Hello, new blog post with some new juicy and maybe not so happy news.

So, for the last few months I haven't actually touched this project at all, in fact I didn't even open RPG Maker or log onto the site.
I see some of you have posted feedback and reviews and I'm very sorry that I didn't see them sooner. All feedback is still highly appreciated and I'll do what I can to improve the game using it.

Anyways, the reason I haven't worked on Deimos is because I lost interest, motivation perhaps. I thought I could better spend my time elsewhere, which I did. School was a priority as well for quite a long time and the way I imagined the schedule in my head was that I would work on Deimos almost full-time over summer break, get a lot of things done so that when school started back up again I could work 1-2 hours a day and still make it in time for the release date.

But this schedule went flying out of the way and now here we are....I decided to not continue college as I knew I wouldn't be happy by the time I was done with it. It just wasn't for me.
So outside of my job and a 1 year course in digital art which will be starting soon, I have a lot of time to actually work on the game again.

So, here are the big changes I have planned for the game.

1.
All cutscenes will be changed to VN-style. Most of you will know what this means but for those that don't I direct you to SMT4's cutscenes:



All art will be done by me, yes this means it takes a lot of time especially as I am still learning. I do promise it will look good though, I will make sure of it.

2.
The main character will no longer be silent. There will still be choices the player can make but there'll be less choices overall, all "meaningless" choices will be taken out. The MC will say more despite this. Choices that affect the outcome of a situation will still be player-chosen.

The main reason for this change is that the silent MC hindered me more often than not. Every time I wrote dialog I felt like I was working around the MC instead of with him, this of course because I'm not an actual good writer. This change is a big one but the dialog and overall story progression should feel better once all is said and done.

3.
Navigation through Kyndale will be done through a bird eye's view map. You click on icons to move there. Think Persona3/4 without the menu.
There's a reason for this: Engine limitations. The game becomes increasingly laggier as more events are made and because a lot of events take place in 1 map of the town, it would become pretty unbearable by day 20+. I remedied this somewhat by having copies of the same map and using them for different days but this could become quite messy and confusing overtime.
Working with a single image, a few icons and the cursor of the player is far more intuitive. I can also actually visually change the town depending on which upgrades the player has made so far since the entire thing will run on a single image which I can swap out easily.
The world map will remain the same, because a lot of events is exactly what I need it for.

4. (not so big really)
Weakness multiplier in battle reduced to 200% (down from 300%)
This change seems small but might be big overall. I thought a big weakness multiplier would be a huge incentive go for them whenever possible...and it was! But 3x the normal damage posed some problems.
Namely, that characters who could not hit the weaknesses of the enemies felt useless in terms of dealing damage. This was gonna become even worse when enemies would start resisting certain elements. By toning back the weakness multiplier it should open up the possibilities in battle a bit more, make the characters feel more balanced and make the player feel reasonably strong even when having a party that can't hit enemy weaknesses at all time.

I think that's all.
So the release date of the game will definitely be pushed back, I don't think I can get it done in 2015 (I'll try) but early 2016 maybe?
I'll release a new demo which will go to day 10 once I'm done with all the content up to that point. I wouldn't expect it any time soon, but I will post updates and screenshots of my progress as I make them.

Thanks for reading all of this!