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Thank you, we're happy to hear that!

We completely understand the desire to have unique interactions between the children and spouses, but as you can probably imagine, that's 4x37 custom scenarios, as a minimum (not 4x38, since you can't adopt if you marry a specific spouse), which isn't really sustainable. As you suspect, any type of gameplay/story based DLC would require a lot of everything, and we don't really have a lot of anything these days (as we enter year 5 of development, we're reaching a burnt-out-status on development and are getting quite ready to move on from making new content). Therefore, there will unfortunately not be any such DLC. The only content we will be adding are some remaining main events that will be released for free in 1 or 2 more updates. We'll think about adding some more hairstyles, outfits and hair accessories, but since they also take time and effort (especially outfits), we can make no guarantees. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Thank you, that's luckily enough info for that specific event! We'll make sure to fix it in the next update!

There is unfortunately no demo available any longer since:

1. It was not a good representation of the game, mostly speaking from a performance and quality-of-life perspective

2. Players would still have to replay/skip through the relatively long intro (1,5-2 hours) and go through the same first few hangouts again in the full game. Even though the intro can be skipped completely in the full game after having completed it once, saves do not transfer from the demo to the full game, which means that players would have to go through it twice

We completely understand that some players want to try it out before purchasing, but in order to make a demo that represents the game accurately, we would have to make one from scratch at this point. That is a commitment of time, work and effort that we simply can't justify (making a demo is a lot more demanding than one might think). Sorry about that!

Unfortunately, there won't be anything like that. There isn't even a debug/cheat menu for us developers, and adding it this late into development would probably cause more issues and bugs than it is worth. Sorry for the inconvenience!

There's no way to see the reputation for the classes as a whole - when the classes are referred to, it's simply a reference to all of the townsfolk in that specific class. For example, when the nobility is mentioned/affected by something, it always refers to Dawn and all other characters in that social class. Since all of them can have very different reputation, there's no way to display any overarching class reputation. So in order to know if taxing a specific social class will be bad for the reputation with that class, you will have to check the reputation of each townsperson in that class. Hope that helps!

Thank you so much for buying the game! As for the question: There's no way for the player to be married to multiple people due to the game's lore, but it's technically possible to be in a poly relationship if you marry president Camilla, since she already has other spouses. All other characters are monogamous and it is only possible to marry one character per playthrough. That being said, it is of course possible to romance multiple characters at the same time as long as you don't marry anyone (since marriage stops all romance with other characters), and the characters you romance won't interact with each other in any way.

Thank you for the questions, it's fun to see so much curiosity! As for the answers:

Development questions

1. There won't be any more content that makes the game longer in terms of in-game time. It will always end after five years

2. We won't add any characters or buildings, but we will add a few main events. There were some we didn't have time to add before release (like ensuring that all townsfolk have 2 meetup events, and having some small events where foreign leaders you are allied with request something of you). We also have ideas for a few "regular" short and long main events that we plan to add sometime in the future. Although, none of this content will be playable this year

3. We already have a pretty good idea of the next game we're going to make. It won't have any sort of connection to Mistwinter Bay, will be a completely different genre (although still pretty centered around characters, most likely) and much smaller, which is good for both our mental health and the development time. That's all we can say about it at the moment. We might return to the world of Sefra in another game at some point, though - we deliberately designed the game world so that it would be easy to build on the lore and have other games take place in it!

4. Besides the short events where you buy a horse or find a kitten, we don't think we'll add any sort of animal for the sovereign. At the very least, it won't be anything that requires any sort of new mechanic

5. No, it unfortunately won't get animations. There are simply too many characters and animating them would require too many graphical assets (we have already been struggling with optimizing the game with the existing, static images) or complex code that is simply beyond our coding level. None of us are that experienced with 2D animations either, so even if we tried to animate it, it probably wouldn't do much good for the general gameplay experience

6. As you suspect, a spinoff with any of the adoptable children won't happen. We don't know what a game like that would be about. Also, since there are four children, all of them would need the same amount of attention, which would mean a lot of work even for a small project

Personal questions

1. Since we are two people working on the game, we have different opinions of who we like and why. For one of us, the favorite townspeople are Gale, Dough and Amelie (probably because they were written by her). For the other, there are a few for very different reasons, like Erewen, Zane, Ulvar, Te'Rohga, Kieran. But none of us really have a singular favorite and we like all of them for one reason or another

2. One of us isn't fond of Celia because of her personality, and the other doesn't like Amelie and Eugene (because they were annoying to implement haha). Of course, as developers, we don't really dislike any character, townsperson or not, since we added them to the game for specific reasons. Even if they aren't characters we would have pursued romantically etc if we were players, we made them since we knew someone would want to do that, and that's a big point of the game - to have a bunch of different characters so that there's hopefully at least one who every player finds interesting!

3. For one of us, it's Orreg. For the other, it's Llemyon, but Gaird has a really interesting story lore wise

4. If we have to choose, one of us picks Camilla and the other Eria (for the same reasons you mentioned)

We hope those are satisfying answers that satiated your curiosity! Thanks for enjoying the game!

As much as we would want it, it's simply impossible for many reasons, like the massive scope of the game (it would simply be too expensive to hire voice actors considering how many lines of dialogue there are). But it's primarily the game's logic that makes it impossible, due to things like the player character talking a lot (which would require at least 2 voice actors), the player being able to choose a completely custom name that's said by several characters, the fact that the characters that show up in different situations aren't predetermined (they can be randomized, chosen by the player, etc), just to mention some hurdles. The only way to get voice acting to work in this game would be to use AI voices, which we do not support.

Thank you so much, we really appreciate the support!

Thank you! We're happy to hear that things got sorted! Best of luck with the rest of your playthrough

Sorry about the issue, that's very unfortunate! Based on the error code, it does indeed seem like something went wrong when your computer lost power, probably related to some files not being saved properly. As such, it most likely isn't something we can fix in an update. That being said, we suggest that you try the following:

1. Locate your savefiles in your computer's folders by going to: user->AppData->Local->Mistwinter Bay. You need to allow to show hidden files, or the AppData-folder and all folders in it won't show up

2. Delete the "settings.save" file. Start the game and see if it starts like it should. Deleting this file means that you have to re-apply any custom settings

3. If the above step didn't work, repeat the process but delete the "menus.save" file instead. Deleting this file means that menus, such as the Townsfolk Roster etc, opens in a default setting and not where you last left off

4. If the above steps didn't work, repeat the process but delete the "savemanager.save" file instead. It's worth noting that when this file is deleted, your savefiles will not be properly displayed when saving/loading in the game, but they are still there and can be loaded and saved to as before. Deleting this file will also delete some achievement progress statistics, achievement coins and some other things. As such, for the best experience, it might be worth it to delete the "achievements.save" file as well so that all achievements can be obtained again

5. If none of the above steps worked, deleting all remaining files should hopefully solve the issue. Unfortunately, this means losing all current saved games

We hope one of the steps helps!

Unfortunately, the demo is no longer available to download anywhere since:

1: It was a bad representation of the game, since the loading times were abysmal, making it close to unplayable on some computers, and there was a bad visual error visible on some computers as well. There were a lot of quality-of-life things missing as well, making the entire experience much less enjoyable than needed

2: Those who play the demo will still be forced to replay some of the same things in the full game, particularly the pretty lengthy intro, since savefiles cannot be transferred from the demo to the full game

Sorry for the inconvenience!

Thank you, we're very excited as well! :D

Hello, we're glad to hear you like the game and sorry about the bugs! You can report the bugs by:

Sending a message in the bug report channel on Discord

Making a topic about it in the Steam forums for the game (we're not entirely sure if you can make posts without having a Steam copy of the game, though)

Sending an email to our support email: swordlake.ent.help@gmail.com

Edit: Actually forgot that there are specific bug report topics here on Itch as well!

We will try to sort the bugs out as soon as possible!

You're welcome! Thanks for playing the game!

Yes, we did realize that it was basically impossible to have a playthrough without either or both the stone quarry and lumber camp, which isn't ideal (and it's a shame, since the other characters can have some pretty interesting interactions under specific circumstances). We hope this improvement will provide more freedom to players!

Thank you for the support, we really appreciate it! We're glad to hear you appreciate the addition of the easy mode, hope you have fun with the game!

Save files are stored on your own computer. They can be found in your user->AppData->Local->Mistwinter_Bay (show hidden files must be turned on, or the app data folder won't show up). Hope that helps!

Then we won't say anything (other than thank you for appreciating the work behind adding multiple body types!)

Not as in your player character fighting anyone, no.  There can be duels between other characters, but they are portrayed with a still image, no animations (and blood splatter effects can be turned off)

Great question! No, there is no adult content and there will be no such content updates or DLCs

Today, November 15 2024, we at Swordlake Entertainment released the full 1.0 version of our massive visual novel RPG, Mistwinter Bay! The game launches with a 15% discount lasting 1 week. You can download the game from this page: https://swordlake-entertainment.itch.io/mistwinter-bay

About

There are 32 unique characters who can live in the town and it is up to you to decide who gets that opportunity. Subjects, as well as six foreign rulers, may like or dislike you based on your actions. Positive reputation with a character opens up the opportunity to deepen the relationship with them. Negative reputation may lead to an unfixable relationship or even someone’s death.

There are many choices leading to unique outcomes in dialogues, and many of them affect the town’s resources or characters’ perception of you. With several unique endings to each event, randomization of which events will occur and more events than can be cleared during a single playthrough, every playthrough is unique.

Expand the town with buildings of your choosing. Since most buildings are linked to a townsperson, you also decide who gets to live in the town. Sometimes, you may have to choose between two possible buildings to place on a lot, which means that it is impossible to place all buildings in a single playthrough. The characters you have determines how you can handle events, since it is possible to send subjects to complete certain tasks. All characters are unique with their own personality, stories and set of skills, which means they can succeed or fail at tasks. If they fail, there is a risk that they will perish in some scenarios. Even the sovereign is not immune to death, and depending on your game settings, anyone’s death can be permanent.

Find out more about Mistwinter Bay on the game’s page:

https://swordlake-entertainment.itch.io/mistwinter-bay

Indeed it is! We're also excited (and pretty nervous, haha!)

That's some dedication! You have our permission to obsess over the full game when it's out, haha!

And we can't wait to see how everyone's playthroughs turn out!

Thank you so much, we're very happy to hear how excited you are! We feel honored to have been able to break your no-unfinished-games rule, haha! If you liked the demo, we can promise that you'll like the full game even more

We will take the time required to get all the things we need into the game, and if we don't make it by November, then so be it. But so far, it's looking good for the deadline ;)

Thank you, we're very happy to hear that!

Thank you, it's really encouraging to hear that!

Thank you, we're happy to hear that you enjoy the demo! You'll probably like the full game even more once it's released ;)

There's nothing wrong with your installation - the demo does indeed only last for 1 in-game year. The full game will contain all 5 years, though.

We're aiming for a release of the full game sometime this Fall (2024)!

You will be able to choose if you want to adopt or not!

Your spouse will present you with those options a while into being married. You'll only be presented with those options once. Your spouse  will have an opinion on it.

If you agree with them (adopt when they want to adopt, or don't adopt if they don't want to), your unique marriage relationship with them will increase a bit.

If you go against them (adopt when they don't want to adopt, or don't adopt if they want to adopt), it will affect your marriage relationship negatively.

There are also quite a few spouses who don't care what you pick, which means that you can choose whatever you want without risking them getting upset with you - or like you more, for that matter.

No matter if you go with or against your spouse, it will only have a small impact on the marriage relationship, though (for most characters, at least. It will be obvious if the impact is bigger, because your spouse  would get very upset if you go against them). It's generally pretty easy to make up for a potential negative impact caused by your choices with adoption. This is because you can increase the marriage relationship in the spouse's three unique married life events. But it's also possible to decrease the marriage relationship in those events, so it's important to listen to your spouse and understand them, if you want to maintain a good relationship even when married.

TLDR; It's ultimately up to you to decide to adopt or not. But since every character is unique, your spouse will have an opinion on the topic and it might affect your relationship with them in some way.

I hope that clears things up a bit!

I agree that it would be nice to have your own children! I myself would probably have preferred that option if I were presented with it as a player. In the perfect scenario, we would have that as an option, but there are several reasons why we opted for adoption only:

1: Having your own children would mean more graphical assets, which means more work for an already very large game. It would also require checking your player character's appearance against the appearance of your spouse and so on, which would make things quite complicated to implement

2: Having your own children would mean that the player would need to have an assigned gender, which we want to avoid. Alternatively, it would mean there would have to be some sort of "magical" childbirth (a stork or something), so that the gender of your character and your partner don't matter, which I personally am not a fan of

3: There are some characters that you wouldn't be able to have your own biological children with, which means that adoption would still be necessary in order to have a child with all possible spouses (if we assume there is no "magical" childbirth, of course)

4: By only having adoption, we can ensure that the children you can have are actual characters. Otherwise, they would likely be assigned one or two character traits, making them feel like cardboard cutouts and thus be almost impossible to give unique and interesting stories - especially endings. It would also make them a lot more complicated to implement. With adoption, we can also make the children a bit older, so that they can actually display their personalities, and not be static babies in a crib. The biggest reason why we went for adoption is to avoid the feeling of the children being props, which they often feel like in other games (like Stardew Valley, Story of Seasons/Harvest Moon, and probably Fable, too. I haven't played any Fable-games, so I can't say for sure)

I hope that answers your question without making you too disappointed! Hopefully, our decisions make sense when the game is fully released and you'll get access to the adoption-feature and see what colorful little characters the children are ;)

<3

<3

Hello! Currently, we have no plans to add such a tier or release an early build in any other way.

Scratch what we wrote earlier. We've posted a patch that may have improved the pixelation, but we are unsure. You would have to download the patch to see if anything has improved. If not, we will likely have to save that improvement for the full release of the game.

Hello, thank you for your input! As of now, we are unsure how to add different resolutions due to the way the game engine (GameMaker Studio 2) works, and it is unlikely that we will dabble in this with the demo. However, we will look into it for the full release of the game. Also, the native resolution of the game is 4K.

Mistwinter Bay

Hello everyone! We have very exciting news: the free demo is out now! You can find it here: https://swordlake-entertainment.itch.io/mistwinter-bay

We would like to thank everyone who has been keeping track of the development so far. We don't think we'll be posting any more devlogs on here, but you can always keep track of the development by supporting us on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/swordlakeentertainment) and watching our video devlogs on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCICWzkpUmB-Xv_52sAh_tUw/featured). You can also find us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/swordlake_ent) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/swordlake_entertainment/).

Thank you so much for the support so far! We hope you enjoy trying out the game for yourselves!

Today, September 9 2022, we at Swordlake Entertainment released the free demo for our visual novel RPG, Mistwinter Bay! You can download the game from this page: https://swordlake-entertainment.itch.io/mistwinter-bay

About the game

More information can be found on the game’s page here on Itch: https://swordlake-entertainment.itch.io/mistwinter-bay

Images

You can download the game from this page: https://swordlake-entertainment.itch.io/mistwinter-bay

The demo release is drawing very close now - it's only two days left! Today, we posted the demo trailer on YouTube (and yesterday, we posted another devlog, talking about the creation of the town view. You can find it on our YouTube channel). Here's the trailer:

Have you made something related to Mistwinter Bay? It can be art, a video, a Twitch let's play - anything that you have created that is based on Mistwinter Bay. If you have something like that, feel free to post it here (or link it). We would love to see what you've created!