Lengthy Update on All The Things (Patreon)

Hey everyone! 

Sorry things have been quiet on the patreon front lately. We've been really wrapped up in beta testing Changeling and trying to get things fixed and polished and ready for release sometime within the next decade. ;A;

I haven't had time to prepare more screenshots for you guys but I did want to check in and give you guys a detailed update of what's happening over here! 

First of all – we've actually reached out to a couple of artists to finish up the remaining "extras" that we want to add in the game. I really don't have time to complete those along with everything else…and I'm also having a stupid hardware issue with my computer that is making it difficult for me to actually do art at all. I have been able to get in some additional sprite variations that we wanted to have in the game. I have one more of those to complete. But it has been an ordeal to wrangle this stupid machine into submission. @_@

We're also having a new trailer made! =O

I don't have anything to really show for it yet but I'm really looking forward to the end result. The first trailer we did was kind of made in a rush, explicitly for the Kickstarter. We had very few assets yet (just a few unpolished BGs and the main sprites). We also couldn't afford to pay someone to have it done so I did most of it myself with help from my son – who is more knowledgeable about video editing things. I struggled with picking good music or really making it interesting at all. I feel like it's a pretty ho-hum sort of trailer and have been wanting to get something a little more exciting. So that's what we're hopefully doing! We have all the game assets now which means a new trailer can show off more of the game and, hopefully, do a better job communicating what this project is. 

You guys will be the first to see it when it's done, so look forward to that! 

Otherwise, we've just been really focused on testing. Even though beta testers are playing the game and giving feedback, I'm also playing through the game myself. There are certain things that beta testers don't notice or know to look for – and often miss. But they're things I notice because I know to look for them. In addition, I'm also trying to take a more critical eye to the story itself and smooth out any sudden scene transitions or awkward dialogue. There are also some really small continuity issues that I've found, but that beta testers have missed. 

Since I started my edits, I've added around 3000 words – which is weird, because I actually am cutting stuff out, too. There are a lot of moments where the narrative is like "He laughed." Or "I smiled." – and those things are often unnecessary when you have sprites that are actually….laughing. Or smiling.

Nora also thinks (Ugh.) a lot. 

Ha ha. I'm trimming out those kinds of lines and sometimes merging lines of narrative onto one screen so the player doesn't have to hit "enter" as often. 

And, again, this is the type of polishing beta testers just don't really point out – which is fine. A lot of it comes down to how *I* want the story to flow anyway.

The new beta tester group is really talkative (more so than the previous group, actually). And it's funny how much feedback you can glean from conversations that happen in chat. You can get a real feel for their overall opinion about the game but also opinions about specific characters that they may not be posting in their threads. So I've been making a few fixes based on that kind of feedback as well.

There have been some bugs that we've struggled with a bit as well. Our game journal is being a pain (as always). We finally got all the entries in game and so of course, it can't just *work.* Issues like this are why we're going to explore other game engines for our next project. Ren'py is great, honestly. And it can clearly be made to do amazing things - look at Doki Doki Literature Club. Whether you like the game or not, from a dev perspective, they did some pretty remarkable things with Ren'py that really demonstrate how flexible the game engine *can* be. Unfortunately for us, neither of us is a coder. And that means even simple things can be a huge pain. There are certain aspects of this engine that have been a huge struggle.

So we definitely want to explore other options in the future to see if there are better game engines for us to work with.

But yeah, this is just a really busy time of trying to add in a few small additions to make scenes look nicer – as well as making a ton of small fixes to make the game more polished. 

 That's why I wanted to give you guys a more detailed run down of what's going on.

As I move into my play-through of the next character, I'll try to take a bunch of screen shots for you guys here on patreon. In the meantime, as ever, thank you for your support. It's because of you guys we can even do things like get a new trailer, or commission more art!

You're all amazing!