November Progress Report - Release Date? Early Access?

Hello there! It's been...wow since July?  I haven't posted a progress update in all that time? Shame on me haha.

To be fair, I've been a bit busy with various builds and releases compared to earlier in the year where I was just focusing on the major developments of the game without providing any playable builds.  But since it's been quite some time, I figure we might as well breakdown the current state of things.

This devlog will be broken up into various chunks.  Feel free to use the various labels to jump around to whatever points interest you most. We'll be looking over the current state of things, what I'm working on right now plus my plans for the rest of the year, and then ending on discussing the release date and a newly planned early access model.

Current Status:

If you HAVEN'T played the updated demo, or watched the trailer (which you REALLY should, I worked so hard on that and you can hear an original song that's super incredible!), this section will go over what has been refined between builds.

The biggest things to discuss in this section are the major changes to the games UI elements. Most notably is the replacement of the various Status bars that were displayed on the screen.  The old indicators did not update live, instead only changing at certain thresholds, and more standard things like Health, Mana, Stamina, and Armor were all absent.  The new UI accounts for all of these factors and will even display Red's states if any are applied. These bars are all updated live, with different levels for every possibility. The armor gauge will change to reflect whatever outfit Red currently has on, making it much easier to know what your armor status is between outfits. You can also hover over the various gauges to see tooltips and additional information.

Now this isn't playable currently for you guys, but I think this is a good screen shot to further mention some updates to the UI and other factors. So, the obvious is that a new location has been created, The Dead Carnival.  This section includes a bunch of activities that you can do, playing various carnival games to collected Tickets which you can exchange for prizes. There are tons of new enemies to face here, but what I really want to talk about is how any states currently applied to Red will be displayed next to your Stamina/Mana bar.  You can hover over the displayed icon to see exactly what it is, and in the full game, each state will clearly state what they do. Little animations can also play over Red's face, though I may disable this in the future.  There's also, of course, more weather effects that have been added to the game. Rain in particular will be a theme of this middle section of the game

The Battle UI has seen similar updates.  In addition to the bars mentioned above, an EX meter is displayed during battles.  Now you can clearly see what builds your Evocation and how close you are to having it accessible.  The skill selection menu has also been redone entirely.

When selecting your actions you can see MUCH more information, including what element your attack is, how many targets it will hit, and other such factors.  This is helpful to go in tandem with the revamped magic system.  Skills have been renamed, and it may not always be clear what spell is what element, so factors like this should be a big improvement for you.

What's going on behind the scenes?

The Dead Carnival has been the major focus for me this month. As I mentioned above, this has resulted in a lot of minigames. Enemy sprites, two new backgrounds for use in battle, as well as a number of CG's related to this sections boss.

I started work on one of the games two ultra secret boss fights. While Alice got her proper debut earlier this year with the jam version of Alice In! she'll get a proper voice debut in Project Red.

Work on two songs has been completed; I've been slowly replacing all of the default sound effects in the game.  A lot of minor things that some players likely won't even notice.  And I guess with that, there's nothing more to yap about when it comes to housekeeping.  So, what say you we jump to the topics that likely interest you the most?

Will the full game release this year?

This is the big question. Mostly because I had stated this was my goal for a long time now. However, as often happens, making a plan leads to things going wrong. In all fairness, there was no real way I could predict a massive and sudden push back against games containing adult themes. Nor could I predict falling into a bit of a depressive slump after having my game deindexed so close to the finish line, with no guarantee that Itch or Steam would even continue to sell such games.

On top of this was the Jamsepticeye game jam that I used as a way to kind of rebuild myself, and just make something cool without worrying about anything. In the end I lost a few months to burn out from both things. And despite my best efforts, I do not believe the game could release, in a form that I would be happy with, before 2026.

In terms of what is left to develop, the game is only missing a single dungeon map, and the art for its main endings. And while I very well could rush through these and get them out before years end, I would not be satisfied with the quality, and it would come at the cost of cutting other things that I simply refuse to cut.

The first ever trailer for the game that I posted, was revealing that Red would have voice acting. At this stage the game still used edited default sprites, and largely used default tiles and other assets. I still remember watching that trailer after I published it and how immediately I was overcome with a feeling of shame. I wanted to delete it right away. But I didn't. I wanted it to stay up as a reminder to myself, that what I had made was not good enough for the talents of Hikari Kami's music or Sultry Lamp's vocal performance. And I wanted it to sit as a testament to how far the game will have come. That week I began the massive task of throwing out every single art asset and essentially rebuilding the entire game from scratch. That trailer was posted one year ago.

So within largely one year, I did rebuild the entire game. Not only that, I expanded it. And I am incredibly happy with the progress I have made. But, one thing I knew from that trailer, was that I would NEVER put out something that I was deeply unsatisfied with again.

A game can be delayed an indefinite number of times. And while it sucks, and it's annoying, if the final product is still good, it will have been worth it. But, a game can only ever release once. And if that release is poor, buggy, or feels incomplete, that game can die right there. While there are examples of games launching in a poor state and going on to be rather beloved, this is not the norm. And even less so for a small indie game that is already dealing with issues of visibility on store fronts due to its content.

That's without even mentioning how stupid a holiday release would likely be for me. December and January in particular are tough times to ask people to spend money on a random game.

So yes, I will be delaying the game, for all of the above reasons. I want the game to be as good as it can be. And I want as many people as possible to enjoy the hard work that everyone on the music, and voice acting side has poured into this. I do not want this game to come out, and bury all of that, because I stubbornly stuck to a stupid date that had no actual meaning.

What happens next?

So, if not December, what is the new plan? Great question! There is a date that stands out to me. February 14th. This was the day that I posted the first ever public build of Project Red. You can't even find that page any longer after I did my relaunch. However as a date, it does have some meaning. I'm not going to say this is a for sure thing just yet though.

What I will say is that December is going to mark some big changes around the Patreon. I have been very careful to control what sections of the game you have been able to play. And in doing so I have done a very good job at hiding just how big this game actually is. However, this is beginning to create a problem for me, as I do not have any dedicated play testers for the sections that are not publicly available. And while I do a good job play testing myself, this is becoming harder and harder to do.

So, starting in December, to make up for the lack of the full release, I will be switching to a different model. In December, I will be releasing a patreon exclusive build of the game. This build will be save compatible with the existing demo, meaning you shouldn't have to start over. And this build would allow you to play past the demo's current end point.

This "Early Access" build would let you cross the bridge into Chapter 5, meet Cheshire and see her updated shop, find and explore the Dead Carnival, have a reunion with Hati, and of course reach the end of the chapter where you would meet Scarecrow and explore Broomhill Farm.

From there, as I deem the next chapters to be completed, I will update the release to include them. There would be no specific schedule for these as I will simply release them once I feel that they are ready.

What I would ask in return, is that those of you that play, find and report any issues or bugs that you discover. Saving me the time that I would normally spend combing through each chapter.

I will release more details on this once we are in December, but do feel free to leave any questions bellow and I will do my best to answer them.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. Happy holidays.