Game Update 0.2.8 | "First Dates"
Added 2025-07-27 12:29:14 +0000 UTCUnlocked for all patrons!
Brothers and Sisters and Siblings,
Fancy a date?
Your fellow novices are looking for a fun day out in Downprior after their first week of classes, and it's time to join them and get to know them a bit better.
IMPORTANT!
Canticle by its nature and design has many variables, consistencies, and branches. Because of this, sometimes it is necessary in development for me to go back and add variables or change them based on future needs of the game. As a result, if you simply load your game from the last point you left it in the last update, you might get some inconsistencies going forward (characters thinking you did or didn't do something you know you did previously). In addition, some dialog choices were given additional relationship points with certain NPCs, so you might find the relationships unbalanced slightly.
This is why I recommend starting a new game. With skipping, you can get to your current point relatively quickly (and check all the changes to parts of the game you've already completed on your way there). If not, for this update in particular, I suggest loading a game at least from before your Saheilan Service with Alaric on Thornsday, because that scene has been changed quite dramatically and might influence some dates and conversations going forward.
Download for Android
(The Android versions has gone through some optimizations, but more are on the way. The game should be playable and relatively user-friendly at this point, but some scenes, like investigations or some minigames, might still be tricky on smaller screens.)
Warning | Some points below involve mild spoilers for earlier events in the game.
STORY UPDATE
This content update is not long, but it is girthy. By which I mean that in any given playthrough, only two things were added after the scene at the Tipsy Prior:
a visit to the blacksmith for those who have found a certain item in their investigations
a date with whoever they invited to accompany them to Downprior on Lightsday (including Soren's date, which has been revised since the last update)
However, there are 5 dates finalized now, so I encourage everyone to play around and check all of them out. Who knows, it might change your plans about who to pursue once you get to know them more. A good time to make a save game is on Lightsday morning, when you have to choose who to bring along with you to town.
On a related note, the dates also allowed me to get familiar with animating larger scenes and CGs (not only sprites/backgrounds), and the directorial freedom of that is something I really enjoyed, so you can expect many more animated CGs in the future.
OTHER UPDATES
The Arcanometry game has been added and should be fully functional now. You can play it on Watersday in your class and during the early free slot of every day after that.
Updated sprites for Luca and Jude have been added to the game.
Updated graphical assets have been added to the game.
Updated and animated CGs have been added to the game:
(Chapter One) The prologue slides introducing the history of the world.
(Chapter One) The "star dream" sequence.
(Chapter One) The scene with Soren when arriving to Downprior.
(Chapter One) The scene with Rehan in the herb garden.
(Chapter One) The scene with Alaric in the chapter house.
(Chapter Two) The scene with Luca in the stables.
(Chapter Two) The scene with Jude in his cell.
(Chapter Two) The scene with Alaric during Saheilan service.
The forest investigation scene has had the areas of its invisible "discoverable boxes" enlarged, and the sparkle animation meant to indicate some of them has been animated to appear more regularly. This means that it should hopefully be easier to notice clickables during investigations. I expect investigations to continue being improved upon in the future.
Many variables were added to or changed in the early game, storing data for future reference. For best results, play a fresh game to make sure to set all those variables to your preferences.
Many other bugs, inconsistencies and typos have been fixed.
I hope you enjoy your dates this Lightsday, and remember to head back in time for Evenmass!
Comments
Thanks for the feedback! I can definitely have a look at the directions to make sure they're easy to understand. The game is based on a pretty popular old game called Mastermind. There are only 4 symbols for now, but as the weeks go by, the game will become more difficult and more symbols will be added. Regarding the yellow dots: I don't know, for me, they can be quite useful. For example, if I try snowflake-snowflake-sun-sun and I get 4 yellow dots, then I immediately know that the final combination must be sun-sun-snowflake-snowflake. Because if all 4 were the correct type but none of them were in the right place (because none of the dots are red), then the only possible explanation is that the two pairs need to switch places. I hope I explained that correctly.
Metaleptix
2025-08-17 15:53:25 +0000 UTCI think the linguistics game needs the directions to be more refined. The red dots are helpful, in a way, but the yellow dots provide no useful information. Since there's only 4 symbols, and there can be doubles, the fact that one of them is correct, somewhere, isn't useful, and is incredibly easy to misinterpret. That A symbol you put on the board appears somewhere on it is basically tautological. The other thing that's completely unclear is if the responses correspond to any particular symbol or position. (i think they should, so that the information is more useful)
YahBoiOrgalorg
2025-08-17 07:46:53 +0000 UTC
