Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a relaxing holiday season. Here’s what we’ve been up to in December, what we accomplished over the year, and some goals for 2022!

December 2021

December was a little bit of a slow month, as we took some time to relax and visit family and friends. That being said, we did get a few things done, such as:

• New enemy animations
• Finishing some palette swaps for cats/dogs/birds
• Finished updating older maps with the new biome
• Fixed all user reported bugs (and a few others)
• TTBattle infrastructure upgrades & planning
• More cutscene writing

2021 Review

The past year was hectic and we accomplished a lot more than we expected. The biggest example of this is what happened with the in-game world map. Just to show off how much has changed, take a look at the images below!

As you can see, we increased the game world size by at least 25%, leaving only the bottom section left to go. We also:

• Released a Beta Update
• Fulfilled some Backer Rewards
• Added Font Accessibility Options
• Upgraded and added all the Battle animations and SFXs
• A variety of TTBattle Upgrades such as:
  • Group Skills
  • Respawn Timers
  • Battle Class Visuals for Player Characters
  • Reimplemented Status Effects with new animations
  • Added differing chances for group-wide status effect skills
  • Skipping turns now has an animation
• We added a bug and feature report form
• We released a new trailer
• The new overworld tiles for the new biomes were completed
• As seen above, we completed a new biome/province
• We worked on new VFX for the overworld, such as flag animations
• New enemies, emote bubbles and running animations!
• Skill and Item icons were updated with a 1080p version
• We worked on creating passive animals, such as cats, dogs, birds, frogs and others
• We worked on UI animations and improvements
• Almost finished the soundtrack
• And we’ve been streaming regularly on Twitch!

2022 Plans

So what do we have planned for 2022? Well, it’s a little bit more of the same, but we want to focus on finishing up a lot of areas that are currently in progress, such as:

• Finish TTBattle planning, upgrades, and implementation
• Finish adding new enemies and skills, including relevant SFX
• Finish adding all of the overworld maps to Gataela (that bottom section in the above images)
• Shader improvements, such as the house shader for performance, or the water shader for visuals
• Finish end of game rewrite
• Add all of the cutscenes and skits for the end of the game
• Rewriting debates
• Writing and adding side quests

We are also considering releasing a demo update with all of the bug fixes, and maybe a TTBattle specific demo to get feedback on how the system plays at some point during the year.

In the meantime, we hope you all continue to stay safe!

Welcome to the snowy season. We hope everyone enjoyed the last little bits of fall! Here’s a brief update on everything the team was up to during November!

Finishing the Biome

Making Friends

One area we’ve really been focusing on recently has been creating more passive animals. We talked about it briefly last month, but it’s things like cats, dogs, bugs, birds, frogs and other animals that exist to give the world more life. One thing we really noticed when traveling throughout the world is that other than NPCs and enemies (and treasure) there wasn’t too much else. These little things can add a lot of extra movement so we hope it will help.

Twitch

We’ve begun to do regular weekly Twitch streams every Tuesday from 8-10pm EST. If you’re interested in watching, follow on Twitch or keep an eye on Twitter for when we go live. And if you miss it a VOD is available on Twitch for the next little bit.

What’s Next?

Our big plan over the next few months will be to:

• Continue writing and reworking the end of the game
• Developing the last biome
• Upgrading the turn-based battle system

The general theme of this next work is to finish “preparing for content”. In other words, although the story might be written, it hasn’t been implemented in the game just yet. We need all of the levels to exist in order to do that. At the same time we’ll be upgrading the turn-based battle system and fleshing it out more. After that’s gotten it’s turn, we’ll look at the debate battle system – which is heavily dependent on the story.

Our next update will focus more on a year in review and what our plans are for the coming year, so in the meantime we hope everyone stays safe during the holiday season!

Happy Belated Halloween! We hope everyone had a spooktacular night! Here’s what we’ve been up to over the past month.

Misc Additions & Improvements

As we mentioned last month, progress was expected to be pretty slow. That being said, we got a few things done, and have a few things coming along the way such as:

• The Stealth skill animation was updated to match the new battle animations
• All of the Skill and Item icons were updated to match the new 1080p UI resolution
• We fixed a bug where when you changed the selected quest in the quest log and left the menu the mini map was still pointing to the old quest until you changed levels
• Added an area identifier to the mini map for quests that have an objective in a general area
• Working on an animation that plays when turns are skipped during battle
• Working on adding passive animals to the game, such as cats, dogs and birds
• Designed some new VFX for when walking on dirt, sand, and through shallow and deep water
• Working on juicing up the game with new transition animations for battles and menus
• Creating new emote bubbles for cutscenes, and updating the debate battle bubble to be more clear
• And More!

What’s Next?

As we outlined before, we’ll be continuing to focus on various improvements through the month of November. We hope to finish off most of the transition maps/levels between the new province and the old ones, and start planning out the last province and the battle improvements.

Happy Spooky October! Here’s what we were up to over the past month!

Province Update

Misc Additions & Improvements

This month we also worked on a variety of other small tasks such as:

• Fixing the remaining bugs from the public bug list
• Creating running animations for bear, moose, cougar and wolf enemies
• Creating a special boss skill
• Creating more emote bubbles and working on improving the debate emote bubble
• Creating various VFX
• MSQ writing improvements

What’s Next?

As we previously mentioned, progress will be slow over the next few months due to some sudden important real-life responsibilities and events. Now that the new province has been added, we’ll be working on the following for the next little bit:

• General animation improvements, such as running animations, more VFX, etc
• More MSQ writing improvements
• Updating the Skill and Item icons with a a higher resolution version
• In-between levels/maps blending and connecting the new province with the older ones
• Planning for battle improvements and the next (and last) province

Hello! Summer has gone and passed, and Autumn will soon be arriving ?

What’s Next?

Next month we’re looking to finish off the rest of the province, more writing and finish fixing all the user-reported bugs.

It’s also important to note that the next couple updates for the month of September and October will likely be short on content due to some sudden real-life responsibilities and events. We thank you for your understanding during this time.