Saturday Update! Hunt Month 8! (Patreon)

[ I'm sorry, it's been a crazy busy week and I didn't make a fancy HUNT MONTH 8 image ]

HUNT MONTH 8

Nothing much to say here other than I'm still working on the game for November! 

SATURDAY UPDATE

I do have a lot to say here! I've been pulling a little overtime to try and get Celia's path more edited.  The thing with Celia's path is that the rough version of it really fell flat of my expectations. I felt like I just couldn't get the writing right and the gameplay was convoluted and boring. I was really disappointed with it and it made it hard to stay motivated on it.

The good news is that now that I'm getting deep into the second pass and editing it, I've gotten inspired and I'm getting all these ideas about how to fix it! I'm so happy that I'm managing to get closer to what I originally wanted for the path- but it's been much more work-heavy than the editing for Mason's path [ and honestly, I don't think the Desert path will need as much editing either since I was happier with my first pass ].

So, without further ado, here's what I cooked up last week:

Firstly, I heavily edited / rewrote the remaining normal encounters with Celia and added in placeholder cgs and sprites. This was the only basic task that I expected.

Then, I recoded and rewrote the mechanics for searching rooms. In the original version, I made the player search some rooms more than once [ sometimes 3 times ] to get a useful item. I found this gameplay very tedious and punishing players going through the story multiple times. Instead, I added difficulty by giving players a choice of three options when they search. This makes it harder for first time players, but easier for repeat players.

Every room in the path except for the elevator now has 3 options when you search and players will no longer have a search a place more than once for no reason.

Next addition is the break room. For all the content I wanted to add and places to find more inventory items, I decided that I needed to add another possible location for the player. 

The break room contains a new food item to help restore food and sanity stats, and rat poison- which I will be writing a new death ending for next week.

To go with the new location, I decided to update the functionality of the map.

The map now gains scribbled-on labels every time the player enters a new room for the first time [ this is just to help with possible confusion ]. The map also gets a small scribbly lock symbol if the player discovers a locked door. This symbol will update to an unlocked symbol if the player unlocks the door.- a helpful reminder if the player doesn't want to leave doors unlocked.

And that brings me to a new locked door. To access the basement before, the player had to find a physical key. I thought it was boring to re-use that concept, so I added in a new note with number found in the elevator last week. This week I finished the coding for the number pad door to the basement.

It's ugly right now but it is functional! 

I'm also planning to write a new death ending involving the basement next week. Right now if Celia comes back and you're down there, you get the same ending as if she catches you anywhere else. I want to have a unique, spicier ending for if you're caught in the basement.

Phew, and I think that's it! It was a very busy week!

Thank you so much everyone for you support and patience! And thank you again for another successful development month- I really couldn't do it without you! It means the world to me!