River Tails Summer News! Polishing, SFX, extra end-of-game content & more...

Hello River Tails friends and supporters,
Hot weather getting too much for you? We can lower temperatures with some cool news. So grab an ice cream and listen up!

Where are we with production?
Very good question, and one we ask ourselves every day.
The game is almost finished: every level and time trial is already there, animations are done and all the music has been written and composed. We have also added some new systems, new levels and have improved design in various places.

What are we doing right now?
So, what’s next? What needs doing for it to be a finished, polished game? Glad you asked. Here’s a detailed list of what we are working on RIGHT NOW!
Balancing every level
With the help of external testers we are making sure that all the levels flow and making sure to smooth down any unexpected difficulty ‘spikes’. We are also doing a lot of work on the ‘Ask for Help’ mode; we’ll probably make this the default mode, to make the game more enjoyable for most players. We are watching streamers and reading Early Access reviews to understand where the problems could be and then fixing them.
The Instant Death mode you’ve seen will probably become the Hard mode, for players who are looking for a challenge and don’t want our help!

Sound FX
We have realised that we need more sound effects in some sections of the game, so in the next month we are finalising our sound library.

Menu
Even though the old selection menu was almost there, we weren’t 100% sure about it… so we redesigned it! We’ve changed the way it works and looks, so that it gives more sense of the river and the journey our two heroes make.

End Game content
We are taking care of some aspects of the game which will give extra hours of fun even after you come to the end of the main story, like challenges and mini-journeys to complete to win bonus prizes!

Finishing the remaining Cinematics
We want to give a bit more emphasis to some moments in the story, and so we are finalising some of the cinematics. We are also adding sound effect to all the cinematics, something that was missing in the Early Access release.

End of Level Dioramas
End of level screens need to be designed with care and love. We would like to show cute or cool little scenes – that we call dioramas – to celebrate the players who have made it that far! (sorry for the video compression, hope you get the idea!)

Hope you like what you see and the new updates of the game.
Enjoy your summer, and thanks again for your patience and support. You will hear from us very soon!

Kid Onion Studio🧅