Friday Rambles and Game Dev Update 2023-03-31 (Patreon)

It's already Friday. And it's the last day of March! What the heck!!!!! It's not fair!!!

I'm rushing to finish a bunch of stuff so I'm at least done enough to submit my build to Steam for review (and then hopefully add everything that's missing afterwards before the launch date). So I couldn't get as much dialogue writing as I had wanted, but at least made some progress there...

A bunch of Steam related stuff:

Above: Added achievements, and it works :)

Above: Added Steam cloud saving, and it works :)

I built the games for the first time in a while for Steam for Windows and Linux and they still... build... so luckily I didn't have to spend hours debugging weird compilation errors this time around. I enrolled in the Apple Developer Program this week, too, so I'll be attempting to build for Mac too in the coming days. Hopefully that'll... also build...

Moving on:

I playtested several paths through the game to check off items in my story checklist. I played for an hour straight and only saw about a quarter of the way through the main story, so the game might be a little longer than I expected it would be. If you're savoring the text and playing Lumber Lass and going for all the achievements and stuff, I imagine it could easily be more than a couple, or even a few, or dare I say, several, hours long...

Above: Todo list update

While I was playtesting the game I realized I kinda wished I had some kind of progress tracker to give me a hint on where I should go next (and i made the damn game). So I added that to her Todo List, which was previously just for flavor. Now it's actually useful! And was surprisingly easy to implement. You can easily ignore it if you want to play hard mode, and half the endings have nothing to do with the main story objectives anyway. >:)

Also I got rid of Funstafeed. I just don't have time to write and draw bunch of funny social media posts. Maybe in a free DLC in the future.

Above: No more Funstafeed, but the Todo List is useful now

Finally moving on to the actual story content: I was writing some dialogue and was like, "I need to draw Skye so I can put her in this scene", and then made a Skye sprite. She was originally just in the BG (like a cameo).

Above (animated gif): Skye, finally

Above: Skye cameo

I made both of these yesterday. My urgency is making me draw at super speed. In addition to adding achievements and cloud saving. I've never been so productive in my entire life.

I went ahead and did the title screen thing I wanted to do before, where it changes depending on where Penny is (and how she's doing) in the current save file.

Above: Title screen progression

It felt like the last one being the default was starting the game off on a super pessimistic note, which I didn't want. So she only does that now if you're doing really bad lol

Drawing the new art gave me a nice opportunity to update the banner on the Steam store page, and I also took the time to write a real description instead of the crappy placeholder text I put there when I first made it. Now it looks like I actually want people to buy the game!

Above: Almost looks like a real video game store page

By the way (I don't think I ever announced this here) the OST is crafted by none other than the amazing Chance Thrash!!! So, if nothing else, at least the music is good!

So now, the plan is:

• By mid next week: Finish script draft so player can at least go from start to end and see all the endings (in text form)
• By end of next week: Finish remaining story art. The CGs are easy to make. I can do many in a day. Character sprites are harder, but the only ones left are for the endings...
• Build Mac version
• Submit builds to Steam for review ASAP
• In the meantime, do playtests and quality passes for remaining bug fixes, improving and beefing up dialogue (most time probably spent here), other polish, QoL, and flavor
• Make new trailer with footage from latest versions
• If/When Steam approves the release, announce the launch date and do some Real Marketing
• Do last minute fixes and polish
• Release 4/25 (or 4/26 or 4/27 depending on how things are looking for Steam review build and remaining work)

Other stuff:

Finally put in an order for new stickers (all EMDaD (EMDND? EMD&D?) themed), so those will be available on the shop soon. I think it'll be the biggest update to my shop in like a year. I'm excited to stick them on my [ex-company] branded Hydroflask™ water bottle. Anyway, hoping that the superfans will enjoy the merch and that it'll help supplement game related income, so I can still have hope for doing more gamedev after this. (addendum: I ordered the stickers before I drew the Skye sprites, so I'll have to put in another order for Skye stickers...)

Above (animated gif): I already posted some new Skye footage yesterday on Twitter, so for the Patreon crew here's an additional sprite I drew and animated today and some ~gameplay footage~

Despite being busy working all the time I still made sure I jogged or walked every day and got enough sleep every night so I'm not destroying my body. So physically I'm feeling pretty good, still. Even if my brain is being all not work good no more.

That's it for this week. Hopefully I'll have good news next week about how finished and complete the game is.

Thanks for your support, as always!