What's new in the latest build?

For those of you who want more detail than a simple list can offer, this one's for you.

Project Red updated to Version 1.7 yesterday and today I'll be going over as much of the new stuff as I physically can.  As usual I'll try to tackle things in an order that lines up with how you'll experience things.  So starting off with...!

When booting up a new game, you will no longer have the option to skip to chapter 5.  Now, I imagine some people will dislike this change, but hear me out.  If I kept that feature, you would be skipped all the way to the Crow enemies, with no understanding of the new skill tree, how skills have been tweaked, and with no skill tree accessible nearby.  Meaning you'd likely die in your first encounter.  While I COULD give you a bunch of affinity and skills as well it kind of defeats the whole purpose of your choices defining what skills you have access to.  You'd also by default miss a lot of the new stuff.  So it just felt like a really bad idea to keep that option available.

So you boot up the game, get through your chat with the Witch, and what the hell the water is green now? This is a mana pond.  You can drink from them to refill MP.  Mana Ponds will also contain some unique fish like the Magifish. For now this is the only pond like this in the game but they will be added to more areas, especially dungeons that would otherwise require you to back track heavily to a store or a camp fire.

The next thing you might notice are these wriggly little guys.  Warm Worms are now creatures Red can find all over the place.  Simply walk up to one and interact to pick it up.  Now you won't have to constantly spend your Gold on fishing supplies, especially since these worms can get you Sardines which can also be used as bait.  Of course there are still bait varieties that you'll have to buy but it's a nice addition I think.

Step out into the woods and meet your first Cute Slime.  You all should have seen this event before and famously while in SFW mode these tarot cards would all still display with full nudity.  But now the SFW version of the game has censored all the Tarot Cards.  If I'm being honest I actually prefer these edits.  They give the cards a more cohesive look.  But the main purpose of this was to allow people to have an easier time making a lets play or other such video out of Project Red.  As it was it would require a tedious amount of editing or cutting around every Tarot Event making them nearly impossible to talk about.  But this will allow me to include them in future trailers for youtube as well without any extra hassle.  In the future I might make the toggle for card arts separate from the general NSFW mode toggle, since I assume some people will agree that these arts are better and hate that it's locked to SFW mode.  But for now that's just how it is.

Now you've made your choice and look at this!  Gone is the morality bar of old and in its place we have The Divine Scale.  The choices you make can impress one of three Goddesses, and the more favor you gain with them, the higher level skills you'll be able to unlock from their designated Skill Tree.  Not all choices gain favor however, so don't be alarmed if you make a choice and no Goddess cares.  You can't please them all.

From there you'll eventually reach the Rest Spot.  And my god the amount of times I've heard people talk about never realizing a skill tree even existed haha.  Well complain no more!  A new mandatory scene will automatically trigger where Red approaches the statue and the player is prompted to give a prayer, thus initiating your first visit to the skill tree.  Why wasn't this in the game sooner?  Well for one the skill tree was itself a complete place holder so it didn't make much sense to hype up an incomplete system or include any write ups or tutorials for it if it wasn't going to stick around.  Which leads to our next point!

The Skill Tree has FINALLY been updated.  Now it's not DONE.  There is an issue with navigating up and down that I was unable to decipher if it was a real problem or just my janky ass broken keyboard doing what it does best.  But it sounds like it is a coding issue so I'll have to fix that up.  It's still possible to navigate just, a little finicky so apologies about that.  There's also no proper tutorial for how this all works in game yet but I promise one will be included eventually.  Tutorials are just at the very bottom of my to do list as they require the elements they discuss to be as final as possible to be accurate.  But the basic gist is that each diamond represents a Tier.  Ad those Tiers unlock when you progress your affinity with the Goddess to whom you are praying to.  Do more things they like, get access to more skills.  BUT you also must buy 2 skills from each diamond before you can move to the next one.  The central skills are unique Core Skills and can only be unlocked by buying all surrounding skills on their diamond.

From here you can activate your first quick travel mirror and be surprised at the updated Mirror of Recollection.  A new layout, clear doors marking where you can and cannot go, some being locked with chains.  This should make it SO MUCH more clear where to go in this place.  I've also moved the relics to their own room to declutter this starting space.  The new walkways allow for more future mirrors than the original small space that was a hold over from the games alpha as well.

Now on the subject of Relics you can unlock the door housing them by simply talking to the Forgotten Maiden here for the first time.  Doing certain things or progressing the story will lead to pop ups like this occurring, letting you know there's a new room to check out here.  Sadly I didn't have time to get to the requested gallery feature.  But maybe next update that will finally get included.

Head into the Hall of Exchange to get some lewd skills and would you look at that?  There's no longer a single broken Goddess statue representing all the Goddess's.  Eros here has her own individual statue, and praying to it will take you to her unique skill tree.  It behaves just like the main one, but with a different flavor of course.

The Merchant Camp has had a number of tweaks and fixes.  The Carpenters dialogue has been updated to HOPEFULLY be more clear for those who struggle to find the logs.  Various campers had issues with their names not showing up or having non functional talk options.  The alchemist's shop was unaccessible until you got the Witch to make you medicine.  All of these things have been fixed.  Quest balloons have also been adjusted to be more accurate of when there's something NEW to do.

Fishing received a lot of criticism, and ya know what.  It deserved it.  That being said it wasn't exactly finished to begin with.  First of all, you can talk to the Fisherman at any time and change the playstyle now.  If you don't want to button mash, you can switch to a QTE variant.  But the real change is that not all fish are the same now.  The code has been updated and different fish will come with different challenges.  Common fish will be much easier to get than say, a Shark.  Where as they used to all use the exact same code.  On top of that the diversity and available pool of fish to be caught has been updated.  All in all it's much closer to being in its finalized form.  So I hope you haven't written it off entirely because of the rough initial launch of the feature!

As for a change that absolutely NO ONE asked for, I've included a sprite of Red stuck in the hole at the drunkards house.  This was just something I always WANTED but just never got around to.  And when I had some free time one day I finally went ahead and included it.  The scene itself is entirely the same otherwise. 

Defeat the Slime King and you'll unlock a new room in the Mirror of Recollection.  The Room of Trials is more or less end game content for this demo.   You don't NEED to play chapter 5 or 6 if you don't want to, as they are largely the same to the previous version.  Just with updated features and more voice acting.  But the Battle Trial includes new enemies and bosses, as well as unlockable party members (Such as Hati!)

Reaching milestones in your trial will give you various bonuses.  Unlockable Party members will become permanently available for all future runs in this save file.  You can also unlock one time use healing spots to restore your party.  You MUST complete the trial in one go however.  Exiting will reset your progress.  You can still save by using the games auto save feature if you need to take a break (just open up the menu and close it to trigger an auto save.). There is a weapon rewarded for clearing it, and you can playtest Hati and Scarecrow while you're here as well as fight the Crow King boss.  But really it's just a bonus or alternative to replaying the entire demo.

And that's just about it for the major stuff.  There's lot of small tweaks like additional dialogue or voice acting, and of course Scarecrow is playable in the story itself and brings unique mechanics to the table for his brief stint as a party member.  Lots of visual updates like more corpses in Broomhill.  New items, new events, new enemies and enemy placements.  But going over all that would be a little extra.  So if you want the full list of changes do check out the actual change log post.

I'm already hard at work on the games second chapter which is what the next update will focus on.  I also intend to update the games icons at long last and start including proper explanations for all the statuses and effects in game.  We're reaching the demos final form now.  Again I appreciate everyone's support and all the kind words.  I'm liking this trend of updates every other month so I think I'll try and stick with that schedule.  So hopefully you'll be playing chapter 2 in April.  There might be a patch if any game breaking bugs are discovered but I'm hoping this build will be much more stable thanks to my extensive playtesting.  Well that's it for now.  Hope you're enjoying the game and I'll catch up with you all later!