Progress Report #52: A Deep Dive

Hi everyone o/

This week's Progress Report is going to be a tad different than our usual norm, because not only would we like to bring you up-to speed on the development, but also make a breakdown presentation about the upcoming new patch.

Rest assured, we'll try our level best to conserve words!

What's the next update about?

Let's get the big question out of the way: Is this an update that will advance the central story-line? 

Short answer: No. 

Long answer: No, but it's a major side-quest. One that'll extensively touch underlying and underused secondary elements of VoidBound. Retouched elements that'll eventually merge into, and enhance, the central story-line in multiple capacities, ranging from expanding lore to inducing different game-play facets. We'll go into more details later so, lets start from the beginning.

• The Plot

While out and about minding her own business in Henosis, Caly spots a mysterious formless being from the corner of her eye. Curiosity getting the best of her, probes Caly to investigate further, only to realize that the more she discovers, the more she finds herself quickly getting caught up in a turmoil of events- one that'd ultimately culminate in putting the safety of the entire city at risk! Caly will have to move fast to grasp the gravity of the situation and eventually align herself with choices that might have long reaching consequences- including sealing the fate of an entire race!

• The Concept

For a long while we've been building a faction system concept that would allow Caly to ally with certain entities by running errands or executing actions on their behalf, thereby gaining their trust and benefits. This patch is the precursor test bed to evaluate the basics of that system.

Player will be tasked to mediate a deep dispute between a few residents and the police force. The goal? Find a solution to end the dispute. Simple enough? Well, yes but with more game-play focused approach in the mix. Not only will there be a lot of legwork and gunmanship involved, but how the player goes about to finding the aforementioned solution is going to be entirely upto them.

• Set in stone no longer

Breaking away from the kinetic nature of the story up till now, RPG's core elements of facing a choice and having the chance to approach the solution in one of many ways, will be a key factor this time. The branching nature of the quest will have players come across decisions that will culminate in one of three uniquely different outcomes. Please note, whichever way you choose to go, your actions won't bear any significance on the main story-line whatsoever. Feel free to explore each outcome at your leisure as we have no plans currently to box a player in.

• The Characters

Five new characters have been minted specifically for this update. They will not only have their unique avatars, but some will also have special battler sprites that Caly may come across in the heat of a battlefield. Now we'd love to go into depths on this but we've decided not to bombard you with an info dump and instead introduce these characters in short bursts over the next few weeks. All in all, outside of the mentioned new character, players can expect to face two bosses and 11 normal enemies on the battlefield!

• New Game Play Additions

Though multiple coding revisions have been done on the back-end, one of the most interesting on the game-play front are the adjustments to how enemies act and react to Caly's presence. Specifically, they have different roving modes now:

Normal Search Mode: Their default state whereby they'd be unaware of Caly and will only launch after her if she gets spotted. Intercepting will involve a stun for a close second followed by a chase at Caly's normal movement speed(not sprint). Eluding the chase will not be a challenge as long as players make some sharp cuts at high speeds.

Alert Mode: If Caly manages to escape after the stun, the enemy will enter a vigilant mode whereby their movements will be speedily precise as they scan the area more proactively.

Full Pursuit Mode: If you enter the search cone again while the enemy is in Alert Mode, they'll no longer give you any quarter, pauses or stuns. A full blown chase will immediately ensue and that too at max speed. Players will find escaping on this mode, very difficult.

Finally, irrespective of their mode, SFX now governs an enemy's detection patterns as well. If you walk normally, in a range of 2 tiles around them, enemies will not detect you. However, if you sprint/dash close to them, they will immediately turn towards you and will give chase!

• The Naughty Content

What patch presentation could be complete without mentioning the new batch of risqué? Now we apologize in advance but, Patreon rules forbid us to use explicit terms on a public post, so we'll simply paint you a more technical picture and leave the rest to your vivid imaginations.

-Four detailed NSFW scenes planned, each unique to choices and quest branches.

-Three restraint and three climax poses during battles- one for each new character exclusive to both slime and police encounter.

-Eight new Cut-Ins for both the back and the frontal variety dependent on actions of the enemy during the encounter.

• The Audio Connection

Those with exceptional memories might remember us talking about our plans to add ambient sounds to the game. We're glad to report, that those are no longer just plans and work is already underway to make them a reality. Currently, the areas that have been covered are the indoors and the outdoors of both the spaceports and the commercial area.

If plans remain on track, soon you will be able to hear the water dripping from the fountains, spaceships flying in the sky, logistic center machines humming and so on!

• Expected PlayTime and ETA for the Patch

As far as side quests go, this one is planned to be no slouch. Content wise, it's expansive enough to keep an average player occupied for an hour+. Speed runners might even burn through all of it in less than 30. In short, a very interactive content update with a hands on approach from the player as the patch leans more towards player activity.

The estimated time of patch arrival however... will be a bit delayed. Generally, we aim to release a patch every 2 months without fail. Unfortunately, in order to uphold the quality of our work, and given our limited resources, we had no choice but to make the difficult decision to bump the release from February to March. It's not a decision we made lightly, but as the saying goes, "You only get one shot at impressions", and we didn't want to miss that shot by setting out a hasty "compromise-riddled" release. For this, we very much apologize.

To make up for the gap, we'll be posting some regular updates in between the progress reports to keep you up-to speed on the status of the patch. Once again, we truly do apologize for this delay and hope to make it up-to you with a release worth spending your time on!

Kind Regards,

Cursed-Atelier Team