[RELEASE]: Headspace v.20 build (Patreon)

EDIT: Currently, Headspace is no longer in active development, but you can still access/play the last-released build via this post.

Good afternoon, everyone! 💚 I've been working on some new systems that I've been wanting to add for awhile in order to make combat feel a little more rewarding, as well as the addition of a new character! Here's a little recap of what's changed:

• The Shop has been updated!
• New Shopkeeper character!
• Monster Materials & Item Synthesis system!
• A new forbidden Limit Break! (for you MaliceThought slayers)
• Interactions throughout Office 2F have been added!
• (A few minor bug-fixes involving collision - thanks WORMSTweaker!)

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It looks like the shop is evolving! But... is that really someone we know? You'd better hope you have enough gold to make her happy.

The shop was long overdue for an update from being a simple building-sized vending machine. While it will still be that way at the beginning of the game, a certain something will trigger once the player returns home with the 2nd Inspiration. However, before working on the shop, I had wanted to flesh out a certain system that I've been messing with: Item Synthesis!

Fighting monsters is pretty normal stuff, but at the end of the day, they're all just walking sources of exp/gold. But what if they were a little more? Now, most enemy types drop specific Monster Materials that can be used at the shop for Item Synthesis to create items and upgrade equipment! Currently, there's only about 10 recipes in there, but now that I have the system working, I can add more whenever I think of cool new stuff or create new enemies! :)

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For those of you who battled the optional mini-boss, the MaliceThought, you likely saw the "item crafting" hint on the item it dropped. Well, now you can turn that hard-earned relic into something nice (...or wicked?)

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Also, I realized in the Office 2F zone that there were a lot of objects in the environment that couldn't be interacted with, so I went back and fixed that. Even if it's just silly flavor text or a little joke, almost all objects can now be interacted with (including every single item in the Shop). To me, a lot of the fun in RPGs is checking out the scenery, trying to find hidden items or dialogue, so that's a feeling I want to have in Headspace.

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Lastly, some important news: with this release build, further playtest builds will be on hiatus while I rework the game. I talked about this a bit in the previous release notes, but because of the way I setup events when I first started making Headspace, it's making everything I build on top of it unstable.

The biggest offender is Stella herself - when I made the first build of the game, I didn't know how to correctly setup her events, so I made a bunch of separate pages, and now it's a mess trying to get her to do any new stuff without breaking the game. Things hit the tipping point while I was trying to setup a new lewd event for her:

Basically, I wanted to set it up so that when the player rests 5 times, a cutscene plays where Stella wakes you up in the middle of the night for impure reasons. However, during testing, this scene would break the game and essentially reset Stella back to how she was when you first meet her, so I had to disable it. Somewhere in her 10 pages of events is the reason for this, but instead of spending countless hours picking through spaghetti code, it'd be best if I just put things on hold until I rebuild the game. Coincidentally, this is also a big reason why I've been hesitant to progress the Office storyline further, since the final part of that quest involves Stella quite a bit.

It's a big undertaking, but it's necessary. On the bright side, that does give me a chance to rework some things about the intro sequence that I've been wanting to change. For example, I want it to actually be playable instead of just one big cutscene (player able to walk around human-Zero's house), so I can also sneak in a few little plot elements. Additionally, some of the older art doesn't hold up as well (the intro was made back when I had barely started Veronica & Mona!) so having a chance to redo the art would be refreshing.

So, for the moment, Headspace releases are gonna be on hiatus while I work on getting the game appropriately rebuilt. I can't say for sure how long it'll take to complete, but I'll keep you all posted on how it's going - and when it's done, you can be sure I'll have also added a nice chunk of new content for you to enjoy :)

CLICK HERE FOR THE DOWNLOAD LINK (decrypt key attached to this post)

Thanks so much for your patience! 💚 Feel free to let me know if you run into any bugs!