Maids & Masters (& Progress on v0.13)

It's been a while since I gave a proper progress report on v0.13's development, and I have some good news and some bad news. I'm a fan of ending on good notes, so let's get the bad news out of the way.

First, we're something like 8 weeks into development for v0.13 and it isn't done. That's not super great. There are two main reasons for it. The first is that I spent about three weeks working with Berkili on reworking Companion of Darkness' first chapter (he said it's fair to blame him for that, so if you're upset v0.13 isn't here yet, go leave a 5 star review on his itch page and tell him how great the new Chapter 1 is, he'll hate that). If you aren't tired of hearing it already (or haven't heard it at all) - I do this full time. Working with Berkili took a lot of financial pressure off of my October, and he was genuinely great to work with, so I don't regret taking the job at all. If you genuinely dislike that I have to take on other work to keep my bills paid, you can support me on Patreon or leave a tip or buy early access on itch. Early access is even on a discount for the Halloween sale until November 2nd. If I make enough money on my own work, I don't need to worry about taking on new work.

 

The second reason v0.13 is taking longer is that I got sick, so once work on Companion of Darkness was complete, I couldn't focus on work to save my life. I did get a few things done, but it's an amount of work that should've taken me two or three days, not an entire week. I am thankfully at this point over the cold and am able to concentrate again, so work is progressing much more smoothly.

As a lesser issue, but one with a silver lining, I wasn't very happy with how the "interrogation" portion of the segment played out, or with how the following segment, where you'd learn about the events of the succession crisis that lead to current events, followed it. So I threw away roughly a week's worth of work. The silver lining is that I'm much happier with the new version. The old version included the succession crisis in a very forced way, isolating it from the story so that you could solve the murder of the previous Master Bancroft. The way it ended up, it didn't feel connected to the mystery at hand or provide any clues to help solve it. In the new version, the succession crisis serves more as character motivation, and you learn about the events as a part of questioning the suspects. I do have some concerns about how difficult it is to pick up on the clues for who the murderer is now, since some of those were replaced with this new information about the past, but things should come together pretty quickly in the second half of the segment. Hopefully I get some feedback about this when I get a test build put together.

Speaking of a test build, onto the good news. Having to reconstruct the segment the way I have means I know exactly where I want which things to happen, which has streamlined development significantly. I'm very happy with the way the investigation and questioning portions play out, and I think there's a good balance of the game mechanically remembering what you've found and you (the player) needing to remember the details in order to correctly solve the mystery. I'm not entirely happy with the way I have the game remembering clues, because it's difficult to call out specific clues, but I think I've found a way to work around that as well. I just need to build the segment out far enough to test the ending.

 

I've also got most of the rendering done for the new scenes, which I'm hoping to have implemented later today. Once I hit that point, there's still one more investigation segment and the final reveal left to put together. As of right now, I'd put the segment at roughly 65% done. The reveal at the end will have a few versions, based on whether you used the "Phoebe easy mode" and whether you collected basically all of the clues or not, then the story for v0.13 is done. That means that unless I hit a pretty serious roadblock, I should be able to get a test build finished and out to VIPs on Patreon for this Friday. It may not include the final reveal where you can make your attempt at solving the mystery, but it should include everything else with (hopefully) full functionality.

Of course, that does leave all of the smaller things that I should really do for the release but will likely end up skipping so I can move on to working on v0.14. Things like updating Emily's shop with the next set of Contracts you should have access to, making sure the v0.12 trophy is obtainable in the way I intended it to be if you don't obtain it during the segment, making sure the trophy for v0.13 is obtainable after completing the segment, and building out the second cult segment complete with its own side content to find. The cult segment in particular is something I want to at least have the story for, but with how delayed development has been on v0.13, I really want to get the story completed so you can play through the segment yourself. We'll see how it all goes - now that I'm finally over this cold, getting work done is much easier than it has been for the rest of October.

Shilling For My Fellow Devs - Companion of Darkness

 

3 years after a tragic incident, you return to your home town. Just before you reach your destination, you find two supernatural forces pitting their strength against each other in a fight to the death.

It seems that you have been discovered and effortlessly overpowered, but instead of dying you wake up in your bed as if nothing had happened.

Was it all a dream? 

Everyday life goes on whether you like it or not. Not only do you feel like a stranger in your home town, more and more unexplainable events are happening around you.

When the ones you care for are threatened, you must decide which boundaries you are willing to cross. And if it is worth giving up your humanity.

 

Over the last few weeks, I had the absolute pleasure of working with Berkili, the developer of Companion of Darkness, to rework the first chapter of his adult visual novel. I've become a big fan of the story he's writing and have helped him in the past with proof-reading. For the re-work, I handled the renders - every scene was completely reworked. New camera angles, new positions and new maps. His Chapter 1 originally had about 1100 renders, and now it has over 1300. I've even made a handful of promotional renders for him, including the render of Noel above and the Halloween render you can find completely free over on my Patreon.

Companion of Darkness is currently 5 chapters long, with each chapter being an hour or two of content (depending on your reading speed). In addition to the all-new Chapter 1, Chapter 6 will be out to Berkili's Patrons soon. If you want to play the new Chapter 1 and enjoy all the new renders I made for him, you can find it on his itch page. If you want to support him and get Chapter 6 as soon as it releases, you can do that on his Patreon page.

Maids & Masters (& 2023 Holidays)

If you've been following my work for a while, you're probably aware that I like to do seasonally flavored updates. Things like Halloween, Christmas, and April Fool's Day. You may also have noticed that it's October, and my next release (which I'm hoping to have done around Halloween, but more on that in the coming weeks) isn't exactly the same Haunt updates that I've had in the past. 

While I'd like to keep up tradition and make more holiday releases for this year, it unfortunately just isn't going to work out. v0.13 already has its content set, and while I could see an argument being made, it isn't exactly a Halloween update. I could maybe do something for Christmas, but with the amount of time the remaster took combined with the update schedule I have in mind for Act 2, that just isn't going to work either. It's just as well, I think, since as is, the in-game years have been suspiciously short if you compare how long it typically takes for one of the children to be born, and the events of Act 2 are supposed to happen over a comparatively short time span.

I can't say for sure that even April Fool's Day next year will go completely unaffected by this. While I'd like to have another project ready (and I do have a couple ideas for it) creating an entirely new project - even a dumb one that's only meant to last for 15-20 minutes - takes a lot of time. The best I can do is hope I'll be on track with my long term projections for Act 2, and I'll be able to use the 2024 holiday season as part of Act 3 to create a bit of down time between the first major plot point and the end of the game. Maybe I'll get ahead on work and have the time for an April Fool's release, but only time will tell.

That's not to say I won't be doing anything for the holidays this year, though. To make up for it, I'll be making more promotional renders than usual, starting with this Friday's Patreon post being a collection of renders from more than a dozen devs made available for all to enjoy to celebrate the spooky season. The following Friday will be a full set of my own Halloween-flavored renders only available to Patrons. Plans aren't set in stone for future holidays, but I hope I'll see you over on Patreon to celebrate the season through the new year.

Maids & Masters (& v0.13 & Magach)

Right up front, I want to say I've taken on a bit more outside work for a dev friend who wants to rework his renders for the first chapter of his story. I'm about halfway through, and while I don't expect it to impact the dev cycle of v0.13 too much, it does mean I won't have a lot to share while I focus on getting that done so I can return to MnM full time. Maybe you'll hear more about that once my work is closer to being implemented in a release, maybe you won't. Only time will tell.

For now, I want to talk a little more about Magach. Like I mentioned a few posts ago, Magach is rather large, but only the homes relevant to the story are going to be accessible. Lore-wise, this is because a lot of death and violence happened in the village recently. Before the new Master stepped into his position, Magach was in chaos. The previous Master had just been killed, some Servants were trying to restore peace through violence, others fought against them in an attempt to gain their freedom, some Folk fled, and a handful of the dead Master's children were smart enough to just lock their doors and wait for the dust to settle. Fast forward a few years, and while there's a new Master, there's also been a new murder - this time one of the scions that thought they were safe. And if they aren't safe, who is? Better to just keep those doors locked and keep to yourself, even if someone comes knocking. Especially if someone comes knocking.

Mechanically, I just didn't want to risk drowning you in information. While red herrings and other means of misleading the reader are common in mysteries, having over 30 maps be interesting enough to explore while also not being relevant to the mystery you're trying to solve is - to put it bluntly - a bad idea. I've seen enough complaints about "empty maps," I really didn't want that frustration to bleed into what effectively boils down into a giant puzzle.

That does leave me with another issue, though. A new village would normally mean new Folk girls, which often means a new potential mother or other event(s) to find. With all these locked doors, I can't really do that. Except yes I can. I have something planned that doesn't quite fit the previous villages, but I'm going to save that for another week, once I've had a bit more time to prepare a reveal for Patreon.

Maids & Masters (& v0.13 & Investigation Mechanics)

Now that I think I'm happy with where the investigation into the cult is and the new mechanic is built for that (because I can't stop myself from experimenting with new mechanics in this game), it seems appropriate that these "investigation mechanics" also get used for v0.13's murder mystery. So now on top of using the new mechanic in more places, I'm trying to use the new mechanic in more ways, including across multiple maps (which presents its own challenges).

I haven't tested it yet, but the introduction is complete, along with the first leg of the investigation. So far I'm happy with how everything is turning out. It felt good to write, and I feel like I'm seeding enough questions and additional nuance and other complications. Plus, as long as the mechanics work the way they're supposed to, keeping track of the vital information you find should be easy for people who (for some reason) don't want to do any reading and just get the footnotes.

 

Though I do want to make a differentiation there. The "vital information" does not fully cover all of the important information. I'm not sure how intertwined they'll end up by the time I'm done writing everything, but there is a story here beyond the murder mystery itself. If you stay on the rails and only do the bare minimum, you'll be able to solve the mystery just fine; but you won't get the whole story. There's still the death of the previous Master Bancroft that - while it isn't vital - does still play a role in all of these events. On top of that, there's everything that happened between that death and the new Master Bancroft succeeding the Estate, which I've already mentioned several times in the first step of the quest. These stories won't tell themselves - you'll need to go out of your way to ask the right questions of the right people at the right time.

I think I've also got the "hey Phoebe, do it for me" mechanic working in a way I'm happy with as well. It'll still be a struggle to figure out exactly how to not break progression with it, but the mechanic does what it's supposed to do, and doesn't do anything unless you go out of your way to tell it to do something, which were the main goals. It should also make the narrative of the mystery itself nice and concise for anyone who can't keep track of all the details in something like this.

Now I just have to introduce the rest of the cast, hide the murder weapon in a place where it can be later found, throw a couple wrenches in there to keep things interesting, and figure out how to write a satisfying reveal despite giving you (the player) the ability to select incorrect options the whole way through. That last one will be the real trick, because I think rather than using game mechanics to force you to only have "correct" choices, I'm just going to leave wrong choices everywhere, and you'll need to remember your discoveries in order to properly nail the killer's reveal at the end.