the story in the meantime.

[ 2023-05-17 16:40:27 CET ] [ Original post ]

Character art update

Hey. We've just released an update with the rest of the character art added for Null, Star, and Mom. Now there's no more placeholder character art! We plan on adding different expressions for characters in the future, as for now, we're working on the game's second scene and new minigames. Thanks everyone for playing the game!

[ 2023-02-27 09:16:00 CET ] [ Original post ]

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Team Veki

Developer

Team Veki

Publisher

Coming soon

Release

Indie Singleplayer EA