Game development Trembling Essence update:

Hello once again and welcome to my devlog! I am here with another update! This one is going to be fairly long but I'll try my best to condense everything. :]

If you would like to play the demo here's a link to it. :]

Things were progressing pretty smoothly until I ran into something pretty interesting! I'll try my best to explain it properly but depending on how close you are with Noah along with a few choices into one ultimate decision, it would have you going into three separate branches and situations which included one of the longest routes which depends on what you choose after that. When I went over everything, I came to realize this would be too overwhelming and long for the player with how much was going on and I want to spread it out more/condense certain things.

• To remedy this I decided to make certain choices/Noah's relationship with the player(Y/N) from the longest route go into one specific branch and the others lead elsewhere. Also to be fair, the scene you get with Noah's reaction from everything in this makes more sense now versus the other two I had since he didn't really acknowledge it like I wanted him to. I also added new varying choices/responses in there too so even if it leads to the same situation, you at least have something different happen when it proceeds into the next day. I actually had fun with this since I was able to do a few callbacks to other choices from before.
• There were two endings you could get and there was a certain way you had to do things to get them but I decided to turn one of them into a full ending instead to keep the situation unique!
• Lastly, I moved the second branch you could get from your choices elsewhere and adjusted a few things in there to make it fit where it is now.

I let my play testers try it out since this was a very drastic change especially for longest route and they said that it's easier to understand what's going on versus all the branching leading them everywhere. I am hoping this will make things easier/not too lengthy and coherent for the player! :,]

Lastly, I gave the entrance into the cabin a small quality of life adjustment. Since I've come a long way with how I write I decided to clean up some old dialog I had in the game back in early development! Anything that's happened before this part hasn't been messed with. :]

• There were some parts that had wonky wording/outdated so I cleaned it up and gave some parts of it a bit of clarity. There are some moments in the game that I want to express for the player when you're outside/within the cabin!
• There was a situation you could get with Noah where his dialog text would change color. This was removed since the text color blended into the background at some points and it didn't fit the situation as much as I thought it did months ago.

Here's everything that's been fixed along the way:

• Grammar mistakes
• Evening to night transition overlapping Noah's sprite
• SFX volume adjustment in certain areas
• Hue change remaining in a certain CG transitions

That's everything I have to share so far!

Thank you guys so much for all your continued encouragement and support! :,]