Alright Balin, I hear you say, what's so special about this build?
We’ve improved animations, we’ve improved scene transitions and music and just about everything, we’re snuck in a bunch of extra scenes and easter eggs! If you’ve been waiting for a definitive build of Familiar Travels to snag to experience the game as it’s intended to be, this is that build.
So, I’d like to summarize this build and the chapter two development with a less corporate, more personal letter:
This has been an incredible month since the launch of the game. It’s been a bit of a bumpy launch, I remember telling someone else on the team that if we could just iron out some bugs for a month I’d be happy - But the support all of you guys have given in the development of the game, from giving me feedback (BTW, all of the feedback on the Steam page that was feasible to be added has been added) to joining in and engaging with the community. It’s been seriously inspiring and has put a lot of fuel in the entire team’s tanks for chapter two.
Okay, let’s talk features.
A lot of this game’s mechanics were coded from the ground up, so perhaps a lot of features typical VNs would have innately we had to integrate in a way that wouldn’t break the game. In other words, with this patch we’ve added
- Auto Text Advance
- Fast Forward / Skip
- Backlog
These are awarded to the player as they’re leaving the tutorial/intro section of the game, so you’ll be all good with this one. I understand to a lot of people these are basic mechanics, apologies for not having them at launch, but we wanted to make sure they were fluid, non-laggy and precise.
Speaking of the intro section, we’ve re scripted a good section of the intro, polished it and added things that I feel improve the pacing a lot!
We have a route list on our discussion page, and there will be a small update coming after the sale to integrate Steam API (Screenshots, achievements, etc) and I’ll always be in there cleaning up the odd wrong letter or apostrophe ;)
The nice things you guys have said about the game means a lot to me, and I hope I can continue to do you proud as a developer, and I hope Halftone Studios can continue to be a crew you can get behind!
Don’t forget to join our discord server to participate in our community, and I hope all of you enjoy!