September Dev Report

Hello again everyone, hope you are all doing well! I want to thank you all for your amazing support. The Monster Souls fan base continues to grow and brings with it the possibility of bigger and more exciting things for the future!

Patreon Anniversary

October 23rd will be the first anniversary of the launch of Monster Souls on Patreon! To mark the occasion I would like to release a public version of the dungeon prototype. I talked about doing this for a while and I think October is the right time for it. The plan for the first demo release is to feature the dungeon portion of the game and then a future release will include the full beginning of the game. Patrons will continue to get early access to the new builds and the Animation Viewer will remain a patron exclusive for the duration of the game’s development. Hopefully this will give a chance for new people to try it out and get a taste for what the game is like.

October Development Plan

In preparation for the dungeon prototype demo release I will likely focus on polishing and bug-fixing any glaring issues within the dungeon itself. However I also want to put aside some time to work on Patreon exclusive content as well. I’ll probably split the time evenly between these two tasks for the coming month.

Future Development Roadmap

In terms of content there’s two major scenes that need to be finished; The tavern scene and the optional first buddy sleepover scene. Then there’s a few minor scenes to bridge the storyline and finalize the first chapter of the game.

After that is wrapped up I want to focus my attention on finishing up the core systems of the game. There’s a few things in particular I want to look into, for example the way future scenes and quests will be handled. I also want to look into having scenes wait during looping animations and prompt the player before advancing. I think that would be more enjoyable to view them at your own pace. I'd also like to do a pass on monster and battle scripts, they could use a little clean up just to make things a little bit more orderly for the future.

I want to avoid long periods of development where I’m unable to release new content so I’ll try to work this into my plans to hopefully continue the monthly builds. Once that stuff is taken care of I should be free to focus a greater amount of my time adding new content to the game and begin working on the second chapter.

I had a lot more I was going to say here but it was getting very long and rambling. So I’m going to try to keep the final points brief.

• I’m still looking for artists that I can commission for environment artwork for the new dungeons and environments.

• I would also be interested in someone who can do animated effects for monsters and character abilities.

• It needs to be professional quality and match the existing art in the game. I realize it could be difficult to find someone but I’m not going to rush anything and we will make do in the meantime.

• Voice acting, I’m going to look into this more soon.

Thank you all for your amazing support, new and exciting things are on the horizon, I just need to finish up a few crucial things so we have a good foundation to build upon.  As always let me know if you have any questions or feedback!  

I hope you all have a great day, you guys are the best!