SLARPG: General update February 2020 (Patreon)

Hello again! When we last spoke on Patreon, I said we were nearing completion on our next goal, which was to have the next 60-90 minutes of content after the end of the demo fully playable and up to alpha. We aren't quite done with this yet, but we're extremely close! Literally all that's left for that goal is for me to add a couple more enemies and run through everything once or twice to tweak the balance.

There's actually a reason for this small delay, though, which you'll already know about if you follow me elsewhere. Because of my Archie Sonic blog, Thanks Ken Penders, I was invited to write an article about the history of the comics and the legal battle that changed everything for New York magazine's Sonic Week! This was an extremely cool (paid) gig that I just couldn't turn down. I can now put on my resume that I am a paid Sonic historian. Wow

Anyway, as for the game! Much has been done. The last remaining areas of the Amber Woods have been made, another very cute orc NPC got her sprite, more enemies have been put in the game, some very large landmarks around the map got art, more fun new Spellbooks have been implemented, and a complex new boss has been added. On the music front, Bee has completed both a new boss theme to go with said fight, and a theme for one of the game's main antagonists. As you might expect from Bee, both of these tracks totally slap.

I've also made a few tweaks to the UI, which will hopefully have a positive impact on everyone's experience! For one, dungeons now feature a visible key counter in the corner of the screen so that you don't have to go into your inventory to check how many keys you have:

This is something I already shared on Twitter and Tumblr (although that particular screenshot is new). But here's another change that hasn't been seen elsewhere yet. Previously, when a party member had a Spellbook equipped, they would simply get a generic "Spellbook" option added to their list of battle commands. But now, I'm experimenting with giving each Spellbook its own unique label and icon on the menu! I'm hoping that this will be helpful, reminding you at a glance who has what Spellbook equipped and what you can do with them.

I believe this is also the first hint I've shared at what some of the Spellbooks actually are. I'm definitely looking forward to sharing more about them in the future... but that will have to wait for another time.

So yes! A couple weeks of me getting sidetracked by getting paid to write an article about Archie Sonic aside, we're already making great progress on the game this year. I'm very excited to have some close friends do some private playtesting very, very soon, and to keep charging ahead and getting more and more of the story playable.