The Proteus Effect 0.8 is Released! (Patreon)

Greetings!

It's finally done, and I've never been so happy to complete a release. My biggest fear was that I wouldn't like it after all was said and done, but I'm actually quite pleased with it overall. Now hopefully all of you will like it, too!

If you want to get right to playing, here's the changelog and links:

Changelog:

• 6 new areas with 31+ new maps
• 7 new quests
• 2 new minigames
• Ana texture revamp
• 1 new H-scene with 29 images
• Many new characters and skits
• Difficulty revamp for The Dark Pits
• Added Karathian Alarm Clock to help with getting nighttime H-scenes
• Bugfixes, other minor changes

Links:

Windows 

Mac 

Linux 

Notes:

The first thing that needs to be said about this release is that it's long - or at least it can be. It took me 4.5 hours to clear all the content on my final testing playthrough - including the rather long H-scene - but you don't have to clear all the content to advance the story. In fact, if you just did the minimum required to advance the plot, you'd probably be done in somewhere between 1-2 hours.

The focus of this release is getting The Bunnies on board with fighting the dragon. In order to gain their support, you can perform quests for each of them - and there's a final quest for Ana that becomes available once you complete all the Bunny quests. You only have to complete 2 of them to advance the plot - Shiri's is mandatory, but any of the others will do for the second quest. You can (and probably should) complete all of them, though! Just be aware that you won't be able to start or complete quests for the Bunnies once you begin the vote. It is possible to fail some of them - notably Val's - so keep an eye out for that (though you may want that to happen, depending on how you feel about Val!)

For those of you who want to get through it as quickly as possible, here's a list of the quests ordered by increasing length:

Ren's Quest < Jovi's Quest < Shiri's Quest < Cory's Quest < Val's Quest

Important Changes

I hit these in the changelog, but there are 2 changes I feel I should speak a bit about. First, I added an Alarm Clock that will make it easier and more convenient to access some of the nighttime H-scenes. People complained that the whole 'drink coffee and go to bed' thing was a bit counterintuitive, and I'm forced to agree. Hopefully the alarm clock will mitigate that. You can get the clock from Kobble in Ogremarsh after you've beaten The Dark Pits.

The second big change is that I've reworked the difficulty settings for The Dark Pits. None of the actual gameplay has changed, but what was formerly 'easy mode' is now called 'normal mode,' and is now the default setting for the dungeon. What was formerly called 'normal mode' is now 'hard mode.' This shouldn't affect any saves you currently have in the dungeon; if you'd already explored it on the old normal mode, the new system shouldn't switch the gameplay's actual difficulty on you - you'll just be considered to be on 'hard mode'. (Similarly, if you'd already beaten it on the old normal mode, you'll now be considered to have beaten it on hard mode.) You may notice the torch in Kobold Town is a different color, but that will be the only difference. I'll talk more about my reasons for this decision later, but the short version is that I wanted to make the game more accessible to casual players. I've also made this change on the forthcoming public release of 0.7.

I'll have more to say about 0.8's development - and I'll want feedback from all of you about which quests were your favorites - but I'll save that for later. I hope you enjoy this release! Please let me know what you think about it!

Please let me know if you have any issues, and thank you very much for your patience and support!