Hello everyone! Welcome to the end of Fall as Winter is sure to hit soon!
As we mentioned last time, as we move into working on things like *~*debates*~* we won't have too much to share until we're done sorting some things out (and even then there won't be too many images) so these updates will be a little small!
Our original goal was to add the Passive Animals to Olvia and Vescha over the next quarter - but we actually got it done ahead of schedule! Both of the new regions now have an abundance of birds, butterflies and other (non-violent) creatures waddling around. Here's a short video showing it off!
One thing we can talk about and show with the debates is a small fundamental change that people will (probably) appreciate.
First let’s throw back to the original debate battles! Way back when we planned for the debates to have three metrics to determine if you would pass or fail a debate:
You needed to select the correct options (or at least not get a bad end)
You needed to select the options within a set time (don’t leave someone waiting forever – that’s awkward)
If your score was too low then you would fail (maybe you should up your charisma)
You’ll notice that last option has been removed in the most recent versions – we found it to be really unfair. If you picked all the options and got the “best end” why would you need to level up your charisma and then do it all over again? So for a long time debates looked as follows:
You needed to select the right options and also do it within a certain period of time! With this we hoped people would still feel some tension to pick options and that unfairness would go away.
However over the last while we’ve been playing other “choice selection” games – like Ace Attorney and Disco Elysium. Some of the most interesting parts of the game – and parts we really enjoyed – were when you needed to select an option but you had the opportunity to stop and ruminate over which one was the one you thought would work best. Talking it out, thinking over what each choice meant, etc. – we found that being able to do this meant engaging with the work more deeply.
The intent of the game is to engage with the world, gather facts and information about it, then apply it in debates. The debates and your performance in them depend on your understanding of the world – and being rushed to make selections can take that away.
Plus it can still feel unfair to miss the window to click a button because you were too busy thinking and then you have to do the whole thing all over again!
So with that said – we removed the timer! We had originally been thinking about removing it as an accessibility feature, but decided that removing it was better for the whole design. (Hopefully)
As we’re sliding into the end of the year we’re going to be looking at two main areas: Debates and redoing older Overworld maps. The debate work is already known, so we’ll expand on what we mean by “redo”.
Quite a while ago after we finished the second province (Lakure) we noticed that the regions looked too similar. It didn’t feel like you were progressing through the world and it didn’t feel like each region had it’s own uniqueness. This is why we took a pause to develop more assets before moving onto Vescha and Olvia (to the bottom and right of the river/lakes).
Originally the plan was to redo the vegetation in these areas closer to release (similar to the water) but we’ll be moving this ahead in schedule for a few reasons. First is that we have some time now and it works well as a break from Debate work when we need it. The second is that once we add animals, treasures, and enemies it will be very difficult to redo the areas.
Therefore we’ll be starting to work on redoing the Lakure region – only available to beta testers right now. It’s the area between Wiska Forest and Vescha. Our focus is on giving it it’s own identity and once done we’ll be adding passive animals. We expect it to be completed for the March 2026 update.
We will then focus on Wynoa – the region available in the demo. Since there’s treasures, enemies and more this will be more time consuming, but will be finished before end of Summer 2026. Once done we’ll push an update to both the demo and beta branches so people can explore the “new” areas.
We’re giving ourselves a lot of extra time on these because it’s more of a background activity while we work on non-visual changes and will require some retesting of the game and the beta before we push it out to the world.
So look forward to some more visual upgrades in the next update as well as more information on the debate changes!
See you in the new year!