Fech The Ferret recap - Q4 2020

Helo helo!
The year is ending and I bet you're all happy because of that! It's of no use to yet again remind you why that's the case, so let's just get to the saucy news and updates about Fech.
Starting with...

Yes! After the SAGE demo it became much clearer what this game is, which meant it was time to welcome new devs to help me shape up Fech The Ferret into the ambitious game I wish it to become. Unfortunately most of this matter is super secret, so I can't show you much for the time being, but I can tell you that one of the people who has joined the project is an outstanding level designer and I can't wait to tell you more about it.

See you again on this topic in a recap from now!

Along with 2020 going away, Alex will also be leaving the game as a developer. Our work relationship has been a pretty remarkable one, we first met at beginning of March: while I was admiring the quality of his works he DM'd me this

Well, you can easily guess how the situation developed in the following weeks ahaha.

Anyway, on this matter I would like to let you read his message:
"Due to personal circumstances it has become an impossibility for me to continue helping out with my work on Fech professionally. It's been fun and making the ferrest for SAGE was surely a learning experience that i won't forget, i'm not leaving 100% just stepping down from a team position to a normal member of the community, since i want to see Fech to the end and can't wait to see how it develops. I'm pretty sure i'm not going to stop making some sketches of Fech here and there just for fun, but from a fan perspective, one with a bit more knowledge than others wink wink. See ya! :D"

Not really! Although we both liked working on this project, after the end of summer it became clearer and clearer to us that he no longer had all the time required to keeping up with the team's schedule. I wish Alex the best with his projects and I'm glad to see that he'll stick around! As for "Fech the Ferret" the last months of the year always tend to be a time of development restructuring for some unknown reason, so such change might prove to be fitting to the project's ever-evolving status.

Now, on to a rarely tackled topic here...

No, I don't have any spoilers for you today, but I can happily say that Enimo and I have been working pretty closely lately and we managed to get much further with the writing: all the major events and key points of the story have now been defined. The next step is to translate this into in-game dialogue, quite a lot of work actually!

The second big milestone of the year! Taking part to Milan Games Week has been a dream of mine since I was 13. Unfortunately due the circumstances it didn't happen the way I wished, but it was still a very symbolic experience personally.

At a practical level, one of the main things that came out of it is a new much improved demo! Quite more accessible than before and with improved controls, better animations and much better looking visuals. If you haven't already, try it out on my itch page!

Moreover, if you happen to speak Italian, here below you can watch the part of MGW's stream where I'm playing Fech The Ferret and talking about its development.

(click here to play the video) 

Getting close to the end of this report!
Here's 4 wonderful pieces that have been made during the last 3 months. They were drawn by members of the Fech server and it looks like there's a theme this time around

pls remember Fech is a pacifist boi, this is all misleading, in truth he means no harm

Oh! I also want to share this surprise gift by Dramis: twitter.com/dramisdraws/status/1339210572425027594

We're at the end of the recap! If you felt like this was a bit short, it's probably because there's a pretty stark contrast between development this summer (rushing to get stuff done for SAGE) and during autumn where I've focused on less visible aspects like bug fixing and testing new things. Also, more importantly, I'm back to school! I'm now enrolled in the first year of Fine Arts. And I'm just now starting to get accustomed to how Uni works ahah.

So, that's all for this year! See you in the next one!

Oh! don't mind me, just dropping a link to Fech The Ferret's wonderful discord server in case you didn't know about it: discord.gg/9QKKx6X