Hey everyone! 💚
We'll be honest: June and July were so intense that we didn't stop long enough to write a Devlog. We've been heads-down, pushing to get a fully playable version of Heidi's Legacy from the very first scene to the final credits, and we got there!!
So today we're catching up with a double Devlog, and there's a lot to cover!
This was an enormous amount of work: weeks of sculpting and level design across zones 3 to 5. The lake, the camping spot, the stone benches near Sebastian's place, the glacier... the upper mountain is now a real place to explore, with its own atmosphere and secrets at every turn!
On the narrative side, Act 6 is complete, a lot of new dialogue has been added to balance the pacing across all acts, and a light romance system for the NPCs is fully implemented. The whole story of Heidi's Legacy now exists from beginning to end!!
Now that’s done, we've sent all the texts off to our translation partners and proofreaders (a big thank you to Michelle for patiently reviewing our franglais 🙏)
Two new mechanics made their way into the game this period. First, bird spots: you can now craft birdhouses at Sebastian's sawmill and place them in the mountain environment, giving the local birds somewhere to nest. This will please Peter too.
Second, this is Agnes’ medicinal herb garden where you can now grow and harvest chamomile, borage, and hibiscus flowers, which feed into new crafting recipes. And maybe other stuff in the end game 👀
We built a fishing mechanic! The pontoon is in, Heidi has a small casting animation, and the associated rhythm mini-game is working. It's still WIP, but it's already a relaxing little moment in the flow of the day.
Now that the mechanics are in place, we've entered a proper polish phase. That means adding new expressions to every character, and replacing all the placeholder images that have been sitting in the game for months, like this rather suspicious image of a boys' dinner, or this one of Peter looking very upset about something… but we won't spoil it. 👀
Big appreciation to Bloo's developer art, it helps so much!
Back in May we showed you a very rough bridge connecting zones 4 and 5. It's now fully finished!
And the same goes for the climbing spots we teased in May’s Devlog.
We've never shown this before, but here's our updated minimap featuring the new level design, points of interest markers… and yes, fast travel! 🐐💨
We added to the mushroom digging mini-game and gave it a new setting: you can now dig into the cliff faces to find precious stones for Peter's collection. A nice complement to the fossil hunting 💎
Previously, only the most important story moments showed characters as full standing portraits, the rest used speech bubbles above in-game sprites.
We've now reworked the system so that standing portraits can appear in any dialogue, making every conversation feel more personal and expressive.
Finally, we've been running recorded playtests with external players, watching them play in real time and catching all the things we'd stopped noticing after months of development. It's been incredibly valuable… and generated a very long bug list 😅 We're working through it!
That's it for June and July, two intense months that brought Heidi's Legacy closer to the finish line than ever before. If you haven't tried the demo yet, it's free on Steam, and a wishlist really does make a difference for a small team like ours. 💚
See you at Gamescom in August!
- Meli & Bloo