Welcome to the first devlog of 2026!
We started the year by writing a list of things we want to have ready before our second test. This is going to be the final test before we finalise the game, polish it and release it. Since this is basically the last opportunity we have to test or receive feedback, we want to complete as many features before the test as possible.
Here's the list of features we'd like to finish before the test:
Full cohesive playthrough from start to endgame, including all side
quests
All companions, including their abilities, equipment and level progressions
Menus (right now we have functional menus for saving/loading and for some settings, but they have placeholder graphics. )
Item limitations. So only some characters can equip bows, some can equip heavy armour etc.
Combat rebalancing.
If the game needs tutorials/guides to explain to the player how the game works, those should definitely be completed before the test.
Create the demo through steam (to test how to upload builds and
getting the game to run through Steam. This will also enable our testers to run the game on their own PC's with their own screens, possibly enabling us to find bugs related to things like screen resolutions for example.)
In addition to that, we also have a list of minor bugs and improvements that we'd like to complete before the test.
The first bullet is probably going to be the biggest task. We want it to be possible to play almost the full game, including all side content. No missing images or missing dialogues.
We started on the first missing area: Julia's farm. At the start of the sprint, this area looked like this
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| We drew this sketch quite a while ago, back before the first test. |
Now it looks like this
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| So.. many... trees... |
This area took quite a while to draw, but hopefully we can re-use parts of it for other areas in the game.
Next, we started writing some of the dialogues. The player is going to have a talk with Julia on the farm, which will lead to the player travelling to the next area, the town. Upon arriving to the town, a cutscene will play out with additional dialogue, explaining what is going on and adding another character to the party.
We started writing both of these dialogues in this sprint.
We also made a few improvements: It is now possible to change the look of characters dynamically during the game. This could be for costume changes, or even adding scars or mutations. For now, we only use it in a single place.
Another small improvement we have made is a cheat menu that allows us to automatically win combats. We're probably going to play through the whole game quite a few times before we hand it over to the testers. Being able to skip combats will make that process go faster. The cheats will be disabled in the final version of the game.
Unfortunately, I was struck by illness this week and haven't been able to work much. Today is the first day I'm feeling a little better.
Hopefully I'll be well again to work next week. We'll continue to post blog updates on the 1st and 2nd friday of every month. Here's our preliminary plan for the year:
January 23 - Prepare for the test
February 13 - Prepare for the test
February 27 - Prepare for the test
March 13 - Pre-playtest polish
March 27 - Prepare build and bugfixing for playtest
April 10 - Improve game based on tester feedback
April 24 - Final confrontation. Boss fight. End cutscene.
May 8 - Bugfixing and missing features
May 22 - Bugfixing and missing features
June 12 - Steam integration
June 26 - Polish
July 10 - Polish
July 24 - Release preparation
August 14 - Release
So far we've been consistently underestimating how long tasks take, so it's very possible that the plan doesn't hold up. We'll probably re-evaluate the plan after we do the playtest. For now, we'll focus on completing our pre-playtest list.
Thank you for reading! We'll be back with another update on January 23rd.
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