Saturday Update! (Patreon)

CELIA'S PATH IN A NIGHTMARE!!!

Ahem, welcome to another Saturday update! This past week I've been working on editing Celia's path.... and it has been a challenge.

Not only is her path just disgustingly complicated with programming, but I feel like my existing writing is especially lackluster. I got overwhelmed when I was first creating Celia's path and it shows...

I don't have much progress if we're going by endings covered- but I swear I made progress. Celia's path just happens to be a bit more like Ren's from BTD2 in that she interacts with the player a lot more without killing them. It's a huge difference from Mason, who will almost assuredly kill the player on sight.

Celias path structure: Celia keeps the player locked in one room. She will visit 5 times- generally to torment MC. If the player chooses not to try and escape, they'll simply go through these 5 visits normally and get a normal ending. 

However, after the first or second visit, MC will have ways to escape the room. They can then explore other rooms in the building to find traps/weapons/etc. Time keeps ticking, so they can be caught by Celia if they're not back in the prison room in time. Celia can also find out if MC has been out of the room by how they leave the state of the rooms. 

The player can get more exciting endings if they manage to get certain items and use them properly without alerting Celia.

What I did last week:

- rewrote the first encounter. I didn't feel like it had the right feeling for Celia. I'm getting to know the character better so I changed the tone to reflect that.

- added alternate short version of second encounter. Playing through, the tone of the second encounter doesn't make sense if MC chose feisty or rude options. There's now a version where Celia acts a lot colder and lets MC starve longer.

- added placeholder sprites, cgs for first and second encounters

- changed the door lock mechanics for after the second encounter. Door used to just be inexplicably unlocked by mistake after- this was out of character for Celia. I added in a scene where MC finds a dropped bobby pin to unlock the door with and removed the pin from the elevator search list.

- changed the note in the elevator search list. It used to be this weird long note left by some other person. I scrapped this idea because I don't like it. It's now a cryptic note with four numbers on it only- which I will be using next week to create a number pad lock for the basement door [ currently unlocked by a searched key which will be scrapped. The path has too many keys. ] I also added a cute placeholder cg thing for the note so the player can see a big version on the screen.

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It's been a little rough getting back into the groove with this one since Celia's path is such a mess right now, but I do feel like I'm making big improvements and that I'm managing to untangle the nonsense. I'm hoping next week will go even smoother since I've gotten into the swing of things!

Anyway! This is quite long! Woops!

Thank you so much everyone for your help and support! AND YOUR PATIENCE! I know things are moving a little slower than what I originally had planned, but I swear I'm making progress!