Yo just bought this on the steam sale, i really love it so far! im just curious what inspired you to make that cool little hideout town in the first part. I loved all the dialogue, the cook guy with the missing tail is so funny, but i was just blown away by how big it was for a "secret" area. How long did it take you to make and what inspired you to put so much thought and effort into something that was mostly hidden from players? Does it bother you at all that some people playing might miss parts of it that ur especially proud of?
funnily enough, the stepdown was actually the last piece of content i made before shipping the game. i really like towns in any game, and i love writing dialogue, and i had this whole dialogue system i'd barely made use of up to that point. i wanted to add a little more character to the world and give the game some more context to the setting. but i didn't want to mess with the game's "plot" or progression or anything. it took me a few weeks to a month of work, so nothing too crazy but it was definitely an undertaking. most of that time was spent making the geometry lol--i wrote all the townsfolk's dialogue in like a day or two.
personally, i'm never too worried about whether or not a player's gonna see everything. i sort of make my levels from a standpoint of, here's the critical path, and now that i've got that done, i can start adding branches to random cool stuff. and i just repeat that process over and over. as the most extreme example, i didn't even expect all my players to see the end of the game: partially because most people don't finish games, and partially because i made act 2 so hard to beat. i figure if people wanna poke around and figure things out and see all the content i made, they'll do it, and i don't need to guide those kinds of players. in general, i don't give much thought to the playstyle that finishes all the required content as quickly as possible, except maybe in a speedrunning capacity.
i'm super proud of how the stepdown turned out. i kinda wish i could make a whole game like that--interacting with townsfolk; hanging out; low stakes stuff. maybe someday.