This week in the Forest! #9

YO FOLKS!

We hope ya guys had a good holiday! As good as it can be at least :>!
We took some time off, but we're back and at it again!

Let's start with a word from Vixel!

1/4 weekly report!

Last week I got back from Christmas travel and spent the next five days with flu! :O Am doing much better now but didn't make any game progress.

This week I'll be continuing work on the full bunny cuck scene, the travel/spawning system, and scripting new conversations & gossips for the upcoming monthly build. ^^

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On my side I've got a couple fun things to share!

First, A MAP??

Given the game is kinda small, we're still in the process of figuring out how much we should put into this function. Currently a lot of stuff is pretty linear, but once we hit Act 5, the game will open up a ton - so having a function like this will help let ya know where critters are, and what tasks you may have missed :O! But at the same time, we've designed the game to be relatively simple, and the areas are small, so we need to make sure we aren't putting too much time making an intricate map when that's not a huge deal haha.

This is one of the ways we will be introducing "Power ups" to the player!

This sorta thing is a fun thing to design. I think any solid game needs to have a few components, one in particular is the feeling of progress/growth. Though the plot/story is designed with this in mind, it's nice to have it evident in gameplay. But in a game without any combat sorta stuff, it may be unintuitive to "power up" your player. 

That said, there's a ton of ways to improve QoL and enhance the experience of the player! These are things we've been toying with for a while, but they aren't yet implemented in the game. Soon though!

I'll keep this area short since I don't wanna over promise/ruin surprises haha!

Moving on!

I've finished up the art for Lanora's Part 2! Have a sneak peek!

Shluuuuuuurp!

I've also started roughing out some future illustrations! One for content voted on by the 10$+ folks last month!

I've also started working on the capstone visual for Act 2! I won't share it since I want this to be a surprise :O

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OK LASTLY, I wanted to share a DOPE-ASS tool I stumbled upon.

it's called Obsidian - You can download it here for free! 

It's a SUPER fluid writing program! Vixel said its kinda similar to your own personal wiki, very good way to put it! I've been using Act 3 stuff as a testing grounds for it, and it's been a fuckin' BLAST. Check it out!

Basically it works best as a sorta "mind barf" tool - that you can then go in and polish later. I can go through major steps, and using notations [[like this]] CREATE AND LINK a new document that I can flesh out later.

It also supports image inbeds, #tags, and it has a neat visualization map as well. (tbh I haven't seen how that's super useful, but it DOES look cool as hell)

This is kinda a niche thing - but if you're a writer at all, and tackling a large project, this is LEGIT a necessity.

There are plenty of tools that allow for non-linear writing, but this one's free AND has no clutter! Lots of the other programs we were looking at has specific like "character/location banks" and a buncha bloat and bullshit that can inflate the process.

This is super bare, but very flexible so you can effectively map out whatever! Definitely worth looking into. I've been giving it a thorough test run, and Vixel agrees we will likely be using this as a major tool in our pipeline.

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OK! That's it!

No ETA on this month's build just yet. We wanna add some cool stuff to it and the holidays put us back a bit. We'll keep y'all posted!

10$+ Folks, I'll get a new thing to vote on soon :>