So, in the last devlog, I said I was developing The Last Map demo to release it in June. Since then, a lot has happened. Do you remember how I was going crazy over procedural generation? All that talk about puzzle loops, the difficulty of maintaining cooperation, and making puzzles actually work? Yeah… I made a decision.
After one of my playtests to validate the demo with Thales — who’s responsible for the game’s main theme — I was venting about how awful procedural systems can be: complex and frustrating. That’s when he encouraged me to remove it from the game.
This idea had been in my head for a long time, but since I had been building it for over a year, I refused to let it go. I had already invested too much time and patience into it. But during that same call, I decided to completely remove it and focus on the narrative.
At first, I wasn’t happy about it. But I quickly changed my mind when I saw the results. The feedback became infinitely better, the new level design worked really well, every puzzle I planned worked, and player reactions were exactly what I expected.
After that, the changes I made were smaller but still important — things like adding a rain effect to the house environment, combined with a cloudy day, buildings with lights turning on and off, lighting adjustments; the ability to skip cutscenes; fixing inconsistent mechanics; making sure players understand the clock puzzle; adding SFX and several improvements like that.
I also spent a lot of time finding volunteer testers to validate the puzzle flow (now handcrafted), improving the save system, adding server selection, improving the game feel/juice, adding more cutscenes, and...
You’ll see all the changes when you get to play the demo. And no, it won’t take long before it’s available. Right now, I’m working on the demo trailer, which should be out soon on my YouTube: @pinster43
See you at Next Fest — play the demo, enjoy it, record videos, share it with your friends, and wishlist the game!