NEW UPDATE: DOWNLOADABLE EDITION (NOT THE BROWSER VERSION)

We had been working on Gestate here and there since the game jam, addressing the most immediately actionable pieces of feedback. Since finishing Uni, we have a lot more free time, so we decided to release an update and talk about both updates in this devlog just to show that we’re still working on the game. 

Recap - update 1 (11/03/2024)

This is all of the changes made to the game immediately following submission of the Game Jam, and the reasons why.

• Graphics - We improved the game’s visuals, from UI fonts to lighting, postfx and fog. This also involved fixing lighting glitches and generally balancing the colours better.

• Sound effects - Sound effects were added, and existing ones were adjusted, the monster no longer screamed constantly, instead ominously grumbling. Items were given sounds that play when equipping them and on impact with the environment. Footstep sounds were also added, and crunches when feeding and getting eaten.

• New feeding system - The original feeding system caused a lot of confusion for players, and was not intuitive or well explained, so in the last update we simplified the process to feeding whatever is in your hand to the monster during the day, and updating its stats in real-time.

• Movement system - In our last update we improved the movement system to be more organic and immersive, the player now leans into their movements and breathes heavily when stamina is used up

• Scenery - We started work on expanding the backdrop of the level, such as for the borders of the forest and lake

• Interlude - We added an interlude scene between days, allowing the player to view the overall change in the monster stats for that day, and to catch their breath. This also allowed us to make the fail state more cinematic.

• Rebalancing foods - One of our main constructive criticisms was that the game became very repetitive and difficult because of how long it took to reduce the monster to 0 strength, so we reworked the food stats to give each of them a viable role in gameplay and to make the game less grindy.

This Update - update 2 (09/06/2024)

These changes were made more recently, specifically to demonstrate continued development on the game so that the “Future Plans” section doesn’t just come out of nowhere.

• You can push hay bales around.
• Background scenery is in the world now - A big weird nondescript factory looms upriver, as well as electricity pylons. You also can see your house up the hill from the gate you spawn at, to tie it into the interlude a bit better.
• You can now pause the game (escape) - There’s also settings for changing volume and mouse sensitivity.
• A journal has been placed in the Interlude scene - You can interact with it to view all previously collected notes, which is useful because notes disappear now. However…
• Notes appear on different days - Rather than having the entire map full of notes on day 1, they arrive over time, so we can tutorialize the game a bit more gradually.
• Bear Traps spawn in the world as an additional obstacle - You have to pry the jaws open by looking at them and pressing ‘E’. They also go off if you drop objects on them, or roll a hay bale onto them.
• Particle effects - Dust when you drop creatures on the ground, blood when your leg gets clamped, flies buzzing around the corpses of dead animals.

Future Plans

• Creatures - We will be expanding on the threat aspects of gameplay by adding hostile entities, work has already been started on implementing this.
• Fridge - In order to facilitate persistence and interplay between days, a fridge/freezer will allow the player to bank their haul to reclaim in the next day, which should help stop the “three poisons spawned but you should never use three poisons, then no poison spawned for 4 days in a row” issue.
• Barn - A barn will be erected on the farm, allowing the player to enter its interior. This is where the fridge will be.
• Variation/events e.g. fog - The most consistent piece of feedback we had was that there wasn’t much variation between different days of the game other than the food randomizing, which players only noticed when a crucial item such as poison or a bird was completely missing. The fridge should help with this gameplay concern, but as the main (positive) feedback people had was that they enjoyed the vibe/atmosphere/concept of the game, some way of building on this over the course of the game is a no-brainer.
The idea is to implement an event system, where each day would have some random extra stuff happen to spice up the day a little bit. Such as weather effects, food demands, and enemies. 

• UI - The UI is currently still very plain aside from the fonts, we will be addressing this moving forward, making it more expressive and VISCERAL