Starlight Shoals

Hiya guys!! I'm closing in on the point where I can finally put out a goshdarn new demo, which is a little sad for me to say 'cause I dumbly expected to be done with the game by now...but life in 2020 was more twisty and turny than I expected :<

But!! The game is still a work in progress, and there's been progress! The new demo will feature a buncha stuffs, such as:

-A new dungeon called the Venom Marsh where combat will start to get more complex than before, jumping in select spots is introduced (it's cute!!), and a lot of weird lore and new wrinkles in the narrative arrive

-Oh yeah and you get a new party member!! It's Luxsor, he's neat, you should use him

-The Vacant Keep is the next new area after the Marsh, it's not a dungeon but it's a creepy mansion with a puzzle or two where a ton of story stuff will unfold with three possible paths to pick from, and based on your past choices it can go pretty differently!! In fact, you might be surprised at how much the outcome at the Keep will affect the rest of the game...

-Due to popular demand, I figured out a way to make escaping ALWAYS work in battles (except bosses), and enemies will pause for a second on the map after escaping so you can move away from them (so you won't have to deal with the frustration of repeatedly trying to get the random chance of escape to work and then immediately get sucked into a battle right after)

-Guarding now restores 3 SP every time you do it, which is very useful in the early game when you've only got like 10 SP and enemies hit like a truck

-Tutorials are more fun now!!

-Some maps, some scenes, and a good amount of dialogue have been edited to flow better, also added new dialogue in some places, like a whole new set of things Dyana can say to you after exiting the Tower if you talk to her (only happens if you agree to the Ritual and she has a negative view of you)

-Most bosses and enemies have been refined and refigured to be more fair and/or challenging than before, as well as tweaking skills, items, drops, and a bunch of other things

-You can now see the ages and heights of party members in the status menu!!

-Even the very first scene has been changed!! Longtime players will notice, I'm sure :p

...annnd that's the main stuff to expect from the December 2020 demo. I'm hoping to get another one up in January that features the Riverway and Anchor City, especially since this latest one will kiiinda end on a cliffhanger. You could almost call this game episodic!! Speaking of which:

If you have saves from previous demos of the game (0.03 and up), they should be compatible with this new one. Just make sure to copy-paste your save files and DO NOT forget the "Global" save file or Wren will not remember your name between playthroughs. On the other hand, if you want to change the name she calls you by, just delete the Global save and start up a New Cycle from the main menu so she can meet you again!

Well, it's been ages since I said anything about the game's progress, and I'm really sorry about that, guys -- this year hit me really hard with depression and stuff, so the game isn't nearly as far along as I'd like, and I'm waaaay behind schedule on getting the next demo out...but that's where the good news comes in, because the next demo should hopefully be out within a few weeks!! (Let's call it a month and a half just to be safe. Maybe two months? I'm so bad with deadlines...)

Anyway, just to tease ya'll with some info, the next demo will contain the following stuff and more:

-A brand-new mountain dungeon called the Molted Trail, complete with a sidequest that develops the whole monsters vs. humans theme we got goin' on in the game so far
-A little place called Wayside Town where you'll finally get a (brief) glimpse of the male lead in this game...yes this game does have male characters, I swear
-A short sidequest where you can go on a date with Amori at the Cuppercake Bakery (platonically or romantically) and learn a lot about her past
-Around 15,000 words of new dialogue
-Major fixes to the battle system because there were some bugs/issues with a script I'm using that made it so Agility didn't work right, which kinda broke the whole game since Agility is like, the most important stat
-Also I adjusted the difficulty for a lot of battles since the game was too hard
-Also the healing skills have been boosted in power because everyone complained because everyone gave me their helpful feedback on it
-Redesigned versions of a lot of the early maps, based on feedback I got from people saying the mapping was really meh at the start
-A bunch of new flavor text for stuff you can examine in Seasalt Town (which is still an unfinished area, my bad), plus new character models for a couple NPCs that only had stock models before
-A good chunk of altered and added dialogue for the early parts of the game
-Some small, kinda neat changes to the game when you replay it a second or third time...think Undertale and you'll have a good idea what I mean :3

I'm excited to see what people think when the new demo gets released!! Should be any week now...aaaany week now...

~Starlight