About that demo..
Hey everyone! 🐢
We hope everyone had a great start into the year!! We have a bit of a mixed bag of news to share to kick the new year off.
Good news first
We're super excited to share that Code: 9 got approved by the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung (MDM) to receive funding for part of the game's development!! Words cannot describe how happy we were to learn the news and how it gave us a great motivational boost! Not only will that funding allow us to focus better on the game and upgrade from rice and beans to the occasional cheeky pizza, but it will also give us the opportunity to invest more into the game.
Not so good news next
Despite our motivation and continuous work over the past weeks, we sadly had to make the decision to postpone our demo launch date for various reasons. Firstly, we had several things to get done that had little to do with the game itself (like the funding application). Secondly, we might have bitten off more than we could chew when it came to the overhaul and addition of mechanics in the game. We could scrap some parts of it and patch them in later, but we strongly believe that it would just lead to a worse experience for the demo, and we don't want that. Everything also needs more testing to make sure that everything runs as smoothly as possible!
What to expect from the demo now with the delay?
Quite a bit, actually!
You'll be able to experience the prologue and first chapter of the case (playtime between 30 minutes to an hour or even more, depending on your speed!)
A more fleshed-out "cinematic-esque" opening to the demo
A lot more dialogues, which will introduce you to the lore of Code: 9
We expanded on the "Conversational Mode" in the game! You might now gain rewards or relationship points if you choose certain paths in dialogues
An improved system for when you can write your answer in dialogues
Animated portraits
A lot of additional environmental storytelling
Improved UI & UX for the whole Klara module and the systems within
Quality-of-life improvements for the controls
And lots of small fairy dust changes to the sound and animations etc. to tie it all together
It doesn't matter at which point you were able to play a previous version of Code: 9 last year, with this demo there will be something new to experience for everyone!
When will the demo be out then?
We've set the date to February 3rd! We're really excited to hear everyone's opinion on it and collect more feedback to make it even better!
In the end, we're sorry that we couldn't get everything done in time, but we also hope that the little extra waiting time will be worth it!